Open Thread 119.25

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server.

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1,255 Responses to Open Thread 119.25

  1. There is a South Bay meetup this Sunday, January 27th. I have just put it on the schedule for a second time, but since it vanished the first time I am not counting on it showing up this time.

  2. nkurz says:

    There’s an interesting interview with Stephen Pinker up on Quillette. Most of it is Pinker responding to reviews of his book Enlightenment Now, which is about the “Age of Enlightenment”, not bodhi or satori as recently discussed it the thread about the survey. But Pinker does explicitly call out Scott’s “Conflict vs Mistake” essay later in the interview, saying that Enlightenment Now is firmly on the side of Mistake Theory:

    Enlightenment Now not only engages in Mistake theory but sees it as the essence of the Enlightenment: Progress depends on the application of knowledge. Conflict theorists think this is just an excuse for reinforcing privilege: progress depends on the struggle for power, and the philosophes were woke avant la lettre.

    • Guy in TN says:

      “Conflict vs. Mistake” is one of the more baffling entries in the SSC canon to me. I’m still not sure what these terms are supposed to mean; it seemed as if Scott retconned some of the harder claims in the follow-up. I’m genuinely disappointed, but not surprised, to see it become one of the more commonly-referenced blog posts, filtering out into the mainstream discourse.

      Its just too easy, for more unscrupulous readers, to pick it up and use it as a weapon: “Oh, you’re mad? You want to fight back against this thing I’m advocating for? Looks like you’re a Conflict Theorist who has abandoned all logic and reason smh”

      • I think it’s a simple and useful distinction. One reason why you disagree with me about what policies are better is that you are in favor of the same results I am against. An alternative reason is that you disagree with me about what the results will be–expect the policy I support to produce results that I as well as you would be against.

        Minimum wage is a pretty obvious example. One explanation of the fact that I am opposed to having or increasing the legal minimum wage is that I want low paid workers to be poor, or at least am not willing to accept a small increase in the cost of things they produce as the price of making them less poor.

        An alternative explanation is that I believe the main effect of a minimum wage law is to price low-skill workers out of the market, leaving them unemployed.

        Presumably, most people who favor having or increasing the minimum wage would not favor those policies if they agreed with me about the consequences.

        • Plumber says:

          @DavidFriedman,

          You nailed it.

          When values differ (“Justice” vs. “Liberty”) than arguments get heated, but when goals are agreed to (“What ways will lift more people out of poverty?”)., more reasoned discussion is likely.

          There’s also “winners and losers” and “long-term vs. short-term”.

          I think your prescriptions (more free trade and more open borders) will probably lift more humans out of poverty (as in China and India), but I also think those prescriptions will hurt more Americans in this generation than they will help, and more Canadian/Scandinavisn/mid 20th century U.S.A.-like policies will be more helpful for those I most want helped in the next couple of decades.

      • Guy in TN says:

        I think it’s a simple and useful distinction. One reason why you disagree with me about what policies are better is that you are in favor of the same results I am against. An alternative reason is that you disagree with me about what the results will be–expect the policy I support to produce results that I as well as you would be against.

        It sounds like you’re just re-describing the distinction between normative vs. descriptive claims: one debate is about what the outcomes of a policy will likely be, the other debate is what the outcome of policy ought to be.

        How do we make sense of Pinker’s reference, if this what Conflict vs. Mistake is supposed to be? Quoting Pinker and substituting in your concepts:

        Enlightenment Now not only engages in [disagreement over what the objective results are] but sees it as the essence of the Enlightenment: Progress depends on the application of knowledge. [People who debate over whether the results are good or bad] think this is just an excuse for reinforcing privilege…

        Huh? Is this really what he means?

        • Mark V Anderson says:

          I agree with DF that “Conflict vs Mistake theory” is a useful distinction, but I don’t quite follow his explanation.

          In my conception of conflict theorists, they aren’t really concerned about what is the correct answer. They already know what actions to take will result in the best solutions. While these actions will help most of the people, there are always a certain group of people that will be harmed by taking this action, and they will oppose taking these actions. Thus the concept of conflict — the issue is how to win this conflict, not how to find the answers.

          I think few people are 100% Conflict Theorists or 100% Mistake Theorists, but it is useful concept to think about the different approach to ideological differences.

          Pinker sees his concept of the Enlightenment as not about conflict but about knowledge. Thus it is about Mistake Theory.

          • Guy in TN says:

            I see two main categories in your interpretation, if you would allow me to summarize:
            1. The question of what the best process is (“mistake”)
            2. The question of how to implement this process (“conflict”)

            Another perfectly fine explanation, but again, not one I think Pinker (or Scott) shares. How does Pinker’s rejection of Conflict Theory square with this? Are rational people only supposed to only ask questions in the realm of abstract ideas, and never touch the question of tangible implementation?

          • Aapje says:

            @Mark V Anderson

            In my conception of conflict theorists, they aren’t really concerned about what is the correct answer. They already know what actions to take will result in the best solutions.

            That is one way they can look at the world.

            However, another is based on an identitarian ideology where different genders/races/etc fundamentally cannot understand each others specific needs and thus cannot act fairly for the other.

            And/or it can be a segregationist ideology where the needs are considered incompatible.

  3. The original Mr. X says:

    I don’t know if any of you have been following the story of the alleged harassment of a Native American by a bunch of school students, but if you are, it looks like the media has been (surprise, surprise) giving a completely misleading and biased account of it.

    • Paul Zrimsek says:

      The kid’s smirk is still pretty annoying, though I don’t know whether it’s something he can help: it might just be a thing he’s got, the way some others are afflicted with Bitchy Resting Face.

      • The Nybbler says:

        If having a totally punchable face meant it was OK to be punched, there’d be a lot more busted noses and skinned knuckles than there are. But yeah, that kid does have a punchable face.

      • bullseye says:

        I don’t care enough to watch the video and form my own opinion, but it certainly looks to me like they focused on the most punchable looking kid there (considering I’ve seen a few different pictures, and they all feature that one guy).

        • HeelBearCub says:

          That’s because he was inches from the vet’s face, doing his best “I’m a little shit and you can’t do anything about it“ routine.

          Really people.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Precisely how far did punchable face guy move to get into the Indian veteran’s face?

          • The original Mr. X says:

            That’s because he was inches from the vet’s face, doing his best “I’m a little shit and you can’t do anything about it“ routine.

            Well, yeah, when you invade someone’s personal space like Drummer Guy was doing, they do tend to end up inches from your face.

            “This creature is a vicious one. When you walk uncomfortably close to it, it stands there grinning awkwardly.”

      • The original Mr. X says:

        I’m sure a supermodel such as yourself doesn’t need to worry, but I think a norm of “Don’t ruin people’s lives because you saw a photo of them with a silly expression” is going to be better for most people than the reverse.

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          I’m having trouble retrieving the part where I called for anyone’s life to be ruined, but the compliment on my own appearance is much appreciated. For one reason or another I don’t get that nearly as often as you’d expect.

      • Randy M says:

        To me it looks like an awkwardly held smile by someone in an unpleasant situation, but it could be a haughty look of disregard.

        But we’re well past reading tea leaves when we’re condemning someone for smiling wrong.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        When I said earlier that this is how things go to shit this is what I was talking about.

        Instead of being a good person yourself, you think “I could be more effective if I attack evil people,” and you calmly talk yourself into torturing people because it’s holy.

        Edit to follow-up: “This” is the mob chasing people who they think are the perpetrator in this incident — not even caring if they have the right person. There’s no time to wait on identity confirmation, if we don’t get ahead of the mob, the mob might turn on us.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      Dude, you can’t possibly be that gullible.

      • AliceToBob says:

        @ HeelBearCub

        Would you elaborate? To anyone, the things that I’m confused about:

        – I scanned the NPR video online [1], and I don’t see the taunting/jeering behavior that’s alleged. A few juvenile unintelligible outbursts/howls, but that’s to be expected under either explanation. There’s what appears to be a couple seconds of what might be hand-chopping by a couple young men, but that is quickly shut down by the other students. Is there some clip where a student actually says something that crosses the line?

        – The video on the Adam Clements twitter page isn’t as clear as it could be, but it does look like the Native American group moves toward the students. It certainly explains why the young man (who alternates between grinning and looking uncomfortable/insecure) is so close to the drummer. It seems strange he would voluntarily place himself in close proximity to such a loud instrument.

        – Is WKRC, or Adam Clements in particular, known for presenting events in a rightward-biased fashion?

        – What sounds like a student at 56 seconds saying “I’m so confused!” jives with the account given by the students that this confrontation wasn’t planned by them.

        My regard for mainstream media has taken a nosedive over the last few years, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the original report is just knee-jerk coverage, and the truth is more nuanced. I’d like to know if I’m wrong, or whether I should downgrade my opinion of AP News even further.

        [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/686988268/video-of-kentucky-students-mocking-native-american-man-draws-outcry

        • HeelBearCub says:

          Say a soldier, a Vietnam vet, was processing down the national mall, solemnly, making a symbolic journey to the Vietnam War Memorial, marching with a snare drum.

          And then a group of young men gathered around him and started dancing and blocking his path, getting right in his face, inches from it, but not making physical contact, wearing Che Guevara shirts, jeering at him. You would understand instantly what was happening.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            Gees, HBC, it looks to me like you are the gullible one here. This sounds more like a Vietnam vet walking directly into a crowd of kids to try to make some kind of ideological point, going out of his way to avoid the Memorial.

            We certainly don’t have enough info here, but from what I’ve seen, I wonder why you are being so ingenuous. Sorry to be so harsh, but usually you are more open-minded.

          • Have you looked at the webbed videos? Do they show the young men gathering around the Indian vet or the Indian vet going into the group of young men? That would seem to be crucial to how to interpret what happened.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            It looked to me like Phillips came up to the edge of the group at first, and happened to settle on Smirking Boy as the one he wanted to confront. (If, as the current version of the story has it, his group was trying to defuse the situation between the kids and the Black Hebrew zanies, then they were right where they wanted to be and no one was in anyone’s way. If they were trying instead to move through, as HBC would have it, it’s just barely possible that a quick “coming through, please, excuse us” would have made the point more clearly than the wordless drumming.)

            Some of the kids did gradually filter in behind Phillips, mostly taking video at first. Pretty much what you’d expect when someone’s putting on a show, and the guys with him didn’t seem to be acting like they saw any sort of threat. There was a certain amount of Beavis-and-Buttheadish yuk-yukking going on at his expense, perhaps a reaction to the left-wing protest cliche of the drumming, but more likely because that’s how boys that age usually react to anything outside the teenage Overton peephole.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ HeelBearCub

            You’re right that I’d understand the situation you describe, and my sympathies would be with the soldier. Ditto if you replaced “soldier” with Nathan Phillips (the drummer) and “Che Guevara shirts” with MAGA hats.

            But the scenario you lay out seems to have little connection with the video or descriptions that have emerged regarding this event.

            I’m also struck by the hyperbolic statements of Nathan Phillips [1]:

            There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” Phillips said. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that…

            Phillips said he recalled “the looks in these young men’s faces … I mean, if you go back and look at the lynchings that was done (in America) …and you’d see the faces on the people … The glee and the hatred in their faces, that’s what these faces looked like.

            In contrast, the statement by Nick Sandmann (student) gives a very different, but plausible description of what happened that day [2]. Perhaps you should check it out.

            I thought this segment was particularly relevant:

            I am not going to comment on the words or account of Mr. Phillips, as I don’t know him and would not presume to know what is in his heart or mind. Nor am I going to comment further on the other protestors, as I don’t know their hearts or minds, either.

            [1] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/01/20/native-american-leader-nathan-phillips-recounts-incident-video/2630256002/

            [2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/covington-kentucky-student-statement/index.html

      • The original Mr. X says:

        Dude, there are videos in that Twitter feed confirming the student’s account of what happened. Have you bothered to watch them?

        • Plumber says:

          @The original Mr. X

          “Dude, there are videos in that Twitter feed confirming the student’s account of what happened. Have you bothered to watch them?”

          I can’t speak for @HeelBearCub (or whomever you were responding to) but the likelihood of my ever watching videos on a Twitter feed are pretty damn low.

          Please write what you mean or link to an essay that’s readable, if it’s not good music or short comedy I’m not likely to endure videos and some damn protest is just about the last thing I’ll watch voluntarily, if whatever is in a video isn’t worth a text commentary then as far as I’m concerned it’s not worth my time.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            No-one is under any compulsion to watch anything, of course, but if you accuse someone of being “gullible” whilst refusing to look at the evidence, that doesn’t say much for your intellectual honesty.

          • but the likelihood of my ever watching videos on a Twitter feed are pretty damn low.

            I don’t generally watch youtube videos and the like, because I can read faster than most people talk and find text a better way of conveying information.

            But in this case the issues isn’t conveying information, it’s giving evidence. How we interpret the events depends critically on what happened, and the videos show at least a partial picture of that. If, as I think is the case, the video shows the drummer going to the group of teenagers and confronting one of them, that means that any account in which it was the teenagers who confronted the drummer is false.

          • Plumber says:

            @The original Mr. X

            “No-one is under any compulsion to watch anything, of course, but…”

            Thankfully @DavidFriedman described the content more exactly, which was much more effective, than the Uh-huh’s and Nuh-uh’s.

    • SamChevre says:

      Admittedly biased source, but video seems to line up with the story in the tweet.

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      Slightly off-topic: Wearing a MAGA hat is equivalent to carrying around a picket sign. Political paraphernalia’s only use is to send political messages.

      • The Nybbler says:

        The students were just returning from a political rally.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          I know, they were at a right to life rally.

          But they kept the signs uphats on when some of them started arguing against someone else’s ‘rally’ (granted, a crazy street preacher, but still).

          I could see why a Vietnam vet might find it appropriate to try to divide and distract them (the crazy preacher and the MAGA-hat wearing students). Not knowing the reason why the students were there, it could look like something was about to go down.

          I don’t see malevolence in their actions, but I hope they draw the right lesson from this.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Who changes their clothes directly after a rally? There’s no taboo or rule against wearing political propaganda in public, certainly not on the Mall in Washington D.C. They didn’t start arguing against anyone else’s rally. The Black Hebrew Israelite group started up with them. And then the Indian guy went in, and I doubt his motives were as benign as he said.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            It takes two to tango.

          • The Nybbler says:

            I see. So if fault can be found with the MAGA kids, find fault with the MAGA kids. If that doesn’t hold up, switch to implying that anyone involved in a situation must be at fault.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Oh FFS. They’re teenagers, of course they’re going to do things that adults would think counter-productive or stupid.

            I just hope they draw the right lesson from this fiasco! (The wrong lesson would be that they, as a group, did absolutely nothing counter-productive, and that left-wing radicals will try to set them up for no reason at all.)

            I also hope they learn, like most adults do, not to start arguing or interacting with crazies who happen to be in their vicinity, even if those crazies are arguing with you. Nor tomahawk chopping at NAs.

            Frankly the ones that I blame here are their adult chaperones who should have been looking out for their interests better.
            Why the school would have a political rally with minors at all I do not know (the rally was not specific to matters of concern to minors). It’s one thing to indoctrinate students, it’s quite another to get them actively involved in your political hobbyhorse.
            Why the school would allow unrelated political paraphernalia at a right-to-life rally that students are getting credit for I do not know.
            Why the adults wouldn’t intervene to tell them to stop arguing with the preacher I do not know.

          • The Nybbler says:

            (The wrong lesson would be that they, as a group, did absolutely nothing counter-productive, and that left-wing radicals will try to set them up for no reason at all.)

            That strikes me as exactly the right lesson. With the addition that they will be subject to an irrebuttable presumption that they are the party at fault.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            I just hope they draw the right lesson from this fiasco! (The wrong lesson would be that they, as a group, did absolutely nothing counter-productive, and that left-wing radicals will try to set them up for no reason at all.)

            Why exactly would that be the wrong lesson? From the videos, it looks like the children were just standing around, not doing anything more anti-social than your average group of high-school children, and then Native American drummer guy walks into the midst of them and starts banging his drum a few inches from someone’s face. Then he goes to the media to slander the kids, and the MSM does its usual propagandists-of-the-intersectional-left routine, and now an innocent high-schooler is being treated like Hitler Jnr. for the crime of smiling awkwardly.

            If this isn’t a set-up, I’d like to know what would be.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            That strikes me as exactly the right lesson. With the addition that they will be subject to an irrebuttable presumption that they are the party at fault.

            Yeah, but they deserve it, because of all that white privilege they have.

            You know, where people assume you’re evil because of your skin colour, and make statements like “No one need ever forgive him.” That kind of privilege.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            It’s the wrong lesson for the same reason Rashomon. Viewpoints differ, what’s salient to one is invisible to the others.

            People in a large group can easily not realize how intimidating their large group is to those in smaller groups.

            Wearing a MAGA hat and then arguing with a crazy makes you look crazy too.

            Tomahawk chopping in the presence of Native Americans is provocative verging on instigative.

            it looks like the children were just standing around, not doing anything more anti-social than your average group of high-school children, and then Native American drummer guy walks into the midst of them and starts banging his drum a few inches from someone’s face.

            I have not watched the extended video, but my wife did. So a few things:

            1) Some of the students began arguing back at the crazy preacher prior to the Native Americans coming between them to, in their understanding, defuse the situation.
            2) Standing around with political paraphernalia and uniforms while chanting/hollering/whatever in unison (which they were doing) would tend to look like some sort of political statement to outsiders such as the Native Americans.

            You have got to be aware of how you can appear to others, and modify yourself appropriately. As a large man I have been taught this lesson. It hasn’t been a pleasant lesson to learn, but it’s one I needed to learn, and the other parties are not in the wrong no matter how pissed off I was at being wrongly considered dangerous.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            Drummer Guy walked into the middle of the kids and started banging his drum three inches from someone’s face. If he found them at all intimidating, he has a very funny way of showing it.

          • The Nybbler says:

            It’s the wrong lesson for the same reason Rashomon. Viewpoints differ, what’s salient to one is invisible to the others.

            That there are different stories does not mean there is no truth.

            2) Standing around with political paraphernalia and uniforms while chanting/hollering/whatever in unison (which they were doing) would tend to look like some sort of political statement to outsiders such as the Native Americans.

            This was the Mall in Washington D.C. If there were to be only one place in this nation for political statements, that would be it. You keep using this as some sort of strike against the students, but it’s really not.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            You have got to be aware of how you can appear to others, and modify yourself appropriately. As a large man I have been taught this lesson. It hasn’t been a pleasant lesson to learn, but it’s one I needed to learn, and the other parties are not in the wrong no matter how pissed off I was at being wrongly considered dangerous.

            You seem to be looking at this situation backwards. The kids in the video are not the ones crying in the media to ruin the lives of other people for their political views. Other than refraining from voicing their political opinions, what could a group of teenagers, and specifically the young man at the center of this, do differently in this situation?

            Not smile?

            If there are kids tomahawk chopping, that’s inappropriate but hardly grounds for the media to get involved – that should be a school discipline issue. The kid at the center of accusations literally did nothing – what should he do differently?

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Not smile?

            Yes. Just like in Gone Girl.

          • albatross11 says:

            anonymousskimmer:

            Not really. If you’re walking down the street and I walk up and start a confrontation, you don’t have to agree to it at all. You may just be standing there with a dumb look on your face trying to figure out what’s going on–that doesn’t mean you did anything to be part of the conflict.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I would like to see some evidence that Nathan Phillips is actually a Vietnam veteran. Apparently he’s 64 years old, which would put him at 16 or 17 when the last combat troops were leaving Vietnam in ’72. This makes his claim of service seem unlikely.

            He lied shamelessly about the kids in the video, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t lie about being a vet, too.

          • Judging by the Washington Times story, it isn’t clear he has ever claimed to be a Vietnam veteran, although that’s how he gets described.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            it isn’t clear he has ever claimed to be a Vietnam veteran, although that’s how he gets described.

            Somehow that seems the perfect crap cherry on this sundae full of fail.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            You people say these things as if I don’t know them already.

            I don’t get it. I’m trying to show how this can be a learning opportunity. You seem to be saying that the kids (and more importantly in my eyes, the adult chaperones) have absolutely nothing to learn, other than that the world is out to get them for what they look like.

            P.S. In the extended video the crazy preacher called the students out for not having any black members. Some students shouted back that they did have some black members, and a handful of them shouted “Bring out Jamal!” (as proof that they have a black member) to the students inside the circle. At this point the Native Americans were some distance away. “Bring out Jamal!” ~= “Build the Wall!” As my wife said, a comedy of errors. (She’s more on the kids’ side than I am)

            FOR THEIR GOD’S SAKE I HOPE THE STUDENTS TAKE HOME THE LESSON: DO NOT INTERACT WITH CRAZY PEOPLE!!

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            That there are different stories does not mean there is no truth.

            That there is truth, does not mean that we know what it is.

            Which is the entire point of the previous comment you responded to:

            Viewpoints differ, what’s salient to one is invisible to the others.

            One of the lessons a lot of people seem to be trying to make is “don’t rush to judgment”. They’re making it on the grounds that the original posted video turned out to be an incomplete account of the incident, on grounds of a statement published by one of the attendees, plus a second video. Well: what if that statement and that video are themselves inaccurate? What if we missed a bit where the HS students were taunting the Black Hebrews or Phillips, or were harassing innocent passersby, or were bragging on their way between their protest and the Mall about how they were going to look for some other protests to gatecrash? Or the next wave of evidence after that, where the passersby were themselves looking for angry protestors to catch on camera, or…

            Obviously, there exists a point where further evidence is so likely to just uphold one of the previous narratives (ideally, one that fuses and resolves any previous narratives) that it’s no longer worth searching for more. I think most people don’t have a consensus on when that point has arrived, with the possible exception of professional investigators.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            One of the lessons a lot of people seem to be trying to make is “don’t rush to judgment”. They’re making it on the grounds that the original posted video turned out to be an incomplete account of the incident, on grounds of a statement published by one of the attendees, plus a second video. Well: what if that statement and that video are themselves inaccurate? What if we missed a bit where the HS students were taunting the Black Hebrews or Phillips, or were harassing innocent passersby, or were bragging on their way between their protest and the Mall about how they were going to look for some other protests to gatecrash? Or the next wave of evidence after that, where the passersby were themselves looking for angry protestors to catch on camera, or…

            One of the videos out there is around two hours long (I can try and find it if you want). So, I don’t think the scenario you outline is very likely. Even if it was, though, that still wouldn’t change the fact that the MSM have been attempting to destroy a child’s life on the basis of a hat and a few seconds of out-of-context video.

          • albatross11 says:

            anonymousskimmer:

            Lesson for the kids: Avoid crazy people and provocateurs trying to create a Social Media Moment to get attention.

            And for the people watching at home:

            Lesson #1: Don’t fall for the next social media outrage storm.

            Lesson #2: When mainstream journalists and political figures fall for the next social media outrage storm and and it falls apart, update your estimate of the seriousness and care with which those journalists and political figures report factual questions and approach questions of greater weight.

            IMO, this is more-or-less the big lesson from Tetlock’s work. When people write commentary on stuff like this, most people judge them on how well it agrees with their previous beliefs or with their bit of ideological bubble, and never check to see if the original commentator got the facts straight. Here we have a natural experiment–a misleading Twitter storm kicked up, with evidence that was extremely ambiguous, and that anyone could see was ambiguous. Lots of people we otherwise trust to stand between us and reality and tell us what’s what responded with the crowd of people with whom they shared beliefs, despite the obviously thin evidence, and without any particular attempt to get to the truth. Why would we expect them to do differently in the next ten cases where we won’t see any inconvenient contradictory evidence or narrative collapse? Probably they’re just as careless all those other times, but we don’t notice.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @anonymousskimmer

            I don’t get it. I’m trying to show how this can be a learning opportunity.

            This is going into it from the perspective of “the kids or their chaperones did something wrong, that is what resulted in the situation, and they should learn from it.” This is pure Bulverism. Not only does it exclude the possibility that the kids did not do wrong, it fails to consider the agency and/or culpability of the other actors involved and furthermore also fails to consider that alternative actions you would suggest might either not work or have _other_ negative consequences.

          • albatross11 says:

            Maybe the right lesson to draw is that you shouldn’t join outrage storms based on ambiguous evidence, because you’re likely to be missing a lot of context, and a lot of the time, you’ll have the whole story wrong. And even if you don’t, you’ll probably be contributing to making the world a much worse place.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @anonymousskimmer

            Some of the students began arguing back at the crazy preacher prior to the Native Americans coming between them … Wearing a MAGA hat and then arguing with a crazy makes you look crazy too.

            It seems that you think wearing a MAGA hat contributes to looking crazy. Do you feel the same about “YES WE CAN” shirts?

            I just hope they draw the right lesson from this fiasco!

            You have got to be aware of how you can appear to others, and modify yourself appropriately. As a large man I have been taught this lesson.

            It’s not clear that whatever lesson you learned applies here. Trying to influence how people perceive the intentions of a group seems harder than influencing how people perceive my own individual behavior. You seem to be holding this group of teenagers to a higher standard than yourself.

            Also, insisting that your life experience generalizes to this situation, and that these students should learn the “right lesson”, comes off as a little arrogant.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            And I have seen my conservative circles rushing to attack the vet as a stolen valor guy, although (for the moment) the evidence shows he never claimed that himself.

            I can say “their outrage storm was not as bad as the previous outrage storm,” which is true, but it is still the same lesson: stop participating in outrage storms, and seek shelter yourself to avoid outrage storms.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            And I have seen my conservative circles rushing to attack the vet as a stolen valor guy, although (for the moment) the evidence shows he never claimed that himself.

            I’m not sure whether he’s made such claims in the context of the present controversy, but he has in the past, e.g.:

            “I have a relative here who said he’d lead the way and scout ahead for us,” Phillips continued, his voice breaking. “You know, I’m from Vietnam times. I’m what they call a recon ranger. That was my role. So I thank you for taking that point position for me.”

          • The original Mr. X says:

            TBH, the insistence that the kids should “learn the right lesson” looks like the just world fallacy to me: they’ve got in so much trouble, there must be something they did to set it off.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            Good lessons albatross11.

            @The Nybbler

            Not only does it exclude the possibility that the kids did not do wrong, it fails to consider the agency and/or culpability of the other actors involved

            It doesn’t matter whether you did no wrong or not. People will still react to what you appear to them to be, and sometimes this will result in bad things happening.

            And yes, I do believe that interacting with crazy people (unless trained to do so, or necessity) is “doing wrong”. Given the givens the impulse is completely understandable from HS students (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATTMB4gH3sU), but still something that’s best to avoid.

            @AliceToBob

            It seems that you think wearing a MAGA hat contributes to looking crazy. Do you feel the same about “YES WE CAN” shirts?

            On a personal note I feel this way about anyone whatsoever wearing political garb (exception for actual politicians).

            Trying to influence how people perceive the intentions of a group seems harder than influencing how people perceive my own individual behavior.

            Damn right it is. That’s why you have to be extra-conscious of your actions.
            https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2019/01/222285/good-place-season-3-episode-11-recap-michael-new-neighborhood
            “Last week’s “The Book Of Doug” proves it’s the consequences of even people’s most thoughtful decisions are what’s keeping them from eternal paradise.
            Back in the day, giving your grandmother flowers would result in a net of 145.1 points. Now, you’ll lose 4 points for the same actions (by inadvertently supporting sweatshops, pesticides, and one CEO who committed crimes against an ill-fated racehorse and many people).”

            Also, insisting that your life experience generalizes to this situation, and that these students should learn the “right lesson”, comes off as a little arrogant.

            I’m now past 40 and had a first ‘mentorship’ experience last year; old people are gonna be old. I’ll try to limit how arrogant I come off to avoid making my father’s mistakes. Thanks for the feedback.

            @The original Mr. X
            I’ve listed the actions that members of their group took that I believe were mistakes. Their mistakes don’t come close to the mistakes that their school and chaperones made. I hope lessons are learned.

            P.S. I’m bowing out from the debate now.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ anonymousskimmer

            It seems that you think wearing a MAGA hat contributes to looking crazy. Do you feel the same about “YES WE CAN” shirts?

            On a personal note I feel this way about anyone whatsoever wearing political garb (exception for actual politicians).

            Okay, your bar for what looks crazy is lower than mine. In most settings, I don’t mind that people signal their political opinions, whether it be via speech, attire, bumper stickers, protests, or whatever.

            Damn right it is. That’s why you have to be extra-conscious of your actions.

            Last week’s “The Book Of Doug” proves it’s the consequences of even people’s most thoughtful decisions are what’s keeping them from eternal paradise. Back in the day, giving your grandmother flowers would result in a net of 145.1 points. Now, you’ll lose 4 points for the same actions (by inadvertently supporting sweatshops, pesticides, and one CEO who committed crimes against an ill-fated racehorse and many people).”

            Spoilers ahead…

            In the Good Place, the situation is that no matter how much effort is put into considering the consequences of their actions, people (like Chidi or Doug Fourcett) will nevertheless end up in the Bad Place.

            This is portrayed as an immoral state of affairs, since (as you describe) there are essentially unforeseeable/unavoidable/unintended bad effects tied to any action. Indeed, the Judge agrees with Michael that damning people for this is wrong, and that their “point system” may need recalibration.

            Your enthusiastic directive to be “extra-conscious of your actions” seems similarly flawed. It requires every individual in the group to present themselves in a way that cannot possibly be (mis)interpreted as crazy, threatening, or whatever “modify yourself appropriately” entails.

            I’m now past 40 and had a first ‘mentorship’ experience last year; old people are gonna be old. I’ll try to limit how arrogant I come off to avoid making my father’s mistakes.

            Without you elaborating, I don’t understand what age or mentorship (or your father) has to do with things. If I ever claim to impart “the right lesson”, it involves content from a limited domain where I have expertise. My opinions on the proper etiquette for political expression is something I likely wouldn’t share with a mentee, let alone declare as “the right lesson”.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            One last comment @AliceToBob:
            Re: political garb
            “contributes to looking crazy”, not “makes them look crazy”.

            Primarily I’m talking about interacting with crazies, not political expression, which is frankly a lesson that every adult should pass on to every child, if only in the “stranger danger” sense. The students had already finished their political expression after all, they had just neglected to account for their still wearing political garb, and their still being in a large group.

          • albatross11 says:

            ISTM the message you’re proposing for kids is that they must never reveal their political views in public or engage with someone they disagree with in public, lest some bunch of assholes take some pictures and make up some lies and try to drag them on Twitter. If that’s the right lesson to teach kids right now, then it suggests some huge society-wide problems.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Edward Scizorhands says:
            January 22, 2019 at 11:49 am

            And I have seen my conservative circles rushing to attack the vet as a stolen valor guy, although (for the moment) the evidence shows he never claimed that himself.

            I can say “their outrage storm was not as bad as the previous outrage storm,” which is true, but it is still the same lesson: stop participating in outrage storms, and seek shelter yourself to avoid outrage storms.

            Except your conservative friends are right. Phillips has made statements leading the media to believe he was a Vietnam vet, like having served in “vietnam times” and been called a “babykiller” and spit on by hippies. When the media reports this as him being a Vietnam veteran, he does not correct them. His DD-214 has been found, and he was a refrigerator mechanic in Lincoln, Nebraska. Also he went AWOL multiple times.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Well then, I’m glad I didn’t get involved in an outrage storm about my conservative friends. At least I got that right.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ anonymousskimmer

            Before:

            You have got to be aware of how you can appear to others, and modify yourself appropriately. As a large man I have been taught this lesson.

            Viewpoints differ, what’s salient to one is invisible to the others.

            It doesn’t matter whether you did no wrong or not. People will still react to what you appear to them to be, and sometimes this will result in bad things happening.

            After:

            Primarily I’m talking about interacting with crazies, not political expression, which is frankly a lesson that every adult should pass on to every child, if only in the “stranger danger” sense.

            So, your primary point distills to “stranger danger”. If only I’d known earlier that your aim was to convey a platitude.

            The students had already finished their political expression after all, they had just neglected to account for their still wearing political garb,

            which they should wear without fear of being exploited as poster boys for hatred, racism, bigotry, white privilege, etc. by what now seems to be sloppy and ideologically-motivated work by reporters.

            and their still being in a large group.

            while waiting for their school bus to come collect them.

    • 10240 says:

      Regardless of the narrative, what the hell is newsworthy in this ? (International news no less, I’ve seen an article about it even in Hungarian news.)

      • brad says:

        I rather agree. Fine it blew up on twitter and facebook. That doesn’t mean the Times needs to write multiple articles about it.

        • Randy M says:

          “People outraged” is a dog bites man story without the bloodshed angle.
          In other words, I agree. Although now there’s the media spin angle, but that’s also a dog bites man story.

        • Plumber says:

          @brad

          “I rather agree. Fine it blew up on twitter and facebook. That doesn’t mean the Times needs to write multiple articles about it”

          The New York Times

          Funny it never filtered to anything I’ve read and I try to read every column by Brooks, Edsall, Douthat, and Krugman, and usually there’s “Editors’ Picks” and “More in Opinion” showing at the bottom of the essay to lead me to what’s newsworthy that week but somehow once again the SSC commentariat is responding to something I’ve never heard of. 

          • nkurz says:

            brad seems right that there are bunch of New York Times stories: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22covington+catholic%22&as_qdr=w

            It seems like you read primarily the Opinion sections. Perhaps it will take a few days before it filters down to there?

          • brad says:

            I avoid the opinion section these days, mostly stick to “Top Stories”, “World”, “New York”, and “Business”. I used to read some of the lifestyle sections but they seem to be exclusively aimed at women in recent years.

          • Plumber says:

            @nkurz, “

            …It seems like you read primarily the Opinion sections. Perhaps it will take a few days before it filters down to there?”

            And tonight the story of the incident did filter to where I usually read.

            Three seperate showboatin’ groups meet?

            This is so many layers of stupid.

            The only thing that makes this “news” is that it was news.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Just keep in mind that if it weren’t for nitpicky gossips like us, the version of the story that finally filtered through to the sources you do follow would almost certainly have been the uncorrected one. You’re welcome.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Addendum: I just want to note how very New York Times it is to take a story where what little accurate analysis there was was done by Internet randos, and draw the lesson “Boo Internet randos”.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            All parts of this story were publicized thanks to internet randos.

            No one was killed, no one got hurt, no one was even physically touched.

            As other elsewhere said this should not have been a news story, not even a social “media” “”news”” story.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            No one was killed, no one got hurt, no one was even physically touched. […] As other elsewhere said this should not have been a news story, not even a social “media” “”news”” story.

            It’s not that simple. Ridicule precedes demonization. Demonization precedes hate. Hate leads to suffering violence.

            So a lot of people are astutely looking upstream from violence, and then looking for examples of what they see elsewhere, as a potential precursor.

            (I hope and expect that people will slowly get acclimated to how much gets caught up in this net, as well as noting how much it’s affected by the mere act of looking, and adjust their priors.)

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            Say, if it’s all a big “no harm, no foul” nothingburger, why is it important that the kids draw lessons from it?

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            The times in my life when I’ve made mistakes that could have lead to something serious are unworthy of even local news*. This is going to be the same for the vast majority of people.

            We should still learn lessons from those mistakes.

            * – possible exception is the accident that resulted in 150+ stitches, and even that’s just worthy of a minor note in a very local paper.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            If one side is answerable for anything that might have happened, and the other only for what actually has (so far), naturally the ones who get the special dispensation are likely to come out better.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            One side this, one side that.

            Enough people are talking about how bad the crazy preacher was and the rigidity of the Native American, why do I have to talk about them too?

          • The original Mr. X says:

            Enough people are talking about how bad the crazy preacher was and the rigidity of the Native American, why do I have to talk about them too?

            You can talk about whatever you like. However, the outrage directed against the CCH kids is already so extreme that talking about how they should examine their own behaviour comes across as victim-blaming.

          • albatross11 says:

            The interesting phenomenon isn’t that some crazy assholes were crazy assholes on the internet, it’s that lots of normal non-crazy, non-asshole people went along, some allegedly serious people with serious jobs in politics and media. Nothing we can do will stop crazy assholes from being their own crazy asshole selves. But there’s a social pathology going on that sweeps normal human beings into saying and sometimes doing seriously nasty things.

          • Dan L says:

            it’s that lots of normal non-crazy, non-asshole people went along, some allegedly serious people with serious jobs in politics and media.

            The politicians and media have the excuse that following the masses is literally their job (and if you don’t like that, find a subset with better incentives), but I still haven’t found a way to fire the electorate/consumer base. IMO while this incident was remarkable for just how low the actual stakes were, nothing about it was surprising and I don’t think it shifted my priors any.

        • albatross11 says:

          This was my thought, too. The story seems to be some mix of:

          a. Teenage boys act like assholes.

          b. Protesters try to provoke a response and then overreact= to it.

          c. Someone on Twitter is outraged.

          Why would any of this be news? Someone on Twitter is always outraged, massed teenaged boys are often assholes, and protesters commonly try to provoke a response they can get outraged about. Who cares?

          Now, the media being what it is, I don’t have a huge amount of faith that any story about this will be careful with the facts, and in fact I kind-of assume that they’ll start with the narrative they want to tell and then fill in facts to fit. That’s especially true because nobody here has much power to push back on them or anything.

          So ISTM we’ve got some ambiguous situation mixed between asshole teenagers and asshole protesters, of zero significance to the world, plus nobody we can expect to honestly untangle the situation and tell us what actually happened. What could be a less productive place to spend my time and attention?

          • The original Mr. X says:

            To be honest, I don’t even think the particular boy at the centre of this was acting like an arsehole. Given that he was pretty much minding his own business until a strange old man came up and started banging a drum in his face, I think he showed quite admirable restraint.

    • Mr. Doolittle says:

      As I’m reading more of this story, I wonder if the kid has a libel case against some of the media reports? Not the preacher, as he seems to have genuinely misunderstood the kids, but the media reports that went out of their way to infer maliciousness on the part of a teenager who literally just stood there.

      • The original Mr. X says:

        Not just the media — his local school, parish, and diocese all hung him out to dry, and I hope he sues all of them into financial oblivion.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Being accused of a crime does not entitle one to gobs of money, it entitles one to due process, which the school said they were going to give.

          And I sure hope the tomahawk chopping students get a stern talking to.

        • brad says:

          We have the first amendment in the United States. Thank goodness.

        • What I hope is that the many people who responded to the initial story by presuming the accused guilty and verbally attacking them on that basis will learn the appropriate lesson–that they are themselves badly prejudiced.

          But I’m not counting on it.

          • Plumber says:

            @DavidFriedman

            “….will learn the appropriate lesson…”

            The lesson I learned is to wait until a story filters to my usual news sources for context, as trying to suss it out here may be head-banging frustrating.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            You would think people would figure out by now “if the media says something inflammatory, wait two days before talking about it.” But no.

      • brad says:

        Unlikely. In addition to the well known “public figure” rule in defamation there’s also the matter of public concern which invokes actual malice.

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          I’m assuming that the inclusion of the “public figure” exemption is for completeness here, as there’s no way any of the people involved fall into that.

          As for “matter of public concern” – what matter reaches that level here? Drummers drumming? High school kids waiting for a bus? A confrontation that didn’t escalate?

          I think you’re stretching quite a bit here. If the media, however defined, can create a story of “public interest” simply by reporting on anything they want and passing it around, then that severely reduces the purpose of libel laws.

          • brad says:

            If you are genuinely interested, I suggest reading some of the cases. They should be easy enough to google given that phrase. If you aren’t that interested then you will have to take my word (or not) that the doctrine is quite broad.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            If you want to pull the lawyer card, then I would like to hear your analysis of the Snyder v Phillips criteria as it applies to this case.

            Is the fact that this took place in a public area enough to satisfy the first prong? Do you think that such a broad reading of the test will lead to any unacceptable bad consequences? I think the second prong is harder to meet or requires an even broader reading.

            Secondly, my original question is not about whether a news agency can report on some item that’s gotten popular on Twitter (that clearly is going to be covered by the 1A) – but instead the people that added malicious content (check out this tweet by former governor Howard Dean.) Calling a school a “hate factory” seems a bit much for a public concern exemption to me…

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            “Hate factory” wouldn’t be actionable in any case, being so obviously a personal opinion rather than a factual claim.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            That’s fair. And maybe each individual toed the line enough to avoid libelous statements – which would be an answer to my original question.

            That it’s a matter of “public concern” and the implication of no “malice” in Brad’s response is more of what I’m responding to here.

          • albatross11 says:

            As an aside, reading blue checkmark tweets for a week is perhaps the best possible antidote to taking a lot of our elites[1] as serious, well-intentioned thinkers.

            [1] Political, cultural, and media elites.

          • brad says:

            Snyder v Phillips isn’t a defamation case. Also actual malice doesn’t haven’t anything directly to do with malice, it’s a term of art in the case law.

    • Plumber says:

      @The original Mr. X

      “I don’t know if any of you have been following the story of the alleged harassment of a Native American by a bunch of school students, but if you are, it looks like the media has been (surprise, surprise) giving a completely misleading and biased account of it””

      Now that I’ve read beyond that unreadable Twitter link you posted about the “incident”, I’m a bit angry that I know about it at all, three groups of protesters meet and noise is made?

      So what?

      Why did you want to share this?

      And if it was important to you why didn’t you give context (beyond an unreadable link)?

      • The interesting point wasn’t what happened, it was the response to what happened.

        • Plumber says:

          @DavidFriedman,

          This bizarre story (bizarre that it’s in the news at all!) reached the radio on my drive to work this morning.

          While the reporters read off a statement of the high school student they interviewed the drummer at length, and asked questions like “How did you feel?”, so hardly balanced reporting.

      • The original Mr. X says:

        Now that I’ve read beyond that unreadable Twitter link you posted about the “incident”, I’m a bit angry that I know about it at all, three groups of protesters meet and noise is made?

        You’re angry because you voluntarily read a news story?

        Why did you want to share this?

        Firstly, because large numbers of people were smearing a kid on the basis of inaccurate information, and I thought it right to correct the record for any SSC readers who’d been doing the same. And secondly, because the whole incident provides an exceptionally good example of the media’s current role as the enforcement mob of the intersectional left.

        And if it was important to you why didn’t you give context (beyond an unreadable link)?

        Because it is (somewhat bizarrely) a major news story at the moment, so I assumed that most people would know what I was talking about. And indeed, it seems that everybody except you did.

        Also, I don’t know why you think it’s “unreadable”. I managed to read it perfectly fine.

        • Plumber says:

          “…..I don’t know why you think it’s “unreadable”. I managed to read it perfectly fine”

          The text in the original link is far too small to read (I presume to get past Twitter’s character limit), and when I tried to “view image in another tab” it cuts off most of the text, so unreadable!

          A better way to present it is in the Brooks column, readable and with context!

          • The original Mr. X says:

            I think that must be a result of your display settings, since it’s perfectly fine on my computer.

        • brad says:

          I mean if you want to know what kind of person turned this into a thing to begin with, I’d imagine you’d have to start at home. Sure you’re defending the kid and attacking the drummer instead of vice-versa, but the instinct to pore over the video second by second and then go write impassioned screeds about it on the internet is the same instinct that leads to these so-called mobs in the first place. It’s all well and good to blame the online right’s favorite boogeyman–the media–but they are trying to sell newspapers and clearly there’s a big audience for what amounts to basically gossip.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            Would it be better to allow bad actors in the media to destroy a young man’s life for standing in a public place and smiling? What response is appropriate to that kind of initial malice against him?

          • albatross11 says:

            If major media companies report on a story, it seems unlikely that random comments on blogs are going to spread it any further or ignite it any more. But every time a major media source falls for something like this, does a shitty job reporting it, and later enough details come out to undermine their reporting, it costs them credibility. I feel like a lot of the prestige media in the US have been spending credibility in exchange for clicks for quite awhile now, and one consequence is leaving a lot of us with less and less faith that they’re trying to tell us the truth, or likely to figure out the truth in the first place rather than report the easiest story to write.

          • brad says:

            @Mr. Doolittle
            Can we get a solid definition of a “destroyed life” and a confidence level that the grinner will have one? Perhaps a bet?

            @albatross11
            You have the chain of causation backwards. This story became a story because of the inexplicably obsessed random commenters on blogs (or equivalent) not because of the media. The hunger for gossip is the root problem here, not the media.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            Brad, the argument is not that his life will now be destroyed. It’s a question of what would have happened if there had been no counter to the original reporting. It’s that you seem to be saying that the people responding to the original stories (by “writ[ing] impassioned screeds” on the subject) were equally wrong.

            If the original reporting went uncorrected, there is a very real chance that this young man’s life would have been severely damaged and his life options heavily restricted. Even now he’s probably lost the chance to work for certain employers (a very small minority, probably no real impact on his life). If there had been no “impassioned” response to the factually inaccurate reporting – which lead to people trying to “dox” him specifically and a bunch of really nasty statements about him – what consequences would have lasted beyond the national spotlight moving on?

            After Charlottesville, identified far-right protesters were put in a list with the full intention of getting them fired from jobs (which happened to more than a few of them, as well as a completely unrelated guy in AK (IIRC)) – what do you think would happen to this guy after he gets labeled a “racist” by a similar mob?

          • Randy M says:

            This story became a story because of the inexplicably obsessed random commenters on blogs (or equivalent) not because of the media.

            Are you sure there’s a distinction? A lot of what used to be blog comment conversation is on Twitter lately, and a lot of the participants in that are people affiliated with actual news organizations of admittedly varying size and gravitas.

            Can we get a solid definition of a “destroyed life” and a confidence level that the grinner will have one? Perhaps a bet?

            Well the situation has changed with the further evidence and retractions, so likely the restrained young man will be just fine. With any sensible person acknowledging the mistake, in target if not in methods, hopefully those methods are discredited as less useful in the future by spreading stories of their overreaction and misfire.

          • Jaskologist says:

            Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys both argue in court, so really they’re doing the same thing. If the Innocence Project thinks a lot of people are being convicted unjustly, maybe they should start by looking at home.

          • albatross11 says:

            Well, there have been a fair number of cases where random people bore huge costs as a result of a social media mob being whipped up over something they said or did, and quite often I think the social media mob didn’t have much of the story straight. So I don’t think it’s crazy to worry that getting yet another social media mob pointed at some high school kid might lead to him suffering some costs.

            He reported getting death threats, which is pretty normal for anyone caught up in a CW controversy–there’s a background level of crazy people and assholes in every movement who get into that sort of thing.

            In many cases, schools, employers, and other organizations have been very quick to discipline people for being on the wrong end of a social-media mob, without spending a whole lot of time making sure they had the facts straight, and again, it’s not crazy to worry that something similar might happen in this case. If this kid gets expelled from his private school over a bullshit Twitter controversy, that wouldn’t necessarily ruin his life, but it would be pretty shitty.

            I assume that over time, our institutions will adapt to social media mobs and stop reacting as though thousands of messages from angry Twitter users meant anything. But until then, it sure doesn’t seem unreasonable for people to want to push back on a mob that seems likely to actually screw over some high school kid for dumb reasons.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            Covington school was closed today due to specific threats of violence against the school.

          • brad says:

            @Mr. Doolittle

            After Charlottesville, identified far-right protesters were put in a list with the full intention of getting them fired from jobs (which happened to more than a few of them, as well as a completely unrelated guy in AK (IIRC)) – what do you think would happen to this guy after he gets labeled a “racist” by a similar mob?

            Are they now all homeless, living on the street, and bereft of all their former friends and relations? Same with the pizza place owners and the male/female cable joke guy? They all have had their lives irrevocably destroyed?

            Covington school was closed today due to specific threats of violence against the school.

            I guess all those kids have had their educations destroyed, right?

            @albatross11

            that wouldn’t necessarily ruin his life, but it would be pretty shitty.

            Sure, pretty shitty. But why is it always “mobs”, “lynchings”, “destroyed lives” and so on instead of “pretty shitty”?

            Can’t we have one tiny little corner of the internet that’s not filled with hysterical over the top rhetoric about what is at the end of the day a fairly inconsequential event?

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ brad

            Can’t we have one tiny little corner of the internet that’s not filled with hysterical over the top rhetoric about what is at the end of the day a fairly inconsequential event?

            Nice.

            Weren’t you advocating for Damore’s firing back in OT 81.25? I suppose that CW event was consequential to you, while this one isn’t, so we shouldn’t get “hysterical” about it. Would it be acceptable terminology to say his life was probably “pretty shitty” for awhile after people like you got their wish?

            In OT 97, when discussing the term “racist” and how it gets (mis)applied, didn’t you accuse a poster of “sanctimonious, bad faith posts from the Dutch alt right”? Not over the top at all.

            Instead of implying that those concerned about this event are acting badly, I’d be interested in knowing your criteria for what makes a CW event consequential vs inconsequential. joczmrdnz, d rjio gzo ocz yjjm cdo hz ji ocz rvt jpo, vn tjp vmz ajiy ja nvtdib.

          • brad says:

            Re: Damore
            I never advocated for him to be fired. I defended google’s decision to do so after it was brought up here by someone else.

            Re: the Dutch alt right
            I don’t see what’s over the top about that. I’m not suggesting that posts are tantamount to violence which is something y’all are constantly doing with this “mob” language.

            As for what makes a culture war event consequential, almost all the ones that have been posted about haven’t been. The major exceptions I can think of were Kavanagh and Roy Moore, particularly the first one. Who ends up on the Supreme Court is almost infinitely important than whether some pro life kid or a native drummer was being a jerk at some protest.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ brad

            Re: Damore
            I never advocated for him to be fired. I defended google’s decision to do so after it was brought up here by someone else.

            If true, then it’s an insignificant distinction. However, it seems false. You posted on Aug 5 in response to Matt-M:

            Brad says:
            August 5, 2017 at 3:46 pm
            They should fire him pour encourager les autres. Internal mailings are not the place for self actualization through compulsively sharing the “truth”.

            [Matt-M’s comment] Firing him would also largely confirm his point. His main objection seems to be that there is an authoritarian attitude that prevents people from raising their concerns about significant societal issues. Instantly firing him would essentially confirm everything he says.[End of Matt-M’s comment]

            It’s called work. Unless you are at zappos or that one game company it is supposed to have an authoritarian attitude and prevent people from raising their concerns about significant social issues.

            He should pursue his hobby on here or reddit like the rest of us. If he wants to do it full time he can quit and go work for a think tank or set up a blog and get a patreon.

            It wasn’t until August 7 that Damore was fired. This is reflected in a later post in that same subthread:

            Kevin–C. says:
            August 8, 2017 at 1:58 am
            Google has fired the author of the “manifesto.”

          • Randy M says:

            I don’t think you guys need to go back to Damore to find a point of agreement with Brad (quibbles about hyperbole aside). In this thread he defended the principle that

            It is entirely right and proper that, all other things being equal, those who through thoughtlessness or deliberate action make those who they encounter annoyed or upset have more difficult, less pleasant lives than otherwise.

            The best evidence seems to be that the Covington students were innocent of this deliberate action, but a great many people were not, from the Indian activist to reporters tweeting and writing stories about them.

            I don’t know where Brad stands on calling out microaggressions, and it’s fair to say “ruin his life” is an exaggeration, but it seems fair to bring up this incident here.

          • AliceToBob says:

            @ brad

            As for what makes a culture war event consequential, almost all the ones that have been posted about haven’t been. The major exceptions I can think of were Kavanagh and Roy Moore, particularly the first one. Who ends up on the Supreme Court is almost infinitely important than whether some pro life kid or a native drummer was being a jerk at some protest.

            Again, what are your criteria? Events that threaten the political interests of your ingroup? This selective caring is what I think Jaskologist was highlighting.

            I think nearly all CW topics raised on SSC are notable simply because it provoked someone enough to sit down and write something of (at least) reasonable quality. This peek into someone else’s thought process is usually interesting, even helpful. Those discussions that don’t interest me, I don’t engage with.

            But I don’t frame things as if I’m entitled to some online haven that’s being disrupted by hysterical and over-the-top comments regarding inconsequential events. And I wouldn’t declare a standard exists for deciding which CW topics have merit, certainly not without at least stating how merit is evaluated.

            If I did, I wouldn’t be surprised if people reminded me that this is indeed a CW thread, and that I might be exhibiting the same lack of principles displayed in past postings (on CW topics only).

          • The original Mr. X says:

            I guess all those kids have had their educations destroyed, right?

            So a school has had to close due to threats of violence, and your only response is to make a snide quip? You really are a partisan hack sometimes.

          • You really are a partisan hack sometimes.

            Possibly, but I think he was making a legitimate point here–that what happened wrt Covington might well have had bad consequences but not catastrophically bad, and people were, in his view, writing as if the consequences were catastrophically bad.

            Perhaps I’m misreading him, but I don’t think he is arguing that we shouldn’t comment about such things, only that we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of them in our rhetoric.

    • Plumber says:

      @The original Mr. X

      “I don’t know if any of you have been following the story of…”

      Well until you brought it up I hadn’t heard word one about what I think should’ve been a forgotten “incident”, but this morning on my drive to work I heard an interview with Nathan Phillips and some guy named Chase Ironsides, and while the reporters did quickly read off a statement by one student the amount of time given to Phillips and most of the questions asked of him did show a “Left-Tribe” bias that seemed to be trying to make a story where one really wasn’t, so your conclusions look valid, but please provide more context next time you decide to report on something like this.

      Thanks.

  4. johan_larson says:

    I’ve been reading lately about the British Arctic voyages undertaken during the nineteenth century into what is now the Canadian north, in search of the North-West Passage and the North Pole. One of the problems they ran into, particularly when their ships overwintered in the ice, was scurvy. They had some understanding of the disease. For example, they supplied everyone with daily doses of lemon juice. But they persisted in the belief that the disease was affected by cleanliness and exercise (not really) and missed the insight that fresh meat helped ward it off.

    It seems strange that the Royal Navy took so long to really come to grips with this. It’s not like the Britain of the time lacked a scientific establishment that could have attacked the problem. And since the disease had a single underlying cause (we now know), scientific trials should have been able to pin it down without a vast expenditure. And then all sorts of remedies could have been tested. But despite the importance of the problem, somehow this wasn’t done, or wasn’t done effectively enough, or the results were never disseminated widely enough. I wonder why.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Vitamin C is quite fragile; cooking destroys it, and so does oxygen (so their lemon juice became useless after a while). If they’d adopted the Inuit habit of eating raw seal (especially liver) and whale skin, they’d have been fine as far as scurvy is concerned. Being British, it seems unlikely they attempted this.

      • Protagoras says:

        Yes, I imagine this was a major hindrance to their figuring it out. Seemingly the same food sometimes helped and sometimes didn’t, making it natural for them to think it must involve factors other than the food.

      • albatross11 says:

        ISTR reading somewhere that there was a change in processing that caused their scurvey remedy (lime juice) to be ineffective–maybe they cooked it or something, but they destroyed the vitamin C in it.

    • bullseye says:

      Didn’t Scott post something about the history of the British Navy’s knowledge of scurvy a while back?

        • dick says:

          I was just going to post it, great article, but doesn’t it sort of answer the question you asked above?

          • johan_larson says:

            Not quite. The article describes why beliefs and practices changed. It doesn’t explain why the Royal Navy didn’t do a more thorough job of investigating the causes of scurvy and how to treat it. They had a first-rate scientific community. But they didn’t use it. They consulted with the medical establishment, certainly, but that seems to have been a pretty backward bunch until pretty much the twentieth century. It’s an odd failing on the part of the RN at a time when science was very much a part of public consciousness.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            The existence of vitamins themselves wasn’t discovered until 1912. It’s a little hard to discover that scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency when you don’t know that vitamin C exists.

            Then you have the fact that humans are somewhat rare in that they don’t make vitamin C, so if you want to run an experiment using animals as analogues you are going to be confounded.

          • nkurz says:

            > It’s a little hard to discover that scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency when you
            don’t know that vitamin C exists

            This may be obvious to others, but I was surprised recently to realize that not only was Vitamin C discovered because of scurvy, the chemical name “ascorbic acid” was given because of it’s role in preventing scurvy:

            Rather than patent the process or the product, Szent-Györgyi sent batches to all researchers working on vitamin C or related problems (including Norman Haworth at Birmingham, who established its chemical nature, and then, with Szent-Györgyi, re-named it “a-scorbic” acid, since it prevented scorbutus, i.e., scurvy).

            https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/WG/Views/Exhibit/narrative/szeged.html

          • HeelBearCub says:

            the chemical name “ascorbic acid” was given because of it’s role in preventing scurvy

            I did not know this. Interesting.

            I think the “on the shoulder’s of giants” quote applies. Despite the idea that Yudowsky attempted to popularize that you can simply logic your way to scientific truth, it really does take the previous body of knowledge to allow the next discovery. It’s an iterative process, and, in some very real sense, evolutionary rather than revolutionary (even though the next great scientific success may have the effect of revolution).

    • bean says:

      Others have adequately addressed the issues from the scientific side, and I can speak to the RN side pretty well.

      The mid-19th century was not a good time for the RN. First, you had the “If it was good enough for Nelson, it’s good enough for us” attitude, which was real, if often overstated by popular accounts. And Nelson used lime juice. Second, the officer corps of the age wasn’t exactly overrun with men of a scientific temperament. It was dominated by the sons of existing officers, whose training was almost entirely at sea. This produced excellent seamen and tolerable leaders, but their knowledge of the sciences was basically limited to that required for navigation. In earlier ages, the officer corps was big enough that you got a lot of oddballs, but that wasn’t so much the case in the early Victorian navy, and those officers hung around for a long time. Those who did have scientific/technical inclinations were probably working on gunnery or torpedoes, or were part of the engineering branch, which was completely separate from the line until fairly late (can’t remember when they were merged, sorry).

      • johan_larson says:

        Maybe part of the answer is that the RN already had an adequate solution to scurvy in most situations they faced. Lemon juice lost effectiveness over time, but if you only went weeks or months between ports and got fresh provisions every time you stopped at a port, it was good enough. But it wasn’t good enough when ships were away for years, as occurred when arctic explorers overwintered in their ships.

        • bean says:

          That’s not unlikely, either. Particularly with a smaller navy, which is spending a lot less time continually at sea (blockade duty or just running about the world), scurvy is going to be a much smaller problem than at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.

  5. fion says:

    The thread on ADHD below made me aware of a distinction I’ve not really thought about explicitly before. Namely, that between getting down to work and keeping up with everyday life tasks. I have almost no difficulty preparing meals, getting plenty of exercise, getting out of bed in the morning, doing chores, keeping up with friends and family, and various other things along those lines. However, I find it incredibly difficult to motivate myself to get work done. I procrastinate a lot, and I’ve not managed to improve this. Whenever I set myself a rule, like “no slatestarcodex between 0900 and 1700 on weekdays” or “no notifications coming to my phone when I’m supposed to be working”, I just break my own rule. I’m the only thing stopping me, and that’s not enough. This week I have a deadline and a lot of work to do for it, so I came in on the weekend to get stuff done and yet here I am reading comments and posting on the slatestarcodex open thread.

    This can’t be an uncommon problem. Any advice?

    (On an unrelated note, I’ve decided I much prefer newest-first comment ordering.)

    • Plumber says:

      @fion,

      Since I’ve discovered SSC I’ve had the same problem.

      No solution yet beyond forcing myself to get a measurable amount of work done.

    • J.R. says:

      I suffer from the same affliction at times. On the chance that you break your rules and return to this comment thread, here’s what I do when I’m managing my attention well.

      The first thing you want to do is to shift your thinking from perfection-seeking to improvement-seeking. You can have self-imposed rules, but if you are coming at them seeking perfection, it is easy for things to spiral out of control. You rationalize to yourself, “I broke my rule, I can’t manage my attention so there’s no point in trying, I’m going to read this SSC post instead.” More explicitly, by having the expectation that you will adhere perfectly to rules, all transgressions are the same, so there is no difference between a 1-minute distraction and spending 30 minutes reading Meditations on Moloch for the 10th time. This is the habit of mind you should undo. The habit you want to cultivate is when you realize you have become distracted, you return immediately to the thing you want to focus on (work). The faster you return to your work after being distracted, the better. This way, you can change your relationship to distraction and feel proud when you return to your work after a small distraction, rather than beating yourself up for checking SSC again.

      One way to improve your probability of success is to erect more barriers to your avenues of procrastination. There are browser extensions that will allow you to block some websites for certain periods of time. From your OP it sounds like you have already tried them. If you’re anything like me, you have gotten creative about circumventing them, such as using another browser or checking the website on your phone where you don’t have the blocking software in place. This, too, is ok. Realize that, even if these measures don’t prevent you from using SSC, they do give you the opportunity to realize you are distracted and pull your attention back to your work. One example is that I often try to visit blocked websites even when I know LeechBlock is on out of complete absentmindedness. Hitting the “website blocked” webpage is a good cue for me to realize, hey, I’m distracted, instead of turning to my phone or opening some other browser, I should return to whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing.

      One last note: SSC is particularly dangerous for me as well. Realize that, in the absence of checking SSC, your mind will naturally wander and get distracted by something else. It just so happens that these other things are less engrossing than SSC posts, so you get distracted by these other things for shorter periods of time.

      • fion says:

        Thanks for your input.

        shift your thinking from perfection-seeking to improvement-seeking

        This makes a lot of sense, and I’ll try what you suggest, but I think this isn’t what my main problem is. The thing is that my work is difficult and not very fun. At any given instant where I’m comparing spending the next few minutes working or not working, I’d much rather do the latter. So I don’t think it’s that I go “oh well I became distracted; now I might as well be distracted for a while longer” but rather “I’ve started doing something else and hey, this is really nice!”

        Having said that, maybe I can start to treat “small distraction followed by getting back to work” as something to be proud of, and maybe that will help.

        There are browser extensions that will allow you to block some websites for certain periods of time. From your OP it sounds like you have already tried them.

        I haven’t actually, and my excuse is rather pathetic. I anticipate that I will just circumvent them as you say, or turn them off or something. After all, I’m the only one stopping me. However, I should try them. Perhaps the trivial inconvenience will save me.

        in the absence of checking SSC, your mind will naturally wander and get distracted by something else.

        Yeah, I actually wonder if I should deliberately seek out some rewarding-but-not-time-consuming procrastination activity so I can go to that when my brain feels it needs some non-work, rather than coming here and reading every new comment since I was last here.

        • Argos says:

          Typing this quickly, because my blocker allows me only 5 minutes SSC per day:

          Inconveniences matter, especially if they are strong enough. Also, I recommend setting up several of them at once, and making sure that there is at least one you do not break. This will create a mental habit of not touching that particular barrier, for me it’s the host file that saves me from spending all my time on my phone on SSC.

        • J.R. says:

          The thing is that my work is difficult and not very fun. At any given instant where I’m comparing spending the next few minutes working or not working, I’d much rather do the latter. So I don’t think it’s that I go “oh well I became distracted; now I might as well be distracted for a while longer” but rather “I’ve started doing something else and hey, this is really nice!”

          Work being difficult and not fun is what makes work, well, work.

          You mentioned in your OP that you have no problem keeping up with chores. Chores are tedious and not very fun by definition. What is the difference between your attitude toward chores and work? Is it that work is more cognitively demanding?

          • fion says:

            Work being difficult and not fun is what makes work, well, work.

            So truthful it hurts.

            But yeah, the difference is that chores are easier and more rewarding. I can spend a week at work and get nowhere or even go backwards, but when I clean the toilet, it takes like ten minutes and afterwards I’ve got a clean toilet!

    • onyomi says:

      For me the problem feels more like I can take good care of myself and my personal/social life or I can get a lot of professional work done, but it’s really hard for me to do both to a level I feel satisfied with in a single day or even a single week. Practically speaking this means alternating between periods of getting a lot of professional work done while being somewhat neglectful of goals like getting in shape and keeping in touch with family and friends and periods of taking better care of myself and my relationships but getting less professional work done.

      I believe Mark Zuckerberg’s sister wrote a book about this recently, though I haven’t read it yet.

      Regarding how to focus on work, I don’t have (diagnosed) ADHD, so YMMV, but one thing I’ve found that helps is the “Pomodoro technique,” but modified so that, instead of 25 mins, each “pomodoro” (unit of work time in which you are not allowed to engage in other activities, like checking SSC) lasts 45 mins. Do actually use a timer, as the ticking sound adds a sense of urgency. Mine is shaped like an eggplant, so I do melanzanas. If I can complete six “melanzanas” in a day I consider it a good day of work, regardless of whether I get any additional, non-timed work in.

      A benefit is that, for me at least, a lot of the difficulty in concentrating on work is in overcoming the inertia of not working. After about 45 mins of enforced work time I often find that the inertia has shifted in favor of work so now other activities have less pull. I found the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport helpful in this regard.

      • fion says:

        Thanks for the input. I have tried the Pomodoro technique, and I found it very helpful for a while, but then my subconscious seemed to realise that there was nothing stopping me procrastinating during the 25-minute stretches and I was lost. The other problem is that my breaks between them got longer and longer. I originally tried 25 on; 5 off, but during the 5 off I would often get distracted by something more time consuming and before I knew it I was doing 25 on; 35 off or something. (It also doesn’t help that I find it pleasing if the pomodoros match up with the clock, so if I miss my cue to go back to work I’ll often continue my break for another 15 or 30 minutes.

        I’ll try the 45 minute stretches and see if I get along better with it. I quite like the idea of aiming for a particular number of stretches in a day.

        After about 45 mins of enforced work time I often find that the inertia has shifted in favor of work so now other activities have less pull.

        So if you’ve been working for 45 minutes and you find that you have inertia and you don’t want to procrastinate, do you keep working or do you take your scheduled break?

        • onyomi says:

          I also have the problem of once I take a Pomodoro break it can last longer than I planned to, which is why I aim to do a certain number of Pomodoros per day rather than strictly timing the break.

          I also find 25 mins too short to gain work “inertia,” so I do 45. If I’m really into the work to the point I don’t want a break at 45 mins I don’t force myself to take one, as that feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth, though it may be against the rules of the “technique.” However, it doesn’t count as a new “pomodoro” until I take at least a very short break (could just be get up and pace for a few minutes) and reset the timer.

          The advantage of setting a goal like “6 45-minute pomodoros today” is you can consider the day a “success” so long as you accomplish that and everything else is sort of gravy. This also incentivizes you not to let breaks stretch on too long since the sooner you complete your pomodoros the sooner you can reach that point where you get to relax and say “okay, good day; if I accomplish more than this, great, but if not, I still get to feel good about myself.”

          My experience is minor logistical things like returning e-mails can be crammed in at the end of such a day but quality work of the sort that requires concentration can’t be crammed in after a day of dealing with logistics, which tend to expand to fill the time and energy available.

    • A1987dM says:

      There are browser extensions and phone apps which can enforce rules like “no slatestarcodex between 0900 and 1700 on weekdays” or “no notifications coming to my phone when I’m supposed to be working” for you. I personally use LeechBlock and Digital Detox but you might want to experiment with different ones as well.

    • brad says:

      It sounds like you work from an office? If so, that’s good, work from home probably wouldn’t work for you (or me!). What kind of set up is there at the office? Cubicles, open plan, offices? Everyone slags on the more public options, but I find dicking around on my phone or on non-work websites in front of co-workers is vaguely embarrassing and so I’m less likely to do it. There is a trade-off in that being interrupted when in the flow is more likely, but I think over all open office is net productive for me. Whatever type of office you have can you make it more public? Leave the door open, put your screen towards the door — whatever?

      Peer pressure can be very powerful. I’ve started to make pointed comments when friends pull out their phones in front of me, partly because it’s annoying but partly because I know they’ll retaliate and that’s going to help me stop doing that.

      • fion says:

        Yeah, I work in an office with seven other people, one of whom can see my computer screen. When i first arrived I felt super-awkward about dicking around when people could see, but the more comfortable I’ve got the less I care, unfortunately.

        Actually the person who can see my screen did for a while nag me whenever she saw me not working. The problem is that the effect was more like “yeah, I’m wasting time again, I’m so hopeless” than “oops, caught! Better get back to work!”

        • LesHapablap says:

          If it helps, I now think a lot less of you for being this selfish and lazy on a team. What do you do for a living? Do you care about your colleagues or your company?

          • fion says:

            If it helps…

            Thanks for trying. I think if I was working on a team, or for a company I cared about, then it would be easier to get down to it. As it happens I’m a PhD student. My failures only hurt me, and they don’t hurt me quickly or predictably enough for it to really sink into my subconscious.

          • LesHapablap says:

            Fion,

            That makes more sense. For myself, I am terrible with executive function in my own life, but I love the company I work for and the people here and have no problem staying motivated at work. My job is perfect for ADHD as I can change tasks if I want, rarely have to work on the same thing for more than an hour. Actually being organized with work required using new tools to not forget about things.

  6. brad says:

    As part of a discussion a few OTs back, it occurred to me that I have a moral axiom that I thought was universal, but may not be. Viz,

    It is entirely right and proper that, all other things being equal, those who through thoughtlessness or deliberate action make those who they encounter annoyed or upset have more difficult, less pleasant lives than otherwise.

    I can think of some possible objections. For example a burn victim might make people he encounters upset, but I don’t think he ought to be responsible for those harms. I think that is covered by the “thoughtlessness or deliberate action” clause though, in his case it’s neither. Another example might be a gadfly that goes around annoying people, but as part of an effective effort to end some great moral harm (e.g. slavery). That I think would be covered by the “all other things being equal” part.

    Thoughts? Objections?

    • fion says:

      I don’t think it’s a bad axiom, but it’s not mine. Lots of people are thoughtless and wicked, but I don’t blame them for it. An accident of their genes or upbringing has made them the unpleasant person they are. In this way they’re already suffering from bad luck; I don’t want to add insult to injury.

      Now, I accept that in an imperfect world we sometimes find ourselves needing to educate people by punishment, but that’s a lesser of two evils, not “right and proper”.

      • LesHapablap says:

        I don’t blame people for being wicked either, but I still think they should suffer for it and not just to try and stop the behavior.

        It is right and proper to reward someone for being a good, helpful person. It is an action that is in no way evil. It increases the total amount of justice and fairness in an otherwise uncaring universe. Harming people who make the world a worse place for others is the flip side of the coin.

        • Machine Interface says:

          “I don’t blame people for being wicked either, but I still think they should suffer for it and not just to try and stop the behavior.”

          So you
          1) don’t think wicked people are morally responsible
          2) don’t think they should be punished for utilitarian reasons
          3) do think they should be tortured because Universal Order says so

          And you call this self-serving saddistic impulse “righ and proper”?

          • LesHapablap says:

            1. I do think people should be responsible for their actions, I may not be using as precise a definition of “blame” as you are
            2. I didn’t say that, in fact I said the opposite: “not just to try and stop the behavior”
            3. when I call the universe “uncaring” I mean that there is no universal order

            Fairness is a good thing (right and proper), and it doesn’t just mean good people get rewarded. It means bad people get punished. Even if not explicitly punished, rewarding some and not others is a kind of punishment for those left out.

            It is nice to see bad people punished. It is satisfying to see a bully on youtube get beat up. This isn’t sadism, and it isn’t some base human instinct that we should be trying to suppress. It feels right because it’s fair, and shaming people for feeling that way makes the world worse off for a variety of reasons that would take too long to get into.

          • Nick says:

            3) do think they should be tortured because Universal Order says so

            And you call this self-serving saddistic impulse “righ and proper”?

            This is a blatant strawman. Less of this, please.

    • albatross11 says:

      brad:

      I’m not sure your moral axiom is wrong, but I think it’s easy for a society to implement it in ways that cause a lot of problems. On the ground, it’s not going to be obvious to most people whether the annoying gadfly they’re talking to is part of some great positive social movement or is just a crank. (In fact, the main way people distinguish those is to see how successful they are.). And most people are going to perceive people saying things that make them unhappy or upset as being offensive assholes whether they’re making a valid point or not.

      My sense is that a lot of progress in the world is made by offensively weird people who make those around them uncomfortable or angry, and who don’t much care. A society that gets better at suppressing that stuff will have less progress, less innovation, fewer new ideas come up in every area. People will know better than to openly discuss their doubts about the dominant religion or culture, which means that those things won’t face much challenge, and will change a lot more slowly.

      We can get rid of the Darwins and Galtons and Benthams and Teslas and Franklins and Dawkins and Watsons and Edisons and Twains and such, by sufficient social pressure and making the lives of people who make others uncomfortable by their words and actions very hard. Then we won’t get the fruits of their labors.

    • Machine Interface says:

      “I have a moral axiom that I thought was universal”.

      Well there’s no such thing as a universal moral axiom, so here’s your problem.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      This just seem like more an “is”.

      We are social creatures. All other things being equal, the person who is deliberately unpleasant will not be rewarded with pleasant social interaction.

      • brad says:

        There are is-es that we want to fight against because they are part of a cruel, unjust universe. If you were born with juvenile diabetes you will have a more difficult, less pleasant life than otherwise. But it is not entirely right and proper that you should so suffer.

        I think the ought question is valid in spite of the underlying is.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          If I set out to make the world around me more X, how is it “wrong” that the consequence of that action is for the world to become more X?

          I think your moral sense here is mostly dependent on the antecedent of intentionally or uncaring, and the fact that X is undesirable.

    • gettin_schwifty says:

      Drop the moral language and you have a natural law. Those who make others shorter of temper and slower to smile will experience more bad and less good emotions from peers and strangers alike, which in turn makes life more difficult and certainly less pleasant. The implication is that one should make sure she is not unnecessarily annoying or upsetting, lest she lead a pointlessly worse life.
      Better have other values to balance that though, all inoffensive means universal simmering resentment when no one can speak honestly

    • Randy M says:

      Contrary to what you might think, I agree, with an additional caveat that we need some kind of “reasonable person” standard to avoid empowering utility monsters.

      Also, we should train people to be resilient and forgiving just as much as we train people to be sensitive and kind.

  7. theredsheep says:

    Something I’ve long speculated on, and had a hard time putting in words: to what extent do you believe modern political alignment or polarization relates to a strong dislike of embarrassment? I’m thinking of a specific situation. When you offend someone somehow, and they object, and you apologize, you’re effectively placing yourself in a temporarily lowered social position; you have wronged them, and you owe them redress, even if only in the form of words of contrition, and possibly an explanation. This requires you to acknowledge error. On a small scale, once or twice, this doesn’t matter, but if you regularly offend someone, and they regularly ask for apology, no matter how politely, you’re left with two reactions, shame or anger. That is, you can start feeling that there is something wrong with you, that you are a bad person, or you can suspect that the requests for apology are invalid. The person offended doesn’t actually require apology; they’re simply exaggerating their sense of grievance to gain power over you. Between those two alternatives, the latter is by far the more attractive.

    All this strikes me as fairly obvious, and I’m sorry if I’m belaboring 2 + 2 = 4 here. This is how I react, but I’m a highly shame-motivated person who still remembers and feels bad about ancient errors from years ago. It may not apply for everybody. Does it?

    The political implications should be clear. I have old friends from college, etc., of whom I’m still quite fond. They’re good, funny people, and I’d like to stay in touch. But they’re quite liberal. The disagreements themselves aren’t a big deal, I can accept that people have weird opinions. Sometimes really, really weird. The problem is that, yes, contemporary prog culture places a strong emphasis on “don’t harm” models of interpersonal relations. And every faux pas that meets with a “I’m going to have to push back on your use of the term [offensive term],” makes me feel kinda like a total POS, because I offended this nice, caring, friendly person. Now, I’m pretty sure their social lives within their political circle aren’t actually malicious nested hierarchies of degradation, because after a while that would lead to really dysfunctional behavior. Also, I don’t remember them being total bastards, and a lot of them are really active in caring professions like helping the homeless or mentally ill. But I personally have a really hard time dealing with it, and I’ve taken to avoiding interaction with a bunch of old friends, partly subconsciously, because I have enough self-loathing already. And I hate that.

    In person, this would not be a problem; they’d probably see a stricken face when they pushed back on whatever, and they’d soft-pedal it, and after some hemming and hawing we’d come to a new social equilibrium which I think we’d be able to maintain. I was friends with some of these people for some time, after all. But since I mostly interact with them online, where they can’t see stricken-face, and I’m afraid that “geez, now I feel like crap” will come across as me trying to make a counter-claim for emotional dominance, it doesn’t work.

    When this adds up over time, does it lead to extreme hatred for so-called SJWs? I mean, we have people with all kinds of opinion here, and a lot of us have social disorders, but in general it stays really polite. This might be because those social disorders lead to a fetishization of orderliness, sure, but I think it helps that we seldom act hurt, per se. We express offense by getting mildly cranky and sarcastic, which lets the other person know things aren’t right without putting them on the spot. It sounds odd, but it works better for us, because nobody really loses face. The standard progressive mode (in some circles, at least) of expressing offense is to emphasize victimhood and harm, which for me is kind of like pointing at a dead dog in the road and saying “see what you did?”

    So, leftists of the SJ stripe are people who are used to this mode of communication and think nothing of it, for some reason I can’t personally relate to, while their enemies tend to be the sort who really don’t like looking at dead dogs and greatly prefer just being grumpy. Which strikes the leftists as “those people are assholes.” Why can’t we just say we’re being harmed like normal, emotionally healthy people?

    • fion says:

      I mostly agree with you. I’m a left-winger, and probably a bit of an SJW, and I think the way you try to “correct” somebody is very important and many of my fellows don’t seem to get it. I think I tie it into conversation/debate more generally, though. If you want to change somebody’s opinion or actions, you don’t put them on the spot and make them surrender to your demands; you nudge them in the right direction, lead by example, and give them a chance to agree with you without losing face. (The techniques for doing this are complicated and many and I won’t go into them here, but I’m sure you get the picture.)

      But maybe that’s not what’s going on here. Is it possible you’re underestimating the thickness of your friends’ skin? Maybe when they say “I’m going to have to push back on your use of the term [offensive term],” they’re not offended or hurt by you; they’re just trying to correct you. It’s like if somebody on this OT referred to Sydney, the capital of Australia. Somebody else would say “actually the capital of Australia is Canberra” and the first person would say “Oh yeah, thanks for the correction” without worrying that they’d accidentally offended some Canberries (or however you refer to somebody from Canberra). Maybe when you use a non-SJ-approved term and a friend calls you out on it you can just say “oh yeah, my bad” and move on?

      Of course, I appreciate I’m making guesses about your relationships with these people, and I could be way off base here; apologies if that’s the case.

      • Theodoric says:

        I think part of the issue is that the SJW-ish people are not saying “you are incorrect about a fact (Sydney vs Canberra as capital of Australia”), they are saying “you have done something morally wrong (using racist/sexist/homophobic/etc” term.” One is going to get more pushback than the other.

        • fion says:

          You’re right to make the distinction, but I’m not sure the SJW-ish people do make it. I think what’s going on in their heads is “you’re wrong; this other thing is right.” I think “morally wrong” and “factually incorrect” can feel quite similar to people poorly-versed in philosophy and rationality.

          The steelman SJW who I choose to defend will assume good faith when “correcting” a hypothetical Red Sheep’s use of a particular term. He will assume that the Red Sheep was unaware of the term’s connotations, or how it makes some people feel. He will feel like he is correcting the Red Sheep; “the latter made an innocent mistake, which I have pointed out and told him how to avoid it.”

          There is a different type of interaction when my steelman SJW feels that the hypothetical Red Sheep has actually said something with offensive intent. Given the context of theredsheep’s post, I don’t think this is the kind of interaction we’re considering.

          Tangent: On the rare occasions in which I find it necessary to ask somebody to use different language I will try to make my comment as fact-based as possible. For example, if somebody uses the plural noun “coloureds”, I will say that some people of colour will take offense at that term, and that “people of colour” is generally a safer choice. The desired effect of my objection is that the other person will change their behaviour, but the actual content of my objection is entirely factual. (My facts may be wrong, of course, in which case the other person may correct them “actually this polling data suggests that my term is less offensive than your term…”, but the point is I have made a factual claim, not a moral one.)

        • arlie says:

          I think SJW-ish people come in two flavours, at least as far as my reaction to them goes. Some seem to be trying to teach better techniques; some seem to be trying to establish their own superior moral worth.

          When I’m in someone else’s space (conference, blog, etc.) where they express clear rules, I have no problem with either following them or going somewhere else. If the rules are a lot less clear (most of natural life), I’ll resent the effort needed to figure out how to conform. And when the rules are inconsistent (those with status and their friends can do no wrong; those without can do no right…) I regard the people enforcing those rules as contemptible turds, even while recognizing that this behaviour seems to be a part of normal people’s inate “social skills” package.

          Note that in some cases I regard the local rules as absurd, even if clear. And I’ll really want to talk about them, somewhere, even though questioning the rules is almost always more-or-less a violation of those rules.

          And sometimes I have the status that whatever I do is “right”. I appreciate that, but try not to participate in or encourage pile-ons against less favoured members of the community, or random curious strangers.

          Of course I’m on the autistic spectrum, so I don’t do mindreading very well. Thus I appreciate people who tell me they want to be referred to as zie (or he, or she), or want me to avoid using disability tags as generic negative labels, or whatever their issue may be. And ditto for those few on the right wing who are clear on what kind of comments/behaviour they object to. (In my experience, left wing spaces tend to be far more explicit about such rules.)

          Also, as an autistic person, the number of times I give offense is much much higher than the number of times I intend to behave offensively. Most responders assume my behaviour is intentional, and morally deplorable – I very much approve of the people who can treat it as a skills issue, and wish they were more common.

      • theredsheep says:

        Well, I think I came out jumbled because I was thinking as I typed/using typing to think. I believe there’s a fundamental disconnect at work here, and that some people simply do not feel shame as deeply and viscerally as I and some others do, or perceive the function of moral correction differently, or something. For a long time now, I’ve been tacitly assuming that whenever SJ types get together the result is some sort of Machiavellian mindgame hell where everybody’s maneuvering not to commit a verbal transgression lest they be dogpiled and lose status.

        But I’d expect that to result in a much louder and more vocal crowd of defectors if that were true, because you can only be dogpiled so much before you simply hate everyone and leave. At least, I would, in that position. I’ve seen some accounts like that, but not as many as I’d expect if that were everyone’s experience.

        And, like I said, I know too many people who talk about this stuff and don’t appear to be hopelessly messed up human beings. So maybe for them, getting told that they’ve said something harmful to the lived experiences of indigenous peoples or some such doesn’t have much more emotional significance than having someone whisper, “psst, your fly’s open.” It’s just like etiquette, or something. Or those articles that used to circulate about the different psychological nuances of conversation in East Asian cultures.

        Certainly they don’t seem to understand when I tell them, “hey, moral authority is a consumable good, and if you use it too much they won’t want your approval anymore, they’ll just hate you.” Conversely, the much blunter approach I described works fine for me, but seems to directly offend them. Possibly they’re simply wired differently, or it’s a matter of different socialization. Beats me.

        All this is distinct from my more abstract philosophical objections to elevating subjective experience over objective facts, privileging speakers, and the like.

        • Deiseach says:

          I believe there’s a fundamental disconnect at work here, and that some people simply do not feel shame as deeply and viscerally as I and some others do, or perceive the function of moral correction differently, or something.

          You’ve made me think about this. My usual revulsion to the “point at a dead dog and say ‘look what you did'” strategy is because I perceive it as an attempt to emotionally manipulate me, and more than that – to set the terms of how I react, to establish a duty and obligation on my part to react with tears and “oh no!” rather than “well, that’s unfortunate”, to create the norms that the proper way to deal with such things is “point and blame”/”respond with emotional suffering and groveling”.

          But maybe they don’t! Maybe there is no expectation of a genuine emotional subjective effect on the person being told “look what you did”! You’re correct that people can’t go around with this welter of thin-skinned visceral shame or else they couldn’t function and the entire movement collapses.

          This is simply how the conventions of discussion and response have evolved. In the same way that we’d say “Oh well that’s too bad” and mean that we recognise and acknowledge the harmful thing or damage done, but respond with less overt emotion and everyone knows this doesn’t mean ‘you’re a heartless asshole’, it’s the polite and acceptable way to propose/respond “I’m going to have to push back on [offensive term]”/”[emotionally-phrased acknowledgement of same]” but nothing deeper is intended than in the same way as if you step on someone’s foot by accident you are supposed to say “terribly sorry”. Saying “terribly sorry” doesn’t require you to feel a deep and scouring sense of shame and pain, but it’s the expected response rather than “that wasn’t intentional so why are you complaining?” even if it’s true that it was not intentionally done.

          So coming back to the “I’m going to have to pushback” with “That was accidental not on purpose” is perceived as being rude, ungracious, and ignorant of proper social conduct. This is not a debate about intent, it’s a requirement to show off good manners.

        • Plumber says:

          @theredsheep

          “…..or it’s a matter of different socialization…”

          Probably this.

          I remember in elementary school my being being beaten up for being the lone white kid in the school yard (the excuse was slavery) and I also an older black girl defending me from my attackers, and I well remember in my first year of high school my being moved from the mostly black “Intermediate English” track to the mostly white “Advanced English” track and how very unwelcoming the “Advanced” students and teacher were, and I remember even better being quizzed by a classmate on the location of some damn ski shop and upon my revealing that I didn’t know being told “You don’t belong here” – those stung, but by the time I was an adult working construction that I was thought odd for keeping a book to read in a plastic bag in my lunch bucket, and by the time of the fierce political arguments at work in 2004 over the Iraq war how people thought of me ceased to be much of a worry. 

          When I turned out as a Journeyman and the union made me steward by with the Business Agent telling me “Well there’s no one worse” my skin was pretty thick, and being an outsider was second nature. .

          I’m guessing that you’re just young, in time you’ll cease to care much about how others treat your views.

          Speak your mind when invited to, be mostly polite and give others the silent treatment or a gut punch when appropriate.

        • fion says:

          I believe there’s a fundamental disconnect at work here, and that some people simply do not feel shame as deeply and viscerally as I and some others do, or perceive the function of moral correction differently, or something.

          Yeah, you may be right. I think I’m struggling to understand exactly where you’re coming from. I assume you don’t feel shame deeply and viscerally when you make a factual error and somebody corrects you? My experience of navigating SJ spaces is that when somebody picks you up on the way you say something it’s very easy just to go “oh, my mistake” and move on. They’re not expecting you to grovel and beg forgiveness; they’re just saying “you did something you shouldn’t have; try not to do it again.”

    • AG says:

      Most of the gripes stem from a lack of charity, proportionality, and forgiveness, in that order. Apologies are demanded where they may not be appropriate (no disputing the demand is allowed), punishments are demands in excess of the harm caused by the apparent transgression, and punishments are demanded to be inflicted in perpetuity. Apologies do not end the situation, as they should, they exacerbate things. If you worsen your own situation by capitulating, why ever apologize?

    • Plumber says:

      @theredsheep,

      You mean that I’m far more left-leaning on economics is because my wife is more libertarian than I am and I have to listen and thus resent those policies more?

      Nope I don’t think so, my socially conservative leanings (anti-divorce) are from bitterness left over from my childhood, and my left leaning economic views are also from my life experience, had I been born in a different time and under different circumstances my views would be different.

      Maybe it’s different with intellectuals but I think for most political views are “baked in” early.

      If I won the lottery tomorrow my immediate self interest would favor tax-cuts but I’d doubt that would change my perspective that too many grow up ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-taught, and ill-treated, if anything the better circumstances I find myself in now has only increased my bitterness that it didn’t get that way earlier.

      But the only “S.J.’s” I encounter are those who every Friday in front of the Hall of Justice chant the names of people who have been killed by police and I have no college friends whatsoever so your mileage may vary.

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      I think it’s rather the other way around, actually. So much conversation is about “right” and “wrong” and “victimhood” that we’ve largely lost the ability to talk about pain – or maybe we never had that ability, but we did have common signals for talking about it. Talking about small degrees of personal pain is hard, and also hard to redress online.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      I appreciate what you are doing here, and it seems honest and genuine, but I don’t think you have the right of it.

      I can still vividly remember faux-pas I made in HS, some 35 years ago, and when I am in a bad mental place I will flash back to those events repeatedly. It doesn’t prevent me from being liberal.

      And every faux pas that meets with a “I’m going to have to push back on your use of the term [offensive term],” makes me feel kinda like a total POS, because I offended this nice, caring, friendly person.

      This strikes me as more of an “identity” issue than an embarrassment one. You can’t deal with cognitive dissonance created by someone that you think is nice, caring and friendly having a different opinion than you. Rather than examine why you use a term that you yourself are now indicating is offensive, you would rather maintain your sense of identity as someone who uses that term.

      Now, the fact that you feel embarrassed doesn’t help you make the transition from one world view to another, but that’s not unique to right wing thought. That’s sort of how humans work , and why it’s hard to change your mind.

      • theredsheep says:

        No, because I know plenty of people who are not progressive or who do not use that language, who disagree with me, and it does not cause the same anxiety. It is specifically the framing of the rebuke that triggers the gut response I’m talking about.

    • March says:

      For me, it’s the other way around. I consider myself very sensitive to shame, but being called out because what I said ‘hurt’ someone is one of the easiest things for me to deal with. (And I’m a leftist, although blabla different countries, difficult, etc.)

      I’m not sure why, maybe because I never SET OUT to hurt someone so if something I did or said DID end up hurting someone I can apologize and make amends because it was clearly unintended and doesn’t challenge the way I see myself.

      If people were suddenly to act sarcastic or grumpy without even bothering to explain themselves, that’s what’d send me into a huge shame spiral. Because apparently they don’t care about me or our relationship at all, they apparently think I should not just be able to but also to constantly focus on reading their minds (and I’m actually a pretty good mindreader who tends to the hypervigilant, but any implicit demand that I mindread even MORE hits me where it hurts), I’m apparently completely screwing up something SO basic that I’m completely beyond redemption, I thought they were my friend but any random thing can turn them hostile, etc.

      I much prefer it if people just tell me ‘hey, ouch’ or ‘hey, I noticed you said X to Bob and I happen to know he’s sensitive to X’ or even ‘I have to push back on you saying X, that comes from [terrible thing]?’ Much cleaner, in my reckoning.

    • brad says:

      In person, this would not be a problem; they’d probably see a stricken face when they pushed back on whatever, and they’d soft-pedal it, and after some hemming and hawing we’d come to a new social equilibrium which I think we’d be able to maintain. I was friends with some of these people for some time, after all. But since I mostly interact with them online, where they can’t see stricken-face, and I’m afraid that “geez, now I feel like crap” will come across as me trying to make a counter-claim for emotional dominance, it doesn’t work.

      Kind of sideways to your point, because I don’t really like talking about so-called social justice warriors, but I’ve found that online interaction is a bad way of keeping up friendships that were made off line. I’d one weekend spent together in a year is better for a friendship then constant back and forth on random facebook threads. If the communication must be in writing and must be electronic then at very least it should be 1:1.

  8. antilles says:

    I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve struggled with procrastination and executive function for years, and never really found a solution to getting things done consistently. ADHD medication has helped improve my energy and focus, but not really helped with executive function or life skills. What practical techniques have worked for you in overcoming your poor executive function?

    • theredsheep says:

      Okay, I looked up “executive function” on Wiki but still can’t quite parse what this would mean for an individual struggling with ADHD. Could you clarify with an example, please? Do you mean that you have a hard time feeling motivated to get your life in order? In my particular case, I eventually went into remission where medication was concerned; I no longer require Concerta et al. This coincided roughly with my reaching adulthood. But actually feeling motivated to do something with my life had to wait until I met a girl I wanted to marry, and I realized she wouldn’t wait around forever. This was powerful and permanent motivation–our tenth anniversary is this September. I’m sorry that that doesn’t generalize too well.

      • rahien.din says:

        Executive function is deciding what to do, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it, who to do it with.

      • antilles says:

        I have goals and things I’d like to accomplish with my life, can identify steps to take to approach those goals, but never act on them. Even mundane normal life tasks like picking up after myself or making/eating decent, healthy food go undone. Instead I mostly do immediately rewarding things like browse the internet or play video games, which are easy to focus on and give significant, immediate cognitive rewards. But doing those things doesn’t make me happy or provide any sense of fulfillment, just distraction. Sometimes getting out of bed and taking my medication feels like too much to take on. (Depression is obviously also involved).

        • theredsheep says:

          Yeah, I used to play video games a lot too, and they’ve only increased their efficiency as Skinner boxes since then. One thing that might help: intermittent fasts. I give up electronic entertainment for the four big annual fasts of my religion. Or try to, anyway; I kinda flubbed it last time. Anyway, by setting a period of fixed duration wherein I tell myself I can’t touch, I “detox” a little. Their hold on me is relaxed, and I lose some of the more obnoxious habits I develop from spending a lot of time arguing with strangers on the internet (which replaced video games, as it’s much, much cheaper and doesn’t tempt my wife at all).

          Now, I’ve no notion if you’re religious, but it might help to start with brief fasts, to observe what it does to your mood and activity level. Probably you’ll be really irritable, which is why you want to start with brief fasts. But you can assess from there. It’s a step.

        • LesHapablap says:

          Sounds like you need to start dating. Nothing else really motivates to keep your apartment clean/get your act together. Find a good one that will keep you on your toes.

    • Lord Nelson says:

      My own diagnosis is autism, not ADHD, but I thought I’d chime in because I’ve also dealt with a fair bit of executive dysfunction.

      Honestly, the thing that helped me the most was an app called Habitica. It’s a habit-tracking app dressed up like an RPG that gives you points for doing daily tasks, completing long-term goals, etc. Ymmv, but having a “reward” for completing tasks–even a stupid reward like watching my virtual avatar level up and defeat monsters–helped both my motivation and my memory. I used Habitica daily for about 2 years. I still use it occasionally if I have a big task that I want to break down into smaller sub-tasks, but the more mundane “life skills” habits are now ingrained into my schedule. If the RPG angle doesn’t appeal to you, there are lots of similar habit-tracking apps with different “hooks”.

      As for the depression… if you have the means, find a therapist. Finding a good one could take a little while, so keep trying until you find one that works for you. Other things that have helped with my depression: prayer, exercise (specifically outside), forcing myself to get out and talk to other human beings, trying out new hobbies, taking vitamins (my doctor did some blood work and it turns out some of my exhaustion was linked to severe vitamin deficiency), and adopting a “fake it til you make it” attitude.

  9. Ivy says:

    As a Canadian who moved to the US a few years ago, two facts about the US that seem causally related but I can’t figure out in which direction the causal arrow points:

    1) Americans seem to trust their government much less than Canadians, both culturally and institutionally: the checks and balances system that makes it very difficult to make changes, government work is generally low-paid and low-prestige, etc.

    2) The US government agencies (both state and federal) I’ve interacted with are much less competent than the Canadian. From getting your drivers license to filling out immigration paperwork to figuring out how much taxes you owe, the Canadian process is generally simpler, faster, and more pleasant.

    My current theory is there’s a vicious cycle here: the US anti-government attitude means competent people don’t work for the government, which makes government look less competent, which entrenches anti-government attitudes even further. I’ve even noticed this with my own political views – in Canada I identified as a democratic socialist, but after three years in the US I’m much closer to libertarian (though reading David Friedman’s essays may be another explanation for that shift).

    If the cycle theory is true, how could the US break out of it? Or, for those who think we should keep the cycle going or even accelerate it by “starving the beast” or repeatedly shutting the government down, where do you think this process ends? Will the government eventually become so incompetent and citizens so disillusioned with it that the libertarian political agenda triumphs?

    • wunderkin says:

      Government, at least at the federal level, is not low paid. There are a few exceptions, government lawyers for example generally make less than the other alternatives, and senior management doesn’t make as much as they should but they are that, exceptions.

      Government employees are basically unfireable, get automatic raises, get amazing benefits, and with cost of living adjustments almost invariably have highly competitive salaries.

      • dick says:

        Government employees are basically unfireable, get automatic raises, get amazing benefits, and with cost of living adjustments almost invariably have highly competitive salaries.

        All of this is true of some government jobs at some times, none of it is true without an asterisk (as you might imagine considering it’s describing millions of different jobs), and in almost all cases the reason is because they’re unionized, not because they’re government.

        • wunderkin says:

          (A) Government unions are prohibited by law from collective bargaining over their salaries, so it’s not that.

          (B) Since government unions (again, at the federal level) are more or less mandated by law, you’re making a distinction without a difference.

          (C) It is always the case that federal civil service jobs come with excellent benefits, are virtual unfireable, and had out automatic pay increases. That’s how a civil service systems work.

    • Mark V Anderson says:

      If the cycle theory is true, how could the US break out of it?

      I don’t know that I want the US to break out. Not that I prefer government to be incompetent, but I think that competent workers are a limited resource. The more that work for the government, the fewer that work in business. I think the low esteem most hold for the government result in a higher proportion working in for profit enterprises, which makes business stronger in the US than elsewhere. I think it is better to have strong business than strong government, since government only controls the process. Businesses create the wealth.

      • LesHapablap says:

        Mark V Anderson,

        Government doesn’t really create wealth, but it can and does destroy a whole lot of it. It could be that having competent people doing the regulating reduces the destruction by a larger amount than those same people could create in the private sector.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          The thalidomide decision saved a heck of a lot of wealth in the US.

          The national labs each have many spin-off companies and many licensed discoveries.

    • Plumber says:

      @Ivy,

      Well I am a (municipal) government employee, and I don’t really have an idea of how to improve things but I’m just going to vent:

      One of the earliest lessons is “They do not count how much you do they count the mistakes you make”, in private industry I was told “If you don’t have any leaks that means you’re not working fast enough”, in government the opposite attitude rules, and since they make getting hired so many hoops they make it harder to quickly replace someone, which means they’ll keep someone that in private industry they’d get rid of, rather than go without the hands.
      It still helps to be young to get hired (if you can pass the toughest qualifications) but you find that they just don’t get rid of the old like private industry does.

      They’re terrified of getting sued and of paying medical bills so instead of giving you a 100 page manual and a few seconds to skim before signing it there’s lengthy “anti-harassment” and “safety meetings”, and they have people with diploma’s and clipboards who’s only job is to lecture and monitor.

      Tools and materials are even harder to get thsn some poorly run companies and “repairs” are often wire and tape, perversely overtime to try and fix things without the right equipment is freely given.

      My theory is that higher ups are pressured to cut cost but are paid I verytime when hands are so even though the extra man hours cost more than thd right parts and tools the incentive is to spend hours not parts.

      Between the inmates at the Jail, the cops, and the general public seemingly trying to break things on purpose it’s hard to keep a sense of urgency.

      The benefits?

      The work isn’t in open air high rises or way down in San Jose, plus remembering how to repair the old stuff is an asset and not knowing the new stuff isn’t as much of a liability.

      It’s work for the old.

      • Deiseach says:

        Tools and materials are even harder to get thsn some poorly run companies

        If it’s anything like my experience in local government over here, it’s because of the procurement process and the rules around it (and also probably because they’ve had experience with good, expensive tools ‘walking off’ on their own so Rules Were Made to curb that which means in effect nobody gets anything they need).

        I’ve ranted on here before about the procurement process, which because of the oversight of public finances and the public perception about governmental worker inefficiency and featherbedding (see earlier comments in this very thread) means that the departments have to be both able and prepared to answer at a moment’s notice “How many left-handed wurzel manglers are in stock right now, and at what cost and from whom were replacements sourced?” and to be able to stand over that decision when the opposition politican accuses the managers of waste and overspending Tax Payers’ Money.

        It’s an effort to keep costs under control, to avoid appearances of corruption and nepotism (the minister’s/department head’s/boss’s in-laws, friends, or big campaign donors getting preferential contracts for supplying government departments and jacking up prices because hey, The Government Is Paying For It) but in practice it means huge delays, red tape, and inconvenience when you really need that new wurzel mangler right now because the old one just broke down but you can’t go to the private tool hire firm in town today, you have to source one from the Officially Approved Awarded The Competitive Tender supplier, and to do that you need to fill out the forms and get them approved, and even if that is done (and it’s not automatic that they will be approved, if there’s a public finances freeze on and the directive has come down from the capital that No New Spending At All), you still have to wait days for the order to be filled and the new machine to be sent all the way from the city where the Official Supplier is based.

        Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe it, as you’ve found out for yourself! 🙂

        • Plumber says:

          Yoi nailed it @Deiseach!

          Are you sure you weren’t working for the City and County of San Francisco as well?

      • arlie says:

        I’ve worked for a lot of private companies, but the closest I ever came to working for government was a Crown Corporation (in Canada).

        Your decription of mistake-phobia reminds me of at least one of my ex-employers, which used to be a household name (still was at the time), and was huge. Every bureaucratic flaw Americans associate with “government” was present there. (And it was American.)

        And my very first US job – as a contractor emplyed via a body shop, working for a company that had been relatively recently spun off from a household name behemoth – sent me to something called “AA training” (at their expense, not the body shop’s) very early in my time there. I was extremely bemused, as to me AA only meant “alcoholics anonymous”. (AA turned out to mean “affirmative action”.) It was what’s now a pretty standard anti-harassment presentation, with obvious errors of fact/common sense. Fortunately even with my somewhat autistic social skills, I was able to figure out that this training was a kind of sermon, for a religion where universal lip service was required, and didn’t make trouble for mysef by pointing out the dangers of “accepting everybody’s cultural practices” when those involved e.g. raping or assualting unescorted women.

        Now maybe US government jobs are even worse. But I still strongly suspect the problem is size+bureaucracy, more than government vs private.

        • Plumber says:

          @arlie

          “…..I still strongly suspect the problem is size+bureaucracy, more than government vs private”

          That seems likely, some bits of the stories of the old Soviet Union seem to match certain almost comical inefficiencies of the City and County, but some large private shops get close as well.

          The best and the worst places to work for (in my experience) have been small shops, in both cases with hands on owners who founded the business, with small to medium companies owned by the founders grandchildren being runner-ups for worst (never best).

        • Your decription of mistake-phobia reminds me of at least one of my ex-employers, which used to be a household name (still was at the time), and was huge. Every bureaucratic flaw Americans associate with “government” was present there. (And it was American.)

          But I still strongly suspect the problem is size+bureaucracy, more than government vs private.

          One difference is that a large private firm that is sufficiently badly run eventually stops being a large firm, as your “used to be a household name” suggests.

    • Guy in TN says:

      If the cycle theory is true, how could the US break out of it?[…]Will the government eventually become so incompetent and citizens so disillusioned with it that the libertarian political agenda triumphs?

      I think the more appropriate question, given the recent trends in the view of the role of government among young Americans, is not “how do we break out of the libertarian cycle”, but “how did we break out of the libertarian cycle?”

      • Plumber says:

        @Guy in TN

        “….“how did we break out of the libertarian cycle?””

        2008 and the failure of Lehman Brothers. .

        The Silents and the Boomers remember the draft, Watergate, Urban renewal, “Government is the problem, not the solution”, et cetera but for subsequent generation the absence of a regulatory state looks like the problem.

        Maybe with more experience with government I’ll swing more libertarian, but for now my years of experience enduring working for private industry has given me the opposite perspective, and I’m not alone.

        • baconbits9 says:

          The financial industry is one of the most regulated in the US, its just head scratching that people can’t be convinced that the issue wasn’t a lack of oversight.

        • Guy in TN says:

          2008 and the failure of Lehman Brothers. .

          Surely it must be based on larger socio-politcal trends, rather than the events of this single year? If you are 22 years old today, that means you were 12 when the 2008 crash happened. I’m thinking its a response to growing wealth/ power disparities in general.

          • Plumber says:

            @Guy in TN

            “…I’m thinking its a response to growing wealth/ power disparities in general”

            That makes sense, and it explains why those in cities (where extremes of wealth and poverty are close to each other) tend to lean Left more than others.

            In general those who grow up in times and places that are more economically equal tend to lean more Right.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          Echoing Plumber’s final sentence I was a permatemp in industry for nearly 7 years.

          I’ve had phenomenally more autonomy, power, salary, benefits, and potential for promotion since moving to a government job.

    • AG says:

      The real cycle is the inevitable march of time. We’re pretty much right on schedule vs. the rise and fall of a Chinese Dynasty, into the late years of decline, due to system entrenchment enabling irreversible (for that dynasty) levels of corruption.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      How competent are Canadian private businesses compared to American private businesses, in your experience? Does anything vary by industry?

      I’ve never had super negative experiences with my local governments, but they are typically well funded and the employees well compensated. I’ve rarely come across someone I thought was a complete idiot.

      In private industry, across the few companies I’ve worked, my impression is that there are only a few key people that are really driving the business forward and fixing issue. Everyone else is more or less a cog in the machine, humming along, able to do a key function but not interested in doing much hard work or much new work. There are probably a limited number of these key people, and my impression is, in the US, these people disproportionately go to work in private industry, and do not go to work in the public sector. Additionally, the few people I know that DO go to the public sector, cannot hold the cogs accountable and cannot teach them anything new. They also do not have the ability to scale anything, because practically everything is turf-protected by a manager who is effectively a neo-feudal lord. This prevents them from doing anything beyond extremely localized benefits, and while these localized benefits might hold as long as they are working hard, they vanish as soon as the hardworker disappears.

  10. Viliam says:

    Even absurd accusations can be quite harmful. Imagine the following situation: Someone reads SSC, gets triggered by something, and posts on tumblr or twitter: “Scott is literally a Nazi. Also, he kicks cute puppies.”

    A naive approach is that this should be completely harmless. Among the people who read the message, most have no idea who Scott is. The few ones who know Scott will mostly conclude that the author is an idiot. The very few people who happened to be triggered by the same website will nod in agreement… but in 3 milliseconds they will get triggered by something else and change the topic.

    The problem is, in current era this could be the first step of a larger process.

    Step 1 — throwing mud

    The first step consists of random people throwing random accusations on their own spaces. The accusations are sometimes mere exaggerations, sometimes completely fabricated and absurd. As long as you are famous enough and somehow triggering to the people of mud-throwing online subculture, many accusations will be generated at many unimportant corners of the internet.

    Step 2 — establishing common knowledge

    At some moment you may trigger a person whose job or hobby is creating common knowledge. An editor of a sufficiently known wiki, or a journalist. Now this person has another option to retaliate. Instead of merely throwing another piece of mud, they can collect the existing pieces, and create a written record, supported by references. It will be like this: “Various bloggers report that Scott is a Nazi[1][2] and a KKK member[3]. There are reports of seeing him kick puppies[4], kittens[5][6], hamsters[7], and other cute animals[8][9].”

    If the author is careful, they can avoid actually saying anything false. If you carefully read the technical meaning of their text, they do not claim that Scott is a Nazi; they merely report that other people call Scott a Nazi. Another option is to avoid saying anything specific, just put the words together to create an association in reader’s mind: “Internet also has its dark side. Nazis, Scott, KKK, many others. People can be shocked by what they find online. There are also videos of cruelty against cute animals on YouTube. Our friend Linda says: ‘This makes me really sad.’ But these days, it is too easy for people like Scott to make their own websites.”

    It still seems like… well, someone is wrong on the internet, news at 11. Except, it sometimes spills out of internet, if you are unlucky and the article e.g. gets published in paper edition of Guardian. And now until the end of eternity, people will point at the article and say: “The proof is here, it must be true. Unless you believe there is a media conspiracy again Scott, ha ha.” And then…

    Step 3 — consequences

    …your Patreon account gets closed, because someone reported you for violating their terms of service in points 13 “hate speech” and 72 “cruelty against animals”; attached were links to RationalWiki and Guardian. Also, your Google accounts is closed (oops, all your messages and contacts gone in an instant), and your Visa card is no longer valid. Not because these corporations have anything against you specifically, not even because the important people believe those accusations to be true, but simply because someone reported you and provided evidence, and the safe (as in: cover your ass) reaction for the employee who handled your case was to close your account.

    The meaning of the Step 1 is to provide material for people to make Steps 2 and 3 with deniability. It is not a lie if someone collects the lies written about you online. And it is not a malice to close your account if reliable sources report you for violating the terms of service. The Step 1 itself is false and malicious… but what are you going to do about it, sue everyone who tweets about you?

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      “BuzzFeed reports Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress!”

      Except it’s based on anonymous sources “familiar with the Mueller investigation” and the BuzzFeed authors have never seen the documents and no one has been able to corroborate the story. But I’m sure impeachment is days away.

      The really interesting thing is when the propagandists involved completely fail to understand their level of power and influence. When the Wall Street Journal accused youtuber PewDiePie of being a nazi or having nazi sympathies, Pewds had about 50 million subscribers (that has since increased). These 50 million people, having watched hours and hours and hours of his videos know PewDiePie is not a nazi. Yet the WSJ thought they could take Pewds down by informing their ~2.3 subscribers that Pewds is a nazi. The actual result of this is that 50 million young people now know the WSJ is full of crap.

      The Wall Street Journal authors thought they were influential because they’re the Wall Street Journal. But they ain’t PewDiePie.

      • baconbits9 says:

        Did they attack Pewds to try to get him taken down, or did they try to sell newspapers to the people who weren’t his fans already?

      • dick says:

        I don’t think the WSJ had much to do with Pewdiepie’s antisemitism controversy. I also don’t think a popular youtuber making a controversially-edgy joke is very similar to Buzzfeed running a questionably-sourced article accusing the president of an impeachable offense.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          But the WSJ were the people who ran the “PewDiePie is a nazi” story that cost him his Disney deal. They were literally the one and only reason for the “controversy.”

          • dick says:

            They were literally the one and only reason for the “controversy.”

            So, the world’s most popular youtuber ran a “death to all jews” joke, and all of his fans, the blogs, other youtube channels, and clickbait sites just kind of ignored it until the WSJ had weighed in?

      • The Nybbler says:

        Mueller’s office repudiates the story.

        • ManyCookies says:

          Huh. Well obviously we should go with what Mueller says, but Buzzfeed is being weirdly steadfast about their report in face of a direct refutation. Why are they so confident?

          (Mueller still thinks Cohen lied to Congress to benefit Trump, per his brief. The point of contention here is whether Trump directly instructed Cohen to do so)

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            It’s the same way they stand by their reporting on the Steele dossier. The dossier itself is farcical stories plucked from 4chan, but BuzzFeed accurately described the dossier’s farcical 4chan stories.

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          Jason Leopold swore up and down that a story was true, and then it wasn’t? Wow.

          This is not the first time Jason Leopold has been caught making shit up. It should be the last. It probably will not be. It should. He should have no home in journalism any more, but if all his prior transgressions didn’t do it, why will this one?

    • WashedOut says:

      Even absurd accusations can be quite harmful. Imagine the following situation: Someone reads SSC, gets triggered by something, and posts on tumblr or twitter: “Scott is literally a Nazi. Also, he kicks cute puppies.”

      A naive approach is that this should be completely harmless. Among the people who read the message, most have no idea who Scott is. The few ones who know Scott will mostly conclude that the author is an idiot. The very few people who happened to be triggered by the same website will nod in agreement… but in 3 milliseconds they will get triggered by something else and change the topic.

      I agree this is totally naive. The older I get, the more I believe there’s no such thing as a ‘completely harmless’ lie. In the example you’ve given, i.e “literal Nazi” + “kicks puppies”, this is so far from harmless to my mind that it would be ‘naive’ to not condemn it on it’s face as being vile, baseless slander. For one, we’ve already seen the complete dilution of both “literally” and “Nazi” due to overuse/flagrant deliberate misuse rendering them meaningless. This in itself is harmful, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

      What matters in your hypothetical is the initial process of collecting, assessing and critically analyzing evidence. Most of the paths through hell you outline pass through an initial series of gates like ‘as reported by several bloggers’ or ‘sources from within the rationalist community’ or ‘some well-known wiki states that…’. These should simply not meet the grade for standards of evidence required to indict someone as a “literal Nazi.” Unfortunately the saturation of internet-pseudojournalism and the misaligned incentives of clickbait news media combine to create an environment where such assessment of evidence is practically impossible for the average pundit.

      If I were in Scott’s position in the OP hypothetical, would it be sufficient to ask the accusers/boycotters to provide real primary-source evidence to support their allegations, and anything less will be grounds for a tortious slander suit? Or is that being naive?

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        would it be sufficient to ask the accusers/boycotters to provide real primary-source evidence to support their allegations, and anything less will be grounds for a tortious slander suit?

        Depends. Is testimony evidence? if it is, lying to avoid the ban is trivial. If it isn’t, that seems Bad.

        • WashedOut says:

          If WordPress blacklisted Scott over an alleged affiliation with the Nazi Party and all WordPress was relying on was testimonial evidence, I would say that’s pretty clearly insufficient and Bad.

    • This is essentially what journalists do except they find a few true anecdotes to support their point and paint those as representative of an entire group of people. They also take true stories and report them in a misleading way to accomplish the same thing. It’s easy to notice when it’s the other side that does it, but not your own.

  11. baconbits9 says:

    We went on vacation for 2 weeks and came back to 8 dozen eggs in our fridge so ‘lay’ your favorite egg based recipes on me my friends!

    • The Pachyderminator says:

      ???????? Did your eggs have baby eggs??

    • jgr314 says:

      years ago, I found a really nice diagram with a taxonomy of egg-based recipes and I’m sad I lost it. For example, there were different branches for whole egg preparations, white only, yolk only, separation required but uses both. With 8 dozen, you’d have enough to get through the whole tree.

    • AG says:

      Lava custard buns
      Steamed egg

      Personally, my main use for eggs is fried rice.

      Egg drop into a creamy soup is good times, too.

    • SamChevre says:

      Tortilla:

      Cube up some potatoes, and cook them in plenty of olive oil on medium heat until soft and browned-a nonstick pan is best. Add paprika (Spanish smoked if you have it), chopped garlic if you like, and stir once, then add enough beaten egg with salt in it to cover. Cook over very low heat with a lid on it, or put it in the oven, until the egg is set.

    • dodrian says:

      This Key Lime Pie uses 4 eggs. It tastes great with a regular graham cracker crust and regular limes too.

    • Well... says:

      Fritata. You can easily use a dozen eggs making one that yields about four servings for a hungry adult male. Here’s how I make mine:

      Preheat your oven to 400˚. Grease a big lasagna dish (preferably with bacon fat, but you could use cooking spray or the like) and line the bottom with hash browns or tater tots, the kind you buy in a bag from the freezer section of the grocery store. Put that in the oven.

      While that’s crisping up, chop a bunch of veggies and sausage, enough to fill the lasagna dish most of the rest of the way up. Good veggies for fritata include stuff like spinach and tomatoes and bell peppers but you could get more creative if you wanted.

      Scramble a dozen eggs in a large mixing bowl. I like to add about a two teaspoons of milk for each egg to make it creamier but you don’t have to. Toss into this a couple fistfuls of grated sharp cheddar cheese. Add crushed red pepper, ground black pepper, and salt to taste. Stir thoroughly.

      Once your hash browns/tots have had an opportunity to crisp up a bit, take them out and spread your chopped veggies and sausage over them. Then give your egg/cheese/seasoning mix one more vigorous stir and pour it slowly over top. Sprinkle more cheddar on that and put it back in the oven until the eggs have cooked through, usually about 30-45 minutes but possibly longer. You can check it and put it back in if it needs more time.

    • littskad says:

      Pound cake and angel food cake both use an awful lot of eggs.

      Also, homemade pickled eggs are amazingly good, and there are all kinds of ways you can go with them. I especially like to pickle eggs with beets, but I’ve also made good curried pickled eggs and spicy pickled eggs, too. They’re really good eaten straight, in salads, and make much better egg salad sandwiches than plain eggs.

    • Plumber says:

      On weekends I often take a small 6″ little cast iron pan,

      put oil in it, or (if I want much better flavor) melt some Irish Butter from Trader Joe’s (other butters will probably be good as well)
      crack an egg in it,

      stir with a fork,

      heat it low and slow until solid,

      put some bread in a toaster,

      put mustard on the toast,

      then put the egg on the toast,

      with the now empty pan brown a slice of onion,

      have the onion sluce with the egg and a slice of tomato as a sandwich.

      Delicious!

      For a bigger meal::

      Sauteed some onions,

      Make some rice,

      Put the rice in the pan with the onions, and some butter or oil and fry the rice a bit,

      Let the rice cool a bit,

      Crack a bunch of eggs into the rice,

      Stir it up with some cilantro and/or pieces of bacon or sausage.

      Cook it low and slow.

      Add pieces of tomatoes when it’s almost solid.

      Finish up heating until solid.

    • Deiseach says:

      Fairy cake/queen cake/butterfly buns recipe and instructional video here; she uses four eggs which personally I think is about right (some recipes say only two but that is if you are using milk as well).

      For the cream filling, she uses buttercream but you can do ordinary whipped cream and strawberry/other jam, and they do look nice when presented properly.

      Very easy to make, recipe scales up nicely (so if you wanted to make more, just double the quantities) and if it’s anything like our house when we made these, they will get gobbled up fast so be sure to make plenty in one go! Same basic mix for Bakewell tart, if you’re making the pastry yourself that will use up more eggs but shop-bought pre-made pastry is perfectly fine.

      You will use up more eggs (yolks only) if making proper custard.

    • SaiNushi says:

      Take a few dozen to the nearest homeless shelter. They always need perishable goods.

  12. Le Maistre Chat says:

    We have Roman era dog graves with epitaphs. One Latin inscription reads:
    “I am in tears while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home in my own hands fifteen years ago.”

    … my heart.

    • theredsheep says:

      It is cool that we can find that bridge of empathy to people who died something like 2K years ago.

    • Nick says:

      This reminds me of a story from some elderly friends who, many years ago, worked under an old nun at a hospital. She was a tall woman with a deep voice. She wasn’t strong—she could barely walk, actually—but always got her way through force of will: “Ann, you will come and visit me,” the nun would command of her friends in her last years, and visit they did.

      Her disability was a leg injury she received as a child in Italy. When she was about three an earthquake struck, reducing her apartment to rubble and killing her whole family. She was rescued and adopted by the neighbor who pulled her from the rubble—for his own family had died too. When they immigrated to America some years later she entered the convent, though her adopted father did not believe. He was a wealthy lawyer who had worked some important position in Mussolini’s government and was doing disreputable work in America, I wasn’t told what.

      But she persisted with him, and just as father rescued daughter, daughter rescued father. He repented, giving his illicit money to the Church. He entered the priesthood, and asked to minister to a poor village in Mexico. And he became beloved of the people. In his final year, suffering from cancer, I think, they paid to send him to Mexico City so he could recover. When he died in hospital there, the villagers came and they carried his body back themselves.

      Enter our nun, for she came for his funeral—lumbering in, herself old and gray. She knelt by his grave, a humble grave in a humble village for this once great man, and picking up a bit of dirt, tossed it in, saying, “Father, once you unburied me; now, I bury you.”

  13. DragonMilk says:

    I made pancakes for the first time yesterday. They turned out surprisingly well.

    Surprising because I didn’t follow a preset recipe and per usual, don’t measure proportions. cracked an egg in a bowl, added a dash of heavy cream, poured in some coconut milk, mixed salt and sugar, and finally mixed in the flour before putting it over a buttered cast iron.

    Questions:
    1. What kind of fruit can be added and does this change any of the other ingredients (other than less sugar)?
    2. If I go for savory pancakes, can I still use coconut milk or should I sub water?

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      1 – no. The fruit will make them slightly more soggy but you don’t want any of the batter to be too thick. Berries and bananas work well. If using apples, slice thinly.

      2 – I think this depends on how savory you want them. If you’re serving savory pancakes with bacon and cheese on top, I might go with water, but at that point you may want to swap to buckwheat flour or something.

    • JustToSay says:

      I like dried cranberries and very finely chopped walnuts (excellent combo for scones, but also good with pancakes). Or plain pancakes with sliced banana on top.

      ETA: some people might prefer it if the cranberries are soaked in water for a bit to sort of plump them back up

    • jgr314 says:

      Based on the recipe you described, I think you made English pancakes/crepes and not American-style pancakes. I prefer the former, fwiw, but the latter are also tasty.

      Usually, when I add fruit/fixings to crepes, I wait for the pancake to set (including a flip) and then add the extras. If the extras need a long cooking time to soften (like apples) I would normally cook them separately.

      If you do make American-style, you will need a leavening agent (probably a mix of baking powder and baking soda) and possibly an acidic liquid (i.e., buttermilk) that will react to create bubbles in the batter for a “light” final product. Because you are trying to achieve a particular chemical reaction, I would suggest using a recipe to get the proportions right.

      For American pancakes, you can add the extra ingredients to the batter itself or plop some batter on the pan and thrown things on before the batter sets. I particularly like banana slices, but some people (my kids) can’t stand them. Putting a scoop of applesauce in the middle of the pancake, then some extra batter on top to cover is also excellent.

      For both kinds, aside from leavening, the only danger I see in your no-measure approach is too much/too little salt. The amount doesn’t need to be especially precise, but I’ve certainly made both errors and cooking things that were totally inedible.

      As to the amount of sugar, the range is huge and you’d probably even be ok to leave it out entirely, then put syrup/jam/honey/nutella, whatever on the cooked pancakes.

      Finally, I’ve a lot less experience and only mixed success making Korean and Chinese-style pancakes. I have had great success eating them, though!

      • DragonMilk says:

        Thanks for the tips, I’ve definitely not used soda or yeast before, and may well like the crepe variety.

        How exactly do you cook apples?

        • Deiseach says:

          As in stewed apples? I don’t know anything about American applesauce, but for the traditional stewed apples and custard: tart cooking apples, cut into chunks, put into a saucepan with sugar and water (careful on the water, don’t put too much in or they’ll be soggy watery mess), bring to the boil then turn down heat and cook carefully until the apples are mushy but haven’t completely lost their shape. Add nutmeg* as flavouring during cooking, turn into the serving dishes, pour over custard (personally I like the custard cool and nearly set as it makes a nice textural contrast with the warm mushy apple). You can throw raisins or sultanas in as well with the apples near the end when cooking.

          *or cinnamon, ginger, allspice, any combination you like

          Better recipe (it gives quantities!) here. If using cooking apples, you’ll need sugar (unless you like it tart), if using eating apples probably not – it’s all to taste.

          • DragonMilk says:

            I meant what kind of apples do you use in apple pancakes and how do you cook them before getting them into the pancakes

    • House rules when I made pancakes for the kids were that they had two alternatives:
      butter and syrup and eat the pancakes with knife and fork.

      I add fruit to the pancakes instead and they can eat them with their hands.

      They preferred the latter.

      What I did was to pour batter into the frying pan for a small pancake, put on thin sliced fruit–strawberries or bananas were common–then drip a little more batter on top of the fruit before turning the pancake over. Very tasty. Not long ago my grandchildren spent a weekend with us so I got to do it again.

  14. bean says:

    I was discussing my idea about resolving government shutdowns by locking the President and Congress in the Capitol until they come to a deal with a friend, and he said that while he liked the idea, government was already too much like a reality show.
    Then I realized that government was already a reality show, particularly the Presidency. 2016 was obviously the special Celebrity year. Hillary was primarily famous for marrying Bill, while Trump was famous for being Trump. Hopefully, normal service will resume shortly.

    • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

      The funny part is that this is normal service, just with the veneer of dignity stripped off.

      Trump’s presidency has really only been remarkable in terms of his personal uncouthness and the intensity of the establishment’s dislike of him. None of the shenanigans we’ve seen are new, it’s all stuff at least as old as I am. The only thing that’s new is that people are finally starting to grasp how farcical modern American politics are.

      I would prefer more dignified politics, but only if that means that politicians actually have dignity. If the political circus keeps going though, we should at least have an entertaining ring-master.

    • Erusian says:

      You inherently privilege anything that you apply pressure to in that way. Implementing this would basically mean that the President and Congress have to fund the government. The Founders explicitly didn’t want that. It had long been a tool for people opposed to the royal administration to starve it of funds.

      As for 2016 being exceptional, I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure there was ever a time pre-existing familiarity wasn’t an asset. If you’re concerned with alternative media and saying things for attention, then that really started around 2008. The trend could reverse but it’s not too likely. But I’d actually argue that means it’s not as deleterious as people think. Does anyone disapprove of every election from 2008 to 2018?

      • bean says:

        You inherently privilege anything that you apply pressure to in that way. Implementing this would basically mean that the President and Congress have to fund the government. The Founders explicitly didn’t want that. It had long been a tool for people opposed to the royal administration to starve it of funds.

        Two problems here. First, this shutdown isn’t about people trying to oppose the “royal administration”. It’s about a fight over a symbolic $5 billion for a wall on the border with Mexico. Second, it says nothing about needing to fund everything in the current budget. Maybe the small-government people manage to secure control of the food supply and make everyone agree to defund, say, the Department of Education. (While amusing, I would structure the relevant law so that this doesn’t happen.) This would be totally legitimate under my proposal. They just need to agree to some sort of deal. Because, yes, providing funding is part of their job.

        • Erusian says:

          Because, yes, providing funding is part of their job.

          It is not. Passing a budget (supply, in their terminology) is an obligation in the British system. The Founders were aware of this and explicitly allowed a system where the government could be denied supply without Congress needing to dissolve. You can read about it in The Federalist Papers. Or, if you want a more critical stance, in The British Constitution.

          • EchoChaos says:

            +1

          • tocny says:

            Slight correction: Parliament is necessary to pass appropriations, but there are revenues that are considered to be the King’s revenues, mainly excise. This led Charles I to rule for eleven years without Parliament meeting, often called the Personal Rule. It led to the Civil War, so I am not saying it was necessarily a good idea, just that it happened.

          • bean says:

            That’s not quite the same thing. A failed budget is essentially a vote of no confidence in the British system, and triggers an immediate election. It isn’t in the American system. And this, strictly speaking, doesn’t actually require them to pass a budget. What it does do is give a stronger incentive to stop shutting down the government over whatever the partisan political fight of the day is.

          • Erusian says:

            That’s not quite the same thing. A failed budget is essentially a vote of no confidence in the British system, and triggers an immediate election. It isn’t in the American system. And this, strictly speaking, doesn’t actually require them to pass a budget. What it does do is give a stronger incentive to stop shutting down the government over whatever the partisan political fight of the day is.

            You are right that a failed budget is effectively a vote of no confidence. This is because the role of the Commons in the British system was originally just to provide money and other entities tried to restrict the Commons to that role.

            The Founders were aware of this and explicitly did not include this in the American system. The idea was to strengthen representatives vis a vis the government. If they had wanted, they could have gone the opposite route and required budgets to be passed. They chose not to. It is not ‘strictly speaking’. It was something very purposeful. Elected officials are supposed to have the ability to starve the government of funds like they are doing now.

            I am guessing you like the American administrative state and are upset that people are opposed to it. This is why you aren’t feeling any dissonance over basically arguing the people’s representatives should be locked in a room until they agree to hand over money. You explicitly have objected to them using their appropriations power to extract political concessions. The Founders were in the opposite camp. You can disagree with them but the system is working as designed.

          • bean says:

            I am guessing you like the American administrative state and are upset that people are opposed to it. This is why you aren’t feeling any dissonance over basically arguing the people’s representatives should be locked in a room until they agree to hand over money. You explicitly have objected to them using their appropriations power to extract political concessions. The Founders were in the opposite camp. You can disagree with them but the system is working as designed.

            Working as designed? We’ve had most of the government on holiday for a month because people can’t agree on $5 billion for a border wall. I really don’t think that was supposed to be there. And the government employees who are sitting at home will collect full pay for doing so when they eventually reopen, at a cost to us taxpayers of way more than $5 billion for doing absolutely nothing. Yes, this is a great thing.

            I’m not a huge fan of the American administrative state, and I’m not baffled by your opposition to it. I just think there are better ways to fight back. If you have enough political strength to force a shutdown in the first place, you probably have enough to make some meaningful cuts if you’re willing to reopen things.

            To put it another way, what’s your proposed endgame? Permanent shutdown? That’s simply not going to happen. And if it’s not, then it’s in everyone’s interest to get them over quickly.

          • Erusian says:

            Working as designed? We’ve had most of the government on holiday for a month because people can’t agree on $5 billion for a border wall. I really don’t think that was supposed to be there. And the government employees who are sitting at home will collect full pay for doing so when they eventually reopen, at a cost to us taxpayers of way more than $5 billion for doing absolutely nothing. Yes, this is a great thing.

            It really was supposed to be there. I suggest you read the Federalist Papers and writings of the Founding Fathers. You can read some political histories of the King with Parliament too to see the history of some of there ideas. You can read, if you want to get really granular, Pepys diary where the 17th century Whigs starved the royal administration of funds and he was forced to work without pay. There’s even a scene where several women show up demanding their husband’s pay despite the lack of funds. The men causing that lack of pay were some of the Founding Father’s heroes. John Adams said Americans should make pilgrimages to their graves.

            I’m not a huge fan of the American administrative state, and I’m not baffled by your opposition to it. I just think there are better ways to fight back. If you have enough political strength to force a shutdown in the first place, you probably have enough to make some meaningful cuts if you’re willing to reopen things.

            Does it increase or decrease their leverage to lock them in a room until they agree to reopen? Do you not see how your proposal tilts it towards the state getting funds? Do you disagree the balance should be in the opposite direction?

            To put it another way, what’s your proposed endgame? Permanent shutdown? That’s simply not going to happen. And if it’s not, then it’s in everyone’s interest to get them over quickly.

            The government will reopen when there is political support to fund it. If there isn’t enough political support to fund it, then we should alter it until there is or we should abolish it and replace it with one that can get enough popular support to get funded. We should not start coercing the representatives of the people to pay.

            Fortunately, even if the federal government is shut down we still have the infrastructure to hold elections or constitutional conventions. By design, mind you.

          • brad says:

            Why exactly are we supposed to care so much about the intentions of the Founders? Did they have a directly pipeline to the divine?

          • Erusian says:

            Why exactly are we supposed to care so much about the intentions of the Founders? Did they have a directly pipeline to the divine?

            Because they designed the system. You can think they made a poor design decision. But if you don’t even know why they made the decision (if indeed you think it was an accident and not a purposeful choice despite evidence being otherwise), then your opinion is at best uninformed.

            You might also look up Chesterton’s fence:
            “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            We care because we want to be ruled by law, and sometimes we need to go beyond the raw text of a law.

            If there is a city ordinance that says “no vehicles in the park” does that mean that city trucks cannot drive into there to clean it up? Does that mean a child cannot be on rollerskates? Can a band perform there? (A performance can be a vehicle.)

            There is the nerd-response that laws should be written exactly precisely and everything interpreted with a four-corners doctrine. This instinct is understandable but futile. Human language is imperfect and will never fully describe what people mean.

            90% of the time just reading the text answers that, so there is no need to dig further to figure out the meaning of the text. But when you do, you want to discover what things mean.

          • John Schilling says:

            And where there is a disagreement or misunderstanding about what something means, “what did the guy who wrote it think it meant?” is an obvious Schelling point, and perhaps the only Schelling point for cases where basically everybody has a personal opinion or stake in the outcome.

          • John Schilling says:

            Also, using original intent as your Schelling point means that the deontological and contractual basis for your legal system has full back-compatibility; these are the rules(*) everybody signed up for when they immigrated to or accepted birthright citizenship in a nation, and nobody gets to say “That’s not what I agreed to!” as a justification for defection.

            * Including changes incorporated by the meta-rules for making changes, provided that process is perceived as legitimate.

          • brad says:

            Original intent has been abandoned by all legal scholars and sitting judges. And for good reason, its fundamentally undemocratic to allow the secret thoughts of legislators to serve as law. Original public meaning is the current most popular flavor of originalism. That doesn’t require quasi-deification of the founders.

          • Erusian says:

            Original intent has been abandoned by all legal scholars and sitting judges. And for good reason, its fundamentally undemocratic to allow the secret thoughts of legislators to serve as law. Original public meaning is the current most popular flavor of originalism. That doesn’t require quasi-deification of the founders.

            I see. So, reading (for example) what the Founders wrote and how they argued for ratification would be relevant because it is what the statutes would have originally meant to the public. Not because I have some intimate knowledge of Hamilton’s inner thoughts.

            That’s a fair point. But it is splitting hairs. I am not deifying the Founders. I am talking about their stated intentions in setting up a system.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            The founders were aware of sophistry (though the term may not have been coined in its present meaning yet).

            They knew about legalistic interpretation if only from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

            They were trying to write legal text acceptable to the majority of representatives of all of the states.

            Regardless of their original public arguments (which are just that, arguments, not objective statements of fact), if they wrote ambiguous text we can only assume that they meant it to be ambiguous so as to be acceptable to the majority of representatives of all the states.

            Nothing in the Constitution privileges precedent, or any other kind of tradition (unlike English law, IIRC). And the Constitution is the supreme law of the USA. So where precedent, tradition, or anything else contradicts the text of the Constitution the Constitution is primary. And where the Constitution is ambiguous, then precedent, etc… can be considered, sure, because nothing forbids taking it into account, but it isn’t fixed in stone.

          • Nothing in the Constitution privileges precedent, or any other kind of tradition (unlike English law, IIRC). And the Constitution is the supreme law of the USA.

            Nothing in the Constitution says that the Supreme Court has the power to overrule Congress, either. That power comes from precedent—a Supreme Court case.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            I suggest you reread article 3 as it does give them these explicit duties which pretty much require weighing mere congressional laws against the Constitutional proscriptions when such a case appears before them:

            “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States”

            “to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party”

            “In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

            The kind of ‘un-constitutional’ precedent I’m most concerned with are “tradition” and “the founder’s intent” and “liberty interests not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history” do not qualify as being a protected liberty interest.“.

  15. helloo says:

    Saw a video which mentioned that there was pressure from the shareholders that influenced some of the bigger CW issues regarding company policies namely GPG and FN (acronyms as apparently it triggers spam filter) for a number of companies including Facebook, Alphabet (Google), and others.
    And that one of the bigger shareholders that brought this up was… the Norway oil funds?

    Though I can see other new articles that mention this, did this spark any controversy/conversation?
    Though they were unlikely the leaders in the push for these policies, it certainly seems to be the muscle for a number of them.
    On a side topic, what is the cutoff point regarding share ownership between state-owned and private company for both domestic and foreign companies? Or does this influence really operate on a spectrum?

    • jgr314 says:

      Could you give some more hints about the meaning of acronyms GPG and FN? Is the latter a french political party?

      • helloo says:

        Gender 1234 Pay 1234 Gap
        Fake 1234 News

        As mentioned, I think they are spam filtering those terms,

        • b_jonas says:

          You will find hints about what terms are spam filtered if you read the commenting rules by following the confusingly named “Comments” link in the header bar of the blog.

  16. Chlopodo says:

    For a while now I’ve been trying and failing to find the origin of the story about Sir Walter Raleigh which William Propp tells in this video at around the 8:40 mark. Does it sound familiar to anybody?

  17. Uribe says:

    The maladaptive day-dreaming post below spawned this thought, but I’ll put it here since it is a different topic.

    Stand Up Comedy is something that can only be practiced live. You can write a draft of new material off-stage, but practicing by yourself doesn’t work at all because there is no feedback mechanism. The audience is your much-needed editor. (This is true for comics at all levels.) It’s simply impossible to know with much certainty what a room full of strangers is going to find funny. You try your shit out a number of times, notice where the laughs are and aren’t, rewrite, rinse and repeat over and over. Rehearsing in front of your friends doesn’t work because they know you too well. Rehearsing by yourself (other than to memorize your material) doesn’t work because, well, that’s just maladaptive day-dreaming.

    This is something that many people don’t understand about stand up, and why it drives me crazy (as a fan, although I’ve hit my share of open mics) that people are now recording stand up performances in their infancy and reporting on them in the NYT as if they were fully fleshed-out performances. Not many years ago comics would and could say really, really extraordinarily offensive things at clubs like The Comedy Cellar or The Comedy Store or open mics and nobody in the audience would really care because they understood they were seeing material that was being worked. Much of this material would never make it to that comic’s hour-long HBO comedy special, or to the show they took on the road around the country. (Usually the hour-long special would be recorded after taking it and continuing to work it on the road for a year, at which point it would be at its peak.)

    My question is: what other sort of work can’t be done or practiced in private?

    Bonus: Are there implications about what we should consider to be, for pragmatic purposes, private? I’m thinking here about how a show in a private club used to be consider private (because the club is private) but is now considered public (because it is open to the public).

    • Aapje says:

      I actually see similar issues in science & debate. Trying to move beyond the status quo on controversial topics typically involves proposing something new and then getting feedback from others who notice deficiencies, that can then result in improvements to the proposal or abandoning it after recognizing the downsides.

      For this to work there has to be a certain amount of good faith, where people with heterodox ideas are not held to far higher standards than the orthodox, where lots of people don’t start accusing and punishing the person of/for being morally deficient for not noticing certain things, where the person is allowed to actually abandon positions rather than being held to something they once said forever, etc.

    • AG says:

      Well, the thing is that we’re now in a generation where many people consume an equivalent to stand up in the form of Youtubers, which is faux-live. So for those people, the performance is the final form. They wrote, executed, and edited the footage, posted it online, and they don’t get to workshop it, even if the only feedback was how they reacted to their own footage in the editing.

      It’s like the difference between SNL live sketches and digital shorts. And how are SNL live sketches different from stand up?

      But for people who have grown up on the latter, it’s not obvious that the former should be evaluated differently.

  18. ana53294 says:

    In the previous open thread, several people mentioned that if walkouts in the TSA meant fewer checks in airports, instead of delayed flights and longer queues, people would be quite happy and it would probably be a net positive. You could even let the TSA workers keep their jobs, but make them a private force hired by privatized airports, so the security would be the minimum required by aviation law, and as fast as possible.

    If you eliminate the consequences, which agencies or sections’ dissapearance would be a net positive? By this I mean that during the shutdown, you may be unable to obtain document X to do Y, but if you do Y without document X, you’ll get in trouble after the shutdown ends.

    • ilikekittycat says:

      Query seems tautological. If you eliminate the consequences, surely there’s no agency or section whose disappearance is a net negative? You don’t need the military if someone isn’t going to try to initiate violence due to a power vacuum, etc.

      • Dan L says:

        It took me a few tries to parse too, but if I may be so presumptuous as to guess ana’s intent it would be something like “[Ignoring consequences directly imposed by other parts of government, especially those that are currently shut down], which agencies or sections’ dissapearance would be a net positive?” Limitations imposed by other nations, economic necessities, objective reality, etc. still apply.

      • quanta413 says:

        Not what OP is saying. He’s talking about legal consequences.

        If you eliminate the consequences, which agencies or sections’ dissapearance would be a net positive? By this I mean that during the shutdown, you may be unable to obtain document X to do Y, but if you do Y without document X, you’ll get in trouble after the shutdown ends.

      • ana53294 says:

        Yes, I was talking legal consequences brought by the federal government. So if a group of consumers sue a brewery over the label, that is not a consequence that can be eliminated in this hypothetical.

    • quanta413 says:

      I imagine privatized security would pretty much do the same thing because the government doesn’t have to do all the rigamarole either, but if security rules relaxed that would be great. I don’t see the connection here though.

      I think the things we could most afford to lose are not federal. Occupational licensing is mostly a crock but also mostly controlled by the states or professional bodies.

      A huge chunk of education after high school is a signalling arms race and it’d be great if some of that slacked off, but same deal. Only partially federally funded and mostly very long term.

      I dunno, maybe some of the newer agencies are a net drag. The CFPB perhaps? I’m spitballing at this point and don’t have a serious opinion.

      It’s harder for me to imagine how going in an uncontrolled manner from X to 0 works out well than going from X to X/N to X/(N^2) etc.

      • ana53294 says:

        But the TSA is a federal agency. They are a lot more powerful* than any private security would be.

        Airports want you to spend your time in restaurants, cafes and shops inside the airport. The more time you spend at security, the less time you have to spend money. In London Heathrow, a profitable private airport, they make a big chunk of money from retail and restaurants.

        The airport has two competing incentives: to eliminate risk and legal liability and to obtain profits. The TSA doesn’t.

        Edit: * to clarify, more powerful means that they can make the life of innocent civilians a lot more unpleasant, not that they are more effective.

        • sharper13 says:

          If you aren’t already aware, you may be interested to learn about the 22 airports in the U.S. which don’t use the TSA for security screening.

          They’re not having any issue during the “shutdown”, of course, and there is apparently no major issues with them, security-wise. For example, SF International had a 20% security failure rate in testing, compared to the 75-95% failure rate typical of TSA secured airports.

          • ana53294 says:

            Does the TSA tax airports to pay for their service?

            I am surprised that SF international used private security, being a public airport. Why do they do that? Seeing the results, it makes sense, but efficient management is usually not a high priority in publicly owned companies.

          • albatross11 says:

            TSA is an interesting example, because IMO its function is mostly providing security theater, not actual security. By contrast, a lot of government is doing stuff that has some benefits (even if on balance it should be scrapped), like the FDA or CDC.

          • CatCube says:

            This used to be the way that security was run everywhere. Private companies under contract to the airlines ran security under rules from the FAA (in the Department of Transportation). Then 9/11 happened, and the security forces were federalized most everywhere and put under the Department of Homeland Security.

          • bean says:

            I would take the numbers about TSA vs SFO with a grain of salt. First, when I googled this, it turned out that in 2006, SFO was outed as having cheated on the tests from 2003-2004, which is just about right for a 2005 report to find low levels. I’d want to know about more recent data. Second, I’d want to be sure that we had comparable methods of testing. Keeping the best people Homeland Security can find for pen testing out the majority of the time is not something we can plausibly expect, period. But is the team at SFO the same as the ones we always hear about on the news?

          • sharper13 says:

            Doing a little more research, apparently the official position of the TSA is that “there is no statistical difference in terms of effectiveness or efficiency between federal and private screeners.”

            The number of staff for TSA and private screening firms is controlled by the contract, so while a private screening firm may be a little more efficient with a similar staffing level, they aren’t allowed to just hire more people in order to screen faster.

            It seems most of TSA screening funding comes from a $5.60 per ticket fee. Presumably, much of that that gets diverted to the private screening company instead.

            From the same article, “Any airport wishing to switch must be pass a security and cost analysis by the TSA to demonstrate that hiring private contractors will not harm the agency’s budget or compromise security.”

        • 10240 says:

          If there was no security check or if it was faster, I would arrive at the airport later (as in, with less time before the flight). What’s more, since the time spent at the security check is variable and unpredictable, I have to leave enough time for an above-average queue. So it’s likely that the average (time spent at the airport – time spent at security check) would be lower if there was no security check.

          • ana53294 says:

            It has never taken me longer than half an hour to go through security, and I always try to be at the airport 2 hours early. Some people are worriers, and they will keep coming early.

            Sometimes you need to check baggage. Sometimes public transportation timing forces you to be early.

            So while *you* may arrive on the nick of the time, I am pretty sure that decreasing security time would lead to more foot traffic in cafes/shops.

          • Fahundo says:

            This is a feature, not a bug though. If they force you to spend random extra amounts of time at the airport you might be persuaded to buy something at a restaurant or shop once inside.

            It’s never taken me more than 15 minutes to get through security for a domestic flight, and yet they still won’t let me in if I’m not an hour early.

          • 10240 says:

            @ana53294 Let’s say that security check always takes 15 min. Say you target an arrival time 1 hour before strictly necessary to allow for traffic delays etc., and that makes for an arrival time 2 hours before the scheduled departure time. If there was no security check, the time by when it’s strictly necessary to arrive would be shifted by 15 min, and thus the time you could target in order to arrive 1 hour before strictly necessary would also shift to 1hour 45 mins before the scheduled departure. (And it would shift even more if you currently allow time for a 30 min security check as part of the “time by which it’s necessary to arrive”.)

            As for public transport, let’s say trains arrive at the airport at integer hours (17:00, 18:00, 19:00 etc.). Assuming you target an arrival time at least 2 hours before departure, you will, on average, arrive ~2 h 30 min before the flight (e.g. 2 h 10 min if departure is at 20:10, and 2 h 50 min if departure is 20 h 50 min, with your train arriving at 18:00 in both cases). If you target an arrival time at least 1 h 45 min before departure, on average you will arrive ~2 h 15 min before the flight (e.g. if departure is 20:10, you still arrive at 18:00, but if departure is 20:50, you arrive a full hour later, at 19:00).

            This is a feature, not a bug though.

            @Fahundo That’s why I’m saying that eliminating the security check wouldn’t be in the interest of the airport (especially if the same security check is also obligatory for other airports).

            It’s never taken me more than 15 minutes to get through security for a domestic flight, and yet they still won’t let me in if I’m not an hour early.

            Really? That’s not how it works in Europe (for intra-Schengen flights at least). Baggage drop usually closes 40 min before departure, and that’s before security check and the gate. So I’m pretty sure they let you through security 40 min before the flight. (They probably let you in as long as the gate for your flight hasn’t closed, but I have no hard data on that.) The gate theoretically closes 30 min before the flight (depending on the airline) so you have to arrive by then, though it usually closes later than that.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            It’s never taken me more than 15 minutes to get through security for a domestic flight, and yet they still won’t let me in if I’m not an hour early.

            Really? What airport is this? I usually try to get to airport about an hour before the flight, so presumably sometimes I’ve had less time than that, but I’ve never been stopped.

          • A1987dM says:

            @10240:
            Yes, I confirm that for intra-Schengen flights with no checked baggage you can even arrive at the airport 45 minutes before the flight without much risk except when the airport is unusually busy. (I still aim to be there at least 1 hour before, or even more if I go by public transportation, just in case there are accidents on the way or something.)

          • John Schilling says:

            I always try to get to the airport at least an hour early for domestic US flights, and two hours is often preferred(*). But, if I’m not checking baggage, I’ve never had anyone who wasn’t actually looking at a closed aircraft door turn me away; even twenty minutes before departure they’re willing to let me try to make it through security and to the gate in time.

            With checked baggage there’s a hard cutoff because now it’s a hassle for them if either I or the baggage doesn’t make it on the plane.

            Security can be anywhere from 10-30 minutes, which combined with traffic/parking delays and inconvenient terminal layouts makes an hour-plus margin a good plan.

            * If I wind up with an extra hour, I can usually time-shift a meal to eat at an airport restaurant; there will usually be something decent but overpriced and it’s usually on my employer’s dime.

      • 10240 says:

        Occupational licensing is mostly a crock but also mostly controlled by the states or professional bodies.

        If it’s controlled by professional bodies, then it should be counted at whatever level of government (if any) makes it obligatory to be a member of the body to practice a given profession.

    • 10240 says:

      DEA is an easy example that wouldn’t cause trouble even if it disappeared without notice. There are others that shouldn’t exist, but which should have equivalents either as private organizations or at the state government or lower level, or whose absence would require some other form of adjustment.

  19. vV_Vv says:

    Maybe it is a random coincidence, but it surely looks emblematic of this era that both the British Parliament and the US Congress are at the same time each locked in an impasse over a hot button populist issue related to immigration, with a real risk of causing substantial damage to their respective countries if the situation is not resolved soon.

    Has politics in the Anglosphere polarized to the point that not only the average people, but even professional politicians can’t find a common ground to cooperate even when the basic functioning of their countries is at stake?

    • The Nybbler says:

      The US situation is that Trump wants a victory and the House wants to deny him one. It’s pretty low-stakes, and not far from politics as usual; everyone knows that eventually someone’s going to yield and appropriations will be made.

      The Brexit situation is much more serious. From my POV it looks like May screwed the pooch; she should have been ostentatiously going full speed ahead with plans for a orderly no-deal Brexit from basically the moment she invoked Article 50. This would have given her a better BATNA and possibly allowed her to get a deal that Parliament would accept. And if it didn’t, she’d be ready. Now they’re stuck and all the choices are bad. Crash out and suffer significant economic hardship at least in the short term; this seems likely to bring down her government. Go back on Article 50 and tell the Leavers that their votes don’t count. Or beg the EU to let them kick the can down the road some more, which will likely result in a _worse_ deal.

      • Deiseach says:

        she should have been ostentatiously going full speed ahead with plans for a orderly no-deal Brexit from basically the moment she invoked Article 50

        Trouble is, the Tories were too busy back-stabbing each other from the get-go to allow any kind of coherent plan to be devised. The whole thing is a mess from the start; the Referendum was agreed to and called by Cameron who, after obtaining a victory in the Scottish Independence referendum, thought it would be as easy and simple to get a “No” vote and thus risk nothing by appeasing his backbenchers and having the referendum.

        Having badly misjudged things and run a godawful campaign, as soon as the Leave vote ws official he skipped out, leaving the Tory party in power holding the bag. And the Leave victors and leadership immediately started back-stabbing in order to grab power, with May eventually coming out as the compromise winner (she was originally a Remainer but adopted the Leave position since that was what she was stuck with). She then managed to repeat Cameron’s error by having a general election in the middle of the recriminations, shock, and uncertainty, and ended up needing the support of the DUP to prop her government up (and having to pay a hefty bribe to get that support).

        Since then, everything’s been at sixes and sevens, with the unhappy losers all wanting to get rid of her and take over themselves (but with no real concrete solutions to offer instead), the government which should have been planning what to do instead sailed on in a mood of “it’ll be easy-peasy to get the bargain we want because we’re too big for the EU to ignore” and then ran headlong into “actually the EU are rather pissed off over this whole thing and are not going to make this easy”, and with the officials charged with working on exiting the EU resigning right, left and centre.

        And then there’s us here in Ireland, with the sticking point over the Border, and the EU backing us to the hilt (because they’re pissed off at the British and are ostenstatiously Having Our Backs to ram this home) while the DUP – who hold May’s government in their hands – are equally adamant that they don’t want anything that will separate them from Great Britain, such as being somehow still in the EU in some manner. (Honestly, the messing-around the British are doing in regards to the hard border is doing more to promote the reunification of Ireland than any of our governments have in the past fifty years. Also, Scotland is beginning to look like it wishes it had voted Yes in the independence referendum before this whole mess started, and that is going to be interesting too). I know this is a silly comedy sketch but it’s the best “five three minute explanation” of the situation.

        So now there is what you see: May trying to cobble various deals together, not getting anywhere, hanging on by a thread, nobody really having any workable solution to offer and the best they can hope for is indeed kicking the can down the road but that can’t go on forever, so a no-deal Brexit is looking likely.

        As you say, if they’d planned for this all along it would be manageable. But instead they just muddled along and now we’ve got the current situation (and whatever affects the UK affects us here in Ireland, too).

        • AlphaGamma says:

          The whole thing is a mess from the start; the Referendum was agreed to and called by Cameron who, after obtaining a victory in the Scottish Independence referendum, thought it would be as easy and simple to get a “No” vote and thus risk nothing by appeasing his backbenchers and having the referendum.

          I don’t think Cameron expected to have to call a referendum at all. He planned to ‘sacrifice’ it to the demands of his pro-European Lib Dem coalition partners. Then the Tories did better than expected in the 2015 election, were no longer in a coalition, and had no excuse not to implement that part of their manifesto.

          (The 2015 Lib Dem manifesto does mention an In/Out referendum on EU membership, but only after a future “Treaty change involving a material transfer of sovereignty from the UK to the EU”. It devotes a total of 4 lines to this, compared to multiple pages about the importance of EU membership.)

          • Deiseach says:

            You’re correct about that. The whole notion of a referendum was seen as something not desirable or feasible, but I do feel that the combination of the Tories winning decisively and being able to ditch the Lib-Dems with the victory over Scottish independence combined to “yeah sure, let’s get this nuisance out of the way because everyone is going to vote yes anyway and then we can get on to the important stuff” attitude which sunk them.

            The idea of “a referedum on Europe” was pandering to the Eurosceptics in the party and the outsiders like UKIP which were nibbling at Tory support in some areas. I don’t think Cameron and the mainstream of the party had any burning desire to really question membership in Europe but the EU always made a handy whipping boy for the kind of rousing patriotic speeches nonsense. Then they got into a position where, as you say, there wasn’t any excuse they could give their own members as to “so why don’t we have this referendum?” but the over-confidence meant that he didn’t treat it seriously enough. It was badly prepared and the result really was a shock, and he compounded a bad result to worse by resigning and leaving the Tories to sort three problems out at once – who would replace him, could they keep a government going, and what the hell were they going to do now with the result for Leave? That was dishonourable at the very least, and the internal fighting over “ha ha, now I can be Caesar!” was disastrous as they wasted all that precious initial time not dealing with the immediate problem – the Leave result – but in cabaling and undermining one another for personal immediate short-term profit.

          • ana53294 says:

            As much as I think the Tories screwed the pooch, the clock did not start running until May activated Article 50.

            So the infighting that occurred after Cameron left to determine who would be PM did not affect this timeline.

            They did, however, activate Article 50 too quickly. Sure, the EU pressured to do it fast so Brexit would happen before the EU elections, but not activating Article 50 was a very strong lever they had, and they should have used it.

          • Deiseach says:

            the clock did not start running until May activated Article 50.

            But once the referendum had voted Leave, they knew this was coming. That they would have to activate Article 50 and once they did, the clock would run out in a specific time frame:

            The UK government stated that they would expect a leave vote to be followed by withdrawal, not by a second vote. In a leaflet sent out before the referendum, the UK government stated “This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.” Although Cameron stated during the campaign that he would invoke Article 50 straight away in the event of a leave victory, he refused to allow the Civil Service to make any contingency plans, something the Foreign Affairs Select Committee later described as “an act of gross negligence.”

            Now, it’s entirely possible Cameron put that bit in as scare tactics to ensure a Remain vote: “if you vote Leave, no second chances, no changing your mind, it’s for keeps! So be very, very sure!”

            And there is certainly an argument to be made that they should have dragged their feet on when they’d trigger Article 50 for as long as possible. But all the power-grabbing in the immediate moments after Cameron’s resignation, and the resignation itself, didn’t leave any kind of leadership in place to hold the government together, or let any kind of settled structure handle the whole matter of “Oh crap, they voted Leave, what the hell do we do now?” Cameron sloped off as fast as possible leaving a mess for his successor to manage, with no obvious successor to follow (see Gove’s backstabbing of Johnson in his grab for the brass ring), and once May had emerged from the ruins of the leadership contest, their immediate concerns were trying to cobble a government together, agreeing on a unanimous policy was very much in second place.

            Why did they decide to invoke it in 2017? I have no idea, after all the talk on both sides about taking plenty of time to consider positions. It may have been pressure from the EU, or internal pressure within the Tory party, or a combination of elements. But once it was invoked, they knew they had two years to get all their ducks in a row, and that’s not how it has worked out.

            Much as I’d like to, I can’t really blame May in all this. Cameron should have stayed to deal with the mess he set up, and she only became the Prime Minister after a messy and confusing leadership struggle. She’s tried to work something out that would satisfy all the mutually contradictory demands and while it’s less than perfect, at least it’s something. Instead, two years down the line, she’s still facing the prospect of losing the leadership, the compromise plan has not been accepted, it looks like a no-deal Brexit is on the cards, and even if May is dumped, who is going to replace her and what can they do better instead?

        • Lambert says:

          What’s the actual situation regarding the Irish Question?
          I’m assuming it’s ‘completely open border or else the UK gets its arse handed to it in European Court.’
          Is there any way for a hard brexit to not flagrantly violate Good Friday?

          • The Nybbler says:

            Is there any way for a hard brexit to not flagrantly violate Good Friday?

            Sure, just don’t set up border control. If the EU doesn’t like it, they can close the Ireland/Northern Ireland border themselves.

      • Lillian says:

        EU lawyers seem to be in broad agreement that Britain can unilaterally go back on Article 50 whenever it wants, at which point things return to the state they were before it was invoked. Similarly it has already been established that the Britain can unilaterally invoke Article 50 whenever it wants, by virtue of its having done so. Therefore all Prime Minister May needs to do to give herself a two year extension is to rescind Article 50 and then invoke it again.

        • acymetric says:

          I seem to recall a previous conversation on this topic here mentioned that one of the relevant court opinions mentioned something about good faith, which revoking and then re-invoking would seem to preclude, but I may be mis-remembering (or the person I am paraphrasing was incorrect).

        • wk says:

          Britain may be able to do that, but can May do it on her own? I was under the impression Parliament would need to make that decision.

          In any case, how would May sell that politically? “We’re gonna rescind Art. 50 for now, but I give you all my big word of honour as a Remainer and wheat field runner that we’re gonna get outta here, believe me. You just have to wait a couple years or so. But we’re gonna do it, really, I promise.”

          • fion says:

            I’m pretty sure parliament has to agree to invoke it. Not sure if they’re required to revoke it, though.

        • Deiseach says:

          Therefore all Prime Minister May needs to do to give herself a two year extension is to rescind Article 50 and then invoke it again.

          Apart from demonstrating even more unreliability and wavering over not being able to make their minds up or decide what it is they want, what good would a two year extension do? There’s no sign that they would come to any better agreement or stick to one course of action; May can’t get her own party to fully support her plan and all the opposition of various sorts can do is “We’d do better than that” but not state exactly how they would get better concessions or what kind of trade agreements they would make. For example, Taiwan seems to be not as co-operative with what the UK would want as what was given out in the early days that post-Brexit the UK would have no trouble negotiating favourable deals with trading partners on its own.

      • Thomas Jorgensen says:

        David Cameron handed her a pre-screwed pooch.

        Gambling addiction in a prime minister is not a good thing: That was the third Referendum he held that was going to blow up in the Tories faces in a big way if it did not go his way – Election reform (Getting rid of FPTP would likely have been good for the UK. For the tories? NOPE), Scottish independence, and then this.

        The EU was never going to give the UK a deal which is better than being a member – that would be institutionally suicidal. The only options actually on offer were always “EEA, member or third country”. Asking for anything else was always just going to result in a stone-wall, because those are the only things the EU could internally agree on.

        Which, btw, is very much how the EU always negotiates with outsiders.

        Step one: Spend 18 months figuring out what we can agree to offer.

        Step two: Make offer.

        Step three: Can we adjust this?

        Step four: “No.”

        Step five: but…

        Step five: “Not spending another year and a half debating this among ourselves. Now, do you like the deal or not?”

      • Reasoner says:

        Brexit does seem worse, but things in the US also seem quite bad.

        The coming year will be an exceptionally difficult one for the republic, perhaps even uniquely so. Two major streams of events will at their confluence yield extraordinary outcomes: the advent of the 2020 Presidential-campaign cycle, and the nearly inevitable impeachment of the President by the now-incoming Democratic House. (Impeachment by the House will likely succeed, conviction-and-removal by the Senate will likely fail.) The mechanisms of it all will yield imperatives for maximal behavior by all parties. It will become impossible to compromise without communicating fatal weakness to the other side, impossible to retreat without being immolated by your own.

        https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2019/01/the-long-night-is-coming.html

        • Gobbobobble says:

          Eh, we survived Clinton being impeached for transparently partisan reasons. It’s not good to establish as a trend but isn’t unique.

          And why should we expect the 2020 election season to be substantially worse than 2016? Haven’t people gotten used to Trump being all over the news yet? How much more can they really ramp it up? Sure, we might wind up with a radical prog/lefty in response to 2016, but that’s 2021’s problem.

          By all means, it’s gonna be unpleasant and some bad trends are continuing, but I’m not quite so pessimistic to think the consequences are as severe as across the pond.

        • Deiseach says:

          In the 60s and 70s America had its own home-grown terrorist organisations running around bombing and robbing banks, and cities burning in riots.

          I can’t see 2019/2020 being worse than that. Is this the long night that has been prognosticated by all sides since the results of the 2016 election? Wake me up when the nuclear bombs start falling in the Third World War/torture camps are set up/government stormtroopers are marching through the streets dragging LGBT and minorities off to those camps, okay?

    • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

      I’m really hoping that the government shutdown lasts a few months longer, because it will put the lie to the hysteria about “basic functioning of [the] country [being] at stake” with every shutdown.

      The DoD, FAA and the essential parts of the DHS are funded. The IRS will keep working through tax season. Social security, Medicare and Medicaid will all keep paying out. The night watchman state and the majority of the welfare state will all keep chugging along at least through the fall even if Congress never passes another budget.

      We’ll lose the federal courts and a lot of the regulatory state, which is a mixed bag but hardly apocalyptic. The biggest concern I foresee is rioting when EBT cards stop working, and frankly that’s more of an indictment of poor policing than anything else. The country will continue to function perfectly well with 75% as many Washington bureaucrats.

      I don’t know the details of the situation in Britain so I can’t say, but the situation sounds similar. A lot of Sturm und Drang over issues that seem very manageable.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        Agreed. Apparently there’s also methods whereby after a 30 day furlough the government can enact Reduction in Force rules and essentially start laying people off? I don’t know how true this is, but if so that’s one way of draining the swamp.

        I wanted the dismantlement of the administrative state. I’d prefer it done in a more orderly manner, but nobody gives up power willingly.

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        The biggest concern I foresee is rioting when EBT cards stop working, and frankly that’s more of an indictment of poor policing than anything else

        Now that is a hot take.

        • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

          I mean it’s been five years now since Ferguson and other associated riots. There’s no excuse for police departments, who are flush with cash and army-surplus equipment up to and including armored vehicles, not to be prepared to handle another round of riots. I don’t expect them to handle it but they have no excuse not to.

          Food in the US is extraordinarily cheap and even our poorest citizens have enough that they’ll be fine even if they aren’t given free food. We’re talking about people who are obese at a higher rate than any other demographic in the country. They’re going to be pissed but they’re not in any serious danger.

          • tooths says:

            this is incredibly callous. when was the last time you had to go scrounging around for food? do you have any relevant experience in the fate you’re blithely talking about befalling people?

          • ilikekittycat says:

            EBT isn’t solely used as a bulwark against starvation, its part of people’s budgets they have come to depend on. Many people live in places that don’t have cheap groceries (Hawaii, Alaska, islands, many Indian reservations, etc.) and many people live in places with high rents and very selective access to reasonably priced groceries. Furthermore, eating extremely cheap requires time and skills for preparation many people do not have when they are looking for a way to keep making money.

            Your comment was cavalier and ignorant

          • quanta413 says:

            its part of people’s budgets they have come to depend on. Many people live in places that don’t have cheap groceries (Hawaii, Alaska, islands, many Indian reservations, etc.) and many people live in places with high rents and very selective access to reasonably priced groceries.

            Getting a cut to the food budget sucks and Nabil’s being flippant.

            Furthermore, eating extremely cheap requires time and skills for preparation many people do not have when they are looking for a way to keep making money.

            But this isn’t true. Boiling rice is easy. Microwaving potatoes is quick and easy. Toasting bread is quick and easy. Etc. Etc. I don’t believe lack of time or skill is an issue. EBT’s make up for lack of money not time or skill.

          • Aapje says:

            @quanta413

            Eating only rice, potatoes and bread is very bad for your health.

          • theredsheep says:

            If you want cheap ingredients-in-your-facehole, it’s quick and easy. If, on the other hand, you want cheap food–nourishment that makes you feel like a human being, that tastes better than or even as good as a crummy TV dinner–that requires a particular set of skills, and may take time and planning.

          • vV_Vv says:

            Eating only rice, potatoes and bread is very bad for your health.

            Yes, but beans, lentils and frozen vegetables are also quite cheap, and if you don’t want to go full vegan you could add eggs, dairy or chicken a couple times per week.

            The vast majority of Americans would be able to afford this diet, and those who wouldn’t could probably get it for free at food banks or soup kitchens operated by churches or other private charities. And cooking this type of meals doesn’t really require any skill other than putting everything into a pot with boiling water.

            So nobody is at a real risk of starvation or even malnutrition, in fact it would be probably healthier than the Western pattern diet they currently eat.

            Of course, this doesn’t mean that people are going to like it. Some people use food stamps to buy their food then spend their cash to buy booze and cigarettes, some even collude with vendors or other customers to illegally buy booze and cigarettes with food stamps. If the food stamps run out I’ll expect they will want some heads to roll.

          • theredsheep says:

            No, they probably won’t like living off endless rounds of boiled pot slurry. It’s extremely difficult for most people to continue living off such stuff when fast food is an option. This is not because they’re spoiled and petulant children, or they’re all gaming the system to buy booze–though some do–but because boiled pot slurry is profoundly unsatisfying, and when you have a stressful, crappy, hopeless life it’s difficult to pass up living beyond your means so you can avoid eating like a stereotypical third world villager.

            You can have cheap, satisfying food, but it takes planning and practice, and sometimes a bit of free time. I make some damn good spaghetti sauce on the cheap, but prepping and cooking all those veggies takes time. Big Macs aren’t as good, but you can outsource the effort.

          • albatross11 says:

            They can handle another round of riots, but that doesn’t mean they can always keep them from happening. There are a *lot* more civilians than policemen out there, and if enough of them are interested in rioting, there’s only so much the police can do about it.

          • albatross11 says:

            Yeah, I don’t have a particular policy proposal here, but as a parent, it’s really important to make sure your kids know how to cook a few basic, healthy meals with relatively cheap ingredients. Otherwise, they can end up as I did when I first got an apartment of my own–unable to cook almost anything that didn’t come with explicit and simple instructions.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Consider donating to your local food bank.

          • Anonymous says:

            @vV_Vv

            Yes, but beans, lentils and frozen vegetables are also quite cheap, and if you don’t want to go full vegan be horribly malnourished you could add eggs, dairy or chicken a couple times per week.

            FTFY. 🙂

          • Randy M says:

            Yeah, I don’t have a particular policy proposal here, but as a parent, it’s really important to make sure your kids know how to cook a few basic, healthy meals with relatively cheap ingredients

            Indeed. Throwing things into a pot of boiling water isn’t much of a skill, but it is a skill, and if people are trained to go with McD or frozen TV dinner type meals instead of healthy and cheap, they will.

          • anonymousskimmer says:

            @quanta413

            Microwaving potatoes is quick and easy. Toasting bread is quick and easy.

            The cheapest microwave you’ll find is going to be around $50, and it’ll start falling apart within a year (paint flaking into food, and potential consequent rusting of the cage). I won’t even mention the cost of a toaster versus its utility.

          • Gobbobobble says:

            If you want cheap ingredients-in-your-facehole, it’s quick and easy. If, on the other hand, you want cheap food–nourishment that makes you feel like a human being, that tastes better than or even as good as a crummy TV dinner–that requires a particular set of skills, and may take time and planning.

            You can have cheap, satisfying food, but it takes planning and practice, and sometimes a bit of free time. I make some damn good spaghetti sauce on the cheap, but prepping and cooking all those veggies takes time. Big Macs aren’t as good, but you can outsource the effort.

            What can you get off of EBT that doesn’t require prep and is not a TV dinner? Snack foods? I wasn’t aware of McDonald’s accepting food stamps

          • theredsheep says:

            It doesn’t. You can’t even use EBT on a hot rotisserie chicken. That’s my point; it’s one thing to say “oh, it’s easy to cook up some nutritionally sort-of adequate beans and rice,” another to contemplate actually living off such slop when McDonald’s is advertising easy and (comparatively) appetizing food.

            EDIT: I think I see what you mean. No, not McDonald’s. They mostly use it to buy snacks/junk food, in my experience. Or TV dinners or frozen buffalo wings, which are very far from cost-effective even if you get the wretched kind.

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            So, I’ve been waiting for anyone to disagree with my assessment before responding but so far everyone has just been angrily restating what I said above.

            People aren’t going to be malnurished, much less starve, but they’ll be inconvenienced by having to cook for themselves and humiliated because they have to eat the kinds of food they can afford instead of the kinds of food they’re accustomed to eating.

            For the record, I have actually lived on rice and beans before due to unexpected problems getting my first paycheck right after an expensive move. Even with Manhattan grocery store prices, I got a month’s worth of complete protein for literal pocket change (I had roughly 75¢ in my bank account, and maybe $20-40 cash plus a MetroCard with a few rides left). It certainly wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t a national emergency either.

          • Guy in TN says:

            Everybody has been saying that if we outlaw cars due to carbon emissions, no one will be able to go to work.

            But this is ridiculous- the average American only lives 16 miles from work. At a brisk walking rate of 1 mile every 15 minutes, this is only a four hour commute. Workers are still going to show up, especially when the alternative is being broke, homeless and starving.

            Yeah, you’ll have to skip stopping at Starbucks along the way, but this is doable. Just get to bed early and don’t be lazy sleeping in.

            The only problem I foresee is the potential for rioting- but frankly that’s more of an indictment of poor policing than anything else.

          • Jaskologist says:

            This will indeed be a terrible hardship. It is a national disgrace that we have lashed the poor and vulnerable to such an unreliable system. Once the shutdown is over, the very first thing we should do is tear down this system and replace it with some more anti-fragile. I’m picturing some sort of decentralized system of charity.

            The poor should never be held hostage to disagreements over border security, and the only way to ensure that this won’t repeat is to make sure their daily bread is provided by an organization which doesn’t also have such things in its mission statement.

          • theredsheep says:

            NaD, I think our objection was more to the tone. Nobody thinks they’ll literally starve–if nothing else, it takes a long time to eat up all your fat reserves–but if you’re on a narrow margin and you lose a big chunk of your support, it’s a bit callous to say “they won’t actually die, so this is only a problem insofar as they might riot.”

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            @theredsheep,

            At the risk of spontaneously combusting, I’d like to point out that this is a great example of what SJ people call tone policing.

            Right now, the status quo is that supposedly serious “wonkish” news outlets like Vox can run headlines like this with absolutely no pushback on their hysterical tone.

            As the government’s partial shutdown drags on with no clear end in sight, millions of America’s most vulnerable citizens are in danger of being left to go hungry.

            Is my tone glib? Definitely. But if you dismis me for my glib tone and don’t apply those same standards to the overwrought tone of the national media, you’re stacking the deck in their favor. How can you be confident that they’re right and I’m wrong if your standards are so lopsided?

          • DeWitt says:

            Local man talks glib on blog full of people trying to be thoughtful, encounters people maybe taking issue with that.

          • theredsheep says:

            Well, I “push back” on Vox in the sense that, on the rare occasions I read something there, I am filled with a strong urge to go find a lefty protester and punch him in the face. I have not yet given in to this urge, but it strengthens my resolve to no longer read any Vox articles, no matter how reasonable or intelligent the headline sounds. I don’t waste time yelling at them, though. They’re lost souls.

            I mean, you’re a guy I’m having a conversation with on a cool website, while Vox is a well-known liberal outrage mill. Different standards are going to apply.

          • suntzuanime says:

            Vox is awful and so are the leftists who complain about being tone policed when you take them to task for their comically evil rhetoric. Try to be better than these terrible people rather than sinking to their level please.

      • Reasoner says:

        The country will continue to function perfectly well with 75% as many Washington bureaucrats.

        Wait, are you saying that 75% of government employees are still working during a “shutdown”?

        • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

          This partial shutdown only affects 25% of the government. I’m not sure if that translates to 25% of government employees, it may be more or less for all I know, but it’s not like the post office or the army isn’t getting paid.

    • Watchman says:

      Brexit is not particularly about immigration though, at least for most supporters. The opponents of Brexit seem to focus on this, as do the people who go on about immigration (in a ‘non-racist’ way) but the majority of those who voted to leave were concerned about sovereignty and governance. I know one leave voter who chose to vote that way simply because the remain campaign never made a positive case to stay: indeed unless you believe a federal Europe is a good idea, I struggle to identify a positive case still.

      The Brexit vote was a rejection of fear and negativity as much as populism. From a UK perspective this sets it apart from the US situation where fear seems to be deployed on both sides; I do suspect that this might be an effect of media reporting (someone in Washington must surely be capable of optimism) but remember this goes both ways: perceptions of Brexit in the US go through the same media filter.

      • fion says:

        but the majority of those who voted to leave were concerned about sovereignty and governance

        I don’t think this is true, but I’ll be persuaded if you have polling data that supports it. For what it’s worth, this study, which was the first thing Google turned up for me, seems to show immigration being the biggest reason, with lawmaking a close second (and very underestimated by non-leave voters).

        I suspect your point is in the correct direction (non-leavers overestimate the importance of immigration) but overstated (immigration is still the biggest reason for most leavers).

        • albatross11 says:

          Without the images from the flood of refugees invited in by Merkel, I wonder if Brexit would ever have happened.

    • Thomas Jorgensen says:

      Murdoc.

      The anglo-speaking parts of the world have a political problem because their fourth estate has an infestation of brain eating fungus – This is particularly true for Brexit, which is more or less entirely down to a decades long campaign of slander and lies from the yellow press.

      • Gobbobobble says:

        Any profit-driven fourth estate IS the brain eating fungus.

        • albatross11 says:

          It’s not so clear what the alternatives are. Instead of ad funding, you can go with government funding, funding by ideological organizations, funding by some rich backer wanting to buy influence/respectability, funding from lots of independent donors–each of those *can* lead to high-quality news, but can also have its own failure modes and incentives to lie, omit relevant facts, cut corners and write clickbait, etc.

          • wunderkin says:

            I think the problem lies more in considering the press the fourth estate than it whether or not it’s for profit. I feel like the press gave better service when the whole business was still considered a bit sordid and suspect.

  20. Jesse E says:

    In shocking news, it turns out that one poll about Gen Z being personally more conservative in their finances and some weird UK-only polls don’t actually point to a conservative Gen Z or some right-leaning people being somewhat popular on Youtube doesn’t change the facts about the overall population.

    http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/01/17/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on-key-social-and-political-issues/

    Gen Z is A-OK with transgenderism:

    “While Generation Z’s views resemble those of Millennials in many areas, Gen Zers are distinct from Millennials and older generations in at least two ways, both of which reflect the cultural context in which they are coming of age. Gen Zers are more likely than Millennials to say they know someone who prefers that others use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to them: 35% say this is the case, compared with a quarter of Millennials. Among each older generation, the share saying this drops: 16% of Gen Xers, 12% of Boomers and just 7% of Silents say this.

    The youngest generation is also the most likely to say forms or online profiles that ask about a person’s gender should include options other than “man” or “woman.” Roughly six-in-ten Gen Zers (59%) hold this view, compared with half of Millennials and four-in-ten or fewer Gen Xers, Boomers and Silents.”

    Gen Z is woke:

    Younger generations have a different perspective than their older counterparts on the treatment of blacks in the United States. Two-thirds of Gen Z (66%) and 62% of Millennials say blacks are treated less fairly than whites in the U.S. Fewer Gen Xers (53%), Boomers (49%) and Silents (44%) say this. Roughly half of Silents (44%) say both races are treated about equally, compared with just 28% among Gen Z.

    The patterns are similar after controlling for race: Younger generations of white Americans are far more likely than whites in older generations to say blacks are not receiving fair treatment.

    Younger generations also have a different viewpoint on the issue of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem as a protest. Majorities among Gen Z (61%) and the Millennial generation (62%) approve of the protests. Smaller shares of Gen Xers (44%) and Baby Boomers (37%) favor these actions. Members of the Silent Generation disapprove of the protests by a more than two-to-one margin (68% disapprove, 29% approve).

    Younger generations see increased diversity as good for society.Gen Zers and Millennials share similar views about racial and ethnic change in the country. Roughly six-in-ten from each generation say increased racial and ethnic diversity is a good thing for our society. Gen Xers are somewhat less likely to agree (52% say this is a good thing), and older generations are even less likely to view this positively.

    Even Republican Gen Zers are more liberal on race and the Charlie Kirk/Ben Shaprio ‘own the libs’ wing among the youth seems to be far more popular with the older generation:

    While they are young and their political views may not be fully formed, there are signs that those in Generation Z who identify as Republican or lean to the Republican Party diverge somewhat from older Republicans – even Millennials – in their views on several key issues. These same generational divides are not as apparent among Democrats.

    Gen Z Republicans more likely than other Republicans to say blacks aren’t treated fairlyOn views about race relations, Gen Z Republicans are more likely than older generations of Republicans to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites. Among Republicans, 43% of Gen Zers say this, compared with 30% of Millennials and roughly 20% of Gen Xers, Boomers and Silents. Gen Z Republicans are also much more likely than their GOP counterparts in older generations to say increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. is a good thing for society. On each of these measures, Democrats’ views are nearly uniform across generations.

    Among Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party, the generational divides are even starker. Roughly half (52%) of Gen Z Republicans say they think the government should be doing more to solve problems, compared with 38% of Millennial Republicans and 29% of Gen Xers. About a quarter of Republican Baby Boomers (23%) and fewer GOP Silents (12%) believe the government should be doing more.

    • I wonder whether comparisons like this between generations are comparing the current views of generation Z with the current views of millenials or earlier generations, or the current views of generation Z with the views of earlier generations at the same age. If they do the former, they may interpret changes in individuals with time as changes in the characteristics of generations.

      Doing it right would be hard, because some of the questions they ask now are ones that would not have occurred to them to ask twenty or thirty years ago.

      • Mark V Anderson says:

        Yes, that is my take. They are measuring differences in viewpoint by age, not by generation. Back when I was a kid, they were saying how open and liberal us baby boomers were compared to the previous generations. Now we are the conservative ones. It isn’t that each generation is more liberal than the previous, it’s that everyone becomes more conservative as they grow older. And most of those questions on which Gen Z is so liberal are those things that the press keeps hammering on us as being so true. It takes some maturity and experience in the real world to realize that maybe all the woes of Blacks isn’t wholly or even mostly due to racism, that maybe it isn’t a good idea to do politics on the job, that maybe there are actually downsides to diversity. But most especially to realize that the gospel they learn in school and on the news is sometimes as nuts as what they hear on the street, no matter how sincerely these “truths” are declaimed. It happens with every generation.

        • Dan L says:

          It isn’t that each generation is more liberal than the previous, it’s that everyone becomes more conservative as they grow older.

          It happens with every generation.

          I’d like your best data, please.

          • Deiseach says:

            In the 80s, Generation X was presented as being much more conservative than their Boomer parents, with everyone concerned only about earning money and being successful (see the sitcom Family Ties, for example). Or the novels of Douglas Coupland who popularised the term Generation X. Or the invention of the term yuppie.

          • Plumber says:

            @Deiseach

            “In the 80s, Generation X was presented as being much more conservative than their Boomer parent”

            Sort of.

            We in Generation X are less likely to get divorced than Boomers, and we’re more likely to vote for the Democratic Party than Boomers (and most data either lumps us in with either Boomers or Millenials ’cause there just t’ain’t enough of us to matter much).

        • Plumber says:

          @Mark V Anderson

          “….It takes some maturity and experience in the real world to realize that maybe all the woes of Blacks isn’t wholly or even mostly due to racism…”

          I must not be growing more mature as I grow older then.

          I’m married to a (young) Boomer, but I’m a (old) X’er (just a could of years seperate us), and as the years have gone by I’m more and more convinced that most of the woes of blacks in the United States is due to their relative poverty, and that the policies that were increasing their fortunes in the 20th century were repealed in part by a backlash against those policies that was in part racist.

          The metaphor I’ll use is two men are on a ladder, and the one that is higher up notices that he’s gone down one rung while the guy below has climbed up two, so rather than be pushed aside the guy above cuts the ladder and the both fall.

      • Dan L says:

        I wonder whether comparisons like this between generations are comparing the current views of generation Z with the current views of millenials or earlier generations, or the current views of generation Z with the views of earlier generations at the same age. If they do the former, they may interpret changes in individuals with time as changes in the characteristics of generations.

        A casual glance at the study would show the linked is an example of the former. Plenty of the latter also exist, with a mix of results – if you’ll trust my summary, they tend to show either a relatively consistent partisan divide (e.g. abortion) or a massive shift towards the left (e.g. gay rights). But that depends on your metric, because…

        Doing it right would be hard

        …it’s not entirely clear what “doing it right” would even look like, as the conservative v. liberal split assuredly hasn’t been static either. Or is that conservative v. progressive? Case in point, I guess.

        In the US, we can at least aim for a Schelling point of Democratic v. Republican party affiliation / voting record to serve as a first approximation; we might be able to look at similar in other countries (Tories v. Labor) if you want more data, but that compounds the problem in other ways. And was mentioned in the previous thread, that kind of analysis tends not to show a particularly large change that can be attributed to age alone.

        • Gobbobobble says:

          It’s almost like cramming every idea under the sun into one of two categories obscures more than it illuminates

    • Uribe says:

      Gen Zers are more likely than Millennials to say they know someone who prefers that others use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to them: 35% say this is the case, compared with a quarter of Millennials.

      Not sure how this makes Gen Zers more OK with transgenderism. All it shows is Gen Zers are more likely to know Gen Zers than are other generations. I could have predicted that.

      • theredsheep says:

        Actually, if 35% of them know somebody who uses an atypical pronoun, that implies skyrocketing rates of transgenderism to me.

        • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

          Or that the word “know” has expanded beyond any meaning due to social media.

          Basically, do any of us “know” Scott? I would argue no, that even meeting in person at a meetup doesn’t count as knowing someone. But tell that to the people with hundreds of “friends” who they’ve never met and will never meet.

          I know a couple (literally two) people IRL who use singular they as a pronoun, and I’m in a very cosmopolitan bubble. But if I counted everyone I “know” online I could get double digits easily.

          • theredsheep says:

            Yeah, come to think of it, I’ve run into TG or gender-ambiguous people online–there’s at least one such person right here–but exactly two in my thirty-five years of real-world life. One was a gay man who decided to transition to female late in life; he was an acquaintance’s ex. The other was a teenager I ran into when I was substitute teaching, whose name on the roll was a girl’s scratched out and replaced with a boy’s. And that’s out of probably several thousand teenagers I ran into.

            Uribe’s point is also fair; I know (of) these people, but I’m inclined to be somewhat leery of the phenomenon.

            OTOH, I count as a good friend a guy I’ve been talking with online for more than ten years but have met in person precisely once, for a couple of hours, during which time we exchanged maybe twenty or thirty words. And I know a lot more about what Scott thinks about stuff than I do about the opinions of many former coworkers, who I’d say I ‘know.’

          • Randy M says:

            To be fair, transgender people and people who want gender neutral or unique pronouns are not synonymous.

            Someone who prefers “they” as their pronoun could just be wanting to raise awareness and be a visible ally.

          • brad says:

            I know a couple (literally two) people IRL who use singular they as a pronoun, and I’m in a very cosmopolitan bubble.

            I know zero.

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            @Randy M,

            They could do that, but I’ve never seen it either in the wild or even online.

            From my vantage point, the Venn diagram looks like a small Trans circle with an even smaller They circle sitting fully inside of it. I’ve met as many non-binary people who still used the pronoun she as I have who use singular they.

          • albatross11 says:

            My high-school age son has several friends who identify as nonbinary or trans. What fraction will remain so in another ten years, obviously, I can’t say. There’s clearly an element of mimicry/social contagion going on, but I don’t know how much that drives the outcome.

            I have one close trans friend from college, and have known several people who occasionally cross-dressed. I also knew (and dated) a bunch of women in college who identified as bisexual, but who as far as I could tell only ever dated men, and who ended up married to men. (Also one woman who didn’t talk much about identifying one way or another, but who had a decade-plus relationship with a man, followed by her current decade-plus relationship with a woman. I’d put her in another category.)

            The trendy/common thing of women identifying as bisexual but going on to have fairly standard romantic lives seems like a nice demonstration of how culture/society/fashion can affect even self-identified sexuality.

            My best understanding of things (from many discussions) is that most of those women had some low level of attraction for some women, but were much more consistently attracted to men. And this makes me wonder how much of the cultural effect is in changing how people actually feel (or letting them not try to suppress some set of feelings), and how much is in changing how they interpret their feelings or how they describe them.

          • Randy M says:

            I’m just guessing here, since I know zero people who care about pronouns and one person who is some stage of transgender.
            I suppose 35% of people knowing 1 or more people who prefer non-binary pronouns isn’t that huge, especially for an age group in school, which means they have a lot of acquaintances.
            It seemed a lot to me, so I was trying to square it with a low single digit percentage trans population, but it also makes sense if the respondents “know” a hundred people or so.

          • Nick says:

            And this makes me wonder how much of the cultural effect is in changing how people actually feel (or letting them not try to suppress some set of feelings), and how much is in changing how they interpret their feelings or how they describe them.

            This is something I’ve wondered about—the extent to which people are “leaning into,” so to speak, whatever attraction for the same sex they have. And given that a lot of self-identifying bisexual women end up married to men, it could be they “lean out” of it when they settle down. This doesn’t actually sound that different from people experimenting during college—except that now it gets tied into identity politics….

          • Plumber says:

            I’ve encountered many “Trans” folk mostly at “H” tank at County Jail #4 when I’m assigned to do plumbing repairs there, and one encountered me on an elevator in the court area who recognized me from up there who laughed and said to me “Oh you don’t reconfuse us girls when we’re in our wigs”, and I knew a couple by name when I was a srudent at Berkeley High School student in the 1980’s (they were over 3,000 students, and I’ve never known as many different people since then), but I haven’t know n any by name since high school.

          • William James Kirk says:

            @ Albatross11,

            As one of those men who ended up married to a bisexual woman who mostly dated men and discussed the reasons for this at some length, I have a simpler explanation than “weak intrinsic attraction to women” for self-identified bisexual women tending to end up with men — partner availability. Especially if you’re a feminine-presenting (not overtly “butch”) bisexual woman who likes other feminine-presenting woman and also likes men, you’re going to have a much easier time finding partners in the latter category.

            – There are far more men who are interested in women than women who are interested in women, and a woman’s identifying as bisexual is not disqualifying for many men.

            – Most of the feminine-presenting women you might want to approach to are going to rebuff you, because the vast majority are straight.

            – There’s often disapproval of bisexual women from more exclusive lesbians, which further reduces the bisexual woman’s pool of potential partners.

            – It’s easy for everybody who doesn’t know you to assume that you’re straight, so when you’re romantically approached it’s almost always by a man.

            – If you come from a background where bisexuality isn’t even acknowledged as an orientation, it may have taken a while to even formulate the proposition that you’re bisexual, at a point when you’ve already been involved exclusively with men. Once this has gone on for a while, people who know you are disinclined to believe you when you tell them you’re not straight, which again makes it more difficult to find compatible women.

            It takes disproportionately more effort, in scenarios like this, to initiate romantic relationships with women than with men. This can result in even women who are predominantly attracted to women having relationships predominantly with men. My wife encounters far more women she’s attracted to than men she’s attracted to, but has still been involved almost exclusively with men.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            In Portland, I’ve seen at least one obvious transgender in a game store, one in a park, one browbeating Trader Joe’s employees, two on the streets with signs asking for money,band several at restaurants. These are all male, of course.
            I’ve been invited to the home of a female acquaintance who identifies as genderqueer/they.

          • albatross11 says:

            William James Kirk: Fair enough. I think we may have discussed some of this a few threads back, as well.

            To be clear: I’m absolutely not denying that bisexuality exists, or that people who identify as {bi, trans, nonbinary, gay, etc} aren’t reporting actual feelings and desires. But I think it’s very interesting that the self-reported prevalence of those inclinations changes a lot in ways that respond to social pressures, trendiness, etc., even in people who end up with very conventional lives.

            It’s interesting to me to ask whether those social forces affect what people want/are attracted to, or how they interpret those feelings, or just what they’re willing to admit to. Maybe in 1900 the same fraction of young women felt some same-sex attraction as in the 80s when I was in college, but they just weren’t going to mention it because it would be socially unacceptable. Alternatively, maybe they just thought “oh, that’s a totally different thing than how I feel about boys.” Or maybe they didn’t really acknowledge or notice those feelings at all. I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.

            My favorite weird story along these lines was the couple I knew who had an open relationship all through college, and cut an *amazingly* wide swath during their time in school. Eventually, he graduated, she got pregnant, they got married, and the woman in the relationship very quickly reverted to being the super-traditional Evangelical Christian girl she’d been raised to be. That was a little mind-blowing, as well as ultimately pretty hard on their marriage. (If she’d reverted only to the relatively tame middle-class agnosticism he did, I think it would have worked out okay, but he married a *very* different person than he probably imagined he was marrying.

        • Nick says:

          Actually, if 35% of them know somebody who uses an atypical pronoun, that implies skyrocketing rates of transgenderism to me.

          If you’ve been reading some of the stories Rod Dreher signal boosts, that is entirely plausible.

          • theredsheep says:

            Yeah, I read Dreher, albeit with a pinch of salt since he gets worked up very easily. My feeling is that TG includes a whole bunch of different people with superficially similar symptoms/attributes.

    • aristides says:

      You have only cited two social issues, transgenderism and race, which I think few conservatives would argue are the most important issues. I would be more curious about their view on the free market and the importance of an orthodox family and religion. In my view those are the most important conservative views, not which pronouns you use to talk with people. Though I am a conservative millennial, so that might be a bias.

      • albatross11 says:

        My sense is that the conservative movement as a whole has gotten a *lot* of mileage out of culture-war issues, and that this has broadly been used to keep the base in line while not giving them much. I mean, social conservatives are like 0-100 so far–the best they’ve managed is to slightly slow some of the huge changes in directions they don’t like, or to maybe leave it arguable whether some baker somewhere might be permitted to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, after spending his life’s savings and several years fighting it out in court.

        My model of the world, which I’ll admit isn’t super sophisticated, is that the conservative movement as a whole has a set of priorities about lowering taxes and generally making the laws friendlier to important donors, which the base doesn’t really much care about. And they also have a set of priorities around endless war and cutting entitlements that the base doesn’t like at all. Their technique for keeping the coalition together for the last couple decades has been to talk about culture-warry issues, emphasize them as important things everyone should be talking about, and trust the crazy fringe of the other side to provide them helpful sound bites to support the idea that the liberals want to take your guns, put your 12 year old daughter on birth control pills without your permission, and turn your son gay. Part of this has been co-opting some prominent religious leaders to support the message.

        The strategy seems to be working out less and less well over time.

        • Nick says:

          My model of the world, which I’ll admit isn’t super sophisticated, is that the conservative movement as a whole has a set of priorities about lowering taxes and generally making the laws friendlier to important donors, which the base doesn’t really much care about.

          The funny thing about the Trump administration is that, despite being allegedly populist and far-right and so on, its sole legislative success, in two years, with a unified Congress and White House, is tax cuts.

        • Plumber says:

          @albatross11,

          Until the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare I could easily make the case that the Democratic Party has been doing a similar con job, that is economic issues promises that have broad national support, but actually delivering on social issues that have narrower support – basically that for more than 40 years the two parties have tag team both promising populism while both delivering libertarianism (this is when the commentariat tell s me “NUH-UH NOT SO”, to which I respond “Compared to the ’60’s? YES VERY MUCH SO!”).

          The AFA, though far from ideal (“No insurance company left behind”), is the game changer, when Democrats cast off their post Johnson slumber and expanded the weakend safety net.

          While the increased racial separation scares me, I mostly cheer the base’s rebellion on the Republican side, and what I’d like to see is both Parties cast off donor-class rule and this country becomes more majoritarian and less plutocratic, but even though to me the interests of the both the black, white, rural and urban working classes look largely aligned to me to me, with the contuing “culture war” I just don’t expect longed for progress, just more:

          They’ll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white—everybody—to keep us in our place”

        • aristides says:

          How do you define the conservative base. My Hispanic mother makes around $50,000 that has voted Republican in the last 5 elections mainly because of economic issues that she thinks help her but liberals would argue hurt her. It’s possible she is an outlier, but I know a lot of conservatives that believe both the economic and cultural issues of the conservatives movement. My prediction is when race and LGBT issues are off the table there will still be young conservatives that support free markets, family, and religion.

          • Plumber says:

            @aristides

            “How do you define the conservative base…”

            The conservative base is exactly how you described, but that’s not all Republican voters.

            Neither Conservatives nor Liberals are a majority in this country, as the 2016 electorate may be divided into four broad groups:
            “Liberal”: (44.6 percent): liberal on both economic and identity issues

            “Populist” (28.9 percent): liberal on economic issues, conservative on identity issues

            “Conservative” (22.7 percent): conservative on both economic and identity issues

            “Libertarian” (3.8 percent): conservative on economics, liberal on identity issues

            (source)

            Libertarian and Populist voters are the “swing voters’ needed to be convinced to vote for either Democrats or Republicans in order for either Party to get a majority.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          liberals want to take your guns, put your 12 year old daughter on birth control pills without your permission, and turn your son gay.

          Are you saying this isn’t true?

        • wunderkin says:

          My model of the world, which I’ll admit isn’t super sophisticated, is that the conservative movement as a whole has a set of priorities about lowering taxes and generally making the laws friendlier to important donors, which the base doesn’t really much care about.

          As opposed to the democrats, who definitely don’t want to make laws friendlier for labor unions, government employees, or other left wing donors?

          And they also have a set of priorities around endless war and cutting entitlements that the base doesn’t like at all.

          Republicans have basically never cut entitlements, and have expanded them several times, so it doesn’t seem like that’s much of a priority.

          Their technique for keeping the coalition together for the last couple decades has been to talk about culture-warry issues, emphasize them as important things everyone should be talking about, and trust the crazy fringe of the other side to provide them helpful sound bites to support the idea that the liberals want to take your guns, put your 12 year old daughter on birth control pills without your permission, and turn your son gay.

          As opposed to democrats, who say calm measured things, like republicans want to put black people back in chains?

          The republican positions on culture war issues have stayed pretty well put for the last two or three decades, while democrats have galloped to the left, and succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Why is it the republicans that you seem to think are pushing these issues, when it’s democrats that keep moving the goal posts?

          • DeWitt says:

            The republican positions on culture war issues have stayed pretty well put for the last two or three decades, while democrats have galloped to the left, and succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

            The Republicans have moved right just fine on their most important issue in the past two or three decades. Both incarnations of the Bush presidency could not give a whit about immigration and not have anyone kick up a fuss; immigration was the central issue on which the previous election was decided.

          • wunderkin says:

            @DeWitt says:

            the republican party has been at the same place on immigration for 30 years, a majority of the party, particularly the elite, is basically on board with the status quo while a loud minority scares them into making noise about restricting immigration, but not enough to actually do anything meaningful on that front.

            On gays, they’ve moved left. Feminism, left. Abortion, they’ve stayed the same. And I wouldn’t call immigration the central issue of the campaign any more than free trade was the central issue of 1992, it was an issue that Trump used to gain attention (like Perot did with trade) but clearly not something with enough popular appeal to carry him all the way to victory.

            The only issue on which republicans have moved meaningfully right in recent decades is guns.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            the Bush presidency could not give a whit about immigration and not have anyone kick up a fuss

            No, W got funding for a fence that he didn’t spend. The neocons mouthed the words that the base wanted to hear, but had no intention of following through on. Which is why they elected Trump.

            It’s like saying “your girlfriend said she was faithful, but she was banging other dudes so clearly you’re fine with your girlfriend banging other dudes.” No, that was all bad, and eventually corrected.

          • Plumber says:

            @wunderkin

            “….As opposed to the democrats, who definitely don’t want to make laws friendlier for labor unions, government employees, or other left wing donors?.”

            Even in my lifetime union members still were the base of the Democratic Party instead of only the donors, but there’s much fewer of us left, and the collegiate class has moved in. 

            “…Republicans have basically never cut entitlements…”

            Yes they have, with the help of a turncoat Democratic President.

          • wunderkin says:

            @plumber

            they cut one entitlement once, the least popular one and one that actually wasn’t a very large share of actual spending. All of the others have been expanded, repeatedly, by both democrats and republicans. If I chose A over B 9 times out of ten, you can’t point to the 10th and call be a B chooser.

      • Plumber says:

        @aristides

        “…I would be more curious about their view on the free market and the importance of an orthodox family and religion. In my view those are the most important conservative views…”

        What’s the link between “the free market” and “orthodox family and religious”?

        • aristides says:

          There is Basically no link, but I would argue that what conservatives historically want to conserve are those two unrelated things as opposed to populists or libertarians. That’s my definition for conservative at least, though other ones have merit.

  21. theredsheep says:

    I understand at least some SSCers have experience with atypical and online publishing models. I’m trying out that approach–specifically, serializing a novel, then releasing a dead-tree version once it’s all finished. I’m not linking because I still have housework to do on the site; its URL will probably change once I’ve hammered down a title. Anyway, are there any tips or pitfalls I should be aware of? I’ve got the copyright notice up, I have a TOC on the sidebar, and I’ve divided the text up into ten- or eleven-minute chunks (as wordpress estimates read times). This is a budget project for now, since I’m an unknown author working in his free time. What should I do?

    • C_B says:

      (Not personal experience, as I haven’t done this, but stuff I’ve picked up from following a few web serial projects…)

      1. Apparently you have to be a hardass about allowing distribution of ebooks of your work, even if you’re putting it up for free online as you publish it. Publishers are scared of publishing anything that might already be floating around the web. It’s easy to screw yourself on this early on, and then hard to fix it later. Your copyright notice might be enough?

      2. Did you want to vanity-publish the dead tree version, or sell it to a publisher?

      3. It sounds like you already have a fair amount of this thing written? That sounds good. These things live or die by posting consistency.

      4. Wildbow (the Worm author) posts a fair amount of writing thoughts and advice, including a bunch of very candid stuff about the trials and tribulations of web publishing. You might try stalking his post history: https://www.reddit.com/user/wildbow/

      • theredsheep says:

        I intend to KDP it–vanity-publishing without the ridiculous expense. I doubt I’ll ever make real money off this, but I can have somebody actually read these stories I come up with.

        I got this idea because my old, old blog, where I did nothing but post theological musings, steadily attracted followers who didn’t appear to be bots in spite of extremely irregular updates and no efforts whatever to promote it. Now, all I got from them was an occasional like or three, but for a minimal-effort scratchpad it did quite well. Meanwhile, my first book was critically flawed, but I got minimal feedback, and had no way to promote it. I see serializing as an attempt to address both problems. Also, it will motivate me to keep writing.

        I’m going over the Wildbow archive, and mostly seeing comments on unrelated matters, like how terrible Caillou is. Which is true and valid, to be fair.

      • I don’t think “vanity publishing” is an accurate description any more. That was a model where you paid the publisher so as to be able to claim you were a published author. The current model costs the author nothing, makes the book widely available via Amazon, so has the possibility of bringing in significant income and readership.

        I self-published the third edition of The Machinery of Freedom because the publisher of the second edition wasn’t willing to agree to the terms my agent wanted. That had the advantage of letting me set a reasonably low price for the paperback and a very low price for the kindle.

        • C_B says:

          Yeah, fair, I used that term out of habit, but it’s unnecessarily loaded for what I meant. “Self publish” is a better neutral term.

        • theredsheep says:

          I think vanity presses still exist, it’s just that the few who remain are scammier than ever. I’m in a spec-fic authors’ group on FB, and a guy just came on there talking about how he just got a contract with a small publisher in Chicago. Turned out there were several red flags he’d missed.

    • theredsheep says:

      Replying since I’m past the edit threshold: it’s pyrebound.wordpress.com now. I’m going to try not to be one of those insufferable people who endlessly self-promotes HIS BOOK though.

  22. Well... says:

    I have trouble understanding how people ever “get ahead.”

    My mortgage (small house, nice neighborhood), healthcare premiums (family of four, no employer matching), and healthcare bills are each around $1K/month. My wife and I pay about $1600/month total in daycare & school expenses for our kids. Between the two of us we’re paying about $500/month in student loans. It stings but I don’t think those are outrageous expenses, right? Lots of people have it worse.

    We’re thrifty. We don’t go on vacations except once or twice a year to stay with family over a long weekend (and we always drive), we don’t eat out a lot, we get our groceries at Aldi, all our furniture is used or bought at auction. We drive cheap Toyotas that are both more than a dozen years old. All our clothes are from Walmart or thrift stores. Except for stuff like the new driveway I do all the work on the house. We use the absolute cheapest internet provider and our family cell phone bill is $50/month — nothing extravagant. My 401K contributions are as modest as they can safely be and my wife’s are non-existent.

    So despite how much we gross annually (almost $150K between the two of us), we’re lucky to see our checking account grow by a hundred bucks at the end of the month, and there isn’t more than a month or two worth of expenses in it to start with.

    I can’t figure it out. It seems like most other people at or even below our income level take more vacations, drive newer cars, eat out more, give more money & stuff away as gifts and charity, etc. than we do. What’s up with that?? Is everyone else just walking around with a surprising amount of credit card debt or something?

    (Not worried or complaining, by the way. Just puzzled.)

    • Randy M says:

      Get rid of that student loan, and you can start saving $500 a month. Of course, to do so quickly you have to come up with >$500 a month in the meantime to put towards it. I don’t know where exactly you can find that since your expenses as described seem reasonable, but when I decided to do so, I made an excel sheet of every expense over a couple of months. It helped to see that, for instance, a trip to Target for “essentials” could easily run $80 that wouldn’t even get missed, or that shipping out things for trade was running a non-negligible amount.

      I’m assuming both of you individually make >$20,000 per year. If not, that person could quit to eliminate the daycare expenses. Maybe there’s a way to tele-commute part time to cover that, but I know it’s overly optimistic to assume your employer is cool with that.

      Your mortgage is 2/3 of my rent, I’m jealous there. But you have $1,000 in medical expenses per month on top of healthcare premiums? That sounds non-routine. That’s going to be a challenge.

      There should be some room somewhere, though. I make about half of you and manage to put away a few hundred per month and more from the tax return (I know…).

      • Well... says:

        I believe the interest on the student loans is close to or less than inflation, so if I was going to pay a debt off early I’d look at something else instead.

        Yeah, my wife and I gross a bit less than $150K/year and she makes a little more than half of what I do. You do the math. It’s a net benefit for her to work (not to mention the stress of being at home all day with kids…I know not all women get it, but, uh, some do). And I already have crazy awesome flexibility so I can work from home when a kid is sick without losing a day’s pay. Still though…

        The medical expenses are typical for families, I think. Kids get sick and have to go to the doctor a lot, and sometimes urgent care. They need little surgeries like ear tubes. Also my wife and I are in our mid-30s, so even though we’re reasonably healthy, by now one or both of us have had to see specialists, get scoped, take prescription meds for some chronic thing or another, etc. That crap adds up!

        • Randy M says:

          I believe the interest on the student loans is close to or less than inflation, so if I was going to pay a debt off early I’d look at something else instead.

          By all means, prioritize your debt by interest, just so long as you prioritize your debt.

          The medical expenses are typical for families, I think.

          We just went out for my wife’s 38th birthday, I’m the same. We had a bad few years when she had cancer, and every few months since there’s a check up with the oncologist that runs several hundred on our end, iirc.

          But most months there’s literally nothing in medical expenses that isn’t the kind of consumables Evan lists, let alone a thousand dollars worth.

          Wait… do you have boys? That might explain it. We just have girls. lol. My Dad was on first name basis with the doctor.

          But seriously, I’m not going to tell you to avoid the doctor if you think you need to go… but most ailments we encounter clear up with time. I don’t think our six year old has seen a doctor since the midwife at birth.

        • sandoratthezoo says:

          I’m in my early 40’s, my wife is in her mid 30’s, we have two kids, and we spend a hell of a lot less than $1,000 per month (!!) on medical care. Something seems off there.

        • Chalid says:

          Chiming in to support everyone else here. I have two young children (4 yo and 1yo) and I think we’ve had one, total, non-routine doctor visit in the past year. (which turned out to be an ear infection, with medicine almost fully covered by insurance.) So it’s possible that this is the big difference between you and most families.

          It’s possible that your kids need more medical care than average, in which case there’s nothing you can do. But you might also think about whether all the expenses are actually necessary – e.g. do you take them to the doctor the instant something seems wrong, or do you wait to see if things get better on their own?

          • Well... says:

            Sometimes I wish there was a convenient way to respond to everyone in a sub-sub-thread at once…hopefully just replying to the last comment will suffice.

            I’m the dad so of course if it was up to me the kids wouldn’t go to the doctor except for mandatory shots and if someone loses a limb. (Exaggerating slightly.) The way it works out in reality is it’s mainly my wife’s call, and while she doesn’t whisk them away to the doctor the minute something’s wrong, she’s probably a tad on the aggressive side, especially relative to me.

            That said, it’s not a totally bad thing. My daughter turned out to have a non-trivial nut allergy. My son needed tubes in his ears as I mentioned. Sometimes one of them would be running a 102 fever for more than a few days, and I think a doctor’s visit isn’t unreasonable in that kind of situation.

            Yeah, my own personal healthcare needs are basically toothpaste and the occasional band-aid or whatever, but my wife did need a scoping and to see one kind of specialist or another for a few months.

            I just got the impression that all this is kind of normal. Do you really think it isn’t?

          • sandoratthezoo says:

            @Well…

            I agree that 102 degree + fever (if non-responsive to acetaminophen and ibuprofen) is grounds for a doctor’s visit. Tubes in ears, for sure. Nut allergy, okay. You wife needs something, okay.

            That adds up to $1,000 per month? How often do your kids get 102 degree fevers? How many ears does your son have? I mean, I could see how clustering could mean that you’d end up saying, “Jesus christ, this year we did six consecutive months of $1,000 monthly medical expenditures.” But I don’t see how you spend $12,000 a year for let’s say three consecutive years at the level of medical needs that you’re gesturing to.

      • Evan Þ says:

        But you have $1,000 in medical expenses per month on top of healthcare premiums? That sounds non-routine. That’s going to be a challenge.

        This was the first thing that stood out to me. My “healthcare expenses” are $10/month average for toothpaste, vitamin pills, etc, and that’s probably rounding way up. I know a lot of people aren’t as fortunate as me… but that’s having an impact on their budget.

    • Mr. Doolittle says:

      I’ll agree with Randy about making a spreadsheet. My wife and I started tracking our actual expenses (verses estimated) maybe 7(?) years ago, and were quite surprised to find out we spent hundreds of dollars more in the average month than we would have thought. We started planning our meals with a fixed budget in mind, set limits on extra expenses (not just going out to eat, but clothes and stuff) and generally took control of our spending. It took several years of paying down student loans and a vehicle payment until we could start saving on a regular basis.

      Unless you’re doing something really wrong, it sounds like you should have quite a bit left over after the listed expenses. That said, we don’t know what you’re spending on utilities, vehicles (gas, repairs, etc.) food, etc. With a complete breakdown of your expenses, someone could probably identify issues, but you seem like a pretty intelligent guy, so I bet you could do it as well if you had the breakdown already.

      ETA – I agree with others than paying $1,000/month for medical insurance and also paying $1,000/month for medical care seems much too high. At some point you should be hitting the deductible and out-of-pocket max. $1,000/month sounds like it should be a reasonable plan without a super high deductible. This might be a specific area that would benefit from a detailed analysis.

      • Well... says:

        We plan our meals with a fixed budget too. In fact we did the spreadsheet thing for a while as well.

        I don’t think we spend an outrageous amount on utilities. Our house is small, as I mentioned. We try to conserve water. We use natural gas for heat and electric for everything else, and I’m a total fascist about turning off lights and stuff, and I turn the heat/air way down during the day when no one’s home and at night when everyone’s asleep.

        Our cars are Toyotas and basically just need regular maintenance to keep running like tanks. The payments together total about $350/month. Both of us have short commutes so we’re not spending a ton on gas either.

        Last year we met our deductible around mid-November. I kept getting bills but they were for big expenses from earlier in the year that we were paying off gradually.

        I opted for a high deductible because I’m principled and believe insurance should be reserved for emergencies…but maybe I should be more cynical?

        • Hoopyfreud says:

          It’s not about cynicism, my dude. Insurance isn’t a bailout; it’s a service. High deductible plans are best suited for people who aren’t prioritizing consistent savings, for whom utilization is low, and for whom medical care wiping out their bank isn’t the end of the world. If that doesn’t describe you, don’t be on one.

          • Statismagician says:

            Just a huge, resounding +1.

            Ideally*, HDHPs exist for healthy single 20-somethings and other people who haven’t got significant expected health care spending. As it appears you do, switch at the first available opportunity to one with (new OOP maximum) + 12*(new premium – old premium) < $12,000.

            *This papers over some questions about excess utilization over the medically-plausible, but that's not relevant to your situation.

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          Our cars are Toyotas and basically just need regular maintenance to keep running like tanks. The payments together total about $350/month. Both of us have short commutes so we’re not spending a ton on gas either.

          You mentioned that your cars are both over 12 years old in your OP – are you still making payments on them?

          As for medical – if you are spending $1,000 out of pocket each month, I would consider that very reasonable to put on your insurance. You can go the “we barely have insurance and plan to pay for everything out of pocket” route, but then you wouldn’t be spending $1,000/month for the insurance in the first place.

          I’m picking up something not directly said – do you have credit card debt or other loans? If so, paying them down is likely your highest priority. It’s amazing how much clearer your finances can look without credit cards.

        • Randy M says:

          I opted for a high deductible because I’m principled and believe insurance should be reserved for emergencies…but maybe I should be more cynical?

          Ideally, medical care should be reserved for emergencies as well–otherwise it’s a luxury that you can’t afford (if saving is a priority). I’m not saying you aren’t having expenses worth taking, but if they are needed, they are worth using your insurance efficiently.
          Just because different arrangements would make better economic sense and provide better incentives to the population at large doesn’t mean you shouldn’t select the best plan for your family.
          We went with the lower premium, higher deductible option because we don’t use hospitals much. Look seriously at your expenses and figure out which of your options is better. You probably have 3-5 options, if you both your employers offer a couple of plans.

          Both of us have short commutes so we’re not spending a ton on gas either.

          Is there an option to carpool? You could potentially cut down to one car. Might be a big QoL hit, but maybe not!

          The payments together total about $350/month.

          You mean maintenance payments is 350$ a month or lease payments? If that’s maintenance cost, you might be better off going with one newer car. If that’s lease payments, that’s another potential source of savings once you pay it off, hopefully soon.

          What’s everyone’s opinions on borrowing from 401K to pay off debt? I might be missing something in the math or legal aspect, but it seems like a way of paying yourself interest rather than the bank, so long as the interest rates on your debt is higher than expected market returns.

          • acymetric says:

            Depends on the rules of your company/401k. Some are very strict about why you can request a loan (things like avoiding foreclosure/bankruptcy, but not “pay down debt”).

          • The Nybbler says:

            What’s everyone’s opinions on borrowing from 401K to pay off debt?

            The best argument against borrowing from a 401(k) is if you lose your job for any reason, you have to pay it off immediately or get hit by an enormous tax penalty.

          • Randy M says:

            Ah, alright, certainly a good concern to raise!

          • baconbits9 says:

            One other thing to note is that I have heard of 401ks that won’t allow you to make contributions until the loan is paid back. If you have a match you would functionally lose it while you pay it back.

          • Randy M says:

            I don’t understand that objection, unless they also forbid early repays (something I’d always avoid in a loan). Every dime of the loan you payback is going into the account the same as a contribution.
            Unless it also turns off employer matching, which would be lame.

    • Guy in TN says:

      Randy M beat me to it, but I agree that $1000 in healthcare bills a month is unusual compared to the general population (and unfortunately not something you have control over).

    • acymetric says:

      Are you paying $1k for insurance and another $1k for healthcare bills or is it $1k all in? If you’re spending $2k per month on healthcare that is probably your biggest issue. The only two obvious places to look based on the above are the least palatable to find ways to cut, health related costs and education/childcare for the kids.

      For health costs, regardless of whether it is $1k or $2k, if both of your employers’ plans offer health insurance have you looked at what it would cost to switch to the other person’s healthcare plan? What about splitting, so that, say, one person is on their company’s plan and the other person is on their own company’s plain with the kids? It would be inconvenient and take a little more management, but depending on the specifics of the plans offered by each it could save you money.

      Your comment about no employer matching has me curious, do those numbers include your contributions to your HSA (or similar savings), or are you saying the employer doesn’t pay toward the actual cost of the plan itself? If the former, can you start saving less and still be building a decent emergency fund? If the latter (which would be surprising), have you looked at options other than the plans offered by your employer?

      Beyond that, if you are spending $2k (with $1k just on bills) for healthcare, is there any likelihood of that amount decreasing? I don’t expect you to get into details of your family’s health, but that would be exceptionally high and I would expect you to eventually hit your out of pocket maximum and cut that number way down.

      The other unpalatable option as far as daycare/education goes, is whether one or both of your kids could be going to (free) public school instead. We don’t need to get into the pros/cons of private/public, and it of course heavily depends on the public schools in your area, but that is something to consider as well.

      Other than that, Randy M pretty much nails it above that you just need to look at small day to day type expenses and see what you can cut out. Turn the thermostat up/down a couple degrees, things like that. I agree that getting out from under the student loans would be a big help (I am right with you there), but of course you need to have money to spare to pay them off quicker.

      • Well... says:

        Just a few things because I’ve addressed a lot of this above…

        – My employer doesn’t match jack. I’m looking to switch employers soon though, so hopefully that will change.

        – Public kindergarten (which our older child is in) still costs $300/month, at least where I live. Public daycares basically never have any openings, and the quality isn’t great anyway. For my wife at least that’s a non-negotiable.

        • MereComments says:

          “My employer doesn’t match jack.”

          That’d do it. Per something I linked below, the average employer match for a family of four is $15,788 a year for premiums. It sounds like you’re paying a lot for a very high deductible plan.

          I also agree that threaded conversations are bad, so I’ll just respond to some of your other responses here:

          – Your actual medical use sounds completely normal (going to the doctor’s after the kids have a fever of 102 for a couple of days, for example). Nothing to change there.

          – As Hoopyfreud said, you’re probably thinking about health insurance wrong. It’s not a commons that is irresponsibly drained, it’s about risk management. You get a high deductible plan if you hardly ever use medical care, with the understanding that if you do end up using care, you’re going to pay a lot more out of pocket. Your case is a little weird because again, you seem to be paying a lot for a high deductible plan.

          You didn’t mention this, but I would go back through your bills and make sure you haven’t been charged for something that the insurance should have covered, or got charged twice for something, or got charged for a service that wasn’t rendered. We’ve gotten some eye-watering bills that we shouldn’t have gotten, and my wife managed to them resolved (she likes arguing on the phone with corporations and bureaucracies, if I were just me alone I’d probably just pay it to save the headache).

          – Bummer about kindergarten. We had a similar issue with preschool, where it was public and free where we previously lived, then when we moved we had to pay a significant fee. We ended up going with a cheaper private preschool (daycare really). For our youngest we’re likely going to skip paid daycare, and just join one of the various crunchy parent groups that are in our area and do things in a group. Not sure what to tell you about kindergarten though, we’d probably do the same and just pay the $300.

          – You’re probably sick of hearing about medical costs, but I did address your last paragraph in a response below. tl;dr I think it’s a combination of people going into debt for consumption, and confirmation bias. With a smattering of people who just make more money. =]

          • acymetric says:

            You didn’t mention this, but I would go back through your bills and make sure you haven’t been charged for something that the insurance should have covered, or got charged twice for something, or got charged for a service that wasn’t rendered.

            Just to add on/reaffirm this, make sure that all your expenses before you meet your deductible (and, obviously, after) are submitted to the insurance company. The way it should work is that the office/hospital submits to the insurance company, then bills you for any amount not covered (which may be the full amount, partial amount, or less).

            This accomplishes a couple things:

            1) This ensures it will be applied to your deductible. If the office doesn’t submit to your insurance, you have to do it yourself. If neither happens, it doesn’t count and you’re just out that money for no reason.
            Offices will frequently push back on this because they want to be paid now, but you would be correct to insist on it. Sometimes your insurance company will have a phone number you can provide when this dispute arises where they will confirm it to the doctor/their billing department (this probably varies by carrier, but is worth checking into). You definitely don’t want any cost you incur not applying to your deductible. Again, DO NOT PAY until the doctor/hospital has submitted the bill to your insurance company and they (the insurance company) have responded, even if you know you have not yet reached your deductible and will end up paying out of pocket.

            2) Your insurance company may have negotiated rates. You will receive these if the bill is run through the insurance company. You may not if you just pay at the time of service. You can also verify this through the insurance company (they can’t bill the insurance company $500 as a negotiated rate, then turn around and bill you $1,000 if the insurance doesn’t pay because you haven’t hit your deductible, but they might try if you don’t check what they submitted to the insurance company and they DEFINITELY might try if you don’t make them submit to the insurance company before billing you).

            One final note: it sounds like you’ve had some uncommon (but not super rare) medial expenses. Things like kids having to get tubes in their ears isn’t rare, per se (I have a cousin who had to have that done with both of their kids) but also isn’t the typical situation. You can probably look forward to some of those expenses decreasing as your kids get older, which may help. Decreasing medical costs as your kids grow up, increasing pay or benefits as you both continue your careers, and the incredible feeling when you get your loans paid off will all feel like free money if you keep living sustainable the way you are now. It seems like maybe this is kind of a financial choke point in your lives, and things should open up for you as things go on as long as you keep making sound financial decisions (which it sounds like you are doing and/or trying to do).

          • Randy M says:

            I would go back through your bills and make sure you haven’t been charged for something that the insurance should have covered, or got charged twice for something

            Thirded. It’s a headache to argue over bills, but errors definitely happen and not paying a few hundred here and there is surely a worthwhile use of a few hours.

          • albatross11 says:

            My impression, based on an unscientific sample of our own bills, is that medical billing is optimized for fraud and tends to have errors heavily biased in favor of you “accidentally” overpaying.

            This is a public policy issue I’d like to see addressed. A first step would be requiring some kind of uniform billing format that specified all the details (instead of the bit where some third-party billing company sends you a handwritten note from a different state, demanding payment for some unspecified medical services). Ideally, there would be some actual prosecutions for systematic fraud, with a few exectives spending some time in jail. Alternatively, I’d like a law stating that when there was an error discovered in medical billing that favored the billing party, the billing party has to pay double the error to the person they “accidentally” tried to rip off.

    • Plumber says:

      @Well…,

      Your situation sounds typical, I’ve said a few times “The Middle-class isn’t” (that is people living on near the median income don’t have a standard of living matching what is often described as a “middle-class lifestyle”).

      The way me and my wife did it was by living for 17 years in a rent-controlled apartment with a leaking roof and mold where gunfire and sirens could still be heard even in the low crime late ’90’s, scrimping and saving, and staying in a used motor home (that also sometimes had a roof leak!) during times that the noise from our neighbors became too much for my wife to stand (still paying rent ti keep the cheap rate), while I worked construction jobs during most of that time, my wife not having a job since ’93.

      In 2011 I got a job with the City and County of San Francisco, and later that year we paid $550,000 cash for a house while prices were still depressed a bit from the Lehman Brothers collapse, paid another $100,000 for roof repairs and to replace rotted wood, rented it out to a new U.C. Berkeley professor (who are paid way above median!) for 18 months until he bought a $900,000 house in Kensington, which is when we moved into our house.

      Since my wife has remained jobless we’ve never paid the childcare costs for our two sons that you have, I drive a ’91 Honda Accord (which replaced my ’98 Ford Crown Victoria that a guy in a Mercedes totaled), and my wife drives a 2004 Toyota Prius (which replaced a ’83 Camry that could no longer reverse), after deferred comp and other deductions we live on about $40,000 a year from my nominally $100,000 annual wages, saving about $5,000 to $10,000 in cash a year.

      We took one vacation in the last ten years when we took our son to the model train museum in San Diego, and I bought our first dryer this year after too many days of rain for us to hang out the laundry.

      Our biggest expense is property taxes, but since we live in California under prop 13 they can’t get much higher than the 2011 rate.

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        Your situation sounds typical, I’ve said a few times “The Middle-class isn’t” (that is people living on near the median income don’t have a standard of living matching what is often described as a “middle-class lifestyle”).

        My family did it by living in the country. Dad worked as a third grade math teacher (I remember helping him grade quizzes as a kid) and school bus driver; Mom saved money probably close to Dad’s salary. (Homemaker-as-income-booster is something I see relatively little attention for these days.) We lived in an effectively two-room house – bathroom and everything else, less than 1000 sq.ft., on a farm we owned (and still do). I slept on a couch after I moved out of the crib. When I was seven, we were able to afford to roughly triple the size of the house for about $90k circa 1980.

        We had a piano, a full set of encyclopedias, plus books of sheet music. We had two Beetles when I was young, eventually replaced by two Golfs when I was around 14. My dad was the first member of our immediate family to attend college. AFAIK he had no student loan to pay off, and kept all his textbooks for us to read. I and my sister were #2 and #3. We paid our way. My first car was a used Rabbit my dad helped me buy when I was 17. I bought a 280Z a few years later. Credit cards were habitually paid off every month.

        We thought of ourselves as middle class (albeit rural) for that entire time. Today’s middle class lifestyle continues to strike me as upper class as far as amenities.

    • hls2003 says:

      Couple of things (others have given good advice above).

      First, your single largest expense is undoubtedly taxes. At your estimated income, assuming you and your wife are both W-2 wage employees, you’re probably paying 25-30% / yr (ca. $3,600/mo) of your gross to FICA, fed, and state (more or less depending on where you live) [Note:
      Edited – accidentally used 15.3% instead of 7.65%, as former self-employed person]. There’s not much you can do about that, other than move to avoid local taxes, but it’s good to keep in mind as you’re figuring out where it all goes. You probably have about $8,500 in net monthly income. That’s it. So don’t think about having almost $150K; think about having $8,X00 per month.

      Second, I just want to chime in that $2K/mo for medical expenses + insurance are not crazy to me for a family of four. Again depending on where you live, somewhat, as insurance varies by state. My family and I pay about $1,200/mo for insurance, with an out-of-pocket-max around $8K. I always assume that, due to at least one family member, I will usually hit my OOPM. That adds up to about $1,850/mo. $2K is not out of line.

      Your property taxes – are they already added into the $1K/mo number? If not, you could aim for a lower-tax jurisdiction. Almost all of your property taxes go to paying teacher salaries at your local school district. If you’re paying $1,600/mo for school and daycare, then I surmise you’re unlikely to be going strictly public school. That means you’re not getting value for your property-tax dollars. In my high-tax area, I could save several hundred dollars per month. But again the ability to move will be job-dependent.

      Your spending on your kids’ education is anomalous. Not bad, I’ll eventually be doing the same, but most people are using public schools, so you’re at a disadvantage there – you’re paying for their schools and your own. If you have any ability to, e.g., cut out a couple days a week of daycare by using a relative or your own flexibility, you might be able to save some that way. Free child care is one of the ways family networks help people get ahead.

      Echo what everyone else has said about spreadsheeting. Don’t change your spending habits at all for the first couple months – just track. Get a baseline. It won’t feel as painful simply to track without changing your expenditures (at first). Then you’ll see whether there are areas to cut or not. Then you can try the cuts for a month or two, see if they’re reasonable, and tweak.

      And to answer your puzzlement, yes, a lot of people carry a lot of debt.

      • Randy M says:

        Echo what everyone else has said about spreadsheeting. Don’t change your spending habits at all for the first couple months – just track.

        If you do on-line banking or primarily use credit cards you can look back at your expenses accurately. And also know exactly what your income is if it is direct deposit.

      • Well... says:

        Just to clarify one thing, our 2 year-old is in private daycare because there’s no alternative, and our kindergartner is in public school but there’s still a $300/month fee.

        • baconbits9 says:

          A suggestion that won’t be for everyone.

          Find local homeschool groups, I know a few home school moms who take on a child or two and do so at roughly half the price of private day care (and are more flexible). You will probably have to meet a few of them to find one you are comfortable with but its surprising to a lot of people how cheap in home (uninsured, unlicensed) day care can be and some of these women are extremely good at it.

          • albatross11 says:

            ISTM that some of the cost disease falls out of decreasing social ties. When most people have a pretty robust network of nearby family and friends, child care is likely to be arranged informally, among friends or family. As we have atomized, more and more of it has to be arranged formally–instead of having personal connections guarantee the acceptability of the arrangements, we end up wanting some kind of regulatory system to do it. For both good and bad reasons, you get a large increase in costs there.

            All kinds of stuff becomes many times as expensive, as it moves from informal to formal regulated arrangements.

    • SamChevre says:

      Household income is similar to ours, as is the housing cost.
      Big differences: healthcare–ours is about $750/month out of pocket for a high-deductible plan and an HSA; the HSA has been enough to cover out of pocket costs even the year we had a baby.
      No school loans, no debt of any kind except the mortgage
      My wife is a stay-at-home mom, so no childcare.
      However, our grocery bill is probably higher (five children), and we try to give 10% of take-home pay to charity.
      Two paid-for cars

      Similarly, we seem to spend everything we earn over the course of the year. Savings grow by tax refund and annual bonus pay, but that’s about all until this year (got a pay raise last spring, and spending didn’t go up to match.)

      One budgeting tip that has worked well for us: set a fixed budget for out-of-pocket spending (groceries, meals out, household stuff, etc, etc, etc). Draw it in cash weekly, and spend it. That really helps with making household expenses controllable without reqquiring record-keeing.

      • Well... says:

        The fixed cash OOP budget thing is something we know about (thanks Dave Ramsey) and have tried. We don’t literally do it with cash anymore but we set and stick to our budget for those things pretty well.

    • MereComments says:

      Interesting, you and I have similar budget and life situations. Some differences before I go on: We rent, (no mortgage) but we pay ~50% more a month. We have about 2/3 of your income, but my wife stays at home with the kids and our public schools are good, so we have zero childcare costs (unless we want to go out for fun). Neither of us went to college, so we have zero college loans.

      As people have pointed out, your health care costs don’t seem right. $1000 for premiums and another $1000 for medical costs? My wife has two pretty serious health problems that require her to go to multiple doctors multiple times a month, and we only pay around $650 in medical costs total monthly: ~$500 a month in premiums for a low deductible family plan that covers most things. We also put the maximum amount ($2000) into our FSA each year that we use for deductibles, medications, co-pays, etc. By the end of the year we usually haven’t used the full $2000 and spend the last hundred or so on general health stuff for our medicine cabinet. The only year we went over was the last year we had a baby. If those are your true medical expenses, are you deducting them as part of your tax returns? Any medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your income are deductible. (Reading some of the other responses now, it surprises me that some people are paying more than $1000 a month just on premiums).

      As to the general question, it’s an interesting one and my wife and I talk about it a lot. We actually like being frugal and min/maxing our budget, but yeah, we’d like to take more vacations. We’d like more than one car (but not if we have to take out a loan to pay for it!). We go out maybe twice a month but it feels like other people with kids have at least a weekly date night (or even take kids-free vacations with a nanny watching the kids for the weekend). Oh yeah, lots of people in our neighborhood have nannies. Must be nice. 😊

      My conclusion is that there’s a few things going on: 1) We live in a nice neighborhood, some people here probably just have double or maybe even triple our income (especially if both parents have good jobs). 2) The people who have similar incomes to us but have new SUVs, their own homes, etc are way more in debt than us (we have zero debt and are trying to save for a down payment). 3) Some amount of confirmation bias: we notice the people that go out more often than us each week, don’t notice the people who can’t afford to go out at all. We notice the nice SUVs, we don’t notice the people in the nearby apartment complexes who don’t have a car at all (our neighborhood is walkable).

      As an aside (and this could probably be a separate conversation), it also depends on what you mean by “get ahead”. After spending the last few years budgeting and min/maxing, and also approaching the peak income for my particular career path, I’ve come to realize that we’re getting to the ceiling. At this point, “getting ahead” looks like buying a rental property, taking a big risk on starting our own business, or using any savings towards reasonable investments like index funds (which, in the immediate term, would lead to less of a middle-class lifestyle). The most reasonable option for being more comfortable is probably my wife going back to work once our oldest is old enough to babysit. As Gossage smartly points out, if you have a family and debt, as you get older your costs go down, which certainly feels like having more money. Paying off our car loan and previous credit card debt felt like finding free money.

      Edit to add: We use You Need a Budget as our budgeting software. It has a yearly subscription cost, and is very counter-intuitive to use at first, but it’s changed the way we think about money and is what helped get our expenses under control.

      • Randy M says:

        Reading some of the other responses now, it surprises me that some people are paying more than $1000 a month just on premiums

        Very cursory searching on-line puts this in line with the average, so I’m mentally bumping up my compensation as I pay a fair bit less.
        Part of that is intentional; for example, we did not add vision insurance, since it looks like out amount it cost is more than we’d pay out of pocket in an average year. Just in case, no Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifles for Christmas.

        • MereComments says:

          Interesting. The numbers I’m finding online are all over the place, by state, whether you are on an exchange or employer plan, etc.

          This seems to jive with what you’re saying (fig. 8). Our employee contribution is similar, though lower, and our low deductible means our out-of-pocket isn’t that high. Unfortunately this chart doesn’t break it down by state. The charts that have state-by-state breakdowns show that some places like California and Alaska are double other states. I wonder how much the outliers are bringing up the national average in charts like the one linked.

          • John Schilling says:

            That shows $640/month in premiums and $390/month out of pocket for a “typical” family for four, or just over $1K/month total. The OP is reporting $2K/month, $1K on premiums alone, which is quite high and matches your source only if the employers are contributing nothing.

            So either OP has a couple of cheapskate employers, or the OP has an unusually unhealthy family, or they are stuck in a very high-cost corner of the market.

        • anonymousskimmer says:

          My employer pays about $4k/year for an ACA-compliant ‘catastrophic’ plan for my wife and I (I pay nothing) in the SF Bay Area. If Well… isn’t actually hitting the OOP with his plan, is there a cheaper plan available?

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            There is something going on with either Well…’s plan or his utilization of it. From another sub-thread, it sounds like his deductible isn’t extremely high, but that they choose not to use their insurance for “normal” medical expenses.

            If his employer is providing literally zero support, I’m sure the exchange in his area could beat out a $1,000/month premium and still not leave him with $12,000 in OOP expenses.

    • baconbits9 says:

      @ Well

      My experience, married, 3 kids, 2/3rds of your gross income, 1,700 ft house in a decent school system.

      The way savings works for us is to put money aside and then spend. If you spend and save the rest, well it typically means that savings end up low. Necessity will tighten your budget more effectively than cold calculation for almost everyone, and in the US 80% of your consumption is to some extent luxury and there is more flexibility than you might at first think.

      My suggestion, and what works for us, is to have automatic savings. We put 4% into a 401k (the max that we get a match for), currently max our HSA savings (three kids under 6 and we have been going through it all in recent years), own a mortgage for our house and a rental property and have modest whole life insurance plans for the both of us. This gets us a savings rate in the 15-20% of gross income range, while also allowing us flexibility as we can borrow against either the 401k or the property in a time of real need.

      As far as increasing savings we have never made headway in the “spreadsheet your costs” way, and only in a “forced increase in savings” way, my suspicion is that this is nearly universal.

      As for your specific situation I would look at a few things.

      First it sounds like your wife is making $50-55,000 a year, and your tax bracket is going to put the rate on that earnings at at least 33%. Take home there is going to be mid to high 30s. Childcare costing $20,000 a year means your wife’s income is minimum wage at best before considering all the other costs (commuting costs, more expensive meals, work cloths). There are lots of flexibility costs to consider as well, are you at the best job you can get, or are you at the best job you can get given that you need a lot of flex time to run a double income household?

      I say this not to imply that your wife should stay home, but to say that you probably have a lot more flexibility with where, when and how she works if you want it and that could be used to boost your lifestyle.

      2nd Check your taxes. A fair number of people get caught up in an “affordable” house while paying another mortgage worth in property taxes and insurance every year (and that doesn’t even go away when you pay off the mortgage). Others take a 2-3% of their income hit for city payroll taxes. To many people look at the headline numbers and miss several things that are eating away at their income.

      On a hopefully not to personal note, your family spending on health care is to high. We have run through a pair of bad years, including two miscarriages and a healthy pregnancy, and those years are probably not averaging $12,000 a month (and we paid out of pocket for almost everything). Kids at home get sick a lot less than kids in daycare in my experience, and get a lot less severely sick (or stay at home parents are less prone to taking the kids to urgent care). There might be something there that can be addressed (diet, sleep, etc) which could ease a stress for you.

      • caryatis says:

        A married couple making $150k is in the 22% bracket for federal income taxes. And of course, that does not mean that 22% of income goes to taxes. No clue where you’re getting 33%.

        You’re also making the classic mistake of assuming that the cost of childcare should be subtracted from only the woman’s salary–assuming the women’s work is optional and men’s is not. You also neglect the financial benefits of staying in a job consistently. OP said the younger kid is two, so in around 3 years childcare expenses will be gone and his wife will be glad she didn’t drop out of the workforce and ruin her earning potential for life.

        • acymetric says:

          You’re also making the classic mistake of assuming that the cost of childcare should be subtracted from only the woman’s salary

          I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, or even that it isn’t happening here, but it is at least possible that it was compared against the wife’s salary because her salary is much lower. There is no reason to check the math against Well…’s salary because we know it is probably just a little shy of 6 figures and clearly his dropping out of the workforce to save on childcare wouldn’t be a net positive.

          You also seemed to ignore this part of baconbit9’s post for the sake of making your point.

          I say this not to imply that your wife should stay home

          Finally with regard to

          A married couple making $150k is in the 22% bracket for federal income taxes. And of course, that does not mean that 22% of income goes to taxes. No clue where you’re getting 33%.

          I think baconbits9 is factoring in approximations of other taxes (state, local, SS, medicare, etc) which probably does bring it to ~33% even with deductions.

        • baconbits9 says:

          Acymetric already said it, but factoring all tax rates the total taxes from 100-150k in earnings is probably north of 30% (which would be the difference between his wife working and not working) unless there are significant deductions in there. If Well lived in California (I don’t think he does) the state + federal income taxes alone would be >30% on that income.

        • baconbits9 says:

          You’re also making the classic mistake of assuming that the cost of childcare should be subtracted from only the woman’s salary–assuming the women’s work is optional and men’s is not. You also neglect the financial benefits of staying in a job consistently. OP said the younger kid is two, so in around 3 years childcare expenses will be gone and his wife will be glad she didn’t drop out of the workforce and ruin her earning potential for life.

          I skipped responding to this the first time, but I a pretty annoyed by it. I didn’t make a classic mistake, the OP specifically mentioned his wife’s salary being enough to make her working worthwhile vs staying at home Well’s salary is roughly 2X more than his wife’s. There is literally no reason to discuss childcare costs vs his salary in this context, its just lazy insinuation that I was being sexist.

    • rahien.din says:

      Your healthcare expenditures are sixteen percent of your gross income, or (tax rates) around 20% of your take-home.

      That’s equivalent to a second mortgage.

    • methylethyl says:

      I’m late to the party, and the above commenters have covered all the major bases well.

      For reference: Family of four, one working adult, living on ~$25k/year. EITC brings that up to around $32k, but we live close to our actual income, and are generally able to bank the EITC for emergencies/savings. I will not remotely claim that “anyone can do this”. We benefit hugely from never having been in debt, and having some unique resources to draw on. We own two paid-for old Hondas. We cook 99% of meals at home. Except for husband’s work clothes, all clothing (except socks and underwear) is purchased secondhand– thrift, consignment, yard sale. We have a dryer, but we don’t use it. Clotheslines are the future! Our furniture is so out of date it should be coming back into fashion as “retro” any day now.

      I recommend reading, and trying out the accounting system from (though not the investment strategy which is outdated), the book *Your Money or Your Life*. It was extremely helpful to me in younger years for getting very, very, intimate with every cent I was spending, and why. I revisit it whenever I start feeling like… I feel like we should be saving more money, but I don’t know where it’s all *going*.

      It walks you through interesting calculations like how much you actually make from your job (once you subtract all the things you buy *because* of your job: stuff like meals out, commuting costs, wardrobe, cel service, lightning-fast internet for telecommuting, childcare, alcohol, entertainment to wind down, etc.), and exactly how much you spend on everything, divided up by category, from household utilities all the way down to the odd Snickers bar.

      Those medical bills: yikes! Those are not typical for families, as far as I know. We have two young kids, we pay $255/mo for high-deductible coverage for the whole family through a religious healthshare (when we were shopping around for this, we noted there are one or two comparable organizations that you can join without an explicit religious commitment– one of them is run by mennonites). We’ve never had to invoke that coverage. It doesn’t cover regular office visits and medications (so if you’re dealing with chronic conditions, it’s not for you), but it’s there if we get appendicitis or something. Our out-of-pocket medical expenses don’t come anywhere close to $1k/month. Could this be a factor of where you live?

      That mortgage: $1k/mo seems quite high, but then, we live in a fairly cheap real estate area. Have you ever considered taking a slightly-less-well-paying job in an area where housing is more affordable? It could be a net gain. Particularly if such a move could get you closer to a family support network. I live near my Mom and sister, and as a result have never once paid a babysitter: I cook them dinner, they watch my kids, I get an evening off.

      How much of your current expenses are “lifestyle” rather than necessity? Like, how much do you spend on haircuts for the family? Shearing the kids at home is easy and an electric trimmer pays for itself rapidly. Are you paying for cable? Are you buying more/better internet than you actually need (you work from home, so this may be something to subtract from your “income” column)? Netflix? Amazon Prime? Are you paying for (mortgage, heating, cooling, maintaining) more house than you need? Could you downsize?

      You may end up doing all the calculations, and still decide that your current lifestyle is worth not being able to save money. But it’s better to do that consciously, and by choice, than to just do it and live with a vague frustration that you can’t save, and you don’t really understand why.

      Anyway, best of luck.

      • fion says:

        I’m glad you posted this. I was reading all the other comments open-mouthed at how much money everybody had and was spending. I live on about $18,000, give 10% to charity and still save a few hundred dollars a month. Admittedly there’s just one of me, and I’m aware that children are Expensive, but reading all the other comments scared me! 😛

    • Well... says:

      OK, I’ve gotten a lot more data points, and a lot of 2nd opinions and good advice. (Thanks everyone!)

      I hope future commenters will focus on the general questions in my last paragraph.

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        To your last point, it depends. But yes, a lot of people think about consumption in terms of spending, not in terms of money (relative vs absolute). If you’re trying to save while paying for childcare you’re ahead of the game.

      • methylethyl says:

        To your last question: Yes, I think most people really *are* walking around trailing a crazy amount of debt. I recently walked a friend through the process of paying off multiple credit cards and starting an emergency fund. Didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.

        We have no debt, and we’re way below your income level, but we also don’t drive newer cars than you (We purchased our late-90s CRV for $4k cash, have driven it for nearly ten years, and it now has almost 300k miles on it. We’re very proud of this achievement. The Accord is even older). We don’t take vacations, except once every couple of years to drive and visit family. We eat out maybe twice a month, and by “eat out” I mean we pick up soup and salad at the grocery store, because we have a ton of errands in town, and it’s not worth going home and coming back just to eat. We allocate 10% of our income to church/charity, and since we have always done so, we don’t miss it. We *could* do those things: drive newer cars, take vacations etc… but we choose not to because we prefer having a lot of savings and not having to take out loans when, say, we need to replace a vehicle, or pay a large medical expense. We still don’t have the ability to save for retirement. Someday, maybe…

        • Randy M says:

          We’ve had good luck getting recent–as in, a couple years old–cars from rental sales. Got a 2015 Odyssey for about $12,000, mileage okay. I hope it’s the last car we’ll buy for a good long while, and it’s nice to have something reliable to go on road trips in.
          Anyway, as I understand it, Enterprise doesn’t keep cars around more than a year old regardless of condition.

          • methylethyl says:

            My mother does this, and has had pretty good luck with it as well. $12k is pretty far outside our own car budget, though. Also, there are certain advantages to well-kept older cars: the newer it is, and the more tech-y “stuff” it has under the hood, the more expensive it is to repair.

      • baconbits9 says:

        One thing I have noticed is that lots of people get a ton of in kind gifts from their families. Around the corner from us (a semi extreme example) is a family who moved into the grandmother’s house and she provided moved into the basement and provides full time child care for the 3 kids. It took us a long time (almost 5 years) to figure out that we were an exception in trying to raise kids without frequent help from relatives*. Virtually everyone we know has a regular “drop kids off a grandmom and grandpop’s for a sleepover” at a minimum, and lots of them were getting a few days a week of childcare (even if just pickup and then a few hours after daycare to help their work schedule).

        Now that we know this we start to see it everywhere, the stay at home mom with twins and an 8 month old? Mother in law comes over once a week and twice a week she has friends who visit for 2-3 hours at a time. That is pretty helpful for keeping your sanity + your house clean and allows you to do a lot of other small things that save money.

        *Not that we haven’t received a lot of help from relatives, it has just come in different forms.

        • Randy M says:

          I’m definitely in favor of extended family pitching in and helping new families or families with new babies.

          But I was confused for awhile too when we’d go to friends for birthday parties of their young children and they had nice houses in nice neighborhoods. Made me feel rather inadequate for awhile, until I mentioned it to my wife and she of course said “Yeah, they live with her parents.”

          I almost don’t know anyone who hasn’t at one time or another lived with family, let alone gotten childcare from family, including myself–for the first three years or so of marriage we lived with my wife’s grandmother, both to help us and to help her.

          It can backfire, though. I know a case where the in-laws the parents lived with would give their grandchild candy whenever he wanted it to keep him happy. He’s had more teeth replaced than fallen out naturally, I think.

    • Move to Southwest Missouri. You could probably make a third of what you make now (and accordingly pay less on taxes) while living with the same standard of living (minus the nice cultural milieux).

      Mortgage on decent 3-bed 1-bath home (including interest, mortgage insurance, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, etc.): $550/month.
      Internet: $60/month.
      Utilities: $150/month.
      Trash: $10/month.
      Phones for 2: $70/month.
      Food for 2: $250/month.
      Gas: $40/month.
      Wear and tear on automobile: $50/month.
      Netflix: $10/month.
      Health insurance: none.
      Kids: none.
      Other expenses (restaurants, household things, dog food and vet visits for 2 dogs, etc.): $200/month.
      Total monthly expenses: $1,400/month, or about $17,000/year. Or, $25,000/year while my wife gets her master’s degree at a state school for about $8,000/year.

    • EchoChaos says:

      Four kids, decent neighborhood, single income, so slightly less salary than you and except for the mortgage, most of those expenses sound high to me. The mortgage sounds low (mine is slightly over half again that), but healthcare is brutal.

      Daycare/school is where I would say you can and should cut back the most.

      I am the opposite of you. I make less than you, but we have tremendous savings and are easily building wealth. The heaviest hitters that you have that we don’t have are student loans, daycare and school. We homeschool, so we have expenses that round down to close to zero. However, it means my wife can’t work.

      Given that American taxes are heavily progressive, cutting out your wife’s (or your) income and having her do the daycare work instead will probably improve your net income overall.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      I think a lot of people aren’t actually getting ahead and are not saving anything for retirement. Neither my parents nor my in-laws have anywhere near saved enough, my grandmother “retired” but basically lives in near poverty.

      A lot of my friends seem to have little saved. Most of them got their cars paid off, and then immediately started taking frequent vacations with the money. Most don’t have kids.

      I’d say I don’t get it either, but I sorta do, because my wife and I have a ton of money on hand for emergency expenses. The highest I’ve ever heard any of my other friends have on hand is $5k. Most keep a few hundred dollars available at most.

      • Randy M says:

        I think a lot of people aren’t actually getting ahead and are not saving anything for retirement.

        Ain’t it the truth. My mom’s supported by her kids, and my dad is supported by his dad. :/

    • Statismagician says:

      It appears that yes, it’s the credit-card thing, in combination with what I suspect are substantial in-kind contributions from friends/family (especially in terms of childcare) which may not be obvious unless you know the other people intimately.

  23. Well... says:

    What are the best arguments in favor of the kind of “coddling” of children (esp. by the public school system) that Jonathan Haidt argues against?

    The local public elementary school doesn’t let the kids play tag at recess, or play in the snow basically ever (they’re afraid someone could get snow thrown in his/her face). They have other similar policies related to less-physical play. If I go to them and say “Here’s a bunch of research that shows these policies are harmful in the long term” what should I be prepared for them to tell me in response?

    Is it just legal/CYA stuff, or do they have actual reasons for those policies related to childhood development/psychology/etc.?

    • Another Throw says:

      “I have a BA and MA in education and a PhD in child psychology, and do 40 hours of continuing education every year, and every one of my professors is in absolute lock step that this is the best policy, so go fuck yourself.”

      If you can’t tell, my experience with schools listening to anything, anyone else has to say is very poor.

      • Well... says:

        As I asked The Nybbler:

        OK, so follow-up question would be: how can parents work with schools to undo or avoid these types of coddling policies?

        • Deiseach says:

          OK, so follow-up question would be: how can parents work with schools to undo or avoid these types of coddling policies?

          “Dear parents, supposing it does happen that Johnny has a bad fall in the playground and knocks out a tooth and needs thousands of money worth of dental treatment, do you promise not to sue the school to recoup this, given that if Johnny had the same fall at home with the same consequences you wouldn’t sue yourselves?”

          See how well that one works out for you.

        • methylethyl says:

          Might be worth poking around Lenore Skenazy’s website to see if there are useful resources/connections you could pick up there– they have had some limited success reintroducing playtime to a school or two:

          http://www.freerangekids.com/laws/

        • aristides says:

          My suggestion is to find other parents and have an after school get together with no coddling. Recess is already way too short for children these days, so you might as well make a coddle free supplement. The school can’t and shouldn’t do everything.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      People do not volunteer more work for themselves.

    • theredsheep says:

      I think the really big-picture argument is that we’re an increasingly low-trust society so we have to have lawyers mediate the hell out of everything that might go wrong. Kind of like how Jared Diamond’s New Guinea tribespeople go to extreme lengths to avoid or suppress anything that might possibly spark a blood feud.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Don’t know the words, but the sentiment will be that your opinion doesn’t matter unless you’re the superintendent or on the school board.

      • theredsheep says:

        And nobody ever got sued for playing it too safe.

      • Well... says:

        OK, so follow-up question would be: how can parents work with schools to undo or avoid these types of coddling policies?

        • Jake says:

          From a top level, meet the members of the school board and the superintendent and talk with them. Consider running yourself, if you are really passionate about that policy change. Then, once you have the ear of someone responsible for the policies, bring up the research you have for discussion.

          From the lower level, meet with your child’s teacher and see what they think about the policies and if there is anything you can do to change classroom culture in the way you intend.

          Or, go outside the system and find a school that does what you want and move. A big trend now in my area at least is magnet-type outdoor schooling, where kids spend a majority of their time outside. My kids go to one of those, and they love it. The teachers actively encourage risk-taking activities (to the point where it is even a line on their report card), helping the kids to build forts, dig holes, make fires, catch fish, and all sorts of stuff not in the traditional elementary school curriculum.

        • Randy M says:

          What is one policy specifically that you are having trouble with?

        • The Nybbler says:

          You have to be or have the ear of a policymaker. And often enough even that doesn’t work; the people with the nominal power to make those decisions will cite some force majeure — some law or regulation, insurance requirements, fear of a lawsuit — and you won’t be able to budge them. Voice is incredibly difficult to obtain, it usually just comes down to suck it up or exit.

        • Andrew Hunter says:

          You can’t. Go somewhere else with your children.

    • Deiseach says:

      what should I be prepared for them to tell me in response?

      “We’d love to, but since schools get sued to heck and back if Johnny scrapes his knee, and we want to keep our insurance premiums down to merely eye-watering instead of extortionate, we have to implement a metric fuckton (to use a technical term) of rules, regulations, suggestions, advice, and general ‘nearest thing to wrapping each child individually in cotton wool’ carry-on, so it’s not going to happen this decade.”

      I work in a early years service and you would not believe the amount of new regulations on top of the existing regulations that are coming in literally every day, and that have to be implemented because if anything can’t be ticked off the form when the surprise inspection hits, we will lose our funding. (Surprise inspections are a good thing because they mean real neglect or carelessness can’t be covered up in advance, but goodness gracious me they make a lot of work).

      Really it’s the fear of legal liability that puts a lot of constraints on schools and other places dealing with children (or the public at large). Most parents are reasonable and understand that kids run around and will fall over and bang their knees or noses, but you will always get the one parent or set of parents that will have a screeching fit and threaten the law on everyone to the third generation, and then if it does go to court it’s likely that a judge will say “yes indeed the centre/school should have had someone constantly supervising every movement the child made every second, they’re liable” and awards damages, then the cost of the mandatory insurance premium ascends like a rocket, and that cuts steeply into funding, so in general the “caution at all costs” approach is adopted.

      • Well... says:

        Were public schools really that much different 30 years ago? Were we really that less litigious as a society that we could play tag, tackle football, and call each other “retards” etc. at recess?

        • Plumber says:

          I don’t know about 30 years ago, but 40 to 45 years when I was in school it was not as you describe current schools, the biggest “sports” were ‘smear the queer’ and fistfights, as supervision was scant, I barely remember seeing adults.
          Often I’d just leave school and walk to the library to escape, I don’t recall my absence being noticed.

    • honoredb says:

      I don’t have an opinion on whether coddling is definitely harmful in the long term (I guess because this blog hasn’t posted a meta-analysis yet). I do consider the burden of proof to be squarely on team Let Kids Get Injured, because of their team name. A priori I’d expect kids to be happier on net when protected from injury, even if it means they have to come up with a different game from their default plan, and a priori I’d expect the long-term impact on psychological development to be neutral. I realize there’s an institutional bias toward safety, but there are irrational tendencies the other way too: status quo and survivorship biases by parents who had more dangerous childhoods, and there’s a weird tendency to forget that kids’ short-term well-being matters too that I don’t know if there’s a formal name for.

      • acymetric says:

        Possible theory (I don’t necessarily believe this to be true, but it might be a place to look if you want to find harms of this kind of coddling):

        Could being brought up in an overly risk-averse environment cause the children to be more likely to develop irrational anxiety over unlikely possibilities of their own? Or might it go the other way, with children who are too protected from possible bad things happening inherently underestimate the possibility of bad things happening? Just spitballing here. It does seem unlikely to me that this would have no impact on the concept of risk/risk avoidance for the children, but it isn’t clear to me if that impact would be positive or negative, not is it clear if the benefits outweigh the costs.

      • Mr. Doolittle says:

        The question each parent has to ask themselves (and answer variably depending on their own circumstances) is whether their kids are going to be living in a safe environment when they are older.

        If I could reliably say that my kids would always be in a safe comfortable environment as adults, then “coddling” makes sense. If they are going to have some hardships, physical, mental, or otherwise, then they should be prepared for how to handle those things. That includes both their own internal states, as well as how to handle the external stimuli.

        Since very few adults are without some difficulties, it makes sense to allow my children to experience some level of personal hardship to acclimate them to the process and help them grow. I’m not dropping them in the wilderness at five years old to see if they survive, but I am encouraging them to go outside and play without adult supervision. When they get overwhelmed, I help them. When they try to hide from the world and experience less, I take them hiking. Sometimes kids skin their knees while hiking. If that puts me on team “Lets Get Kids Injured” than I guess I’m on that team.

      • Watchman says:

        I am guessing you don’t have living experiments (aka kids). Once you have them you tend to develop observational evidence on this, albeit not about life outcomes for a few decades.

        The most obvious thing I’d note is that the whiney kids are generally those with the most codling. Happy kids tend to be those who are allowed to explore and play as kids. This makes sense: kids play as they do because that’s a common trait of human (and great ape) development. If you’re ‘protecting’ them from that then you’re also going against what in most cases (kids are pretty variable) they want to do naturally, which will make them unhappy. Long term I would expect, all else being equal, this to affect things like self-confidence and initiative, although you have to allow lots of other factors here.

      • LesHapablap says:

        The burden of proof should be on the people eliminating normal childhood behaviors like playing tag. The claim here is basically that physical activity and any sport at all is bad for kids. The same claim would be preposterous when talking about adults: would you tell a healthy 20-year old she should stop playing in a rec soccer league because it is bad for her?

    • SamChevre says:

      It’s not legal/CYA, and it’s not childhood development: it’s tail risk. What they are (rationally) protecting themselves against is the one kid in the US who trips playing tag, lands just wrong, and ends up quadriplegic. Or the one kid who goes on a field trip, gets bitten by a tick, develops encephalitis, and ends up with brain damage.

      It’s not really changeable at the school level–every big organization does something similar. It’s a legal system problem, and very hard remedy.

      • albatross11 says:

        +1

        I think few schools are worried that your kid will fall and break an arm. They or their insurance can handle that. What they’re worried about is that your kid will fall and break his neck. That’s tail risk, it’s very hard to eliminate, and the cost could be incredibly high because of the variability of lawsuit payouts and the huge cost of medical care in the US.

        OTOH, boy scouts allows kids to do some activities that could conceivably get their necks broken, and I’m sure there are a few tragic cases of this kind every year. But it sure seems good for the boys to spend some time being allowed to do fun outdoor activities in a not-perfectly-controlled environment. I’m not sure how they get around the “sue you into oblivion” problem–probably by some combination of social capital (credit with juries) and the subset of parents whose kids stick with scouts being disinclined to sue. Though the parents definitely sign waivers for everything.

        • acymetric says:

          Surely we don’t behave that way with all tail risks? A kid is much more likely to be catastrophically injured in a bus accident on the way to school, in a car accident with their parents, or in any number of other ways than the activities no longer allowed that we’re talking about here right? I understand the rationale (bad things happening to kids is extra bad), I disagree with the conclusion that kids just shouldn’t do things.

      • baconbits9 says:

        If its tail risk then they are not doing it rationally. Individually they wouldn’t be held liable for such an action and the odds of such an event leading to the bankruptcy of their district is very small. The opposite is actually more likely to be true, that by banning certain benign activities they are opening themselves up to more liability. If you ban tag and bobby takes a paintbrush to the eye in art you are going to have a hard time arguing that tag is inherently riskier than art, so why didn’t you ban art?

      • Well... says:

        But then why wasn’t it like this even a couple decades ago?

        • Plumber says:

          Because the adults of back then were negligent, rresponsible, lazy, selfish and far too busy with multiple lovers and smoking dope to pay much attention to their children’s welfare.

          That’s my child eyed view of the ’70″s anyway, but I reject your basic premise, from my son’s description it’s still too “Lord of the Flies” at school (which is one of the reasons we’re homeschooling him now).

          Better ‘coddled’ than bloody!

          • albatross11 says:

            So what changed? The dope got more potent?

          • Plumber says:

            @albatross11,

            If things have changed I’m guessing it’s a backlash to the hateful “freedom” of the ’70’s.

            Legalized abortion may play a role, as less kids are ‘accidents’, also that so many women delay childbirth, making it harder to have children at all, as well as most families being smaller, means parents feel more protective of their children.

            But probably the biggest factor if schools are paying attention to their students safety is the higher costs of medical treatment, and fears of litigation, but at my son’s former school when I fellow student tried to stab my son with scissors (thankfully only tearing his sweatshirt and a small cut on his arm) the school administered “restorative justice” (they asked the would-be-stabbed to apologize, nothing more).

            To Hell with that!

          • acymetric says:

            I generally find myself either in agreement with you or at least empathetic to your points, but I have to note here that swinging dope smokers make up a minority of 70s and 80s adults, despite what your personal experience may tell you (and modern day film may tell younger people). I’m not sure you can really draw broad conclusions from that about society as a whole.

          • Plumber says:

            @acymetric

            “….I’m not sure you can really draw broad conclusions from that about society as a whole”

            The statistics  also indicate that, while divorce and single-parenthood climbed sharply in those years, the majority of children still lived in two parent homes.

            Not where I lived!

            The statistics also tell me that far more Americans own homes than is the case in my area in California

            I must therefore regard much of the U.S.A. as a foreign land where people have very different lives.

        • Deiseach says:

          I do think part of it has to do with the rise in standards of living and concurrent rise in expectations. For instance, when I worked in social housing, clients have the expectation that their kids will have a room of their own (and so they do expect two- and three-bedroom houses even for “single parent with baby” or “two children under the ages of nine”, where the regulations say “siblings even of opposite sex under nine years old can share room, siblings of same sex can share room whatever age”). For me and other older colleagues, we grew up where you shared a room with siblings and only got your own room in your late teens or when you moved out to live on your own.

          When there was less of a safety net and people were used to living hard, then they accepted that accidents will happen and life is risky. I’m glad there’s a safety net! I’m glad people have better standards of living! But that also means that people expect better conditions and less risk for their kids, and are more prepared to go to court over negligent behaviour (or what is perceived as such) than as in the old days to accept things like “Johnny fell in the playground and broke his nose” as a typical incident of childhood and not challenge respectable institutions like schools.

  24. AG says:

    I feel like we’ve had a “fast food ranking” thread before, but also that we’ve had a good number of new regulars since then. So, let’s have another! (I understand that this is more complicated outside the US, where there aren’t necessarily big chains.)

    In-n-Out has the best burgers. McDonald’s and Jack-in-the-Box are about same tier, and haven’t had BK or Wendy’s recently enough to evaluate them.
    McDonald’s chicken is surprisingly good, probably the best out of the burger places offering chicken. BK’s are an abomination. KFC quality varies per restaurant, but aren’t as good as Popeye’s, who is still below regional chicken places like Bush’s or Gold’s or whatever.
    Seasoned curly fries > battered seasoned fries > plain. Five Guys (which is technically a tier up from fast food, per se) has the best seasoned fries. Then animal style In-n-Out fries, while their plain fries are better than Wendy’s but lower than the other chains. Otherwise, fries quality varies by location and timing, I have no sense of a franchise ranking.
    Fish sandwiches: Jack-in-the-Box > McDonald’s > BK

    All of the national pizza chains are greatly inferior to regional chains, which are usually inferior to one-offs but not always.

    • psmith says:

      I like In-n-Out, but prices and wait times are verging on fast casual rather than fast food proper. Having checked the thread number for culture war permitted, I would also put Chick-Fil-A in this category–it has the aesthetic trappings of fast food, it’s better-tasting than most fast food, but it’s also a touch slower and more expensive.

      Taco Bell is probably my favorite unambiguous fast food.

      • dodrian says:

        Chick-Fil-A is slow? McDonald’s is the fastest and most-efficient fast-food, but Chick-Fil-A is a close second. There are frequent long lines for the drive-thru at the Chick-Fil-A restaurants I occasionally visit, but they move at lightning speed.

        Incidentally, the C-F-A tech blog is a fascinating read.

    • Randy M says:

      In-N-Out had never made me regret eating their burgers, so that’s a point above Jack in the Box, Burger King, and Taco Bell.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Smash Burger is vastly superior to Five Guys. The Colorado Burger is god-tier. Every time I fly into Denver I make a bee line for Smash Burger.

      • Well... says:

        Smash Burger is vastly superior to Five Guys.

        Hah, you’re insane.

        • gbdub says:

          Five Guys is great if you want a thick, greasy burger that all sort of melds together with its toppings, and you have someone to share a bag of the Cajun fries with. This is not a backhanded compliment – Five Guys is great for curing a particular sort of craving.

          When I don’t have that particular sort of craving, Smashburger is better. Sweet potato smash fries are the shiznit.

          Both are vastly superior to In’N’Out, which is just McD’s with less variety, fresher tasting burgers, and worse fries.

          I’m not sure either are “fast food” though.

          • Well... says:

            I’m not sure either are “fast food” though.

            That’s a good point.

            Still, I’m consistently unimpressed by Smashburger. It’s not that their burgers aren’t tasty, it’s just that they’re underwhelming. Also for whatever reason they fall apart really easily, and I don’t remember ever leaving Smashburger feeling full, and I always feel like I’ve overpaid.

            Their fries are lousy, BTW — too thin. Does anyone actually like shoelace fries?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I don’t honestly pay any attention to their fries. But have you had the Colorado Burger?

            Grilled green chilies, melted aged cheddar, pepper jack, lettuce, tomato & mayo on a spicy chipotle bun

            Heaven in a bun my dude, heaven in a bun.

          • Nick says:

            Their fries are lousy, BTW — too thin. Does anyone actually like shoelace fries?

            I do. I’ve never had Smashburger before, but shoestring fries or the slightly thicker regular fries are the best.

          • AG says:

            Yeah, I don’t count Five Guys as fast food. It’s about the price points. Five Guys is a tier up.
            (Although, some of the fast food places are offering premium orders a tier up now, as well. But I’m judging by what’s the thing most commonly ordered.)

            Thicker fries are the devil. Wedges are an abomination, unless you go the full Fuddruckers and have a truckload of cheese sauce besides.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I think Five Guys / Smashburger still count as fast food. The restaurant is in a strip mall, I walk in, order at a counter, pay less than $10, bus my own table and my food is ready in less than 10 minutes. That’s fast food.

          • acymetric says:

            There is actually a separate classification for that type of restaurant: fast casual.

            Places like Chipotle, Moes, Five Guys, most sandwich places and similar are included in that category.

          • theredsheep says:

            Five Guys, in my experience, is substantially more expensive than standard fast food.

          • ManyCookies says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            Where do you live that Five Guys comes down to <10 dollars? The burger alone is 9$ here, I pay as much at Five Guys as I do at sit-down restaurants. Are you splitting fries and just getting water?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Hmmmm good point ManyCookies. I don’t drink sodas (so yes I’m just getting water) and I split fries with Mrs. Honcho (she’s the one who actually likes Five Guys. I’d prefer a burger from Chili’s since there’s barely any Smashburgers in the south). I just looked up the price of a cheeseburger at my local Five Guys and it’s $9. To be honest I’ve never paid that much attention to the cost since as a gainfully employed person the amount of money spent on a burger all sorts into the “say what you want and hand over the credit card without thinking” category.

            I would still call it “fast food” though. It’s a few dollars more than McDonald’s, but every other part of the experience is the same.

          • brad says:

            I know “fast casual” is supposed to be a big deal right now, but from the perspective of someone without a car there’s not a huge difference between Five Guys, McDonalds, Chipotle, or a bacondeggandcheese from a bodega. If I go up to some sort of counter, order my food, wait until it’s ready, bring it to a table, eat it, and the bus my tray–to me that’s fast food.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Great going brad. You and I just agreed on something. Apocalypse in 10…9…8…

            I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done.

          • Nick says:

            I’m with Brad and Conrad here too. For me there’s really not a difference between fast and fast casual.

    • dodrian says:

      Whataburger has the best burgers. McDonald’s has the fastest, most consistent experience, and best breakfast. Chick-Fil-A has the best service. Raising Cane’s is the best chicken.

      • AG says:

        Sadly, Whataburger isn’t available in my region, but I can believe it.
        Carl’s Jr. offers more meat mass, I’d put them in the same tier as Habit Burger, but I’m not sure if it actually beats out modern McDonald’s in flavor.

        I can definitely believe McDonald’s has the best breakfast.

    • SamChevre says:

      Hardee’s burgers need to rank somewhere. Also, their sausage biscuits are the best, and if you ask they’ll give you strawberry jam to put on them.

    • dick says:

      I eat fast food of any kind maybe once a year, and every time is a huge disappointment. Either my childhood memories are distorted or McD fries are a lot worse than they used to be. Even the shakes are kind of gross. Would prefer a plain ham+cheese+mayo sandwich from my fridge every time.

      • AG says:

        Childhood memories may indeed play a role! Fast food was a big rarity in my childhood, so there was a forbidden fruit allure. I caught up and lost the sheen to burgers in generally thanks to college meal plans, but once I started cooking for myself fast food became a rarity again. But my snack preferences also tend towards the salty.

        So I may get more enjoyment from fast food than some people.
        (Counterpoint: sometimes the food is indeed a disappointment, like BK chicken, or Wienerschnitzel.)

        Also, do you have higher quality burgers from restaurants and the like? That may play a role. Since I rarely order burgers from restaurants, I don’t have as much a baseline to be disappointed in fast food for.
        (The few times I do end up with $10+ burgers, they never seem that much better.)

      • littskad says:

        McDonald’s used to fry their fries in primarily beef tallow. They aren’t as tasty since they went vegetable oil. Their shakes were also much better before they went low-fat. And their apple pies were better when they were fried. Oh, well.

        • Nick says:

          I’m sensing a theme of “this food was so much better when it was worse for you.” 😛

          • ilikekittycat says:

            The irony is that beef tallow wasn’t worse for you, because we now know the sugar industry was paying for motivated research about saturated fats

          • littskad says:

            Heh, yeah. I remember exactly when they switched from tallow. It was my senior year in high school, and at the time I had been going to McDonald’s once a month with my grandfather for years; it was kind of one of our rituals. The change really did make an enormous difference.

    • sunnydestroy says:

      I like In-N-Out because their burgers have great vegetables and they aren’t overly meaty, though you can get a triple patty if you want it more meaty. Chick-Fil-A is pretty overhyped for me–I thought their chicken sandwiches are pretty plain and fast-foody quality, though they beat out everyone in their sauce selection.

      One really great thing you can do if you have an In-N-Out close enough to a Chick-Fil-A (I had them across the street from each other) is order a burger from In-N-Out, order a chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, then put them together into an ultimate combo. Also, get the assortment of sauces to dip with and the waffle fries.

    • brad says:

      All of the national pizza chains are greatly inferior to regional chains, which are usually inferior to one-offs but not always.

      You can’t meet the fast criteria in fast food if you only sell pies.

      • Jake says:

        You can if you have them pre-made and ready to go. Little Caesars Hot-n-Ready pizzas are barely worthy of the name pizza, but they are available near instantaneously and dirt cheap. It’s still my go-to pizza place when I want something quick. Though when I want something good, I live right down the road from a local place that recently won Best Pizza from the USA in a big pizza-making contest, and it’s amazing, so I agree with the original comment.

        • acymetric says:

          Little Caesars is definitely not some high quality establishment, but I actually prefer their pepperoni pizza over Papa Johns and Dominos.

        • AG says:

          Sell by the slice places would qualify for fast, but, ironically, most chains don’t do by-the-slice.

          • acymetric says:

            Only moderately so, a lot of by-the-slice places pop the slices back in the oven for a few minutes when you order, which puts it somewhere slower than fast food but slightly faster than Five Guys or similar.

        • brad says:

          You can if you have them pre-made and ready to go. Little Caesars Hot-n-Ready pizzas are barely worthy of the name pizza, but they are available near instantaneously and dirt cheap.

          They keep them under a heating lamp?

          • AG says:

            Actually, that does seem quite interesting. Most fast food places manage by having their product pre-assmbled and frozen/refrigerated, and do a quick heat on order, along with pre-prepping in bulk during meal rushes. Why is it that pizza can’t do the same?

          • brad says:

            In a NY pizza place that sells by the slice, the pies are cooked and then left on the counter for customers to pick out. If you are lucky the slice you want is still hot and you get it right from there. If not they throw it back in the pizza oven for a few minutes to warm it up. Unfortunately these cooked pizzas have a really short shelf life. After fifteen or twenty minutes or so the cheese cools down and it starts getting this plastic-y look. Once that happens it doesn’t taste as good when it gets re-heated.

            There’s no reason in principle that you couldn’t cook whole pies and sell them the same way as slices, but you’d have to be really confident in the number and type of pies that people were going to order.

          • albatross11 says:

            There’s a nice pizza chain in the DC area (&pizza) that manages about 5 minutes to get your pizza when there’s no line. They’re small pizzas and go through an oven on a conveyor belt, and they’re quite good.

          • baconbits9 says:

            Actually, that does seem quite interesting. Most fast food places manage by having their product pre-assmbled and frozen/refrigerated, and do a quick heat on order, along with pre-prepping in bulk during meal rushes. Why is it that pizza can’t do the same?

            You won’t get a consistent crust if you have a yeast dough sitting out indefinitely. You can pre-bake all the crusts but I would guess you would lose something on the 2nd bake.

            Then you have a volume/heating issue. Your typical pizza is thicker than the portion of a hamburger that gets cooked in a fast food joint, and the hamburger is cooked on a steal plate and only needs to be cooked halfway because it can be flipped. A pizza is thicker, you have to cook through several layers, is air cooked on top and is unable to be flipped. All told you probably can’t cook a pizza in less than 6-7 mins with just the cooking, and more for larger pizza’s, or if others are going in and out of the oven constantly.

            You also have most of the toppings cooked with the pizza, most of the parts of a hamburger are put on after cooking, so you can pre start a hamburger on the grill and then add the bacon/cheese/lettuce/etc to make what ever particular specialty burger was ordered. This isn’t true for a pizza.

            So the long and the short of your answer is that pizza places already do this, sauce is pre prepped, cheese is grated, toppings sliced and balls of dough are kept the right size at the right temperature and its a mechanical process to build it up. You just can’t pre start the process, and you can’t really get prep time under 10 mins.

    • arlie says:

      The only chain burgers I’ll eat are Wendy’s, given any halfway reasonable alternative, but the absolute bottom of the line are, in my opinion, McDonald’s. Maybe they are highly variable, and/or a horrific experience 2 decades ago soured me on them forever – I admit I haven’t even tried them once since – though perhaps only that specific McDonald’s reached this particular special standard.

      Arby’s is OK.

      KFC is sometimes OK – wish we had Swiss Chalet around here though. Much better chicken, at least back when I lived near one.

      If any of the chains make decent french fries, I haven’t tried them 🙁

      Tim Horton’s (only in Canada, AFAIK) has the best donuts, and some of the best coffee. Pete’s coffee is even better; Starbucks is meh.

      • AG says:

        Arby’s needs post-delivery customizing. Their in-house sauce distribution is bad, so I always end up adding my own toppings and sauce. We used to use coupons to order like 20 melts at a time, chuck them in the freezer, and then have one for lunch each day, adding lettuce and sauce on the other side from the cheese.

    • Nick says:

      This thread is opportune, because I’m going to Five Guys for lunch today, and this is my first time. Just one question: should I be ordering the Five Guys style or cajun style fries?

    • Fahundo says:

      burgers: Five Guys > Smashburger > the rest. Shout out to Crystal Burger for being without a doubt the worst burger I’ve ever tasted.

      chicken strips: Raising Cane’s is my favorite. Popeye’s is good sometimes but inconsistent.

      chicken nuggets: anything other than Chick Fil A might as well not exist

      Fries: Five Guys again

      In N Out is probably the best place to go after midnight.

      • acymetric says:

        In N Out is probably the best place to go after midnight.

        You’ve obviously never been to Cook Out at 3 a.m.

        • Fahundo says:

          I didn’t know they were open that late, and it’s too late to edit my comment. In N Out and Cook Out tend not to be available in the same towns though, so maybe they can share.

    • ManyCookies says:

      Man did my California friends hype up In N Out. And their burgers are pretty good for the price point, but god their fries are literally cardboard. Kind of brought down the experience.

      —-

      So onto the most important question, which fast food/casual place has the best french fries? My votes for McDonalds.

      • AG says:

        I said above that, for me, fries quality varies depending on location rather than chain. Since they’re not pre-prepped by the franchise like the burgers, then it’s a lot more at the mercy of the employees who fry/salt than usual. I’ve had varying quality of fries from the same In-n-Out restaurant. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re, ick, mealy.

        That said, I do think their “fresh” approach makes them reliably worse than other chains, who have the time to soak potatoes to remove a level of starch. And then places like Popeye’s can cheat by using battered fries to create a consistent flavor profile.
        But seasoned curly fries also seem to make things more consistent, so Arby’s and Jack-In-The-Box win there.

      • but god their fries are literally cardboard.

        Literally?

        I don’t believe it.

  25. Edward Scizorhands says:

    You wake up in the body of a 1980s middle-school or high-school student, Quantum Leap style, and need to come up with a project for the science fair in the next several weeks.

    Is there anything you can use from your knowledge of the future, and its associated technology, to make your project amazing?

    • AG says:

      Revealing that the secret to roman concrete is to use sea water.

    • albatross11 says:

      I think I’m going to do my science fair project on the differential cryptanalysis of DES. Not only will it be fun to do, with a little work, I’ll actually be able to get men in black suits to show up and shut down the science fair and try to tell me my whole presentation is classified.

      • John Schilling says:

        I was going to suggest building a crappy Zippe centrifuge and producing a few milligrams of enriched uranium to the same effect, but that would stretch the resources of a high-school science fair project. Your version works much better, if you can remember enough of the details.

        Unfortunately, the hypothetical is set a year too late for me to just present a design study for a Teller-Ulam device; Moreland published in 1979.

      • Edward Scizorhands says:

        I thought the S-Boxes of DES resist differential cryptanalysis.

    • baconbits9 says:

      If you were an archaeology buff and knew of a local find that happened you could go pre-empt it pretty easily.

    • Plumber says:

      I was a high school student in the 1980’s, and with my current knowledge I’d forget the science fair, test out of high school even earlier than I did, take VAC or welding training as a teenager, join the military with an enlistment ending before the Gulf War, save money, go to college as a veteran, and make investmentments in companies destined to prosper.

      It be nice if I could somehow warn people of the Twin Towers collapse in 2001, but I’ve no idea how to explain how I got the warning myself.

      • S_J says:

        Is it possible to restate the question to an arbitrary earlier decade?

        I can’t tell whether the intended category is high school at some specific point in the past, or high school at a time comfortably before your own involvement in any level of formal education. For me, the first half of the 1980s fall into the second category.

        One possibility: I might try to demonstrate a prototype form of data-storage on a hard plastic platter, using reflective material that can encode data about sound-waves as binary numbers…if that were enough to make Sony’s Compact Disc a non-patentable item in ’82.

        If I were interested in performing pranks… I would acquire a Geiger counter and a banana, and see how many parents/teachers I can scare with the trace level of radioactivity typically found in a banana.

        For predictions of the future…is there way for a high school science-fair project to predict the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986? Or at least, show the potential for that loss to happen under those circumstances?

        That prediction has much less impact than predicting the attacks on September 11, 2001. But it might set me up to make such a prediction.

        • bullseye says:

          One possibility: I might try to demonstrate a prototype form of data-storage on a hard plastic platter, using reflective material that can encode data about sound-waves as binary numbers…if that were enough to make Sony’s Compact Disc a non-patentable item in ’82.

          Could you actually do that? I’ll assume you know how the thing works (which I don’t), but there’s a gap between knowing how something works and being able to build it.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Alas, making a blue LED is probably beyond my ability, even with prep time in the future. This would be my favorite if I could pull it off. Demonstrating giant magnetoresistance also too difficult and not as cool. Demonstrating superconductivity (with high-temp superconductors, discovered 1986) might be possible, but by the late 80s that was old hat anyway (the move from lab to physics classroom was _really fast_ for that one).

      So, I’ll go a little lower tech and “refute” Earnshaw’s theorem by reproducing Geim’s Ig Nobel-winning experiments on diamagnetic levitation.

    • metacelsus says:

      If it’s early 1980s (1980-1983), I’d invent the polymerase chain reaction. If it’s late 1980s, I’d synthesize an antiretroviral drug (probably nevirapine since I actually can remember the structure for that one).

      If I can’t get the resources for one of those projects (being a high school student would make things tough), then I would make some graphene with a pencil and Scotch tape.

    • Chalid says:

      You can make graphene from graphite with regular scotch tape, and that would get you the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics a few decades early. (It would be pretty ambitious for someone with high-school-student resources to actually characterize it properly in a way that would convince everyone else of what they’d found, but a Nobel should be a pretty big incentive.)

      • AG says:

        Yeah, if the hypothetical high school student jumps the gun on undergrad research, they could probably do some novelty thin film tricks early.

    • Tenacious D says:

      Scoop some of Stephen Wolfram’s work on Rule 110 and other elementary cellular automata. Access to a computer could help, but a lot of the work could be done with pen and paper too, so it’s within the resources of a student.

    • AG says:

      Introduce some music technology innovations sooner? Could PC hardware in the 80s handle something like Audacity, or a stripped down midi-processing program? Though, some of this is limited by available sound card technology, but one should be able to use existing synth tech to recreate future genres early.

  26. vV_Vv says:

    Brexit predictions:

    – No-deal Brexit: 50%

    – Deal negotiated with the EU and approved by the Parliament before 29 March: 5%

    – Unilateral Article 50 suspension (Brexit aborted for the foreseeable future): 5%

    – Negotiation term extended without a new referendum being announced: 15%

    – Negotiation term extended with a new referendum being announced: 25%
    Conditioned on the above:
    – Leave wins again: 60%
    – Remain wins: 40%

    • fion says:

      My predictions

      – No deal: ~20%
      – Deal negotiated/approved before 23/3/19: ~3%
      – Unilateral Article 50 suspension: ~8%
      – Extension (no new referendum announced): ~50%
      – Extension (referendum announced): ~20%

      If referendum happens:
      – Leave: ~40%
      – Remain: ~60%

      I’ll note that an extension with no second referendum being announced might still lead to a referendum.

    • dodrian says:

      I think the chance of a deal passing is higher that 5% – while no one like what May has tabled, no one wants the responsibility of stepping into her shoes.

      I think May rightly sees that having a second referendum would be even worse than the other outcomes. There is extreme political distaste in the commons for a no-deal Brexit. May’s game seems to be to stall and then force her deal through under that pressure, and after this week’s votes I think she has a better chance of doing that than I originally suspected (given that when their bluff was called the DUP supported her – they might not for the final deal, but I bet some of the opposition will cave against the prospect of no-deal).

      My prediction would be:
      No deal: 40%, May’s deal or something very similar: 30%, longer negotiations: 15%, New referendum 10%, No Brexit: 5%.

      • vV_Vv says:

        There is extreme political distaste in the commons for a no-deal Brexit.

        But they seem to be locked in an impasse where makes no-deal Brexit the default outcome. Shall we call it Tragedy of the Commons?

        • dodrian says:

          I think the impasse at the moment is because each side think they can get their preferred outcome – the ERG think they can get a better deal, May thinks she can hold out and have hers accepted, and much of the opposition think they can get a second referedum or stop Brexit.

          The question is who will crack first. As you say, no-deal is the default outcome, but I think most of the commons would prefer May’s deal to no-deal. I suspect that May will take it down to the wire, and that those opposing Brexit are more likely to crack than she or her supporters are.

    • ana53294 says:

      I think the UK government will make some small change to the deal with the EU, and it will give it a week before the 29th of March so Remainers will have to choose between that deal (which is the best compromise that could be achieved given the Good Friday agreement and the lack of leverage by the UK) and no deal.

      Because the choice now seems to be no deal, this deal or no Brexit, Remainers can continue with the delusion that there will be no Brexit. But once the due date is really close, they will have to choose the deal.

      Any extension given will not last past the 22nd of May (the EU Parliament elections). The UK seats have already been reapportioned.

      Deal passes with minor changes: 70%.

      There is a one month extension: 10%

      No deal: 15%

      No Brexit:1%

      • vV_Vv says:

        Because the choice now seems to be no deal, this deal or no Brexit, Remainers can continue with the delusion that there will be no Brexit. But once the due date is really close, they will have to choose the deal.

        This assumes that they will be acting rationally, but in this whole Brexit affair, from the conception of the initial referendum, British politicians have been anything but rational.

  27. moonfirestorm says:

    Book Review: David Friedman’s Salamander.

    I had heard this mentioned a few times in the Open Threads, so I figured I would pick it up. I didn’t know anything about the details of the plot before buying it. I’ll rot13 major plot spoilers, but it’s difficult to discuss a book at all without spoiling some of it, so there may be stuff that sneaks in un-rot13’d.

    The good:
    – The magic system was really interesting. While I’m a big fan of “here’s how a world with magic would actually use that magic in interesting ways”, most authors don’t really address the issues of having immensely powerful wizards at all. In Salamander, the author goes the other way: he creates a relatively normal swords-and-sorcery world, but uses a magic system that won’t distort the world too much, because it’s very limited in what it can do.

    – As a supplementary point to the last, the focus on “how can we creatively use small amounts of magic” is awesome. I’m a big fan of stories like Worm where fairly limited abilities are used creatively, and they came up with some cool solutions to problems throughout the story.

    – The characters were very well-written, and I liked how they evolved over time. It wasn’t really possible to label characters as “good guys” or “bad guys”, because they just had clear goals and worked towards them. Sometimes they were in opposition to our main characters, sometimes they weren’t.

    – The reaction to the main Maguffin (the Pnfpnqr) of the story was very good. I feel like it realistically captured a lot of the benefits and problems of it.

    The bad:
    – While I liked how the characters evolved, it often felt very abrupt. Gur cevapr va cnegvphyne jrag sebz “nal zrnaf arprffnel” gb “lrnu, V thrff jr’er tbbq sevraqf” va nobhg guerr cntrf.

    – The climax of the book seemed very antithetical to the main themes of the book. Gur jubyr obbx jnf sbphfvat ba ubj lbh unq gb hfr fznyy nzbhagf bs cbjre perngviryl, naq vafgrnq bs Ryyra be gur grnpure pbzvat hc jvgu n perngvir fbyhgvba, jr whfg unq gur Cevapr Pnfpnqr uvf jnl gb na rnfl fbyhgvba, naq gura Qhevyvy guerj VASVAVGR CBJREEEE ng gur Sbefgvat zntrf.

    • Thanks for your comments. My response to your first rot13 point:

      Gur Cevapr qbrfa’g jnag gb hfr sbepr ntnvafg Ryyra naq Pbryhf—ur yvxrf naq erfcrpgf gurz, naq jung ur vf qbvat vf ntnvafg uvf trareny cevapvcyrf. Ohg ur guvaxf n terng qrny vf ng fgnxr—naq ur unf jnearq Ryyra rneyvre gung jvgu rabhtu ng fgnxr ur vf jvyyvat gb qb guvatf ur jbhyq abeznyyl qvfnccebir bs. Pbafvqre:

      [Znev nobhg gur Cevapr nsgrejneqf]
      “Ur jnf va na bqq zbbq, nf vs ur jnfa’g fher vs ur fubhyq or qvfnccbvagrq be tynq.”
      Ryyra pbafvqrerq gur iveghrf bs fvyrapr, vgf pbfg, qrpvqrq ntnvafg. “Uvf Uvtuarff gevrq gb sbepr zr naq Zntvfgre Pbryhf gb qb fbzrguvat jr gubhtug bhtug abg gb or qbar. Ur guerngrarq zr gb crefhnqr Pbryhf. Jr qrcnegrq jvgubhg uvf yrnir.”
      Znev ybbxrq pbaprearq. “V frr. Gung rkcynvaf obgu uvf qvfnccbvagzrag naq uvf eryvrs.”
      Ryyra abqqrq. “Lrf. V qb abg guvax Xvreba vf n onq zna, ohg ur vf gbb hfrq gb univat uvf jnl.”

      Va beqre gb sbepr Ryyra naq Pbryhf gb qb jung ur gubhtug unq gb or qbar ur svefg urnivyl jrvtugrq gur bqqf va uvf snibe ol gnxvat nqinagntr bs gurve vavgvny gehfg, fbzrguvat ur vf abg tbvat gb or noyr gb qb ntnva. Qrfcvgr gung nqinagntr, ur snvyrq.

      Ryyra vf n cbjreshy sver zntr naq “V xabj jung na natel sver zntr pna qb.” Jvgubhg gur nqinagntr ur tbg ol uvf gevpx, fur pna xvyy uvz, be nalbar ryfr arneol, va n srj frpbaqf, naq ur xabjf vg. Gur Cevapr qbrfa’g xabj ubj Pbryhf rfpncrq, ohg ur xabjf gung Pbryhf xabjf zhpu zber nobhg zntrel guna ur qbrf—jvgarff gur pnfpnqr—juvpu znxrf uvz n jvyq pneq.

      Gur bayl frafvoyr bcgvba ng guvf cbvag vf gb gel gb jbex jvgu gurz, abg ntnvafg gurz. Naq gung unf gur shegure nqinagntr gung vg trgf uvz serr bs gur boyvtngvba gb qb guvatf gung ur qbrfa’g jnag gb qb.

      My response to the second:

      Jr nyernql xabj gung gur Fnynznaqre yrgf Qhevyvy qb guvatf gung ner fhccbfrq gb or vzcbffvoyr—znavchyngr uvf ntr. Gur obbx vf pnyyrq “Fnynznaqre,” naq cneg bs gur pber bs vg vf gur grafvba orgjrra gur rabezbhf cbjre gur Fnynznaqre tvirf Qhevyvy naq gur pbafgenvagf va hfvat vg qhr gb uvf arrq gb xrrc obgu uvzfrys naq Fnynznaqre frperg. Sver Zbhagnva unf abg rehcgrq sbe gur cnfg svsgl lrnef—fvapr Qhevyvy erzbirq gur Fnynznaqre sebz vg. Chggvat gur Fnynznaqre onpx punatrf gung, naq vg nibvqf gur pbafgenvag bs univat gb shaary cbjre guebhtu Qhevyvy, jub vf na rkgenbeqvanevyl fgebat sver zntr ohg fgvyy vasvavgryl jrnxre guna gur Fnynznaqre vgfrys.

      • moonfirestorm says:

        Thanks for taking the time to respond to me!

        I think your first point makes sense, and I had sort of forgotten about Xvreba’f shegure punenpgre qrirybczrag jvgu Znev. I just recall finding it exceedingly jarring, so thought I should mention that.

        On the second, I’m not arguing that it doesn’t make sense within the context of the story. You clearly established that this exact sort of thing was possible when you introduced Qhevyvy naq gur Fnynznaqre. I just found myself disappointed that that’s what the climax ended up being, since it feels like a rejection of the earlier themes of the book.

  28. Achim says:

    Did anyone already mention the Flynn effect developments here?

    conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-flynn-effect-rising-iq-scores-over.html

  29. brad says:

    The no culture war rule in the last integer open thread seems to have been flagrantly violated in many different subthreads. Any thoughts as to why it broke in that one in particular and whether it will continue to be widely ignored? Is there some connection to the new sort order?

    • onyomi says:

      I get the sense a lot of people haven’t really gotten the memo about public OTs being generally CW-free now.

    • johan_larson says:

      I doubt it had anything to do with the thread. This community wants to talk about a lot of CW and CW-adjacent things, so discussions naturally tend to cross the boundary unless moderators put a stop to it. And Scott has never been a particularly active moderator.

      • fion says:

        I dunno. In the past I’ve seen a lot of “This is CW but I’d be happy to discuss it with you in a later thread.” I think the community is normally very good at self-enforcing the rule.

    • Nick says:

      What onyomi said. It was right there in the post text, second sentence; I wish folks would read that stuff, but it seems many don’t. It could be made harder to ignore, maybe, like putting “NO CW” or “CW OK” right in the thread title.

    • albatross11 says:

      Part of that was my fault, and I apologize. I asked a question that I hoped wouldn’t become CW, but I should have just avoided the topic entirely on the CW-free OT.

    • gbdub says:

      I think the confusion is somewhat understandable for a number of reasons:

      1) The system just changed, and while I never had trouble understanding the old system, apparently a lot of people did because there was always somebody asking whether any given thread was supposed to be CW free or not.
      2) Scott recently front-paged a normally hidden, not CW free open thread to announce the backwards comment order and survey
      3) Scott’s post text, which clearly people don’t read reliably anyway (see #1) didn’t say “culture war free” it said “avoid hot button political and social topics” which is clearer but doesn’t have the magic word people are used to
      4) Front page open threads are always going to be harder to keep CW free for the same reason Scott wants to keep them that way: they are more visible, especially to newer posters who might not know the rules
      5) The “open threads link takes you right to the newest OT” is a convenient feature but one that makes it much less likely for people to be cognizant of exactly which thread they are commenting on (exacerbated by the newest first comment order – an old thread you visit for the second time now looks new because you don’t recognize the top post)

    • Plumber says:

      I didn’t see anything saying “No culture war” and I’ve never seen a description of what is actually meant by “culture war” (I tried once to read the SSC Reddit “Culture War Round Up”, but I find reading Reddit hard on my eyes and quickly gave up).

      I did see:

      “…Post about anything you want, but please try to avoid hot-button political and social topics..”

      As far as I know the “hot button topics” ususlly described as such are: Abortion, Gay Marriage, and Gun Control, and I don’t remember if anyone discussed those in the last open thread.

      • fion says:

        As far as I know the “hot button topics” ususlly described as such are: Abortion, Gay Marriage, and Gun Control

        My impression is it’s a bit wider than that around here. I think discussion of racism, misogyny, transgender identities, social justice and immigration are all at risk of being CW. Also, anything that is polarised along political party lines (especially the US parties). The more emotional people get when discussing it, the more likely it is to be CW.

      • Deiseach says:

        I tried once to read the SSC Reddit “Culture War Round Up”

        Oh, God bless you! I comment over there betimes but yeah, it turns into a real slanging match (and that’s at the best of times, it can be a dumpster fire at its worst, not helped by trolls of various species dropping by to stir the pot). By contrast, on here at its worst and hottest is a haven of Austenian civility where even the barbs are couched in relatively moderate language.

        Probably best to keep clear of it unless you are extremely calm and even of temperament or prone to getting into fights with strangers on the Internet (guess which camp I fall into?) 🙂

        • Plumber says:

          @Deiseach

          “…Probably best to keep clear of it unless you are extremely calm and even of temperament…”

          Thank you very much for your kind advice Deisearch, I plan on following it!

        • brad says:

          It’s a little surprising that thread continues to exist.

          • Deiseach says:

            I wonder how much longer it will? The mods have made and continue to make noises about booting it off altogether, and depending how bad things get it might not continue to exist in its current form, or any form at all.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @Deisach

            There’s a backup culture war group if the culture war thread goes away.

    • vV_Vv says:

      I’m one of the responsible people. In my case, I wasn’t sure what the rule was and whether it existed anymore or it had silently fallen in disuse.

    • JPNunez says:

      I feel the rule is a little silly; maybe on hidden, non CW threads, if a top level post says “CW allowed”, then all replies to that post should allow CW.

  30. LadyJane says:

    A critique of the populist right, the socialist left, and the establishment center: https://medium.com/@farrah_jane/three-roads-to-dystopia-814c7cdb5090

    • Erusian says:

      There’re blind spots in this piece to support mainstream Democrat positions. It also fundamentally fails to understand the right. This is is a ’50 more Stalins’ argument at its core, except driving to the Democratic Party mainstream rather than either extreme side. And I give her credit for that: we need more moderates who are willing to fight. That said, look at the group she wants to put together: Anti-fascists, anti-communists, non-socialist progressives (including Berniecrats), libertarians who will compromise on liberal desires, some centrists, anti-Trump ‘conservatives’… that’s the Democratic Party. She’s describing the Democratic Party.

      This is a vision of anti-extreme centrism that somehow always comes down on the Left. That isn’t going to happen. Either you let in real conservatives, the sort that might not be comfortable for you, or you end up fighting your own extreme wing and the other party. And then you lose. Both sides chose instead to forge an alliance with their own extreme wing. And they ended up with hardline divisions.

      More widely this is the Kasich/Brown problem. Kasich and Brown are very popular among moderates. Their base, as a result, is too small to seriously get them anywhere outside of the Great Lakes (which is a generally moderate area). There aren’t wide coalitions to be made around being a standard centrist in the current parties. There could be new wide coalitions made by political entrepreneurs though.

      • LadyJane says:

        My ideal is actually something more like Niskanen-style socially progressive, economically centrist libertarianism. There are some key differences between that and Democratic Party orthodoxy, particularly when it comes to individual rights, civil liberties, and foreign policy. Hell, the article quoted Adam Bates and he’s practically the poster child for progressive centrist libertarianism.

        • A Definite Beta Guy says:

          I don’t know what this means. However, I don’t like Trump, but there’s no room for folk like me in a Democratic Party that’s still largely concerned with expanding the social safety net and doubling down on the education system to resolve perceived inequality. If recent Twitter has taught me anything, it’s that center-left Democrats are WAY more willing to tolerate bank nationalization or extreme restrictions on their activities, 70% upper marginal tax rates, and Medicare For All, than they are President Romney (or any other generic GOPer). That’s not a recipe for a centrist coalition, that’s just current politics, except that Democratic leadership themselves are actually beholden to certain interest groups that makes them substantially more conservative. Handing over the coalition to the intelligentsia would just make the situation worse.

        • Erusian says:

          What differences precisely? There’s nothing in the article, or really from the Niskanen Center, that wouldn’t fit as a moderate Democrat.

          • LadyJane says:

            Support for deregulation, opposition to raising taxes (the idea is that we can keep taxes down and improve the social safety net by reducing spending on other things, like the military budget), opposition to corporate welfare and corporate influence on politics, support for the decriminalization of recreational drugs and sex work (the Libertarian Party is currently the only party in the U.S. that officially endorses the legalization of prostitution), opposition to the surveillance state and foreign interventionism.

          • Erusian says:

            I’m going to go through the Democratic Party Platform and see where it stands on your positions.

            Support for deregulation,

            Which regulations? Everyone is in favor of deregulation until it comes to specific regulations. Anyway, this is in there (specifically, simplification/streamlining and elimination of unnecessary ones while guaranteeing good working environments).

            opposition to raising taxes (the idea is that we can keep taxes down and improve the social safety net by reducing spending on other things, like the military budget),

            Military cuts is in there. So is increasing spending on social safety nets. The only difference is the Democrats say they might have to raise taxes to do so. If you had to choose between raising taxes on the wealthy or not increasing welfare, which would you choose? If you say ‘increase welfare even if it means raising taxes’ then you are exactly agreeing with them.

            opposition to corporate welfare

            In the platform.

            and corporate influence on politics,

            In the platform.

            support for the decriminalization of recreational drugs

            Some of them are in the platform.

            and sex work (the Libertarian Party is currently the only party in the U.S. that officially endorses the legalization of prostitution),

            Not mentioned either way. But then again, there is no federal law on prostitution. I’m going to call this one a draw.

            opposition to the surveillance state and foreign interventionism.

            This was a position under Barrack Obama but not Clinton. I’ll give you this one since Clinton is more recent.

            You (generously) got 1/6. So in terms of specifically disagreeing with the Democrats, you specifically object to Clinton’s support for surveillance and foreign interventionism. You instead support Barrack Obama’s more non-interventionist foreign policy. Otherwise, you agree with them or think they should go even further. I still think this would fit very comfortably in the moderate Democrat mainstream.

          • LadyJane says:

            So is your take that libertarianism is just “liberalism but even more so”? Because I’ve heard plenty of liberals say that libertarianism is just “conservatism but even more so.”

            At any rate, part of my problem with the Democratic Party is that they don’t actually do most of the things I mentioned, regardless of whether their platform calls for it or not. (Of course, you could argue that the Libertarian Party would be just as useless if they actually got into power, but we can’t know for sure until they actually win some important seats.)

          • Erusian says:

            So is your take that libertarianism is just “liberalism but even more so”? Because I’ve heard plenty of liberals say that libertarianism is just “conservatism but even more so.”

            So have I. But no, I wouldn’t say that, because the Libertarians have policy positions that so directly contradict the Republican mainstream. And they actually will spend money and votes working to achieve them, including working with Democrats. To name a few, the Republican and Libertarian views on drugs, immigration, criminal enforcement, and the military are all different from the Republican answer.

            So Libertarians have significant things they can point to as differences with the mainstream Republicans. Major issues that contradict the Republican Party Platform.

            Do you have anything like that? Because ‘I want to decrease the military to spend more on welfare instead of raising taxes to spend more on welfare’ doesn’t get anywhere close to the difference between open borders advocates and Trump.

            At any rate, part of my problem with the Democratic Party is that they don’t actually do most of the things I mentioned, regardless of whether their platform calls for it or not. (Of course, you could argue that the Libertarian Party would be just as useless if they actually got into power, but we can’t know for sure until they actually win some important seats.)

            Like I said, this is a ‘Fifty Stalins’ argument. You’re not actually criticizing the Democrats except in that they aren’t Democratic (with a big D) or effective enough. That’s fine as far as it goes. There’s really nothing wrong with being a committed moderate or a Democrat.

    • theredsheep says:

      Could stand to be compacted, though it provides a good general summary of where things stand. I feel that the conclusion she (you?) reach/es is probably not practical, and we’ll wind up with escalating aggression until somebody starts shooting. And then, well, who knows what.

    • Nick says:

      I’ve only just read it, but a few things:
      1) When you mention the 7% polled who want “communism” or “fascism,” how much of that is the Lizardman’s constant?
      2) I know you mention in the next paragraph that the alt-right has different concerns than mainstream conservatism, but it might do to emphasize that in your “united by … ” definition. Like, the alt-right has an indifference at best to the religious right and its concerns, at least as far as policy goes—I know Milo says he’s Catholic, but that doesn’t appear to have a measurable impact on his stances, and I know Bannon is working with Catholic traditionalists in Europe now, but he was as you said non-centrally alt-right and this signals if anything a further departure from American anti-PC provocateurisme*.
      3) My biggest concern here is that you correctly diagnose that the alt-right arose because of establishment failures, but your solution is a step backwards. Yes, liberalism isn’t living up to its own standards, but no movement lives up to its own standards! You’re ultimately judging communism and populism by their realities but liberalism by its ideal; so why wasn’t the problem with communism in Russia that it likewise didn’t have enough communism?

      The difference I take it is that one can show certain problems arise out of communism itself, the way Marx argues capitalism destroys itself I guess. But ever since the 2016 election there has been buzz in the Catholic sphere over just this sort of thing about liberalism. Deneen at Notre Dame wrote a whole book with the thesis that liberalism tends to destroy its own foundations, and Catholic integralists have been advancing similar critiques. Here’s a good intro to the debate between Deneen and the integralist Vermeulle. And here’s a conversation between integralists Vermeulle and Pappin, moderate** Deneen, and classical liberal Munoz at Notre Dame last year; Rod Dreher has a summary up if you prefer text. I’m getting off track here, but the point is that if you want to advance that the solution to liberalism is more liberalism, you need to resolve or do away with the contradictions alleged by Deneen and the like. You mostly admit this at the end, but then you say we don’t need to listen to illiberals. Sorry, but that’s exactly who is making these critiques; there’s no one else to listen to. If you don’t engage arguments like this—as Munoz did in the colloquy above—you’ll only succeed in driving more folks from the center.

      *Do I have the form of this word right? I made it up, but French speakers help me out. Or tell me if there’s a better term for Milo-esque behavior.
      **The moderate in this debate, of course.

      • wunderkin says:

        I’d think that if you’re looking for a way to measure the lizardman constant, asking “do you support fascism” is a pretty solid question to ask.

        • Deiseach says:

          asking “do you support fascism” is a pretty solid question to ask.

          Which variety – Hitler? Mussolini? Salazar? Franco? Salazar seems to have been the most successful, with a “dictatorship lasting 48 years”, and I haven’t heard anybody throwing around Portugal as an example of a Fascist state (or even any awareness that it was a Fascist state) on the same level as Nazi Germany when it comes to making condemnatory comparisons (when was the last time you heard someone say “If things go on like this, the US is going to turn into a dictatorship like Portugal”?), so Salazarian Fascism seems the way to go!

          OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT QUOTE THIS AS ‘OMG, SSC IS OVER-RUN WITH ALT-RIGHT ACTUAL FASCISTS!’

          • theredsheep says:

            Come to think of it, now that people like Bernie are unabashedly calling themselves “socialists” to mean something like “social democrats,” I wonder if “fascist” could see a similar watered-down rebranding?

          • wunderkin says:

            The question is deliberately vague. You’ve also got Argentine Fascism, which actually still has defenders in argentina apparently. Plus you have the a variety of post-colonial governments that, while never explicitly fascist, were nationalist, socialist, secular regimes that used rhetoric not all that different from that of fascists. Pan arabism in particular.

          • Plumber says:

            @theredsheep

            “Come to think of it, now that people like Bernie are unabashedly calling themselves “socialists” to mean something like “social democrats,” I wonder if “fascist” could see a similar watered-down rebranding?”

            Huh, the British Labour Party was still a member of the Socialist International until 2013 (they still send observers), and it was barely Social Democrats, much less for socialist for much of this time, and in the U.S.A. voices on the Right have called modern day Canada and the mid 20th century “socialistic” so much that many millenials we seem to just want the welfare state their parents or grandparents had now call themselves “socialists”, so I may easily imagine enough young people after being called “fascist” for not being left-of-center start to adopt the label themselves.

          • suntzuanime says:

            Yeah, judging Fascism as an ideology by Adolf Hitler’s regime is like judging Communism as an ideology by Pol Pot’s regime – it may be an ideology with serious problems, but those problems aren’t helped by being run by a lunatic with a hard-on for murdering his own people en masse, and things don’t always turn out quite that bad.

          • Guy in TN says:

            One major difference is that “fascist” has been used almost exclusively as a pejorative in the past 50 years, while successful and popular political parties self-describe as “socialist”.

            Remember: its not like Bernie Sanders started describing himself as “socialist” as a reaction to rightwing Obamacare talking points.

      • LadyJane says:

        Really, it comes down to values, goals, and methods.

        I disagree with the far-right in terms of all three. Their values are not my values. I prioritize civil rights, social freedom, methodological individualism, economic prosperity, and technological advancement; they prioritize tradition, unity, communalism, and shared identity. Our values may not quite be diametrically opposed, but they certain conflict in a number of obvious and not-so-obvious ways, which makes it difficult or outright impossible to find common ground with them or reach any sort of compromise. So in my view, they are the enemy.

        I agree with the far-left in terms of values, but still disagree with their goals and methods. They’re humanists, they’re egalitarians, they’re utilitarians, so far so good. But their objective is to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a socialist or communist system, and that’s where I part ways with them. They adamantly believe that destroying capitalism will bring about a society where the majority of people are freer and more prosperous; I adamantly believe it will do the exact opposite. So I see them as ideological enemies too, but they’re well-intentioned enemies who I have sympathy for, at least until they start shouting about how the kulaks deserved to be exterminated.

        With liberals, I agree with their values and their goals, I just disagree with their methods. I would love for every country on Earth to be a prosperous capitalist liberal democracy, just like they would. The difference is, I don’t think invading foreign nations, interfering in civil wars, and supporting third-world dictators is a good strategy for achieving that goal. So I don’t really see them as ideological enemies at all, just as very misguided allies. Fundamentally, I’m still a liberal at heart, just a liberal who’s deeply upset about how the liberal establishment has chosen to pursue its goals.

        • Deiseach says:

          social freedom

          Depending if I’m understanding this correctly, social freedom is all very well until it comes to where the 0.001% of the population can hold the rest to ransom by screaming about being disrespected and oppressed, and that is just as much imposed unity of thought as any traditional, communal society. If “we’re socially free because everyone is free to live in the way they choose and hold their own beliefs, as long of course as none of those beliefs come under the headings of this long list of hate speech”, then you have a social imposition of shared identity, like it or lump it.

      • LadyJane says:

        As for the traditionalist Catholics, I simply didn’t consider them relevant enough to include in the article. There are plenty of ideologies opposed to all three of the groups I mentioned. I brought up libertarianism because that’s the most popular one, but there are dozens of others, from the hard greens and primitivists to the third positionists and national Bolsheviks to techno-monarchists and accelerationists. But most of them aren’t particularly important, at least not in the context of U.S. politics.

        Things might be different in Europe, but TradCaths are an extreme minority in North America. The Religious Right is almost entirely comprised of Evangelicals here, and they don’t exactly mesh with TradCaths, partially because they’re hardcore millenarians and TradCaths are reflexively opposed to millenarian ideologies, and partially for the simpler reason that a lot of them are bigoted against Catholics. The majority of North American Catholics are either liberals or mainstream conservatives. At most, they’ll side with the Evangelicals against abortion and LGBT rights (and not so much that second one anymore, slightly under 2/3rds of American Catholics are now supportive of gay marriage), but they’re not really a political force in their own right.

        • Nick says:

          That’s fine for a fringe position like integralism, but Deneen is your real opponent here, which is why I focused on him. He, like many such critics, thinks liberalism’s problems are coming from within. The way I see it, you’re diagnosing the symptoms of liberalism’s malaise, but not the disease, and plausibly that’s why you don’t know how to proceed. Deneen’s offering a diagnosis, and one that isn’t just ‘liberalism is insufficiently Catholic,’ so it’s in your interest to engage with him, rather than dismissing him as a far-right enemy.

          • LadyJane says:

            I haven’t read Deneen’s book, so I might be missing out on some of the nuances in his argument. But going by the links you provided, he’s basically just making the same arguments that paleo-conservatives have been making since the 50s: social liberalism and unrestrained capitalism are destroying traditional values, tearing apart communities, and turning people into miserable atomized consumers with no concern for anything but their own immediate desires. The solution is to reject the centralized authority of governments and corporations in favor of socially conservative communitarian localism. Deneen is smart enough to ascribe the problem to perverse systemic incentives, rather than claiming that it’s a result of deliberate malice by some conspiracy of (coastal elites/secular academics/rootless cosmopolitans/cultural Marxists), but otherwise I don’t see his view as being all that different from the Pat Buchanan types. That said, it’s a very strong argument for that view, so I will give him credit for that, even if I still strongly disagree with him.

            As for why I think that view is largely misguided and wrong, I’ve gone over my reasons in plenty of other SSC threads, and I’ll probably include those counter-arguments in a follow-up article on Medium.

          • Plumber says:

            @LadyJane

            “I haven’t read Deneen’s book..”

            Neither have I

            “….he’s basically just making the same arguments that paleo-conservatives have been making since the 50s

            1950′? Who said that then?

            “…social liberalism…”

            Does that mean voting rights and fuller citizenship for black Americans, after which other Americans decided to dismantle the welfare state? 

            The end of Jim Crow and the rest of the ‘Great Society’ was a good thing, the backlash wasn’t. 

            Or do you mean legalized abortion? 

            No fault divorce?  

            Something else?

            “…and unrestrained capitalism are destroying traditional values, tearing apart communities, and turning people into miserable atomized consumers with no concern for anything but their own immediate desires..”

            .Well yes, but I suspect those things contribute to the “I got mine Jack” ethos which feeds the cycle

            “…The solution is to reject the centralized authority of governments…”

            Why? 

            Use government to restrain capitalism instead, and help build communities.

            “…and corporations..”

            Regulating corporations sounds good

            “….in favor of socially conservative communitarian localism…”

            What does that mean?

            If that means rejecting the divorce revolution then that sounds good, if it means rejecting the industrial revolution that divides parents from their children then that sounds even better! 

            Bring on William Morris’s dream! 

            (I won’t hold my breath waiting though, “cause the revolution was supposed to have happened in 1952)

          • LadyJane says:

            The John Birch Society has been making arguments like that since 1958, and I’m sure the sentiments go back even further.

            By social liberalism I mean: secularism, racial/ethnic/religious equality, egalitarian gender norms, widespread access to contraception, sexual freedom, social and legal tolerance of LGBT lifestyles, social and possibly legal acceptance of recreational/psychedelic drug use, and the general sentiments that 1.) people should be treated as individuals rather than collectively pre-judged on the basis of traits like race and sex, 2.) people should be free to do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone else, and 3.) we should have a culture that allows and encourages people to express their individuality. And yes, legalized abortion and no fault divorce would be an inherent part of that.

            “The solution” I mentioned wasn’t my solution, it was the proposed solution of paleo-conservative thinkers like Deneen. They almost always think the solution is to shift power down from the federal government to state governments and municipal governments, with the expectation that this will lead to a resurgence of socially conservative communitarianism.

            People having been talking about reversing the Industrial Revolution since the Industrial Revolution happened. It goes a lot further back than 1952! But I agree that you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting, they’ve been saying “any day now” for the past 150+ years.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @LadyJane

            You’re confounding communitarianism with anti-industrialism and social repression, which is not politically inaccurate but also doesn’t follow. The problem of the death of community seems to me mostly orthogonal to the question of liberal governance, unless you’re proposing a sort of anti-Confucian social liberalism in which there are no norms or social structures (aside from a universal acceptance of the value of freedom) from the Emperor President on down to the family, only people standing alone screaming into the void.

          • LadyJane says:

            I don’t think communitarianism and social conservatism have to go hand-in-hand, there are socially liberal variants of communitarianism too. I was just pointing out that paleo-conservatives tend to support both. And Plumber was the one who brought up anti-industrialism, although I’ve noticed a lot of paleo-cons tend to be at least mildly anti-industial too. (That’s not always the case; I’ve known a few paleo-cons who were outright technophiles, but they’re rare.)

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            Fair.

            If you plan to argue against the communitarian position it would be nice to see the liberal communitarians treated as well as the conservatives.

          • Deiseach says:

            social and legal tolerance of LGBT lifestyles

            But it’s gone from tolerance, tolerance is no longer enough. This person’s plaint had me eye-rolling all the way through, but especially at this part:

            I’ve handed out literature about my life and asked for questions and feedback, never receiving a single one. I’ve written and distributed “family newsletters” explaining the details of my life in lighthearted, accessible ways, and then spent days by the phone waiting for inquisitive calls that never came.

            You see? You’re not allowed to just mind your own business, or even “okay I got it”, you have to make A Big Deal out of rushing out to gush over what a wunnerful, wunnerful person they are. Now, someone may be entitled to expect that of their family (personally, I think if your family don’t want to know intrusive details of your private life that is their perogative as well) but they sure can’t expect it of a random person in the street.

            And yet.

            True allies do not merely “tolerate” someone’s gender identity, sexual orientation, or life choices. “Tolerance” is not the same thing as unconditional love, support, and protection, and trust me, marginalized people all know the difference.

            You are entitled to not be harassed. You are not entitled to my personal attention and unconditional approval. And in a truly socially free society, this would be accepted. But it won’t be, and I don’t think this is anything more than the normal human instinct to impose conditions to live by. There won’t ever be the Utopia of “live and let live”, censorship remains, it’s just that the books now being banned have different content to the ones that were banned under the previous dispensation.

        • people should be free to do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone else

          That is not the (modern) liberal position, unless you define “hurting” broadly enough to include “not helping.”

          If it were, modern liberals would be opposed to minimum wage laws, regulation of medical drugs, medical licensing, laws against discrimination, … . But those are things which they are the chief supporters of.

          • Statismagician says:

            I think a synthesis can be accomplished if we posit that professional politicians are primarily interested in being re-elected and that the median voter doesn’t know anything about systems economics, neither of which seem controversial.

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        I agree broadly with this critique. I also think that it’s orthogonal to liberalism.

        As Deneen says, we can’t go back. No way out but through. And every time we’ve tried to formulate collective values under an atmosphere of bloody repression it’s turned into a nightmare later down the line. We haven’t really tried to formulate them under liberalism yet. Why not try?

    • wunderkin says:

      Of course, one of the biggest reasons that people lost trust in the political establishment is because it doesn’t deserve their trust. The Bush administration lied to the American public to lead us into a disastrous war under false pretenses, with the support of Democratic politicians and liberal media establishments. The Obama administration continued the previous administration’s wars and got us involved in several new ones. Both administrations engaged in borderline illegal surveillance policies, and in the blatantly illegal practice of detaining suspected terrorists without due process. On the economic front, Bush-era deregulations led to an financial collapse, and the Obama administration’s response to the crisis was to bail out the banking firms responsible.

      The Bush administration didn’t lie, they were wrong. There was certainly nothing blatantly illegal about detaining enemy combatants. The bush administration didn’t de-regulate anything, it oversaw the two largest expansions in backing regulation in decades, sarbanes oxely and basel III. The banks weren’t responsible for the financial crisis.

      The article is replete with these sorts of errors, these are just an example. It’s hard to take the arguments of people seriously when they demonstrate that they are incapable of separating fact from congenially colored fictions.

    • Plumber says:

      @Lady Jane, 

      Interesting to read another generations take on things, thanks for that.

      A couple of responses to some things:

      “…Some leftists will respond that the government would create new housing, but if that’s a possibility, then why doesn’t the government just do that now instead of abolishing rent?….”

      Once upon a time the government did “create new housing”, I lived in what was called “Public Housing” as a small child, and it still exists in a diminished form today, before his death my Dad still lived in a public housing complex in 2017.

      Most commenters describe public housing as “awful”, but I judge it better than all the tent encampments that have sprouted up in the last few years.

      “…It’s also telling that ‘liberal’ has become a dirty word among the far-leftists…”

      This isn’t new, I remember the “adults” who described themselves as ‘leftists’ in the ’70’s doing the same, as they listened to Phil Ochs sing in a 1966 record album:

      “…Sure, once I was young and impulsive; 
      I wore every conceivable pin,
      Even went to Socialist meetings, 
      learned all the old Union hymns.
      Ah, but I’ve grown older and wiser, 
      and that’s why I’m turning you in.
      So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal”

      It was only with the election of Reagan that I stop hearing ‘leftists’ slam “liberals” and start to say things like “If I only knew it would be worse after Johnson”, then right-wing talk radio starting slamming “liberals” when few called themselves that anymore, just “moderates” and “progressives”.

      • Most commenters describe public housing as “awful”, but I judge it better than all the tent encampments that have sprouted up in the last few years.

        How did it compare with the low income housing that was cleared by urban renewal for public housing–and other things–to be built on?

        • brad says:

          I can’t speak to San Fransisco, but in NYC the public housing projects are a mixed bag.

          The crime rate in them is now way down from its peak. A lot of potential factors there, but one I think isn’t talked about much is the aging of the population that lives in them.

          The rents paid by residents are much cheaper than anything available in the open market. That’s true even for one bedrooms (there are no studios) but even more so for multi-bedroom units.

          The physical conditions of the buildings and the apartments are as bad or worse than anything the private market has to offer. Stories about long standing holes in ceilings / floors, lack of heat, broken appliances, unlit hallways, etc. are legion. The repair backlog totals billions of dollars. It doesn’t help that staff doing these repairs are members of a very strong union.

          My biggest problem with public housing, vouchers, rent control, and affordable unit set asides (i.e. the entirety of the urban affordable housing policy set) is that it picks winners and losers. Rather than making things a little better for everyone they give windfalls to some and nothing to many others. I’d much rather see policies put in place designed to lower housing costs for everyone, or at least everyone that’s poor.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            My biggest problem with public housing, vouchers, rent control, and affordable unit set asides (i.e. the entirety of the urban affordable housing policy set) is that it picks winners and losers. Rather than making things a little better for everyone they give windfalls to some and nothing to many others. I’d much rather see policies put in place designed to lower housing costs for everyone, or at least everyone that’s poor.

            Very nice Brad. I agree totally.

        • Plumber says:

          @DavidFriedman

          “How did it compare with the low income housing that was cleared by urban renewal for public housing–and other things–to be built on?”

          Before my time, but from what I’ve read and heard the old “Fillmore” district in San Francisco was better than the post ‘urban renewal’ one.

        • Statismagician says:

          How did it compare with the low income housing that was cleared by urban renewal for public housing–and other things–to be built on?

          Poorly, at least in my area (although I live in Saint Louis, which is on the extreme side of poor public housing decisions).

    • Guy in TN says:

      …Many of these self-proclaimed socialists don’t actually want to dismantle capitalism, they merely want a proper healthcare system, better-funded schools, a stronger social safety net, an infrastructure that isn’t falling apart, and all the other benefits of European-style welfare capitalism…

      …Another popular far-left slogan is “nationalize Amazon.” What would happen if the U.S. federal government actually did so? Well, under current law, it would have to compensate the shareholders for the value of their company, so the government would be down a trillion dollars that it could’ve used to improve the lives of its citizens. ..

      I can only assume the author is utterly unaware of the history of state-owned enterprises in the Nordics. When the left advocates for “European style” system, they aren’t talking about the UK or France, they are talking about the Nordic system, which achieved its welfare state by nationalizing many of their major industries in this very way.

      • LadyJane says:

        There are different meanings of the term “nationalization.” Specifically, there’s a huge difference between the government owning a controlling stock in publicly traded companies, as in Norway, and the kind of direct state (or popular) control over industries that the socialists are calling for. Capitalism is maintained under the Nordic model, the state is simply another major shareholder. You can argue that it’s market interference that goes against the laissez-faire principles of a pure free-market approach, but it’s far from the central planning seen in actual socialist/communist nations.

        • Guy in TN says:

          Specifically, there’s a huge difference between the government owning a controlling stock in publicly traded companies, as in Norway, and the kind of direct state (or popular) control over industries that the socialists are calling for.

          I’m trying to understand how this needle threads. Is the author’s position (and I’m presuming yours), that controlling Amazon by buying >50% of the shares could be a good thing, but controlling it by buying 100% of the company would be bad?

          • LadyJane says:

            I think they would both be very bad. But I also think that quasi-nationalization through government shareholding is a lot less bad than total nationalization.

            I don’t think the Nordic model is perfect or that we should adopt all of the same policies as Norway. The country has some policies that are just bad, same as any other. It also has some policies that work well there, but would turn out badly if implemented here. The point of the article is not to endorse the Nordic model, it’s the condemn the ridiculous conflation of the Nordic model with the Venezuelan model or the Cuban model or the Soviet model.

            The way Americans view Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is akin to looking at the color spectrum, drawing a line somewhere in the yellow-green range, and saying “everything to the left of this line is red, everything to the right of this line is blue.”

          • Guy in TN says:

            Your position is coherent, at least. If you don’t want to implement the Nordic model, then you have no reason to support state ownership. The author sends mixed messages, however.

            The way Americans view Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is akin to looking at the color spectrum, drawing a line somewhere in the yellow-green range, and saying “everything to the left of this line is red, everything to the right of this line is blue.”

            I don’t know what we are even measuring here, we use the terms “capitalist” and “socialist” to mean so many different things. I think it is equally misleading to say “Norway is socialist, like the USSR” as it would be to say “Norway is capitalist, like the United States”.

            I find these terms generally create more heat than light, and I’m not insisting on a particular definition. If you want to say that the state owning 60% of the nation’s wealth is “capitalist”, that’s fine with me- it only help normalize my preferred economic system in the discourse.

        • baconbits9 says:

          Capitalism is maintained in the Nordic model because they have state ownership in things that operate under a capitalistic system. If all states went to that model then the markets that the Nordics rely on would likely be far less efficient.

  31. Baeraad says:

    Browsing the recent threads, I found I had been mentioned in my absence.

    Specifically, it seems like “free speech culture” is inherently self-contradictory, because it prioritizes the free speech of the first person to comment on a particular issue, while socially discouraging the free speech of responders. (Baeraad was willing to bite the bullet and say that he cares about “free argument” more than free speech per se, but I haven’t seen anyone else willing to openly take such a position, and it seems incredible bizarre to me.)

    Unique and bizarre. That’s me. *sighs*

    I feel I should mention that 1) the whole “free argument” thing was me building on something someone else had said, and 2) I wasn’t being 100% serious. But just to make my stance entirely clear, let me explain three different positions: the one I don’t hold but like the idea of, the one I’d like to hold, and then the I reluctantly feel I must hold in this imperfect world.

    What I half-jokingly suggested

    What @LadyJane was referring to in that comment, as near as I can recall, was me suggesting that perhaps speech should be divided into arguments (which anyone would be allowed to counter by other arguments) and expression (which would be forbidden to counter except by other expression). So if a Christian were to say that atheists were a bunch of poopy-heads, it would be perfectly all right for an atheist to respond that nuh-uh, that’s not true, and also Christians are totally the real poopy-heads, so there! But if a Christian wrote a novel in which all the atheist characters just so happened to turn out to be poopy-heads, atheists would not be allowed to clutch their pearls and claim persecution. If they wanted to counter it, they would need to write their own novels in which all the Christian characters just so happened to turn out to be poopy-heads.

    To me, the benefit of this is obvious: it would prevent assholes from shitting over every single thing I tried to like. It would actually be possible, once more, to be a fan of something without constantly being told either that it was Problematic or that it was Pandering To SJWs (or sometimes both). This would do wonders for my mental health, because it would mean I could actually relax and enjoy something without always having to steel myself for the inevitable cry of “you are BAD for enjoying that!”

    But I don’t think it is possible to implement it in practice. There would be too many grey areas.

    What I actually want (but I know I ain’t gonna get it)

    Wall-to-wall censorship of hateful assholes.

    Yep. Far from wanting to protect only “the first person to comment on an issue,” I want that person to also shut their big, stupid mouth if all they’re going to do is insult someone. As I see it, all the practical benefits of free speech (spreading good ideas and combating bad ones, giving each person the dignity to speak their mind) have been rendered moot by the sheer mass of communication going on in the Internet age (good ideas, if indeed any still exist, are drowned out by verbose idiocy; and there is no dignity in having to listen to a thousand psychopaths burbling “beta faggot cuuuuuuck!!!” at you all at once). Enough, I say! We have proven ourselves to be idiot children, so let’s have some adults force us to be nice to one another and stick to the officially approved truths.

    Or I would say that… if there was a chance that the supposed adults would extend this protection to everyone. Sadly, that will not happen. If a program of Correct Thought was put into place, it would follow the current conventional wisdom that straight white men need no protection and that, in fact, it is absolutely necessary for them to be endlessly badmouthed and verbally abused. Well, guess what? This particular straight white man DOES need protection! This particular straight white man can barely get out of bed in the morning because he knows he’ll face a constant barrage of reminders that the world hates him and wants him to die!

    Thus:

    What I’m reluctantly forced to ask for

    Near-perfect freedom of speech. I am actually as on board with this as the staunchest libertarian – I’m just not enthusiastic about it, or believe that it will lead to anything good. In fact, I feel convinced that freedom of speech leads to nothing but suffering – but right now, suffering is what all the loudmouths deserve, and as long as they are all suffering equally there is the chance, the tiniest little chance, that they’ll eventually realise that this sucks and that they’ll need to negotiate some sort of compromise whereby we all agree to not shout out our most hateful and entitled feelings all the time. Whereas if we just silenced half the people, the other half would make sure that their dominion lasted for ever and ever.

    And, even sadder but just as true: as long as people have the right to hurt me, I need the right to cry out in pain. I hate the fact that people are allowed to shame and debase me, and I would gladly gag myself for life if it meant that they could no longer do so – but when being shamed and debased, it makes it feel just a miniscule bit better when you’re allowed to respond with some version of “fuck you!” without being hypocritically accused of hate speech.

    I’m sure that this seems just as bizarre to everyone, but I hope it at least clears up what my priorities are.

    • Aging Loser says:

      The main problem is that we can’t see the facial expressions of people who post conversationally informal comments, and they can’t see the facial expressions of the people to whom they imagine they’re speaking. Facial expressions usually subtly indicate non-hostility, so in their absence writing looks hostile unless it’s carefully formulated in a non-conversational way or is so exaggeratedly aggressive that it’s obviously offered with semi-humorous intent. (Same with vocal tone, shrugs, hand-gestures, etc.)

      • Well... says:

        Time to beta test a feature where every comment, in order to be submitted, must be accompanied by an emoji chosen from a large menu that spans the entire breadth of human emotion and disposition with plenty of redundancy.

        Seriously, I think this is probably the function served by GIF memes: they’re a shorthand way to communicate the emotional context of a verbal statement the same way tone of voice, facial expression, or body language normally would in meatspace. (Although memes are currently almost exclusively used to convey some form of levity, this need not always be the case.)

        • Hoopyfreud says:

          a large menu that spans the entire breadth of human emotion and disposition with plenty of redundancy.

          Good luck

        • AG says:

          Gaming this kind of system is how eggplant emoji happened, and 🙂 gained connotations of sarcasm/passive-aggressiveness. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

          EDIT: Oh good god that emoji conversion is hideous. WordPress why. >:|

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      There are a non-trivial number of people in the world that are more offended by unconventional ‘statements of fact’ or presumed fact then they are direct/overt insults leveled at other people. And given people’s penchant for self-deception, a statement of fact that meets that criteria can be interpreted as an insult. [Thus off-limits]

    • LadyJane says:

      Well, thanks for clarifying what you meant. Your idea seems strange to other people because it’s designed to optimize “making it less acceptable to offend you, personally,” which is not really anyone else’s priority with regards to social norms. It reminds me of this image, except with social acceptability standards instead of property rights.

      It would actually be possible, once more, to be a fan of something without constantly being told either that it was Problematic or that it was Pandering To SJWs (or sometimes both).

      Does it only bother you if this happens for political reasons, or does it bother you when people insult things you like for non-political reasons too? If it’s the former, then I can certainly understand your frustration with the Culture War, but I think you’re getting a little too caught up on a fairly minor aspect of it. If it’s the latter, then I’d say you’re getting way too worked up about your tastes and interests. I liked the Star Wars prequels and people used to insult them all the time, I remember getting into huge internet debates about those movies back in the early 2000s, and I didn’t take it as a personal offense when people bitched about how much they sucked.

      • suntzuanime says:

        Liberalism is what you get when people who all want ills not to be visited on them personally get together and decide that ills should not be visited on people as a whole. I agree to prioritize Baeraad’s well-being and he agrees to prioritize mine and we both end up better off for it. It’s not a bizarre idea, it’s how Western Civilization is supposed to function.

        It breaks down when you get a group of people who say “actually instead of respecting this person’s rights we can do as we please and we’re powerful enough collectively not to fear the consequences”. This is what Culture War ultimately boils down to, people deciding that they can force people to optimize for not offending them without avoiding giving offense in turn, and tearing up the truce that was liberal social norms.

        • LadyJane says:

          Yes, the bizarre part is that Baeraad has rather different standards than most about what would constitute an ill against him. I know he was half-kidding, but most people don’t consider “people insulting books/movies/games that I like” to be such a serious offense to warrant a rule against responding to art with argument. Hence why such a standard is only useful for preventing him from being offended; most people just wouldn’t care that much in the first place.

  32. Angel says:

    Does anyone have experience with maladaptive daydreaming?

    Reading some personal cases, I have begun to be more vigilant to my thoughts and the ways I structure them. For example, this blogger (Eretaia) says that, for people who daydream excessively, fantasy is like a canvas where they express their emotions.
    Analyzing how I think on a daily basis, I am impressed of how much I do this. Everytime I try to think about something (an opinion, an idea, an emotion…) I instantly create a fantasy where I express it. It is difficult for my to not express my internal dialogue in this way. The more I notice this the more I relate to the idea that Eretaia argues in their posts: doing this creates a separation in the self. Because the person you are in your dreams is different from you, they don’t have your traumas, limitations or experiences. So slowly this causes a feel of detachment from you and from the real world.
    It is a very frustrating feeling. Sometimes I feel sick of how little time I am in this world and how much time I spend in fantasys. It is like being disconnected constantly.

    I’m still skeptical, because maybe this is a normal human experience. So I wanted to ask you how do you experience this, if you do.

    • March says:

      Data point: I do not have that.

      I definitely have a penchant for daydreaming in the ‘stop paying attention to the environment and become lost in thought, especially if there’s not much going on to focus on’ sense, but that doesn’t result in fantasies the way you describe. Doesn’t happen when I try to think things through either.

    • Mr. Doolittle says:

      I have often experienced this, but it seems far less and fading as I get older. Also, my “fantasies” are much more mundane than they used to be, where now I imagine scenarios of how to answer tricky questions that might be posed to me at work…

    • Aging Loser says:

      I do that sort of thing a lot, Angel, but my imaginary listeners are usually real people and often I’m defending/explaining my bad behavior to them. Or are real people who I think that it would be nice to share ideas with — who wouldn’t be as interested in real life in my ideas as I wish they’d be.

      Probably idea-novelists such as Dostoevsky do this. Maybe you should write an idea-novel — of course, you might be doing so already, or might already have written three or four.

    • Well... says:

      My daughter does this all the time, like at least 30 minutes a day and often far more than that. She’ll actually sit there narrating long rambling stories in kind of a murmur to herself, often with herself as the protagonist, referring to herself in the third person. She plays with toys and things while she does it, so she’s probably using them to act out the stories a bit.

      But she’s five so it might be pretty normal. Does anyone know? If so, then at what age are kids supposed to grow out of it?

    • fion says:

      I think I do this, but your description sounds more like what I experience than the first two paragraphs of the wiki article do. I view it as a positive or neutral thing, though. I use imagined conversations to clarify my thoughts around a philosophical or political issue or practise an interaction which will happen in the future. Or just explore something that might be fun. I’ll sometimes spend half an hour a day for weeks imagining my life playing out if I just met myself from the future, or something equally silly.

      Actually, thinking about it, the “practise an interaction which will happen in the future” is probably negative, because it fuels anxiety and possibly makes it easier to put off the interaction from happening.

      • futatsuiwa says:

        I think the “maladaptive” part is really open to interpretation, it seems more like an adaptive thing to me, even in the latter case.

        Practicing an interaction is kind of similar to a creative fantasy – it’s creating a new pathway in the brain for that particular thing. Instead of just writing/drawing/creating from the void, there is something in your brain to use as a blueprint for it.

        Similarly for the interaction case, you have at least a basic script to go off of. The worst case is that it veers off-course and you’re back at square one where you are interacting purely in the moment.

        Not that it can’t take a maladaptive direction if you’re always looking for negatives, but I think it’s generally a positive thing, or starts out as such.

        • Angel says:

          Since I’m more aware of my day-dreams I’ve used them to be a little better in conversations. I’m not very good finding topics to talk at the moment, so going as you describe (building a basic script as a support) sometimes help. As long as it doesn’t become in something that hurts you in some way, visualization can be really helpful.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      See, I’d call this Walter Mitty syndrome, and I’d say I have a bit of it, but this is alien to me:

      Everytime I try to think about something (an opinion, an idea, an emotion…) I instantly create a fantasy where I express it. It is difficult for my to not express my internal dialogue in this way.

      This seems very abnormal. I do not know anyone who has an internal dialogue like this. The closest I think normal folk come to this is imaginary arguments in the bathroom that they fully except not to happen in the real world.

    • bullseye says:

      I daydream about explaining stuff to people all the time; typically something I read that I’m interested in. I usually don’t envision any specific person I’m talking to.

      I don’t recall ever actually explaining something to someone in the way that I daydream about.

  33. niohiki says:

    On the issue of comment order on a per-post basis (for Scott, and whoever is interested!).

    I downloaded the Pujugama theme for a test. Turns out you can get the behaviour you want (oldest first for normal content, newest first for OT) changing just one line in the
    wp-content/themes/comments.php
    file. Somewhere in there you must have something like

    wp_list_comments( array( ‘callback’ => ‘pujugama_comment’ ) );

    unless there has been some very heavy modification. If you change it to

    wp_list_comments( array( ‘callback’ => ‘pujugama_comment’, ‘reverse_top_level’ => has_tag( ‘open’ ) ) );

    it will make posts tagged with ‘open’ (you may want to check the case) reverse the top level comments, just as wanted.

    I have tested this in the base Pujugama theme (as from here), and maybe your modified version requires some extra tuning to work, but I’d guess not that much. We can talk it over mail if you want, I’m happy to lend a hand.

    • Scott Alexander says:

      God bless you!

      • niohiki says:

        Well, no, thank you for the blog! I’m just glad to give a small contribution after everything I’ve taken from it over years!

        I also tried a very-slightly more elaborate solution, similar but also adding a small “Reverse order” link under the header “# responses to…”, so that readers can choose whatever they fancy best, after your default setup.

        You would need to place this

        <div style="margin: 1ex; margin-bottom: 3ex; text-align: right;"><a href="?<?php
        echo isset($_GET["reverseComments"]) ? '' : '?reverseComments';
        ?>#comments">Reverse order</a></div>

        just after the

        <h3 id="comments-title"> [...] </h3>

        block at the beginning of comments.php (this is the part that creates the “# responses to…” header). That code creates the “Reverse order” link, that links to the page itself plus a URL parameter reverseComments. Then, the actual comment list creation needs to be

        $reverse = has_tag( 'open' ) ^ isset($_GET["reverseComments"]);
        wp_list_comments( array( 'callback' => 'pujugama_comment', 'reverse_top_level' => $reverse ) );

        to take that parameter into account.

        I just copypasted from my comments.php, so again proceed with caution, and if more help is needed just ask.

        Also, if you end up thinking of something better (not unlikely), just write it on the next OT and I’ll see what I can do!

        EDIT: Tried to fix a bit the code presentation, but I should have thought before that it was going to be a disaster in the middle of a comment section. You may want to paste it somewhere else before reading it.

  34. Scott Alexander says:

    Predictions on the government shutdown?

    1. Will still be shutdown on Feb 1st?
    2. Will still be shutdown on Mar 1st?
    3. Will still be shutdown on April 1st?
    4. Shutdown ends when the Senate agrees to a budget without Trump and overrides his veto?
    5. Trump gets more than half of the $5.7 billion he wants for the wall?

    I’m naively going with 60%, 20%, 5%, 25%, 20%, but not really based on any good understanding of what’s happening.

    It’s hard for me to imagine how this shutdown ends. Trump’s strategy has always been to please his base and screw everyone else, and his base really likes the idea of him being the guy who never backs down. And he’s built a whole image of himself as a tough deal-maker, so it would be humiliating for him to blink first. And I don’t think he loses much sleep over federal employees.

    But the Democrats’ base is also obsessed with the idea of them being “strong” and standing up to Trump, and not having a border wall is a sacred value to them worth an infinite amount of money. There are probably some Democrats losing a little sleep over federal employees, but I don’t think they’ll blink first either.

    And the last few elections have proven that Republican senators who defy Trump get voted out. I don’t think most of them really care one way or the other, but I think they’ll want to save their own skins, and that the optics of the GOP Senate overruling a popular (among the GOP) president – just as he looks like he’s trying the “stand up to the liberals” thing the GOP base feels like no conservative ever tries – would be awful.

    I can sort of imagine maybe some deal where the Democrats throw some bones to border security short of a full wall, Trump promises to respect DACA or something else Democrats want, and both sides say the other has fallen for their ruse and that’s what they wanted all along, but it would have to be really carefully planned for nobody to lose face.

    • BBA says:

      The most likely scenario I can think of is a few centrist House Dems sign a Republican discharge petition to reopen the government with wall funding. And even that’s extremely unlikely, in the next few weeks anyway.

    • ManyCookies says:

      Trump’s been getting the blame thus far, so unless that changes the Republicans probably need to blink before stuff like food stamps start shutting down. I’d be pretty surprised if got to that point (in March), but who knows.

      But the Democrats’ base is also obsessed with the idea of them being “strong” and standing up to Trump

      That’s a part of it. But even if the shutdown wasn’t over a big ideological issue, isn’t the correct Democrat political strategy just to hang tight? Like if Trump’s holding the government hostage and getting the blame for the effects, why would the Democrats back down?

      • Scott Alexander says:

        I think for “the blame” to work, it has to come from some hypothetical centrist who would like you if you weren’t to blame, but doesn’t like you if you are to blame. I think there are few such people remaining, and that Trump doesn’t care about them.

        The only reason for Democrats to back down is the suspicion that Trump may be a completely “irrational” actor who will just never reopen the government unless he gets what he wants (“irrational” used in quotation marks because this could be a winning strategy), and who can deal with the blame he gets for this the same way he deals with the blame he gets for all the other things people blame him for.

        • BBA says:

          Right now the word on the Democratic street is that Trump is irrational in the sense that he may agree to a deal, then renege when it comes time to sign the bill. This is their narrative on how the shutdown started (back in December, when the House was still under Republican control): there was an agreement on a budget without wall funding, it passed the Senate unanimously, then Trump got cold feet at the last minute. Now, they argue, who’s to say it won’t happen again? If they give him $5B, will he just dig in his heels and demand $10B?

          Now I don’t know if this is properly modeling Trump’s behavior, but it explains why even centrist Democrats have been holding firm so far. That, and seeing the wall as a giant middle finger pointed towards them. (Which it is.)

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            Your last line I think is the more relevant. They can win huge political points if they offer to compromise and Trump reneges. Trump looks unstable, irrational, and like a spoiled baby if he does that. They will lose tons of political points if they simply offer to compromise (by funding the wall) and Trump accepts.

          • David Speyer says:

            Is there any conservative rebuttal I should have read to articles like https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/4/18168652/shutdown-border-immigration-wall-daca ? We’ve had a lot of negotiations now where Democrats thought they had secured majors concessions on dreamers or legal immigration in exchange for wall funding, only to be told there was no deal after all.

        • Dan L says:

          I think for “the blame” to work, it has to come from some hypothetical centrist who would like you if you weren’t to blame, but doesn’t like you if you are to blame. I think there are few such people remaining, and that Trump doesn’t care about them.

          Counterpoint: Trump’s net approval is down about five points in the past month – that’s a metric that’s ranged from about -10 to -20 over the last two years. If that trend continues for a few more weeks, it’ll be interesting to see if McConnell is still willing to go to bat to save Trump’s face.

      • albatross11 says:

        I think a likely long-term effect is damage to the Republican party’s reputation, causing it trouble in future elections. But Trump cares very little about that–he has no particular commitment to the Republican party or its future.

        My general take is that this is a battle over the 2020 elections. The last thing the Democrats want is for Trump to be able to point to a victory and claim to have started “building the wall,” even if the wall amounts to extending an already-existing system of fences another 10 miles. Trump very much wants to be able to point to such a victory. Neither side cares overmuch about what happens to federal employees or the effectiveness and function of the federal government. (The Democrats would care if they were getting blamed, but since Trump’s getting the blame, it’s not a huge deal to them.).

        Having a multi-month government shutdown will do a hell of a lot of damage, but very little of it will be photogenic damage that works well for TV news or Twitter memes, so it probably won’t become much of an issue. (Hey, the most employable, highest-value 20% of federal employees have all left, and new high-value employees are no longer interested in a federal job that has lower salaries than industry but now doesn’t offer job security or stability. I wonder if maybe it makes organizations work less well when the best 1/5 of their workforce goes away and is replaced by second-raters.).

        • Plumber says:

          @albatross11

          “….Neither side cares overmuch about what happens to federal employees or the effectiveness and function of the federal government…”

          I know it’s only a partial shutdown but except for checks written to old people, their physicians and nursing homes, the Coast Guard, and overseas military bases, there just isn’t much Federal government that I see left, the big public works projects of the 20th century are no more, and the nearby Army and Navy bases were shuttered in the ’90’s, the State of California already runs the “Obamacare” exchanges, there’s Medi-Cal instead of Medi-Caid, and Cal-OSHA instead of the Feds, I’m not sure what the role of the Federal government is anymore, and during these periodic times when the Federal government seems to have dissolved itself, when I hear what it does do that isn’t being done, it seems to me that the State of California can do those functions, about the only thing that can’t be done is keep other States from sending pollution (acid rain, run-offs, et cetera) from crossing State lines.

          When I’ve read about how weak Fed-OSHA is in enforcement it barely seems to exist anyway, if Where-be-Dragons, Dixie decides to not govern themselves to post New Deal/Great Society standards and become Hellscapes, or if Utah decides to establish a State church, let ’em, “laboratories of democracy” and all that.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        I don’t think “blame” alone measures the effect of the shutdown. I blame Trump for the shutdown, but I approve of the shutdown.

        • albatross11 says:

          So, it seems like the result of a long shutdown is likely to be wasting a ton of money and making the government less efficient by getting rid of its most productive and mobile employees. I can see why you might see this as a cost worth paying for some political goal, but it’s hard to see how it could be a worthwhile goal in itself.

          I mean, we can break this into two situations:

          a. Everyone gets back pay for the furlough. In this case, the taxpayers have spent a pile of money getting the feds to not work. It’s hard to see any way this could make sense. I’m sure some fair fraction of what the feds are doing is dumb, and some is actively counterproductive[1], but assuming the shutdown doesn’t run forever, all that stuff will resume eventually. And there’s also stuff that’s valuable but hard to see, like public health and funding research.

          b. Nobody but the critical workers (who had to work without pay) gets back pay. The federal government loses most of its employees who have any alternatives, and takes a hit to its performance that’s many times worse than eliminating the civil service aptitude tests or imposing affirmative action. Also, lots of federal employees end up going bankrupt or having their houses foreclosed, the housing market in the DC area crashes, and a lot of people have their lives wrecked.

          I don’t see where the good in any of this is.

          [1] Though I don’t think the counterproductive stuff is more likely to be shutdown than the productive stuff.

          • hls2003 says:

            I believe I read that a bill had already been passed guaranteeing back pay to all furloughed workers. That had already been the case in 100% of prior shutdowns, but this presumably made it statutory law.

      • vV_Vv says:

        @ManyCookies

        Trump’s been getting the blame thus far

        But these are polls of the general populations. What matters is whether the food stamp recipients are more likely to be Democrats or Trumpers.

        @Scott

        The only reason for Democrats to back down is the suspicion that Trump may be a completely “irrational” actor who will just never reopen the government unless he gets what he wants (“irrational” used in quotation marks because this could be a winning strategy), and who can deal with the blame he gets for this the same way he deals with the blame he gets for all the other things people blame him for.

        Doesn’t this statement also work if you swap Democrats and Trump?

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          Because Trump has the reputation for being “irrational” that is plausible, while the Democrats do not?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I don’t think keeping the government shut down over a measly $5B to address the severe problems we have with border security is very rational.

            Well, it’s not rational if your goal is performing the most basic duties of government towards its citizens. It’s entirely rational if you’re just playing political games.

      • Jaskologist says:

        What if the government remains “shut down” for an extended period of time, and people notice that their lives aren’t all that affected?

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          I find myself quite interested in this. How many people will notice and personally care? Will those tend to lean one or the other politically? Will that change any person’s thoughts?

          Making this a lot trickier – There are key functions that are being done, without employees getting paid. The IRS is bringing back a lot of unpaid employees for tax season, for instance. Not getting refunds would have hit quite a few people across the political spectrum, but no longer seems to be a likely result. If we keep doing that, the public will not see any sting until a whole bunch of federal employees decide to quit. That only seems likely for the lowest paid employees who can’t afford to muddle through for a period of time. [Side note: Does anyone know if federal employees can get unemployment while furloughed?] Otherwise it’s a nice vacation with a very high expectation of full back pay, even for those not required to work.

          • albatross11 says:

            Which employees will leave first? Which ones will stick around even if there’s no back pay and they’re in bankruptcy? How will that matter for the future efficiency of government?

        • Edward Scizorhands says:

          NPR’s Marketplace opened with a segment about how businesses that normally hate government and now wistful and want it back. But every example was of someone waiting for the government to approve something so they wouldn’t be punished by the government when it woke back up. I’m sure there are instances of people who genuinely want government services that they cannot get but they didn’t bring them up.

          https://www.marketplace.org/topics/government-shutdown-2019 has yesterday’s episode so someone can double-check what I remember during my drive.

          • Evan Þ says:

            On a similar note, Atlas Brew Works is suing for an injunction on First Amendment grounds, allowing them to print new labels that’d normally need to be preapproved by the government, since the government isn’t there to approve them.

            I wish them good luck.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            NPR’s Marketplace opened with a segment about how businesses that normally hate government and now wistful and want it back. But every example was of someone waiting for the government to approve something so they wouldn’t be punished by the government when it woke back up.

            “Next on NPR: children who miss their abusive father when he takes a nap.”
            Turns out their reporters are only able to find children scared that they’ll be punished for what they did without his permission during his nap.

          • gbdub says:

            I saw several of these stories from various traditionally left-leaning outlets (you’d almost think there were a secret list of journalists coordinating what stories to run…) and shared by the lefter side of my FB feed.

            I was kind of shocked by how badly they mis-anticipated the reaction these stories would get. They seemed to think “aha, beer, THAT’S something that will make those uncouth Red Tribers care about the shutdown!” when the Red Tribe reaction was more like “wait, what the hell, why do the Feds have to approve beer labels? Maybe the government really IS too big!”

    • Erusian says:

      1.) 80%
      2.) 10%
      3.) 5%
      4.) 1% (twenty defecting Republicans? Over border security?)
      5.) 66%

      In particular, I don’t think either side wants to let this stretch into the primaries. If they do, it will tend to produce more radical candidates. Trump doesn’t really want that (he’s actually been doing a great deal to suppress Republicans who are more radical than he is, like Stewart). The Democratic leadership might be willing to take that deal with the devil, but I doubt they feel so weak that they’ll need to. Indeed, most of their handpicked candidates seem more mainstream than Berniecrats. I imagine the calculus is they feel Trump is weak so they are strong.

      My prediction for how this shutdown ends: the Republicans don’t back down but slowly make gestures at compromise. Trump has already implied he’d accept explicit appropriations for border security in place of outright wall funding. One of his surrogates even floated the idea of letting the border agencies get to decide what to do with the funds with no explicit mandate whatsoever. The truth is the Republicans have more room to maneuver here because they have an objective (border security) and can take any road to get there while the Democrats are mostly opposing this because they are anti-Trump. (If there is some deeper ideological reason against increasing funds to border security, I’d be curious to hear it.)

      If the Democrats continue to hold out they begin to look more radical and run the risk of shooting themselves in the foot. So they dicker over the specific amount of funding and give in. They then claim they won (because not explicitly wall and lower dollar amount) and Trump claims he won (because border security funding and higher dollar amount than would have been given otherwise). Expect a lot of Democratic supporters walking back statements about never giving in and declaring victory while a lot of Trump surrogates say something about ‘seriously but not literally’.

      And the last few elections have proven that Republican senators who defy Trump get voted out.

      This isn’t true at all. The last few elections have proven that Republican senators who stand with Democrats against Trump get voted out. The Kavanaugh thing was a pure tribal divide and every senator who ended up in the wrong tribe got voted out. Including Democrats whose states had a preponderance of red tribers.

      You know who are still around? The Freedom Caucus, including Representative “I don’t care, Mr. Trump.” Romney’s criticisms of Trump don’t seem to have seriously threatened his chances either. The Republican base is very willing to support anti-Trump factions, providing they oppose Trump for red tribe or conservative reasons and will support him when he does something red tribe/conservative. Trump isn’t immune to this either: Trump basically lets other conservatives pick his judicial appointments and if he didn’t there’d be a Republican revolt.

      I agree it would be suicide to side against Trump at this point. But only because the Conservatives and Red Tribe are at least closer to Build the Wall than the Democratic position.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        I do not think “border security” will fly with Trump’s base. This is a well-known euphemism for “we’re going to squander money on ineffective stuff while not building the wall.”

        I agree with your percentages, though. The idea that 20 Republicans would override Trumps’ veto is ludicrous.

        The Democrats will not back down, Trump will not back down, he’ll probably wind up declaring a state of emergency and ordering the military to build it. Then President Hawaiian Judge will issue an injunction against it, which Trump will ignore.

        • CatCube says:

          I won’t argue with you about the perception of Trump voters, but the border wall is the “ineffective stuff” leg where the money will be squandered.

          I pretty desperately hope that your projection on the way it gets fixed is not true, though. That’s getting pretty close to “take up arms against the government” level dictatorial shit. Obama was pretty offensive on this point, but this would go even beyond his actions.

          Luckily, the president seems to obey court orders, even if he throws a snit on Twitter about them.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            “Fortifications along the border to repel invasion” seems like really basic military stuff to me. And the courts have no authority to stop it.

          • vV_Vv says:

            I won’t argue with you about the perception of Trump voters, but the border wall is the “ineffective stuff” leg where the money will be squandered.

            It is probably going to be ineffective at its ostensible purpose of reducing the number of illegal immigrants, but it has political value, not just because it was a campaign promise (that would be self-referential) but because Trump got flak over children being separated from their parents, children not being separated from their parents and dying under ICE custody, tear gas being thrown at children, and so on. An impassable wall will solve these problems.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I find it impossible to believe that the proposed giant steel slat wall will not reduce illegal immigration.

            It will also make immigration enforcement much more humane. Next time a caravan rolls up to the border it’s a lot easier to disperse them without using tear gas or other weapons.

          • albatross11 says:

            Don’t the caravans just go to standard border crossing points to present their applications for asylum? A wall will prevent the caravan members walking into the country without going through a gate, but if your goal is to apply for asylum, then you *want* to go through a gate.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Right, right. Well, I mean, if they didn’t.

          • gbdub says:

            The tear gassing happened at a location with both a barrier and an official border crossing facility. A subset of the caravan members attempted to bypass the crossing facility and force their way across the barrier, triggering the response from border agents.

          • CatCube says:

            The courts Goddamn well have input on whether the movement of money to fund something is being used legally. If Congress won’t fund something, it’s unbelievably dangerous to allow an end-run to move money from somewhere else. If Congress stops an appropriation to something, that thing stops. That principle is way more important than almost any particular thing at issue. I don’t think I’d even be willing to consider allowing a president–any president, and I’m terrified of what Hillary would have done with this power–this authority for anything short of a literal invasion. And, no, the current illegal immigration is not what I’m talking about. I mean near-peer “tanks and infantry moving in formation” invasion.

            Also, to build the wall, you need to condemn land. The courts damn well have input into that, and condemnation should also require consent of the state, per the Constitution (“…to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;…[emphasis mine])

            Will the wall be “useless” in that it literally won’t stop anybody? Of course not. But is it anywhere near the most effective use of $5bb to stop illegal immigration? It’s far better to fund more border patrol and to fund more enforcement against employers using illegal immigration.

            If, as part of the increased funding of the Border Patrol, a local office identifies an area where a wall will reinforce their efforts and can be tied in to local terrain or will push attempted crossings into more dangerous areas, I’m cool with that! But this top down “Wall is All” drives me bonkers, because it detracts from areas that will be much more effective at lower cost.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            Last time I remember us discussing E-Verify, extremely red states that nominally have mandatory E-Verify for everyone are not doing anything to actually enforce compliance or even audit what employers are submitting.

            https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/28/news/economy/e-verify-immigration/index.html This isn’t the exact news story I found last time but it addresses some of the issues that Arizona has.

            This is real low-hanging fruit.

          • albatross11 says:

            CatCube: +1

            “Gee, we’re not getting what we want. Let’s just wipe ourselves with another inconvenient part of the Constitution!” is a pretty common sentiment among political types, but it’s not one we should support.

          • CatCube says:

            @albatross11

            I do want to emphasize that this is just an extension of “Pen and Phone!” However, that drove me bonkers when the D’s did it, and I don’t support “my side” extending it further; it should be fought, not embraced.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @CatCube

            The “President Hawaiian Judge” objection isn’t to the courts deciding. It’s to venue-shopping resulting in a nationwide injunction from a District Court, particularly a district whose connection to the issue is rather tenuous at best.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            There are lots of things the military can do to start building a wall that do not require money from congress. The military already has money to secure the country from foreign invasion. There is land already owned by the government. There is land that could be sold to the government.

            I’m not suggesting anything unconstitutional. However, single district court judges issuing blanket injunctions across the entire executive branch is…I don’t know if it’s unconstitutional but it’s a massive power grab that for some reason people just go along with. If the executive issues an order “no travel from these countries” and you’re prevented from traveling and sue, fine, the judge can issue an injunction to stop the government from hindering *you* while the case is heard but he has no authority to essentially veto the entire order being enforced against anyone. A judge can issue an order that the president must hop on one foot and rub his tummy every time he enters a room but that order should be ignored and the legislature might want to think about removing this judge from office. They pulled this stunt during the travel ban and Trump went along with it. If they do it again, enough is enough, he should ignore it.

          • CatCube says:

            There are lots of things the military can do to start building a wall that do not require money from congress.

            I work on civil works for the Army, and this isn’t obvious to me. Given what is in the news, and guidance from our public affairs, I want to be clear that this is my own personal opinion. Maybe after the lawyers parse how the appropriations work, it could turn out that I’m wrong and the funds can be shifted in this manner very easily. It could be a real stretch to use any of the appropriated MILCON dollars for this purpose, but it’s definitely outside of how those are normally. From a larger standpoint, I’m deeply uncomfortable about using Executive tricks to fund something that Congress is not willing to fund–the deepest power that Congress has is the power of the purse, and actions that affect that are far more destructive to our Constitutional order than any particular issue.

            Turning to the object level, you’re going to need a lot of dollars for civilians for this, since, well, the military just isn’t set up to do a design or construction of this scale. As far as I know, from 2014-2016 there was exactly one (1) practicing structural engineer in the uniformed active-duty Army, and then I got out and took a civilian job. Other required disciplines (primarily geotech) are just as thin in uniform. Troop labor is intended for temporary construction with a design life of 3-5 years, generally from standard designs. There are not significant numbers of actual practicing engineers in uniform to update those designs (or do new ones like this)–the promotion timelines for officers required by DOPMA really make it impossible to build up the experience required for anything other than dabbling in a career as a design engineer, so it’s typically something they’ll do for a few years before going back to “Big Army” and reassignment to a more typical Army officer billet.

            Similarly, the enlisted labor force is designed and intended for small, repeated projects with short lifespans–primarily in timber for vertical construction, and a more constrained set of earthmoving equipment than a typical construction company would see. It’s perfect for temporary roads and constructing FOBs for forces on the move, but active-duty forces have other demands on their time (and a lack of projects) that mean they don’t get nearly as much “stick time” on equipment as their civilian counterparts.

            Anything of larger scale or longer intended life is handled by civilians; the design will either be done by civilian Government forces, or contracted out to private A/E firms, and no matter who does the design the construction is contracted to private concerns.

            For the jurisdiction shopping, I agree with you–I think our imperial courts are on net a bigger threat than our imperial presidency–but don’t see how that’s a major concern for this particular issue. A court in Arizona, should, AFAICT, be just as willing to strike much of the end-runs around Congress down as a court in Hawaii. You’re correct that a court in Hawaii shouldn’t have the ability to say “boo” about this, and I’ll complain about that when and if it happens.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Well crap. That all sounds reasonable and you know more than I do. I hate it when that happens.

          • John Schilling says:

            OK, but that’s for the United States Army.

            Trump is about due for another summit with North Korea, and there’s going to need to be some sort of quid pro quo if he’s going to lift sanctions like they want. North Korea has a lean and hungry army that is unconstrained by petty constitutional restrictions, and the North Koreans have extensive experience constructing ginormous concrete monuments to the egos of autocrats.

            Think outside the box here, folks.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Lots of experience with border security, too. I like the way you think John Schilling, I like the way you think.

          • wk says:

            Just make sure that hungry army never gets to see a McDonalds from the inside. Otherwise you’re gonna have a real invasion of illegal immigrants to deal with.

          • CatCube says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            I’ve said this before, but I’m willing to design the damn thing* if they put out a call for Government designers because of refusals by A/E firms/political problems/etc. The Wall, as currently proposed in our political discourse is stupid, but it’s not immoral. I spend quite a bit of time working on left-wing wastes of money, so working on a right-wing waste of money would be an interesting change of pace. What I stridently object to is the notion that it’s not a waste of money.

            * I was willing to volunteer to work on the design previously; if they are funding it in a manner that I feel is unconstitutional, I won’t. Congress is allowed to waste the taxpayers’ money, but if we’re doing an end-run around that, that’s a big problem for me.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I accept your position that the wall is not something the military is well-suited to construct. I completely disagree that it’s a waste of money, however.

            The wall would be made out of steel, which is harder than the bodies of foreigners. So when the foreigners try to walk across the border, the steel wall would prevent them from doing so. You can trust me on this one since I was a physics minor in college.

            Since my goal is “wall built; foreigners repelled” I’ll go back to supporting the shutdown until Chuck and Nancy agree to fund the wall built through the normal appropriations process rather than the national emergency / military option.

          • CatCube says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            Since my goal is “wall built; foreigners repelled”

            The first half of that has no meaning; only the “foreigners repelled” part is useful. If the wall is built, but it’s not going to repel foreigners at any rate proportional to its cost. Without it being integrated into part of a larger plan for border security they’ll just climb over it, tunnel under it, or go through it.

            And if we have that larger plan for border security, the wall would be the least important part of it.

            This also is eliding over the fact that “foreigners repelled at the border” is the wrong goal, and one I don’t care about. What I want is “massive reduction in illegal immigration,” and that is better handled on the demand (employer) side in terms of bang for your buck.

          • Plumber says:

            @CatCube

            “…that is better handled on the demand (employer) side in terms of bang for your buck”

            Yes!

            I imagine that a half dozen Americans in handcuffs for employing non-citizens, and one or two more every year on national television with a report thar they’ll do prison-time for employing non-citizens will do more to keep migrants from crossing the border than any wall.

            No demand, no supply!

          • CatCube says:

            @Plumber

            I’m not so much interested in prison. My half-developed thought is that the employer should be fined $5000 (amount negotiable) for each illegal immigrant employed, and the government gets half of that…the illegal immigrant who drops a dime on his employer gets the other half.

          • Plumber says:

            @CatCube

            “…My half-developed thought is that the employer should be fined $5000 (amount negotiable) for each illegal immigrant employed, and the government gets half of that…the illegal immigrant who drops a dime on his employer gets the other half”

            I’m digging it!

            I still think prison-time is more of a deterrent than a “cost of doing business fine” (why not both?) but a reward for turning in your employer is a solid gold idea!

          • John Schilling says:

            No demand, no supply!

            Except the demand doesn’t go to zero, because the demand isn’t just people looking for legitimate jobs in the US economy. The demand also includes people willing to work grey- or black-market jobs because those are still better than the jobs they can get in Guatemala, and people who don’t care whether they have jobs at all so long as the cartels and death squads don’t burn down their house and rape their daughters, and people who will endure anything so long as it means their children are born and raised as full US citizens, which thanks to the 14th Amendment you can’t stop but you can maybe influence what sort of citizens they are and how they feel about your kind of citizen.

            So you can maybe cut the demand in half, and cut the supply in half, but now 100% of that remaining supply goes from being the sort of “criminal” who technically committed a misdemeanor once when they crossed the border, to the sort of criminal who lives every day as an embedded member of a criminal conspiracy that is as hostile to people like you as you are to people like them.

            Patrolling the border, however weakly or imperfectly, divides the prospective immigrant population into two groups – the ones still living in Central America, and the ones who live next door to you and are pretty much like you in every way except they talk funny. Arresting everyone who would give legitimate jobs to illegal immigrants, turns the ones who are still here your enemies. I’d say good luck with that, except they’ll probably wind up being my enemies as well and I’d rather have them as friends.

      • vV_Vv says:

        I do not think “border security” will fly with Trump’s base. This is a well-known euphemism for “we’re going to squander money on ineffective stuff while not building the wall.”

        But if he gets the funds for more “border security” can he then mandate ICE or whatever to use these funds to build the wall without further Congress approval?

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          If. But it looks like a trick. If it’s going to be used for the wall and everybody knows it’s going to be used for the wall, why can’t the appropriations bill just say “wall?”

          • CatCube says:

            Because that allows plausible deniability to both sides to get what they want, and break the impasse.

        • RalMirrorAd says:

          Depends on whether the language says border security but prohibits spending on a wall.

    • Walter says:

      My idea for the resolution:

      Trump declares an emergency and tries to build the wall that way, throwing that into the courts. With the wall getting built(or not) in that manner, he no longer opposes reopening the gov, everyone hastens to pass a ‘reopen the gov’ kind of bill.

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      The votes to fund a wall don’t exist, neither do the votes to override a veto.
      The thing most likely to end the shutdown would be if presidential powers revolving around national defense are invoked to simply have the wall built using DOD funds, as some people have argued is technically do-able.
      It would then fall to the courts.

    • Aging Loser says:

      What do phrases of the type “I predict E with X% likelihood” (or whatever the formula is supposed to be) signify? Are people measuring their own levels of expectation? So that if you say, “I predict E with 50% likelihood” you’re reporting that you’re at about half your maximum confidence-level?

    • gbdub says:

      not having a border wall is a sacred value to them worth an infinite amount of money

      Why? Where did this sacred crusade against border barriers come from, and how is it logically consistent? There already exist hundreds of miles of (apparently reasonably effective) barriers along the border. Whether you call these “a wall” or “fencing” seems to mostly depend on whose sympathy you want. These were built mostly not that long ago, with bipartisan support from some of the same Democrats who are now adamantly opposed to Trump’s desire to expand the existing system of barriers.

      If there has been any serious push among Democrats to have the existing barriers removed, I’ve not heard about it.

      How do you square “walls are morally wrong!” with “I’m not in favor of open borders and if you say I am, you’re clearly arguing in bad faith against a straw man”? “It’s okay to prevent people from crossing the border as long as you don’t use a physical barricade to do it” is a very peculiar moral stance.

      It’s one thing to argue that Trump’s proposed wall would be a poor use of money better spent elsewhere, or that we should have higher priorities than security of the Mexican border. Or to say that border security is great but a wall is an inefficient or impractical way to get that. But that’s very different from holding “no wall” as a sacred value worth infinite cost.

      Even then, some of the anti wall arguments don’t really hold up.

      “It wouldn’t be 100% effective, people could get over / under / around it” Of course, but a) since when is “it won’t work 100% of the time” a knockout argument about any other policy? And b) that’s not the point of a wall. A wall is a force multiplier. The current incomplete barrier is effective in deterring crossing in high traffic, high population areas where getaways are easy and apprehending crossers would be difficult, instead funneling crossers to more isolated areas where there is more chance to catch them. If you want to penetrate the barrier itself, that takes time, equipment, and/or a larger team, all of which make you more likely to be caught.

      “It’s too hard to build the wall everywhere, private property and the Rio Grande get in the way” Rhetoric aside, Trump’s $5 billion request is not for a gleaming wall from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s to add a couple hundred miles to existing barriers in higher traffic areas. Maybe that’s a detail in the weeds for the people griping on Facebook, but congressional Dems ought to know better.

      The actual sacred value worth any cost here appears to be “don’t give Trump a win on a signature issue” but “walls are morally wrong” sounds better even if it doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        All of this.

      • albatross11 says:

        +1

        IMO, this is all about the 2020 presidential elections.

      • John Schilling says:

        Why? Where did this sacred crusade against border barriers come from, and how is it logically consistent?

        I saw what you did there, shifting from “walls” to “border barriers”

        Walls specifically, vs other forms of border barriers, are of approximately zero value for securing the border, or negative value if building them displaces any funding from border patrol efforts – which, in fact, it would. And border barriers in general, beyond what we already have and will uncontroversially maintain, are a very small marginal benefit in the best case and again go negative if they compete with the border patrol for funding.

        Walls explicitly labeled as such, have been very effectively advertised by Donald J. Trump as the cardinal example of Donald J. Trump Owning the Libs.

        The bit where Democratic congressmen consider it a “sacred crusade” to not vote in favor of using taxpayer money to pay for something whose primary effect and purpose will be to serve as a campaign advertisement for Trump 2020, does this really need explaining?

        Even if walls were useful or for that matter vitally necessary for national security, advertising them as [Party X] pwning [Party Y] means the window for their being built, and for the republic being saved from utter ruin if that’s somehow at stake, closes the moment Party X no longer controls the White House and both houses of Congress. So if you’ve identified something truly vital for national security, A: don’t advertise it that way and B: if you’re stuck with that framing, make really damn sure you get your wall funded during the two years your allies do control Congress.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          +1.

          A WALL (writ large) is ineffective, merely of symbolic value, a waste of many resources. In addition, from a symbolic perspective, its effects on our relationships with our neighbors and allies are significantly negative as well.

          There really is no reason to acquiesce to the demand that we eat tapeworm eggs “for our health”.

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            I’m not interested in getting back into an immigration debate today, but your metaphor is hilarious because parasitic worms are now beginning to be used as a treatment for certain autoimmune disorders.

            If your doctor prescribes you worms, you probably should acquiesce to that demand!

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Point taken, however I was referring to the oft-cited (rumored) tape-worm pill diet aids.

            So, in certain, very specific , cases parasitic worms, like walls and other barriers, make sense. But as a generic recommendation they both fail.

      • tomogorman says:

        There is a difference between opposing walls and opposing “the wall”. Democrats plainly don’t oppose any physical barriers anywhere. There are plenty of them in existence in certain parts of the border and I don’t see any Congressional Democrats proposing tearing them down. In fact the Senate bill which passed in December with Democratic support appropriated 1.6 billion for border security – including repairing existing fencing.
        “The wall” is different. “The wall” is very much Trump’s promise of a “gleaming wall from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico”. “The wall” as in the GOP 2016 platform must cover “the entirety of the Southern Border”. “The wall” will be vastly more expensive than 5 billion once all put together. It will do much less to reduce problems than advertised given that it does nothing to solve visa overstays nor asylum requests. It will do almost nothing to reduce drug smuggling given that this processes through ports of entry. And it will do nothing to reduce terrorism because terrorists have not been using that route and given their logistics have no reason to. “The wall” will be vulnerable to breach like all walls and will require even more money for repairs and to monitor it. Therefore, “the Wall” will impose massive costs and is plainly not justified unless you think there are truly massive benefits. Democrats by and large think they will not, and many, think you could plausibly think there are is to give in to racist fear mongering. That is why opposing “the Wall” is a moral value because it, as opposed to any hypothetical wall, is being sold as racist project. Given that Trump’s rhetoric, along with other Republicans most recently Steve King repeatedly fits that, its not hard to see why Democrats see “the Wall” as a huge middle finger to all hispanic people. Opposing that can be a value.
        gbdub’s protest that this $5 billion request is only to add a couple of hundred miles is wrong. Trump did not sell it that way, and that process wasn’t followed. Trump very much is asking for a down payment on “the Wall”. Further, he has pushed it in such a way that he is explicitly asking for Democrats to concede on “the Wall” rather than compromise on a few more miles of wall rather than the start of the 2,000 plus mile wall.
        GOP position originally settled on 1.6 billion including the repairing existing fencing restriction. And everyone tacitly agreed to that until Anne Coulter said it made Trump look week. That is why this came up now rather than in budget demands way earlier.
        Also, if the demand is for a compromise on more border fencing why isn’t Trump saying that instead of talking about the Wall. If that is what he wants why need a shut down for it? Democrats could horsetrade over border security if not explicitly a wall, but Trump has repeatedly insisted can’t have border security without “the Wall”. Hell, if Trump wasn’t so erratic Democrats were openly willing to horsetrade earlier for around $25billion for DACA, but Trump reneged and asked for more. Thats the reason why it has to be a shutdown, because he needs leverage to make the Democrats eat a big loss. Thats the reason he can’t cut a deal, because no one trusts him to negotiate in good faith – particularly when the whole point is a political ploy to demonstrate dominance.
        Which is politics. Stupid politics, and wrong politics he should lose for, but politics. Just don’t try and pretend that Trump/GOP aren’t the ones norm violating in this process. Yes its only $5 billion or so, but its $5 billion explicitly tacked on to a huge symbolic loss. Thats norm breaking to shut the government down over for 27+ days. Its quite right of Democrats not to want to give in to that, when very clearly would encourage GOP to pull the same stunt again later this year with the debt ceiling, and next year when the budget needs to be passed again.

      • gbdub says:

        @John – you’re wrong about “what I’m doing”. The existing border barriers largely consist of giant metal slats stuck in the ground next to each other that are, for practical purposes, much closer in effect to a “wall” than to what people have in mind when they hear “fence”. If your whole argument is “there are better ways to build barriers than the way Trump wants to build a barrier”, fine, that falls into the practical concerns that I explicitly conceded can be valid.

        Again, Democrats are trying to make a moral case against “the wall”. The only moral difference between “the wall” and other physical barriers is that Trump wants “the wall”. If “the wall” is racist, then so is “an unusually sturdy fence that guys with guns patrol”. But of course we already have quite a bit of the latter and there’s apparently no fierce moral urgency to change that.

        @tomogorman – you’re kind of conceding my point, which is that the “sacred value” here is pure politics. This fight could be over basically anything else that Trump had made a campaign promise and was pursuing with this sort of politics. It’s disingenuous to pretend that “the wall” itself is the primary moral issue.

        • tomogorman says:

          How is that conceding your point at all? “The wall” (meaning 2,000 miles), per the Democratic, position is an expensive and wasteful project that does not make any sense from a reasonable cost/benefit calculus. It only makes sense if you massively over rate benefits because of racist fear mongering. It is a bad idea regardless of who supports it. Absent Trump there would continue to be close to 0 Democrats who support building 2,000 miles of continuous barrier along the Southern border.
          That is not inconsistent with thinking you might build barriers along some select small fraction of those miles – that might or might not be a good idea depending on the specifics.
          But Trump isn’t asking for that. He wants to start on “the Wall”. That he is only currently asking for money to start it, doesn’t change that the money is going to a fundamentally wasteful idea. So Democrats are not being disingenuous at all. They actually do oppose, as a moral matter, this project. Hence no reason to fund it at all. That they might not oppose a radically different and much smaller project doesn’t change that.

          • wunderkin says:

            It only makes sense if you massively over rate benefits because of racist fear mongering.

            Can we not assume that the only reason people have to disagree with us is racism?

          • AG says:

            tomorgorman isn’t doing that, though. Non-racist reasons to oppose immigration occur mostly due to immigration that has nothing to do with physical barriers on the southern lander border.
            Therefore, an emphasis on physical barriers on the southern lander border is due to opposing a very, very narrow subset of immigration that is, by its nature, racially discriminatory, and the arguments to prioritize this particular subset of immigration are nearly all blatantly racist.

          • albatross11 says:

            AG:

            {Citation needed}

            What if your concern is that there is a large amount of economically motivated illegal immigration from the much-poorer countries to our South, and you think a barrier would be a reasonable way to slow that down some? This may be right or wrong, but doesn’t seem like an unreasonable position to have, and I don’t see how it’s racist.

            At this point, I have to overcome an urge to just assume that any time someone ascribes an opposing position to racism, it’s just because they don’t have a strong argument to offer against it.

          • wunderkin says:

            @AG

            Albatross11 said it better than I would have. At this point, slinging around “racist” is basically just the modern version of calling someone a witch.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            Can we not assume that the only reason people have to disagree with us is racism?

            Indeed. I suspect this is compounding much of the problem. Whenever I hear Pelosi or Schumer make statements about the wall, they begin and end with “(1) we will not fund the wall and (2) walls are immoral”, and are accompanied by advocates who could argue the logistics of a wall and its effectiveness like John Schilling does, but would apparently rather insinuate that the wall advocates are xenophobic or racist instead.

            As a result, I’m left opposing the wall, but also opposing the wall’s opposition.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            $5 billion would not be enough to build the wall. If you object to building the wall, put the new fences in some place where you think they would the most good. You can even tear down existing border fortifications and put up the new Wall.

            Or just put a bunch of stupid riders on it that make it difficult for much of the Wall to actually get built. Blah blah blah mandatory hearing period of 2 years blah blah blah. Then you can swipe the funds or kill the project when you take the White House in 2020.

            Also the idea of the Democrats heroically taking a stand against wasting $5 billion of taxpayer money is comical.

          • AG says:

            tomogorman isn’t naming pro-Wall people racist. They’re saying that believing that the wall will have benefits far more than using that money towards other immigration solutions is due to the wall having been pumped up as the best solution by arguments motivated by racism.

            That is, people stuck on The Wall as a must have been taken in for a con.

            It’s like the travel ban. There are people who believe in the motte version of it for non-racist reasons, but the ban came into being through openly racist origins, and there are much more effective solutions to battling Islamic terrorism (primarily, deradicalisation programs and focusing on culturally integrating/assimilating immigrants, programs which Trump has slashed funding for). The ban was made prominent over other solutions by banking on racist fear mongering. The wall was made prominent over other solutions by banking on racist fear mongering of a specific kind of immigration, that is not actually a major cause of the problems caused by immigration, nor will the wall solve the problems anti-immigration people want solved.

          • wunderkin says:

            tomogorman isn’t naming pro-Wall people racist. They’re saying that believing that the wall will have benefits far more than using that money towards other immigration solutions is due to the wall having been pumped up as the best solution by arguments motivated by racism.

            1, I think that’s a distinction without difference. 2, I don’t see the public wall opponents rushing to explain how that 5 billion dollars would clearly be better spent on more border patrol agents, or dones, or whatever.

            That is, people stuck on The Wall as a must have been taken in for a con.

            Implying everyone who disagrees with you is stupid is almost as bad as implying that they’re racist.

            It’s like the travel ban. There are people who believe in the motte version of it for non-racist reasons, but the ban came into being through openly racist origins,

            A list drawn up by the obama administration?

            and there are much more effective solutions to battling Islamic terrorism (primarily, deradicalisation programs and focusing on culturally integrating/assimilating immigrants, programs which Trump has slashed funding for).

            Europe spends vastly more money on these sorts of efforts than the US does, to very little effect. The claim that they are clearly “much more effective solutions” is difficult to sustain. And at a political level, do you really think that “these immigrants are totally safe to allow in as long as we spend a ton of money on welfare and education for them!” is a pitch that appeals to people on the right?

            The ban was made prominent over other solutions by banking on racist fear mongering.The wall was made prominent over other solutions by banking on racist fear mongering of a specific kind of immigration,

            The people who brought race into the question were the opponents of the ban, not the proponents. They took a ban on people coming to the US from a list of countries that consisted of active and Iran and called it a racist muslim ban because that was effective politics.

          • AG says:

            Consider if I’ve been inundated with messages about the “toxic health effects” of X food. (Like saturated fats!) I might support a ban on that food, but I’m not strictly X-ist, I might just be health-minded. I’ve been taken in for a con by the people who sponsored abunch of propaganda against X (because they sell alternative Y).

            I agree with the court’s rulings that Trump’s campaign rhetoric on the ban, as well as the original submission before revisions, matters in evaluating the motives for it.

            The deradicalisation and integration programs were offered as an example of how to battle terrorism, not also as the solution to immigration, because the travel ban was offered as a solution to terrorism, not immigration.
            The equivalent solutions to immigration would be different. I myself am not pro-immigration.

        • sandoratthezoo says:

          @gbdub:

          The black swastika, angled 45 degrees, in a white circle with a red backing is an anti-semitic and racist symbol, right? Because it’s the symbol of the Nazi party of Germany? If someone had a proposal to paint it on all government buildings, that would be anti-semitic and racist?

          We can all agree, I assume, that black, white, and red pigments do not have any thoughts, much less anti-semitic ones. In the alternate history universe where there was never a Nazi party, we wouldn’t consider that symbol inherently anti-semitic. And in fact very similar symbols are all over the place in other cultural contexts, and have no anti-semitic character there (it kinda blew my mind when I saw swastikas all over a map of kyoto (they are the marker for buddhist temples)).

          The Wall is a symbol of Trump’s approach to immigration. He did not propose a wall as part seven of a wonkish position paper, he made dumb paeans to its beauty all over the campaign trail. It is, by his own hand, inseparable from Trump’s Proposal About Immigration.

          The Democrats’ sacred value is to not allow the Great Symbol of Trump’s Immigration Policy to become the southern border. The existing barriers are not that great symbol. The thing that Trump wants to build is that symbol.

          • brad says:

            I don’t see why this is so hard to understand. If Obama had proposed spending $10B to put up a giant statue of himself on the national mall is anyone seriously going to claim that the Republicans would have been happy to trade that for some other minor policy victory?

          • wunderkin says:

            @brad

            Every president is obsessed with legacy and enacts, or tries to, policies to secure it, and all politics is at least as much about symbolism as policy. Obama’s statue was the affordable care act, started out costing 100 billion a year and is only going to go up.

        • Dan L says:

          The existing border barriers largely consist of giant metal slats stuck in the ground next to each other that are, for practical purposes, much closer in effect to a “wall” than to what people have in mind when they hear “fence”. If your whole argument is “there are better ways to build barriers than the way Trump wants to build a barrier”, fine, that falls into the practical concerns that I explicitly conceded can be valid.

          Again, Democrats are trying to make a moral case against “the wall”. The only moral difference between “the wall” and other physical barriers is that Trump wants “the wall”. If “the wall” is racist, then so is “an unusually sturdy fence that guys with guns patrol”. But of course we already have quite a bit of the latter and there’s apparently no fierce moral urgency to change that.

          Others have already started making the argument re: symbolism, but I want to emphasize that the fact that The Wall is definitely different in kind from the existing bipartisan border controls was painstakingly established by Trump back during the Republican primary. This is apparently a very important distinction to Trump’s base*, and if merely extending the existing fencing is equally practical then I think it’s perfectly legitimate to question what exactly the difference in appeal was.

          *To address the root of the thread, I’ll put a side bet on “No wall, but either a substantial or symbolic increase in border fencing. Trump declares victory anyway, and his base retcons their expectations accordingly.” I don’t think it quiiite has the plurality of probability mass, but it’s up there.

      • Guy in TN says:

        Where did this sacred crusade against border barriers come from, and how is it logically consistent?

        1. Advocating for removing existing barriers is outside the Overton window/political suicide. There’s no reason to play games you can’t win. (This only applies to the left-faction obviously.)

        2. The wall has symbolic implications to the international community that invisible barriers don’t. Its like “How could you be against putting steel bars on your windows, but not against locking your door when you leave?”

      • David Speyer says:

        Democrats have repeatedly offered wall funding in exchange for various protections for DACA or TPS recipients, including an offer for $25B from Schumer in exchange for a path to citizenship for Dreamers. I have no idea where the idea is coming from that democrats haven’t been willing to put the wall on the table.

        • sharper13 says:

          Republicans have repeatedly offered the same (DACA for wall funding, etc…), including in the current impasse.

          The two sides haven’t managed to both offer that set of compromises at the same time, apparently, or they weren’t actually serious about it and only offered when they thought it would make a good soundbite because the other side was temporarily not interested.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      but it would have to be really carefully planned for nobody to lose face

      Especially in this day and age, it is extra hard to enforce any kind of message discipline. I believe that 20 centrists Senators could come up with a plan that would work, but well before it comes time for a floor vote someone would start screeching.

    • nkurz says:

      > It’s hard for me to imagine how this shutdown ends.

      One theory is that the shutdown makes it easier to initiate a permanent downsizing. There are certain conditions that need to be met before a “Reduction in Force” (RIF) is initiated, and by this theory, a 30 day shutdown might retroactively qualify to meet this condition: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/omb_issues_guidance_on_reduction_in_force_layoffs_due_to_partial_shutdown.html

      I don’t know how reasonable the theory is. If it’s true, it would seem to put Trump in a powerful negotiating position. Either he succeeds in downsizing the federal government if the shutdown is allowed to continue, or he gets the concessions he wants in exchange for stopping the shutdown. Even if this wasn’t Trumps plan going in, knowing very little about the legalities involved, it sounds to me like a plausible endgame. Trump certainly doesn’t seem averse to “doubling-down” when in a hole.

    • honoredb says:

      Seems to me there are two relevant asymmetries here: Trump’s ability to straight-up lie to his base, given the barest of fig leaves, is greater than Democrats’. And the Democratic position on immigration is much less specific than Trump’s: pretty much just “no wall, no deporting Dreamers, also we should probably have some sort of immigration reform maybe.” This means that the eventual compromise has a lot of freedom–Trump and Ann Coulter have to agree to refer to it as “money for building a wall” while it also has to not be money for building a wall. I hope people in Congress are thinking creatively.

      For example, the Make Mexico Pay For And Build It plan: Congress allocates the requested $5.7 billion for a Sovereign Wealth Fund, to invest in a portfolio of Valued American Institutions including Fox. Money will be paid out of it in foreign aid to Mexico when, and only when, Mexico builds X miles of wall on its border with us. Everybody wins: Trump can describe it as an even better deal than what he promised, since Mexico is both paying for and building the wall, Fox News has an incentive to go along with it, Democrats get a new fund to play with and can hardly call the possible wall a “monument to racism” if it’s being built by and in Mexico, and Mexico gets free optional funding for border infrastructure without having to publicly agree to it.

      Or authorize any congressional district to request federal aid to build a wall on its southern border. Restricting it to just districts on the border is a little too obvious a trick since none of them support the wall, but this way it could theoretically work but would obviously go hilariously badly.

      Or create a sovereign wealth fund with an initial investment of $10 billion that will fund the wall once it nets $150 billion.

      Or build the wall but also allow almost anyone to present themselves at it and get an unlimited work visa, with no quota and minimal red tape. Would reduce illegal immigration to essentially zero.

    • The Nybbler says:

      80%, 20%, 5%, 5%, 5%.

      I think Trump “wins” if he gets $1B or more for the wall, and I see his winning as less likely than not (say 30%). Anything over that is gravy and seems very unlikely.

      I also expect Trump will acknowledge when he’s beaten before requiring a veto override — most likely the losing way out is he agrees to a “temporary” resolution with a promise to consider the wall later (which of course will not happen without some other bargaining chip). He might take this if he thinks he’ll win on DACA (going to the Supreme Court soon, I believe), as that’ll give him another shot.

    • aristides says:

      I think I agree with your percentages, and would add that my most likely prediction is Trump gets 2.5 billion for the wall. Less than half, but enough for a victory. Other potential deals would be 5 billion with DACA, but it does not look like either side is willing to compromise that much and would take a lot of time to hash out.

    • Guy in TN says:

      I’m surprised you didn’t give odds for “national emergency declaration”, which seems like the most likely end-scenario.

      Trump wins, Dems can say the fought it, and the only thing we lose are our political norms, which we weren’t really using anyway.

      • hls2003 says:

        I put the chance that some federal judge (Hawaii or San Francisco are good candidates) will enjoin the emergency declaration for some amount of time at 90% or higher.

        Which makes any outcome other than “Trump declaration, injunction, Trump snarling at the judiciary on Twitter” a sucker’s bet. There’s little downside to Trump to do it; there’s little downside to Democrats to force him to do it.

    • Paul Brinkley says:

      One way I can see to get a better handle on the probabilities is to figure out how many Democrat supporters are saying “ugh – I’d rather just build the wall than to endure more of this shutdown” and how many Trump supporters are saying “hrmph – much as I’d like a wall, this shutdown is killing us”.

      How many original supporters are expressing willingness to defect?

      Is anyone reporting on this?

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      When’s that Mueller report coming and what are the rules about changing Senate leadership? Because depending on how long this goes on and how bad that report is, I can totally see 20+ GOP Senators getting sick of Trump’s crap and convicting him.
      I think you’d need a majority of the GOP, though, which I still don’t think is impossible. But I don’t think Mitch would flip unless HIS neck was the next in the political guillotine. OTOH, do you need Mitch? If the House votes to impeach, does the Senate take up the case automatically, under the supervision of the Chief Justice?

      • brad says:

        The Senate Majority is relatively powerful at this point in time (several decades back committee chairmen had more power vis-a-vis the majority leader), but at the end of the day a majority of Senators can take control of the Senate and do whatever they want. Ditto for nearly any legislative body. We are seeing some of that in House of Commons right now.

      • Dan L says:

        When’s that Mueller report coming

        The chart’s a little old at this point, but it’s still good for calibrating priors. A year or two wouldn’t be surprising, press coverage notwithstanding.

        • Scott Alexander says:

          Really? So we’ll probably get it just as Trump is (hopefully) leaving office anyway?

          • Dan L says:

            I don’t think there’s enough probability mass in any one location for anyone to get away with stating that the special counsel investigation is “probably” going to fit any one timeline, but the priors say what they say – there is a very real chance that Mueller won’t be delivering a final report to the AG until 2021 or later. I think an awful lot of people are expecting something like the Starr report though, despite that being quite a noncentral example of special counsel behavior – but if he did feel like making a direct case for indictment then it would have to be in the next several months.

            While I disagree with most of the particulars in the discussion below about the report not being a big deal when it comes out, I do think that matters will probably come to a head well before that conclusion. (Last week I’d have guessed that it’d be a Mueller indictment that Trump couldn’t let pass, but now it looks like the threat from the House is moving faster than expected.) So if what you’re really wondering is when the investigations in general hit their crescendo, months is probably about right. Lots of paths for that timing to be accurate.

      • BBA says:

        The Mueller report will be a dead letter. Nobody’s opinion will ever change on Trump, pro or anti, no matter what revelations the report contains (and they won’t be that impressive – the broad outlines have been public knowledge since before the election).

        There might be a few news cycles of intense discussion, but it’ll all be quickly forgotten the next time Trump does something really controversial, like call Hillary unfuckable.

        I’ll be delighted if I’m wrong.

        • albatross11 says:

          +1

          • theredsheep says:

            Yeah. I have my doubts about whether the average person, stopped on the street, would be able to give you a clear summary of what the Mueller investigation is about. Admittedly, that’s because I can’t; every now and then I try to be civic-spirited enough to give a damn, but then I pore through endless paragraphs about people getting subpoenaed over accusations that they lied about whether Trump did, or did not, talk to a person of Russian nationality, and no amount of skimming reveals an actual crime he is being accused of beyond telling people not to cooperate with the investigation (“arrested for resisting arrest”) and paying off his mistress with the incorrect pile of money. Correct me if there’s something I’m missing here.

            I don’t like Trump. I think he’s a POS, and would like to see him removed. But this bloody investigation is interminable and seems to yield nothing but promises of more results as soon as this one more guy testifies about how the Russians “hacked” the election. Apparently by spreading memes. For the love, this is Donald Trump. Is that the biggest scandal they can come up with?

          • brad says:

            I’m inclined to agree with BBA, but I wonder if Watergate were today if people will be as outraged about the fact pattern as they were back then.

        • A Definite Beta Guy says:

          It’s not going to be dead letter if the GOP is sinking fast and Senators are looking for reasons to dump Trump.

          • Dan L says:

            This is a really important point. The reaction’s going to be a lot different between Trump’s approval numbers being in the low forties v. the low thirties, let alone something more extreme. Nobody in Congress wants to run alongside a president that’s sitting more than 20 points underwater.

          • Plumber says:

            Dan L

            “…Nobody in Congress wants to run alongside a president that’s sitting more than 20 points underwater”

            Only if he’s that unpopular in their district, which seems unlikely as they’re few Republican Representatives left from “split ticket” districts.

          • Dan L says:

            As a quick and dirty first approximation, an additional 5-point shift from the 2018 results would result in an additional 28 House seats flipping; another 5 after that would be another 29. The Senate is more limited what with only a third being up in 2020, but those scenarios would result in something like a D+1 and D+3 Senate, respectively. And a Democratic presidency, obviously.

            Is that likely? Almost certainly not – if the President’s that unpopular it seems likely that his approval will start decoupling from district-level results and he’ll drag the ticket down less. But a general increase in partisanship might actually fight against that, as straight-tickets force people D down the line. Worst comes to worst, Congressional Republicans need to fight that trend as much as they can.

      • EchoChaos says:

        If the House votes to impeach, the Senate must take up the case.

        They can judge it however they want, though. Including immediately voting to acquit while sending a crude sketch of a middle finger to the other chamber.

      • John Schilling says:

        When’s that Mueller report coming and what are the rules about changing Senate leadership?

        I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the next few months. But I would be surprised if it was anything more than sleazy real estate deals, sleazy politics, paying his mistresses from the wrong slush fund, and covering all that up in ways that technically violate various statutes but that nobody but lawyers really cares about(*). After two years of being sold as “Trump is a Literal Russian Agent and Mueller’s gonna prove it Any Day Now”, anything less is going to be a giant nothingburger. The “We told you so, and look, he really is a criminal!” will cancel the “We told you so, there was no collusion, it was a witch hunt!” to no net effect beyond more hot air.

        What might plausibly happen, and what might be politically significant, is an indictment of Jared and/or Ivanka. For low-level sleaze that is only technically illegal in ways that mostly only lawyers care about, but Mueller is a lawyer and he has the authority to indict anyone who isn’t POTUS. He’s also politically astute enough to make it the very last indictment on his list, with every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’ crossed, and every other co-conspirator flipped to a prosecution witness.

        I’d give this maybe a 30% probability, but if it happens there will be a Trumper Tantrum from the oval office that even Mitch McConnell will not be able to ignore.

        * See e.g. Bill Clinton and perjury, which to the Republican House was a high crime worthy of impeachment and to the Democratic Senate was a partisan witch-hunt, exactly what they believed before there was any evidence of perjury.

    • Reasoner says:

      Scott Adams says Trump’s standard negotiation tactic is to take an extreme position in order to frame the debate, and then once he “backs down”, his less extreme position looks really good by comparison. So maybe the government shutdown is just about his negotiation posture somehow.

      • erenold says:

        This strikes me as an extremely good reason not to fund the Wall under the present circumstances.

        There is presently a norm against shutting the federal government down in order to leverage a policy change. My understanding is that historically, American public opinion has both observed and enforced this norm – see for instance the 95-96 Clinton, 2013 Obamacare and 2018 Dreamer shutdowns in the past, all of which were ended by public opinion turning against the party initiating the shutdown (or the perception of that happening). This is a good and valuable thing.

        If shutting the government down until a political actor’s preferred policy enactments are adopted becomes a legitimate, accepted and effective political tactic, it inexorably follows that Americans will get much more of the same.

    • JPNunez says:

      How I see it, neither side will back down for a while, but as the polls keep blaming Trump, as long as the Democrats don’t fuck up -and this basically means stay like they are and not make any stupid declarations-, Trump in the end will have to do something.

      And, I assume this will be an executive order, emergency powers abuse, whatever. Then everybody wins; the democrats get to point at Trump as a power abuser and a danger, they may even stop whatever it is in courts, Trump claims he won, etc, etc.

      In the end I doubt much Wall will get built, unless Trump wins again in 2020.

      So, putting numbers to it:

      a) Trump funds the Wall without Congress: 70%.
      -By the end of January: 40%
      -By the end of February: 90%
      -By the end of March: 99.99999%

      On the other hand

      b) Congress sends a budget to reopen the Gov: 30%
      -And it is signed by Trump: 60%
      -They somehow get enough votes to override veto: 40%

      Mixed option included in the first one:
      a.1) Congress sends a budget to reopen the Gov, Trump vetoes it, Congress cannot override the veto.
      -By the end of January: 10%
      -By the end of February: 40%
      -This does not happen: 50%

      edit: to the original questions. Not sure this is 1:1 consistent with my numbers above hahaha

      1. Will still be shutdown on Feb 1st?
      2. Will still be shutdown on Mar 1st?
      3. Will still be shutdown on April 1st?
      4. Shutdown ends when the Senate agrees to a budget without Trump and overrides his veto?
      5. Trump gets more than half of the $5.7 billion he wants for the wall?

      80% 19% 1% 12% 33%

      Didn’t really consider much the possibility they agree to anything. Again, the Democrats don’t have much to win by giving in, and even offering 50% of the Wall budget may look like pettiness, so it is against their interests to do so. But I cannot discard it outright. Current polls say that like half of all people reject ending the shutdown with a budget that funds the wall, but only 29% say it would be unnaceptable to end it with a budget that does not fund the wall. The democrats have nothing to lose right now, but things may change as the shutdown continues and gov services deteriorate.

    • AliceToBob says:

      Can a Supreme Court nomination/confirmation occur during a partial government shutdown?

      If not, then one possibility is that the retirement or death of Justice Ginsburg changes the incentives of the parties involved and resolves this situation. The state of her health is unclear, but it does seem to be declining.*

      Otherwise, as others have noted, there isn’t any fraction of 5-whatever billion, nor any degree of border barrier, that can’t be spun as victory for one side and humiliation for the other. And almost everyone belongs to a side, so there are a negligible number of undecideds to win over.

      I suppose I’m going to be naive, take Trump at his word, and assume that the shutdown will still be in effect on April 1.

      * I would not wish lung cancer on anyone, it’s a gruesome disease. I wish Justice Ginsburg a full recovery.

      edit: spelling errors, ugh.

      • John Schilling says:

        Can a Supreme Court nomination/confirmation occur during a partial government shutdown?

        Yes. “Government Shutdown” refers only to spending, and there are no expenditures necessary for the President to nominate or the Senate to confirm a SCOTUS candidate.

        I mean, if we wanted to be really, really pedantic, it would have to be done at the nearest Starbucks by whatever subset of Senators are willing to show up unpaid to cast their vote, because the lights are turned off in the Capitol and whatnot, but they’d do that if they had to and they don’t have to because they of course include an “…except for stuff that matters to us, like keeping the lights on in our offices” clause in the laws surrounding partial government shutdowns.

      • BBA says:

        In this case, there is a full-year appropriation in place for Congress (along with several of the executive departments) so the lights will stay on until September 30.

      • AliceToBob says:

        I was very wrong. Didn’t even make it to Feb.

    • bean says:

      Not relevant to this particular shutdown, but I have a plan for how to deal with future shutdowns. The President and all of Congress should be locked in the Capitol, with no more than a few staffers each. The Capitol is searched carefully, and all food is removed, except for a pile of MREs sufficient for about, oh, three weeks. They can come out when they have a deal.

      The ratings for C-SPAN would go up dramatically.

      • Statismagician says:

        So, Vatican Rules? I love this idea and propose we try and get it into the Constitution.

        • theredsheep says:

          Concur. Would they have access to knives, trap material, etc.?

          Actually, with the President and (as Senate pres) VP in there, who would be running the executive branch in the meantime?

      • Mr. Doolittle says:

        Data point – I would absolutely watch that show. That sounds amazing.

      • hls2003 says:

        Given the current political climate, each party would start electing based on obesity. Whichever side could sustain the hunger strike longest could wait out their opponents, then implement their policy without compromise when the other side capitulated or died of malnutrition, leaving a quorum of the fattest.

        • The Nybbler says:

          I believe you’re missing the possibility of cannabilism.

          • hls2003 says:

            But the more of your side that dies, even if cannibalized, the closer your opponent is to a majority of the quorum. More intriguingly, I thought Congressional immunity might allow for a Hunger Games war inside without consequences, which would of course optimize for electing vicious killers. However, Congressional immunity doesn’t cover breaches of the peace or felonies, so that’s probably out.

        • Nick says:

          Oh man, Republicans have so got this.

        • bean says:

          That was not what I meant. I was planning to use the incentive of being stuck in the Capitol with bad food to force them to come to a compromise. Not have them fight it out like that. It takes a long time for people to starve to death.

  35. sentientbeings says:

    I’m going to do a search of the open threads tomorrow, but since I tend to have only sporadic success when trying to locate old discussions, I thought I’d inquire here.

    Does anyone remember some comments (maybe even main post content; maybe a link round-up?) regarding large declines in insect populations? The large decline was not accompanied by the ecosystem collapse that a pessimist might predict. I’m looking for it in order to compare/supplement an article shared by a friend.

    I find this topic interesting because (1) it gets into complex system dynamics, in which it can be very hard to tell whether a small or large perturbation ends up having small or large effects downstream, and (2) because it also has big implications for the practice of purposefully eradicating mosquitoes (as the primary example), which, holding ecosystem welfare constant, would provide a really big boost to human prosperity.

  36. Well... says:

    “After processing the data, I’ve determined that the former vice president is going to drop a rap album,” said Tom algorithmically.

    “Mom, I’m sure it’s my Tourette’s syndrome acting up, but…isn’t it time for you to go home?” asked Tom, malingering.

    “Yup, we could turn people’s desire to help animals into a way to make money for ourselves,” Pete agreed.

    “I know it’s not what I said a minute ago, but I’ve decided to promise not to sue you,” Tom wavered.

    “I’ve now zipped up my sleeveless coat,” said Tom once he was fully invested.

    “‘I can’t hear over the din those communists are making,'” Tom read aloud.

    “This is great! The value is either one or zero,” said Tom ebulliently.

  37. Mark V Anderson says:

    I have various questions for the commentariat about foreign languages. It is my understanding that pretty much all college educated people outside the US become fluent in at least two languages. And usually one of those languages is English. Maybe this is only my impression because those are the folks I have access to, so maybe I’m wrong there.

    In the US, this is much less common, for pretty obvious reasons. The country is big enough that most people rarely leave the country, or just for short vacations. Even if you do learn another language well, it is likely you will lose it because of few opportunities to practice. Plus of course if almost all of the globally educated know English, this greatly decreases the incentive for us to learn another language. (Thankfully for me. I suck at learning languages, so I am glad it wasn’t necessary for me to devote time to this).

    It is true that most US colleges require at least two years of a foreign language in high school to be admitted. Also, many colleges require their students to take a foreign language. But I think few college students become fluent in another language.

    But I am curious about Britain. British folks live close to other countries whose first languages are not English, so there is some incentive to learn other languages. But they have the same advantage of English as their first language. So what proportion of educated Brits are fluent in something else?

    I would guess that Aussies and Kiwis are similar to the US, since they are so isolated from other countries? I’m not sure about Canadians, since they officially are a bi-lingual country — do most Canadians know both English and French?

    • albertborrow says:

      The number of people who are “conversational” in a second language in the UK is 38%. As opposed to the United States, which is commonly said to have about a 15-20% bilingual population. I can’t find the source for that.

      • Any idea how much of that 38% consists of people whose first language is not English? The U.K. seems to have quite a large immigrant population, plus some people whose first language is Welsh and I suppose a few whose first language is Scots Gaelic.

        • AlphaGamma says:

          The question was whether they could speak a language other than their mother tongue, not whether they could speak a language other than English. So it deliberately excluded native speakers of other languages.

          According to the (EU) survey, 92% of British people* gave “state languages or official languages that have an official status in the EU” as their mother tongue (thy could give more than one answer), 3% gave “other official EU languages” and 5% gave “other languages”**.

          The three most widely-spoken languages (by non-native speakers) in the UK were French (23%), German (9%) and Spanish (8%), which makes a great deal of sense as these are the foreign languages most commonly taught in British schools, pretty much in that order.

          Meanwhile in Ireland, 94% of people said they were native English speakers, 11% said they were native Irish speakers. Another 9% said that Irish was not their native language but they could speak it (compared to 20% who could speak French).

          *The survey asked people resident in the UK, aged over 15, and with citizenship of any EU member state. So non-EU immigrants were excluded unless naturalised.

          **I assume the 92% is mostly English with some Polish/other European languages, the 3% is mostly Welsh, and the 5% is mostly South Asian languages.

          • bullseye says:

            The question was whether they could speak a language other than their mother tongue, not whether they could speak a language other than English. So it deliberately excluded native speakers of other languages.

            That sounds like it would include people who speak English as a second language; for them it’s a language other than their mother tongue. It also sounds like it would include bilingual people who don’t speak English, though I imagine that’s rare in the UK.

          • Tarpitz says:

            I feel like “fluent” and “conversational” are not necessarily synonymous in this context. I read French at university, have lived in France and can certainly converse quite happily in French, but I would hesitate to describe myself as fluent, and I would not class the vast majority of continental European graduates as fluent in English.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            I feel like “fluent” and “conversational” are not necessarily synonymous in this context.

            Actually I think they are totally synonymous. What skill do conversationalists not have?

          • albatross11 says:

            My half-joking observation is that Americans who say they speak a language mean they can use it to order dinner or ask directions, and Europeans who say they speak a language mean they can use it to discuss philosophy.

    • Tenacious D says:

      I’m not sure about Canadians, since they officially are a bi-lingual country — do most Canadians know both English and French?

      Most francophone Canadians do. For anglophones, competent bilingualism is not super common outside of cities like Ottawa, Montreal, and Moncton that are in or adjacent to French-majority areas. Or being employed in a government position that requires it. Other than that, it’s common to have some education in French, but fluency is rare. Using myself as an example, I think my French skills are above-average among English-speaking Canadians: I can more-or-less read a newspaper in French, but having a conversation is a struggle.

      • AlphaGamma says:

        To compare to another bilingual country, IIRC (can’t find the data now) that the vast majority of Flemings (Dutch-speaking Belgians) can speak French, while a much smaller proportion of Walloons (French-speaking Belgians) can speak Dutch. English is widely used as an auxiliary language in Belgium- it is the language of command in the Belgian military, and the language that their national football team use in training.

        • Aapje says:

          Interestingly, research in Brussels shows that fewer people can speak Dutch well, but that Dutch is more often used. Also, it found that French-speakers in Brussels are increasingly hostile to the Flemish.

          This suggests balkanization, where people recede into enclaves of similar people.

          Also, the research found that not just English ability is increasing in Brussels, but that it is now a lot more often used in daily life. Furthermore, Arabic seems close to overtaking Dutch as the second language in Brussels.

          • Tenacious D says:

            Interesting. Do you think the balkanization will eventually lead to Belgium splitting into separate countries?

          • Aapje says:

            I already consider it hard to believe that they managed to keep it together so far. They seem to be living as separate states in many ways already.

          • Tarpitz says:

            They managed to go 18 months without a government after the 2010 elections. I imagine the country will break up in the aftermath of the Eurozone doing so, whenever that is.

          • Gobbobobble says:

            In the event of a split, is it more likely to exist as Walloonia & Flanders or is there any appetite to join up with France or the Netherlands, respectively? (and/or maybe that little German part to Germany)

          • Aapje says:

            Flanders is definitely not going to join The Netherlands. The Dutch are to them as New Yorkers are to rural Americans: extremely assertive people who ignore many implicit rules and thus are very hard to deal with without adopting their behaviors.

            Also, because of this, the size difference and the lack of interest in The Netherlands to join up: if they would join up with the Dutch, the Dutch would expect them to adapt to them and would be very unwilling to return the favor. So no chance without some major external force pushing them together (which is not present).

            I don’t know the exact extent of culture differences between Wallonia and France, which I suspect are significant, but the French are definitely not a people who tend to adapt to others, so Wallonia would also have to adapt to France to join up.

            PS. Note that Brussels is a rich, mostly French-speaking, but technically not Wallonian entity just within Flanders, which severely complicates a potential breakup.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            Note that Brussels is a rich, mostly French-speaking, but technically not Wallonian entity just within Flanders, which severely complicates a potential breakup.

            Oh great, I can imagine a North Brussels and a South Brussels, as each side says they need part of the capital. Probably work about as well as East and West Berlin, or East and West Jerusalem.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            They could always give it the Baarle treatment.

      • convie says:

        Most francophone Canadians do.

        That’s actually only really true in the Montreal area. Less than 50% of Francophones consider themselves bilingual. Ever been to Quebec city? It’s easier to get by as an Anglophone in France.

        • Tenacious D says:

          Yes, I’ve been to Quebec City. I agree that outside Montreal the average Quebecer might not be fluent in English (although probably has more facility with the basics than the average anglophone Canadian does of French). I’m surprised that it’s less than 50% overall though, since just greater Montreal + francophones outside of Quebec must get close to being 50% of french Canadians.

    • John Schilling says:

      The statistic that would seem most useful in this context is, what fraction of people in various nations or other groups ever achieve useful fluency (either conversational or reading) in any language other than,

      A: their native tongue, or
      B: the official/dominant language of the nation they live in, or
      C: the default Lingua Franca, which for the past century has been mostly English (but see Russian, Swahili, Hindi, etc, in some places)

      A person is significantly handicapped if they don’t know A, B, and C. Learning any other language is for intellectual curiosity or enrichment, or for seeking specific economic advantage, and thus laudable but optional.

      • Aapje says:

        C: the default Lingua Franca, which for the past century has been mostly English (but see Russian, Swahili, Hindi, etc, in some places)

        Don’t forget French, which is a common language in large part of Africa.

    • jgr314 says:

      pretty much all college educated people outside the US become fluent in at least two languages. And usually one of those languages is English.

      My experience is that this isn’t true in Japan or Thailand.

    • rlms says:

      So what proportion of educated Brits are fluent in something else?

      A very small proportion, in my experience. I know one person who was sent to live in a European country as a teenager for a few months and picked up the language to more-or-less fluency, but all the other multilingual people I know either have foreign relatives or are language teachers.

      I think most British students do a few years of a foreign language, but the teaching is so bad as to be almost worthless.

      • acymetric says:

        Did they already have some experience with the language? That would be a shockingly short amount of time to achieve fluency starting from 0 or close to it.

        • rlms says:

          Not much I don’t think. Six months (I think it was about that long) doesn’t seem to me like an unreasonable length of time to get fluent in an easy language if you’re immersed in it.

  38. INH5 says:

    A few days ago I came across this study that claimed to find that in the United Statse the children of Nigerian immigrants graduate from college at higher rates than the children of Chinese immigrants (see Table 1).

    How good of a proxy is educational attainment for IQ?

    • EchoChaos says:

      Good, but somewhat distorted as affirmative action heavily benefits Africans in the margin over Chinese.

      I strongly suspect that Nigerian immigrants are selected for intelligence, and even with regression to the mean, some of that will stay. But a Nigerian with an IQ of 105 is getting into college far more easily than a Chinese with an IQ of 105.

      • INH5 says:

        These are college graduation rates. Affirmative action shouldn’t help much if at all with that, and if we believe “mismatch” theories might actually harm them.

        And remember that the Chinese immigrants came through the exact same immigration system. How much more selective would the process have to be for the Nigerians for them to close a hypothetical 20+ point IQ gap, even before you factor in regression to the mean?

        • quanta413 says:

          And remember that the Chinese immigrants came through the exact same immigration system. How much more selective would the process have to be for the Nigerians for them to close a hypothetical 20+ point IQ gap, even before you factor in regression to the mean?

          Nigeria is much poorer per capita than China though. So there may be filters on the Nigerian side of that process that are stronger than in China.

          Nigeria and China are both pretty big. Big enough that I expect significant subgroup differences in IQ. I saw a map of the IQ of various regions in China once, and the mean varied by ~10 points. And these were still pretty large regions.

          Also, Nigeria is really poor and was even poorer. I wouldn’t want to bet on IQ data from there being representative of genetic potential for IQ. I’d expect an average for the entire country of Nigeria comparable to all African Americans as a group if you could manipulate the environment so that Nigeria was comparable to the environment African Americans experience in the U.S. With some subgroups scoring probably scoring higher.

          EDIT: I’m intentionally ignoring the question of how close African American (or anybody else’s) IQs are to their genetic potential. I don’t want to discuss that. I’m assuming Nigeria is a worse environment for your brain on average at its current level of development.

          These are college graduation rates. Affirmative action shouldn’t help much if at all with that, and if we believe “mismatch” theories might actually harm them.

          Affirmative action could help graduation since poor students will tend to sort into easier majors whereas admissions doesn’t select the same way. But anecdotally, I really, really, really doubt that’s happening with Nigerians. I attended a graduation for neuroscience bachelors at UCLA and I think there might have been more graduates with Nigerian names than European ones. Neuroscience is not an easy major and UCLA is a very competitive school.

          Unfortunately, I’m unaware of any bulk evidence to bring about on this question. I’m just really doubtful that is what’s going on even though it’s technically possible.

          • I want to know what fraction of the Nigerians are Ibo. Given their reputation, I wouldn’t be astonished if the average IQ was above 100.

          • bullseye says:

            Wikipedia says 24% of Nigerians are Ibo, citing the CIA World Factbook. CIA World Factbook says 14%. Maybe the 24% is out of date.

          • LadyJane says:

            @DavidFriedman: For what it’s worth, all three of the Africans (not counting African-Americans) in my graduate program are Ibo. I’m not sure what percentage of African immigrants to the U.S. are Ibo, so I have no idea how much of a statistical unlikelihood this is.

        • 10240 says:

          I haven’t read the article in full, but from the phrases it uses, it’s not clear to me if it uses graduation rates among those who started university, rather than among the entire population.

          • INH5 says:

            From the Descriptive Analyses section:

            Table 1 provides an overview of our CPS ASEC pooled sample by ethnoracial origin and immigrant generation, along with the proportion with a bachelor’s degree or more.

            So it is among the entire population.

    • Aging Loser says:

      Perhaps males are hired by small-businessmen fathers and uncles and therefore see no need for college.

      My experience adjuncting at fifth-rate colleges suggests that educational attainment isn’t closely aligned with intelligence except to the extent that ability to make it to class indicates that a student integrates some idea of future states of affairs into his/her map of his/her place in the world.

      “Ultra-orthodox” Jews don’t go to college at all, and there are a lot of them (at least a hundred thousand in Brooklyn I assume), and they’re pretty bright.

      • RalMirrorAd says:

        When the range of ability isn’t restricted to a subset of the population, ‘G’ intelligence as measured by IQ predicts educational attainment. But one can obviously find cultural subgroups that don’t encourage pursuing post-secondary education as much as the wider population and so they’re less likely overall to attend post-secondary.

        But cultural inclinations [including the cultural inclination of women to not pursue apprenticeships/trade schools] are just confounders in this instance.

  39. theredsheep says:

    To what extent is (for lack of a better term) “virtue signalling” a bad thing? I’m thinking of the Gillette ad. Now, before anybody starts, I don’t really care about whether the ad is meant to be offensive, or should be perceived as such. Nor about whether MeToo et al are more good than bad on average, or anything like that. I want to focus on the question of whether any given moral cause being loudly adopted out of selfish motives is more likely to be good or bad for that cause.

    If, of course, you have a good argument as to why that ad is not primarily cynicism on Gillette’s part, I’d like to hear it. It seems clear to me that anything that cost as much to make and promote as that spot would not go under the philanthropy budget, such as it is, but as a form of marketing. And, of course, you could argue whether corporate philanthropy and marketing are even different things in the first place.

    Jesus said to do good in secret, and to oil our faces when we fast, whereas a Jewish author I once read argued that, if selfish motives induce more people to do good deeds, hey, that means so many more good deeds done, right? In the case of the Gillette ad, I have my doubts whether it actually accomplishes any good at all, again assuming you define MeToo’s goals as good. Nobody is going to pause before catcalling a woman and think, “wait, would Gillette approve of this?” Nor is it likely to convince anyone. But, of course, that is symptomatic of our deep cultural division at this particular moment, and might not apply to all times and places.

    Either way, I have my doubts as to whether a powerful actor like a corporation signing on to a cause does it any good, except insofar as they might later choose to flex their muscles to enforce the good as a moral norm, or contribute resources directly to it. But I’m not sure it can do any harm. What do you think?

    • The Nybbler says:

      I don’t think there’s any harm to truly signalling virtue — “I, Oz the Great and Powerful, am making sure babies get to eat” is probably usually positive, assuming he’s really doing so. But once you’re beyond that, you can definitely have problems. There’s that saying that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, but “I, Homer The Thief, endorse the Citizens Campaign Against Theft” is likely to instill doubt about the Citizens Campaign (even if they really do good work). Even if you go to neutrality (Gillette being neither known for particular virtue nor vice where #MeToo is concerned), you can have problems. If virtue just becomes another way to sell razors, will people believe it is truly virtue?

      • theredsheep says:

        What would it mean for signal-boosting MeToo to be “truly” virtue? They’re pushing fairly standard prog orthodoxy there AFAICT.

        • The Nybbler says:

          Signal-boosting MeToo is not virtue. For there to be any true virtue involved, Gillette would have be doing the things they were promoting in the ad. Gillette is a classic faceless corporation (well, faceless subsidiary of a faceless corporation) and cannot manage that.

    • Uribe says:

      Virtue signalling is bad when it is transparent, because it makes people cynical, which lowers trust levels in society. Virtue signalling can only be a good thing if it’s done well. The Gillette ad feels phony (phonier than most ads) and therefore winds up signalling cynicism instead of virtue.

      • theredsheep says:

        It might depend on who’s viewing it; a lot of reactions I’ve read, from non-polarized people, seem to find nothing objectionable about it and can’t understand why people are getting upset.

        • Aapje says:

          The ad uses the term ‘toxic masculinity’ which comes with a lot of baggage. Those who are not aware of that baggage might not find it objectionable, but that may then be ignorance on their part. They might consider it objectionable if they were more aware of the meaning/use of the term.

          I would also argue that overly negative beliefs about men’s wickedness and overly positive beliefs about women’s virtuousness are the status quo. Non-polarized people’s opinions may then not be indicative of high morals, in the same way that the average Ancient Roman’s view on slavery would probably not be considered unobjectionable today.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            In addition to using “toxic masculinity”, the ad plays motte-and-bailey with it. (Are the guys we see anxiously scrutinizing themselves in the mirror supposed to be the toxic kind– rapists, wife-beaters, harassers? If not, what is it they’re supposed to be asking themselves?) So, not too surprising to see a certain number of non-polarized people exclaiming over the sturdiness of the motte.

            A better question might be why people who normally ridicule the idea of microaggression are getting upset. The ad is just the sort of thing that would qualify if it were aimed at one of the groups that aren’t considered fair game.

          • Randy M says:

            A better question might be why people who normally ridicule the idea of microaggression are getting upset.

            Aren’t μAgs usually unintentional faux pas, like saying “would you like to get lunch?” to a Muslim during Ramadan or something? This is corporate, targeted, and intentional. It seems to be at least a centiAg.

          • vV_Vv says:

            A better question might be why people who normally ridicule the idea of microaggression are getting upset. The ad is just the sort of thing that would qualify if it were aimed at one of the groups that aren’t considered fair game.

            The “micro” in microaggression implies that the aggression is small both in scope and intensity, when a big corporation releases an ad calling out your entire demographic group, I’d say it’s a pretty macro aggression.

            Imagine if the ad featured stereotypical Muslim immigrants selling drugs, molesting children, driving trucks into crowds while shouting “Allahu Akbar”, etc., then clips of Paul Joseph Watson play and you hear the words “demographic replacement” and “white genocide”, then some helpful Muslims show up to correct their coreligionaries, end with the motto “the best a Muslim can be”.

            Would you call that a microaggression?

          • AG says:

            @vV_Vv

            It’s a microaggression because it’s an indirect attack.

            “I don’t care for X class” is macro. “I don’t care for Y element of X class (but most X is Y)” is micro.

            Stating “All women should stay in the kitchen” is macro. Making kitchen jokes in the earshot of a woman coworker is indirect, so it’s micro.

          • The original Mr. X says:

            Although most microaggressions are indeed indirect, I don’t think it’s the indirectness per se that makes them microaggressions, but rather the trivial (when taken in isolation) scale of the aggression. A major company showing an advert on national television isn’t trivial.

        • Jesse E says:

          Yup, this is it.

          Now, do people remember a Kendall Jenner ad from a year or so ago with Pepsi? It was kind of silly, slammed by both the Left and Right for “virtue signalling” about race and other thing.

          Guess what? African American and Latino people actually liked it.

          Just like outside of the Twitter/Reddit/Online bubble, I’ve seen zero negative reactions to this ad, even from relatively conservative people.

          Is it a kind of cheesy ad? Sure.

          But the people acting like Gillette is allying with feminist SJW’s to try to destroy masculinity looks silly when a Normie watches the ad.

    • DeWitt says:

      But I’m not sure it can do any harm.

      It reduces trust, becomes an arms race, and comes with free rider problems.

      I’m a little tired and can’t elaborate on this all as well as I’d like, but consider the image of politicians promising to be tough on crime. Taken unto itself, ‘I will not be very kind to people who break the law’ isn’t very objectionable. When multiple people run for office, virtue signaling becomes a problem, and you can end up with some overly severe measures getting proposed because everyone wants to look tough on crime the most.

      Tired now, sorry, but I do hope that illustrates one issue at least a little.

      • theredsheep says:

        Yeah, I get you. My OP was pretty muddled too, if it comes to that, so you’re fine. I probably should have made its focus narrower, though, since it’s hard to apply your perfectly cogent point to Gillette’s particular case.

      • Aapje says:

        @DeWitt

        To add to that, a lot of virtue signalling involves a hero-villain dichotomy, often based on stereotypes. This has potential problems such as mistreating people for crimes of others, but also the stereotypes being quite wrong and/or greatly exaggerated, resulting in not just unwarranted treatment of individuals by other individuals, but also unfair policies.

        For example, the mainstream and false belief that men are almost never victims of domestic violence by women (disproved by hundreds of victim survey studies) has resulted in victims being judged and treated as extremely unmanly outliers by other people, a lack of government funding to help male victims, male victims being treated as perpetrators by the police, victim support organizations, etc.

        We have a culture where male victimization is blamed on men (themselves) and female victimization on men. This ad just perpetuates and strengthens that sexism.

    • brad says:

      To what extent is (for lack of a better term) “virtue signalling” a bad thing?

      I don’t know what “virtue signalling” is supposed to mean these days other than it is something to be used as an insult when anyone says something the speaker thinks is too “progressive”.

      Let’s even narrow it down to corporate virtue signalling to give ourselves an easier definitional task. Is it virtue signalling for Chick Fil A to be closed on Sundays? Is it virtue signalling for Chipotle to use napkins made out of recycled paper? Is it virtue signalling for McDonalds to pay for the parents of children that are hospitalized to stay in hotels near the hospital?

      Jesus said to do good in secret, and to oil our faces when we fast, whereas a Jewish author I once read argued that, if selfish motives induce more people to do good deeds,

      FWIW the position you attribute to Jesus position is the halachically Jewish one, (see Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Laws of Charity) not whoever that author that was.

      • woah77 says:

        I think it’s reasonable to distinguish between signalling and charitable activities. Companies who are giving money to causes aren’t merely signalling, they’re actively supporting their cause. Similarly, Chick Fil A isn’t running ads saying “Don’t come here, go to church this Sunday!” they’re just closing all their locations on Sunday so that employees have the opportunity to go to church and spend time with their families. I think for it to be signalling, it needs to be public and intended for an audience. I can’t see Chich Fil A or McDonalds qualifying there. Are their charitable activities private? No. But they aren’t exactly advertising it either.

      • theredsheep says:

        I had a vague inkling that the author was speaking for the Jewish position in general, but I read the book more than a year ago and didn’t want to make claims I wasn’t sure of. Thanks.

        Re: CFA et al, I would (like whoa77) distinguish those from merely endorsing a currently popular message without actively contributing to it via legal pressure, contributions, and the like. CFA’s position is probably helping to sustain a Christian culture to some extent, Chipotle … well, I’m not sure how economical recycling is in the first place, but if it is, they’re doing their bit. McDonalds is just being nice there, since “let kids be near their sick parents” isn’t part of any movement I can think of.

      • Aapje says:

        @Brad

        I would argue that “virtue signalling” as a pejorative is typically intended to call out those who act as authorities on morality, thus implying that they themselves know how to behave morally, while actually being hypocrites. Especially when the ‘signaller’ is doing something that is fairly costly for others, but not themselves.

        However, what seems hypocritical to some may not seem hypocritical to others. For example, some people think that Gillette is hypocritical for saying that they want to reduce sexism, while they actually spread (inaccurate) sexist stereotypes about men. Others think that Gillette is hypocritical for adopting feminist arguments that suit their business model, but not those that would harm it.

        In this sense a lot of accusations of virtue signalling are very subjective & depend on what one sees as hypocrisy. For one person, being anti-abortion is seen as choosing for women to die due to amateur abortions and thus is inconsistent with a claim of ‘loving thy neighbor,’ while to another, being anti-abortion is seen as choosing for fewer fetuses to be murdered and thus fully compatible with neighborly love.

        While ‘virtue signalling’ as a term may be typically be aimed at progressives, my observation is that progressives make similar accusations against others, just with different language.

        PS. Chastising others can very easily be interpreted as hypocritical, because it’s a demand on others, not an actual effort by the chastiser. So a very small sacrifice that isn’t made by that person/company themselves can thus seem hypocritical: “You want me to make a substantial sacrifice and/or what you do harms me, but you are unwilling to make such sacrifice and/or face such harm yourself.”

        • quanta413 says:

          Others think that Gillette is hypocritical for adopting feminist arguments that suit their business model, but not those that would harm it.

          Speaking of which, Gillette needs to make a line of “female” razors that don’t suck. The pink ones are crappy at cutting hair compared to the comparably priced not pink ones.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            The point of the female razors is to suck. People who buy pink plastic for no reason will buy it at a premium for no reason, so…

          • quanta413 says:

            When I think about it harder, it’s just the pink electric ones that suck to my knowledge. I have not heard complaints about the non electric ones.

            Actually, I think most of the electric ones are a different brand, so I’m blaming the wrong company. Gillette should still swoop in here and make not sucky ones.

          • acymetric says:

            Ah. Your mistake is in thinking that electric razors don’t suck generally. I suppose it depends on what you’re looking for, but my experience in trying (non-pink) electric razors is that they

            a) don’t get a close enough shave

            b) tend to pull hairs a little bit

            I think they are primarily for people who don’t need a super close shave, or those who have thin/fine/non-thick hair. If one of those thing describes you (and leg hair is not typically particularly fine even for women) electric razors are probably out. I’m not sure I even realized they marketed electric razors to women.

          • quanta413 says:

            Electrics don’t cut quite as close, but the men’s electrics are still better. A good electric razor doesn’t pull unless the hair is really tough or long. The pink ones aren’t good though.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        I know the term “virtue signalling” is your pet peeve, brad. Can we come up with some other term to specify “signalling of low-cost virtue while expecting high-value returns?”

        How about “virtua signalling?”

        • brad says:

          Right now I’m still trying to figure out if there’s any there there. If it’s a term whose entire purpose is to be a pejorative to fling at the left of center, brainstorming an alternative isn’t high on my list of things to do.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            So what do you think about Gillette’s ad then? Commendable or condemnable? If the latter, then what would you call it?

          • brad says:

            I just watched it. I’m surprised there’s so much furor. It seemed pretty anodyne to me. That said, it also didn’t seem especially effective to me, I don’t want to run out and buy a mach 3. But what do I know about advertising?

      • brad says:

        Replying at this level because it is to both woah77 and theredsheep (edit: the other responses were posted while I was writing)

        Does signalling as used in the phrase only means empty, bad faith communication?

        Take, for example, the sentence:
        “The single women were signalling their availability by wearing revealing clothes, in contrast the married women were wearing longer dresses.”

        I think that’s a perfectly reasonable use of the word “signalling” without even getting into the perhaps jargon-y version from the social sciences. But I don’t think it matches how either of you are suggesting “virtue signalling” should be used.

        • theredsheep says:

          I did say “for lack of a better term.” I know it’s loaded, and I’m sorry I couldn’t think of a better one.

        • woah77 says:

          I suppose my definition of virtue signalling indicates a lack of effecting change. Chick Fil A, McDonalds, Chipotle are all effecting a change (regardless of its effectiveness). Gillette isn’t starting a men’s program to help men out. They aren’t directing money towards a cause. They made an ad for [some amount of money] and aren’t doing anything other than selling razors. When I hear or say virtue signalling, I understand that the person/entity isn’t doing anything. It’s armchair activism.

          I know it’s a fuzzy category, because I’ve seen cases where what appeared to be virtue signalling resulted in effective activism, but most of the time you’ll see people supporting something with only words and no actions, such as “thoughts and prayers.” Whenever an activity is done to show others how good a person you are without producing any actions or results, you are virtue signalling.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Whenever an activity is done to show others how good a person you are without producing any actions or results, you are virtue signalling.

            And I think brad’s objection, with which I supersize, is that “virtue signalling” is a real thing in social science where people signal real virtue by doing costly things that also signal virtue. Like forgoing meat because of the ethical problems with consuming animals, or carrying an unwanted baby to term because abortion is wrong. People started using it ironically to mock people who were using low-cost signalling but still expecting high-value rewards, and now people just assume the ironic definition is the actual definition.

            I propose “virtua signalling” as a term for the fake signalling of virtue.

          • hls2003 says:

            @Conrad:

            How about “virtual virtue”?

          • woah77 says:

            I can accept that. I supposed that when I see a costly thing that signals virtue I immediately categorize it as charity/activism/volunteering/etc and not as “virtue signally.” It’s not something I’m super attached to, just how I expect it to be used and what I expect when I see it used (low cost signalling). Virtua signally works just as well for me.

      • Randy M says:

        To take one example on your list:
        Using recycled paper for napkins–not virtue signalling.
        Printing “Made using 100% recycled paper!” on your napkins (whether true or not)–virtue signalling.
        Also probably harmless, but perhaps grating depending on the language. Like if it says “By eating here, you are helping to save the rain forests and preserve biodiversity that keeps our planet healthy!”

        Lots of things get called virtue signalling. Being virtue signalling isn’t about being a good or bad action; compare doing your work ahead of schedule and then trumpeting it to the office. No, you weren’t wrong to do your job well, but you are probably irritating your coworkers.

        And then the term might be used when there are actual disagreements about whether the actions are positive, neutral, or negative.

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        Is it virtue signalling for Chick Fil A to be closed on Sundays? Is it virtue signalling for Chipotle to use napkins made out of recycled paper? Is it virtue signalling for McDonalds to pay for the parents of children that are hospitalized to stay in hotels near the hospital?

        The short (and technical) answer is “no, but if they’re running ads about it, then the ads are”.

        I don’t know what “virtue signalling” is supposed to mean these days other than it is something to be used as an insult when anyone says something the speaker thinks is too “progressive”.

        I can sympathize with this. In response, I can offer what woah77, albatross11, and others have said. Signalling is specifically considered bad if there’s little or nothing substantive attached. Otherwise, it’s tolerable. So McDonald’s is improving QoL for parents of hospitalized children, and Chipotle is increasing the demand for recycled paper and lowering the rate of landfill growth.

        Chick Fil A is providing moral support to people who prefer to keep holy the sabbath, which tends to fall into the non-substantial category, and is therefore disdainful (to the extent they advertise that fact; I’m unaware whether they do). They get slightly more pass because they’re sacrificing revenue by doing so. However, consider the textbook example of non-substantial signalling I usually hear: someone sharing tweets making some moral point, and expressing their support or rejection, often with a hashtag. If said person were passing on thousands of dollars in income as a day trader or something in order to share such tweets, it’d still be disdainful. If, OTOH, said person was tweeting about a project to increase QoL in some way, that would be better received. Maybe even a total positive; they’re coordinating action.

        It’s still worse to advertise substantive virtue than to “do in secret” in the Christian sense; it’s just that it can be overcome by the substance.

        Non-substantive pretty much includes any sort of idea spreading, raising awareness, “going viral”, “thoughts and prayers”, etc. Whole lotta nothin’.

        Hypocrisy isn’t really distinguishing; it just exacerbates the nothin’. A hypocrite signals while lowering QoL.

        This stuff probably falls disproportionately on progressives because of historical accident. Progressives have some of the most visible signals. Or more accurately, the visible signals of late are often from progressives. This stuff applies just as easily to upper class snobs sniffily declaring that they’d never permit a stoner or person of poor upbringing (nudge, wink) into their home, but this talk rarely made it out of the club, boardroom, or parlor. And progressives who are virtuous in private are as ignominious as charitable conservatives, for obvious reasons.

      • brad says:

        There seems to be some disagreement here. Some would have it mean any communication whose content is essentially “I/we are virtuous”. That could be true or false and be productive or unproductive. Others would have it mean mean that when the actor in question isn’t doing anything virtuous and so it would be strictly pejorative. Others would judge the communication itself for effectiveness before determining whether it applies.

        Given the uncertainty over the definition, the lack of a burning need for a pithy term for any of the mooted definitions, and the fact that it’s use is itself at this point indicates at least something about the user, I think I’m sticking with my objection and will continue to update in the direction of less respect for speakers and writers that use it.

    • albatross11 says:

      Humans being what we are, society works better, the more your virtue-signaling[0] requires some actual virtue or good works or something. Signaling your virtue by actually feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, etc., has the desired primary effect[1] of getting everyone to see what a virtuous person you are, while also doing some good. Signaling your virtue by expressing how very, very concerned you are with all the right values is less likely to actually get much good done.

      [0] I think technically, virtue-signaling needs to be expensive for the signaler–I’m making a costly display of my virtue. But you can do this in ways that are just burning wealth, or in other ways that actually make the world a better place.

      [1] Note the figure-ground inversion here.

      • Aapje says:

        I think technically, virtue-signaling needs to be expensive for the signaler–I’m making a costly display of my virtue. But you can do this in ways that are just burning wealth, or in other ways that actually make the world a better place.

        Perhaps, but it seems a lot more pleasant if the expense can mostly be offloaded on others and/or diluted across so many people that you get a tragedy of the commons effect: overall the harm exceeds the benefits, but the benefits go to me and most of the harm goes to others, so I benefit for doing it, at the expense of the commons.

        • theredsheep says:

          In this particular case, I assume Gillette was deliberately courting the controversy, because I can’t recall the last time I ever had cause to say or type “Gillette” at all before this came out.

          • baconbits9 says:

            Gilette might not have been, they might have gone to an ad agency and said “we want an ad that shows our support for the #metoo movement” and then the ad agency puts together something intentionally inflammatory.

        • albatross11 says:

          Yea, God help your society when the best way for powerful people to virtue-signal is to do utterly destructive things. An example is the prosecution of ritual Satanic child sexual abuse cases in the 80s–the prosecutor got to pose as protecting children from Satanic ritual torture and molestation, while putting people in prison for alleged crimes that were less plausible than the average UFO abduction story.

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      Most forms of signaling ‘X’ virtue involve some demonstration of that virtue to some degree, but advertising in favor of a cause leans very heavily in the signal direction with almost no demonstration of virtue.

      If some company made an advertisement for their product with the added note that a portion of sales went to domestic abuse victims, that would be further on the virtue side of the spectrum.

      The danger of signaling in general is that it’s rivalrous and doesn’t increase the total amount of desirable items being produced [in this case, virtue], at least not necessarily.

      That said a lot of the ire directed at the company is by people who think that the thing being signaled was hateful and not virtuous at all.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        That said a lot of the ire directed at the company is by people who think that the thing being signaled was hateful and not virtuous at all.

        Yes. If Popeye’s Chicken decided certain segments of their customer base were, perhaps, too involved in bike theft and ran a nationwide commercial about how people shouldn’t steal bikes, and all or almost all of the actors in the commercial were black, I don’t think we would be sitting here applauding Popeye’s for their virtuous anti-theft stance.

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      if selfish motives induce more people to do good deeds, hey, that means so many more good deeds done, right?

      This is how everything goes to shit. “It is okay that I sin for net -100 utils, because I am making 50 other people be good at +3 utils each, so it all works out.”

      But pretty soon everyone assigns themselves to that role, and “hey, I know that me pouring molten lead on this guy’s foot looks bad, but by sending a message that you shouldn’t make rape jokes on Twitter, it’s actually good.”

    • John Schilling says:

      To what extent is (for lack of a better term) “virtue signalling” a bad thing?

      Adversarial virtue signalling, where all you are doing is pointing out someone else’s vices (and the meta-vice of still other people having insufficiently opposed said vices), seems to me an unalloyed evil. It encourages the worst sort of tribalism and deepens social divides. It’s too cheap to be an effective signal. And, to the extent that people accept it as actually signalling virtue, it encourages still more people to do the adversarial thing rather than actually working to make things better.

      Don’t do that, don’t be surprised that reasonable people dissent when you do that, and don’t take that to mean that the reasonable people are now in favor of vice.

      Nobody is going to pause before catcalling a woman and think, “wait, would Gillette approve of this?” Nor is it likely to convince anyone.

      So, against the harms cited above, there’s no real benefit. Just a straight-up cynical attempt to misappropriate virtue. How is that not bad?

    • baconbits9 says:

      A few things that I think have been missed about the Gillette ad.

      1. Gillette has no real moral standing to make such an ad, telling basically half the population how they should act requires a pretty damn high standard and they aren’t close to it. This has nothing to do with how earnest the executives who developed the idea are, or if it was a cynical ploy to sell more razors or a first attempt to become more involved. They haven’t earned the right to tell people how to live their lives on this scale and backlash here isn’t any different than your uncle that you have met briefly twice showing up to give you a lecture on life before you graduate high school.

      2. This wasn’t a call to action, it was a call to reaction. “Get out the vote” campaigns, as much as I dislike them, at least have a concrete action to accomplish. Voting = Good so go and vote. Ok, fair enough. Acting good = good so act good, in a haze of swirling images is not that, its an emotional push to get an emotional reaction. The purpose of the ad is division, to create disagreement over the existence of the ad as much (or more) than the content of the ad.

      • theredsheep says:

        #2, at least, is a fair point; it’s clear to me that the controversy was the entire purpose of the ad. How about, say, Burger King coming out with the “Pride Whopper” after Obergefell? Do you suppose that has any effect, positive or negative?

    • The original Mr. X says:

      ISTM that the problem with virtue signalling is that the signallers expect other people to pay costs which they themselves will not. The white, male corporate executive who talks about the need for more diversity in senior management isn’t going to resign so they can give his space to a woman; no, the costs will be born by other men lower down the career ladder, who will be discriminated against when it comes to handing out promotions. The gated-community-dweller who posts #refugeeswelcome tweets isn’t going to have poor third-worlders who can’t speak a word of English moving into his neighbourhood; that cost will be born by other, poorer, people. And, to take the example at hand, I doubt that any of the people responsible for making the recent Gillette ad are going to change their behaviour to make it less “toxic” (however that’s defined).

      This also explains why Brad’s examples don’t count as virtue-signalling, since they’re all putting their money where their mouth is. If Chipotle were to run a “Use recycled products” drive whilst using cheaper, non-recycled napkins themselves, that would count as an example, since they’d be expecting other people to bear the costs of recycling whilst being unwilling to bear them themselves.

      • Aapje says:

        no, the costs will be born by other men lower down the career ladder, who will be discriminated against when it comes to handing out promotions.

        Yep, pulling up the ladder behind him, which actually is very much the custom nowadays.

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        This also explains why Brad’s examples don’t count as virtue-signalling, since they’re all putting their money where their mouth is.

        Again, I must say I think this is insufficient. For example, if I donate half my salary to Puerto Rican hurricane relief (assume I earn six figures), I think anyone would agree that that is virtuous. If I then follow up with an avalanche of tweets, FB posts, and advertisements that I did that, all containing links to my website where you can Buy My Book, I think most would agree that that is less virtuous, and could reasonably accuse me of doing something virtuous just to draw attention to my book, which might even result in a net profit for myself. I expect people would disagree on whether this is a seemly tactic, and I also think it fits the component of virtue signalling that draws dislike.

        • brad says:

          I just think that since there’s no consensus on an actual meaning and in the wild usage is almost always with a sneer and aimed at the left of center, the overall picture is pretty clear — empty right wing slur, usage to be avoided at all costs.

  40. Aging Loser says:

    I’ve been reading a 13th century German verse-novel/romance called TRISTAN (based on earlier versions of the Tristan story). It’s very eerie and pagan-feeling. Tristan is a supernaturally gifted musician like Orpheus, knows all languages and is a trickster and supernaturally gifted liar like Hermes. He receives a poisoned wound in a fight with an Irish antagonist called “Morold” and has to be healed by Morold’s sister, the queen of Ireland, who seems to be a kind of witch-goddess. (Isolde is the queen’s daughter.) This must be a version of the dying-and-resurrected king theme (with the dark alter-ego/Set-figure represented by Morold) that Robert Graves sees as the key to everything. (Ireland, across the Western Sea, might be the land of the dead — just as Odysseus visits the land of the dead, which I had assumed to be America, across the Western Sea.)

    Another thing that I’ve been reading, which some of you probably already know about, is George Macdonald’s PHANTASTES — I learned about via C. S. Lewis’s reference in THE FOUR LOVES to the protagonist’s Shadow. I’m enjoying it a lot — it’s very strange. Gutenberg has the text online if anyone’s interested.

    • theredsheep says:

      I haven’t read Phantastes, but I did read his Lilith once. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever read.

      • FLWAB says:

        I’ve read both Phantastes and Lilith: they are both strange, but good. It’s hard to find work like them: they’re very unique. A lot of MacDonalds work can seem a bit…trippy? But a trip where everything has some deep meaning, or at least seems too. His short story The Golden Key is a good sample of what I mean. His work definitely subverts genre expectations, but not out of deconstruction since he wrote them long before fantasy became an established genre: the conventions are subverted because they don’t exist yet, like a man who drives off road because nobody has made any roads yet.

        • Nick says:

          His work definitely subverts genre expectations, but not out of deconstruction since he wrote them long before fantasy became an established genre: the conventions are subverted because they don’t exist yet, like a man who drives off road because nobody has made any roads yet.

          TVTropes has a term for this, Unbuilt Trope.

          One of the neat things about reading works written prior to establishment of the genre conventions is getting a glimpse at other forms those conventions might have taken.

  41. Nicholas Weininger says:

    People who follow monetary policy: are there any good studies out there of whether the inter-regional divergences of economic outcomes in the US, and subsequent political dynamics, are related to the US becoming less of an optimal currency area?

    Thinking about the problems the eurozone has had, I wonder if the comparison of “rural heartland vs elite coastal cities” to “Greece vs Germany” is at all fruitful. Certainly the resentment of the one for the other seems partly-driven in both cases by a similar sense of having been screwed over economically. The question I’m interested in is whether, in a world where different regions of the US somehow had different currencies and fiscal policies but people and goods could still move freely among them in the way that EU citizens can move among the Schengen countries even though some of them aren’t on the euro, this could have been ameliorated.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      Honestly, I don’t see this come up much in the popular econ blogosphere. It’s taken a total back-seat to other topics, like general recession management, income inequality, taxes, and more specific phenomenon like food desserts or limited behavioral insights.

      My brief guess is that the data would not show a significant change between now and 15 years ago. Even with economic divergence, places like San Francisco clearly suffered during the recession just like Omaha did. We don’t have totally different business cycles.

      Meanwhile, Greece continues to have unemployment at 19%, while Germany has unemployment of 3-4%. France has unemployment of 9%, which has been totally consistent since the recession. So, in typical terms, you’d think of Germany as overheating, France as steady state, and Greece as in a severe depression. What’s the correct European monetary policy?

      The US policy is substantially clearer, as our “Greece” is something like West Virginia, which is still pretty damn correlated with the rest of the US, even if it is still higher than the 2007 rate. So, even in the chance we are getting worse, I don’t think we’re nearly as bad off as Europe.

      Most of the problem in the US seems to just be structural changes. Detroit isn’t getting poorer because its economy is uncorrelated with the rest of the US economy, it’s getting poorer because American car companies shut down.

    • 10240 says:

      [Not an expert] As I’ve discussed before, I don’t really get why such a divergence would mean that having a single currency is not optimal. Or, rather, my understanding is that the regions/countries having separate currencies can have an advantage if, as a result of restrictions on dismissal, a high minimum wage etc., external devaluation (i.e. currency devaluation) is the only way to reduce the prices and wages in one region compared to another, as opposed to internal devaluation (i.e. a decrease in prices and wages, when measured in local currency, which may then be the same as the currency in the other region). But the US has at-will employment, weak unions and a low minimum wage, so it may have relatively little barrier to righting any imbalance though market mechanisms, even with a single currency. Furthermore, even if downward stickiness of wages can’t be avoided, an alternative to separate currencies could be to set a higher (average) inflation rate; then prices and wages in one region can lower compared to the other without having deflation anywhere (e.g. 0% inflation in one region and 5% in another rather than -2% and 3%).

    • Erusian says:

      I’m not aware of any studies but, beyond a feeling of having been screwed over, there’s very little analogous. In particular, the US is not a large export economy. Almost half of the German economy relies on exports, often debt-fueled exports to other countries funded by their own banks. They often specifically trade with weaker, less developed countries as well. The US doesn’t really have an analogous model. Only 10% of the US economy is export based and the less developed areas tend to export to the more developed ones.

      So the Heartland is more analogous to Germany, not Greece. It ‘exports’ food, manufactured goods, etc produced by capital heavy industries to the Coasts. But the Coasts aren’t really Greece either. While they have much larger welfare states, perhaps even arguably unsustainable ones, they also have much stronger economies. There would be a balance of trade problem (the coasts would import much more than they export) but they wouldn’t have to rely on Midwestern banks to finance it the way Greece did. It certainly isn’t like Southern Europe where many financial instruments hadn’t been introduced prior to integration.

  42. Plumber says:

    Two political things are in my mind;

    First: I’m a really bad prognosticator.

    A while back I wrote something to the effect of “The Democrats chasing after the educated suburban vote is a fool’s errand, they aren’t swing voters”, well I was wrong, as well as bringing back some Obama-to-Trump voters in the Rust Belt, the Democrats gained voters from the suburbs, which I really didn’t expect. 

    Second: You guys are probably ahead of me on this, but most weeks I read some of the opinion pieces from the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and last week I saw pieces from Brooks, Douthat, and Emba – all of which referenced a “populist” leaning monologue by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. 

    Reading the monologue I see much I wouldn’t expect, much I disagree with, but also some things I’ve said myself, and that’s very interesting to me (and a Republican finally acknowledging economic conditions driving cultural changes is amazing!).

    Trump also said many populist things during his campaign – as do most candidates, Democratic and Republican, but what he’s actually delivered is the usual Republican tax cuts – I haven’t seen any sign of the promised public works in the last two years, but it looks to me that, just as the Democratic base had a sizable Sanderist revolt in 2016, the populist contingent of the Republican Party is starting to chaff more and more at only the donor classes goals being inacted (though judging by my prediction record probably not).

    What do you who are better prophets than me think about this?

    • Nick says:

      I don’t think the suburban shift to Democrats is necessarily permanent; one way to read it is those voters punishing Republicans for Trump and the general shift in the party by either voting Democrat or staying home.

      The Carlson monologue is interesting, and I’ve been reading some of the debate on that. I don’t agree with Carlson that it’s all the fault of deliberate actions by The Elites, and framing it that way is probably the biggest flaw in it. Actually—sorry, instead of recapitulating everything I think about this, I’m just going to copy-paste my thoughts after I read some early responses to it. This is unedited and comes out of a journal, so I’m not making any effort to be clear, but I think some ideas come through:

      01/10/2019 8:56PM
      This is going to be a short one, though it merits more space than I’m going to give it. A few days ago Tucker Carlson gave a 15 minute monologue on his show laying out a different kind of populism. I don’t think it’s Trumpism–it’s actually something closer to reform conservatism. He links devastation in many areas of the country to the destruction of family and community, and includes the free market as one of these destructive forces, and the legalization of things like pot as others. Carlson thinks this is being orchestrated by elites who, despite living in a pretty conservative way themselves, preach an increasingly libertine ethic that is destroying everyone else, and increasingly arrogate the benefits of the economy to themselves.

      This sparked a firestorm of commentary in the conservative world. David French at _National Review_ and Ben Shapiro at _The Daily Wire_ had some pretty sharp criticisms of it, though they agreed with a fair bit too. The commonest criticism is that Carlson is encouraging a victim mentality, and one that’s going to inevitably lead to disappointment and even greater resentment, because the problems we face are not actually very tractable. The second commonest criticism, which French really hammered, is that personal choices matter a great, great deal more to one’s success or failure in life than any federal policies, so drawing attention from the former to the latter is a bad idea.

      The first I think is an uncontroversially fair criticism of Carlson’s presentation. He was doing it on television, of course, so it’s hardly surprising, but it’s still a flaw that a serious presentation of “Carlsonism” needs to fix. The second is less fair. As MBD, who wrote a great response essay, pointed out, as well as Reihan Salam in The Editors podcast, pushing personal responsibility only goes so far, because there are ultimately significant factors at the level of community and federal policy too. It’s not going to be enough, for most people, much less to get the most out of the situation, to inculcate personal responsibility. We need communities that reinforce that in healthy ways and help out when one fails, and we need government policies that, at the very least, aren’t actively harming what one needs to make those choices, or the communities needed to foster that, and even a little more on that front would be a pretty big help.

      I’m inclined to side with MBD and Salam here. I like MBD and respect him, and he’s obviously right that at some point you have to do more than just clean your room. (Peterson expresses caution here, since he’s concerned about patterns of self-victimization. This is a serious concern, to be sure, but voting doesn’t have to be this monumental engagement with the world. If you spend 99% of your year setting your house in order, and 1% voting responsibly, this is already more than French or Shapiro seem to believe is possible.)

      Salam also made a point not unlike Ross Douthat’s one about our meritocratic elite. In Mormon communities real sacrifices of time and money are required of members to support one another and the broader community. Mitt Romney, despite being the target of Carlson’s ire, very much fits this mold. And it’s none other than the old WASP mold, even though Romney is no Protestant! The Utah Mormons are descended from New England Protestants, and it’s not surprising that they’ve preserved a culture where there are very strong expectations for elites to serve their communities. Salam doesn’t connect it to Ross’s argument, perhaps to avoid giant Twitter shitstorms, but the two are consonant. It’s kind of a shame, though, that he doesn’t bring it up, because he could point out a very serious failure mode in all this praise of personal responsibility, which is that those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps may end up a little full of themselves.

      Salam made a very good impression in the podcast. He doesn’t participate in it much, and I’ve read very little of his writing, so I don’t know him well, but I think this is an indication he’s someone to watch. He seems to be reform conservatism’s policy wonk, which is cool! They could use one. I’m going to be keeping an eye on his writing in the future.

      Links for posterity:
      https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-mitt-romney-supports-the-status-quo-but-for-everyone-else-its-infuriating
      https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-editors/episode-127-is-it-an-emergency/
      https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/tucker-carlson-monologue-populism-politics-personal-responsibility/
      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-wasps.html
      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/wasps-meritocracy-ross-douthat.html

      • albatross11 says:

        I believe Salam was also interviewed on Jonah Goldberg’s podcast awhile back.

        • Nick says:

          I might listen to that. I listen to The Editors and Ordered Liberty on and off, but only the most recent ten episodes are available to listen to, and I have no idea how to get access to the rest. Like, I couldn’t find information about this anywhere, is it a subscriber feature? I would subscribe for a while if I could listen to back episodes.

        • Nick says:

          I had this waiting in the mail for me when I got home today. Those National Review folks sure work fast.

    • The Nybbler says:

      I haven’t seen any sign of the promised public works in the last two years

      He’s currently holding up government appropriations in an attempt to get funding for a YUGE public works project, what more do you want?

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        Less of this please. In the context of “public works jobs in a populist context,” a single national construction project is very non-central, and it’s disrespectful to Plumber to pretend it isn’t with that sort of tone.

        • Walter says:

          I dunno, I kind of agree with The Nybler’s point. Like, the idea that Trump isn’t trying to deliver to his base seems to founder on his currently being seen trying to build a wall to protect people and bring our guys home from Syria.

          I don’t get Plumber’s question. Trump promised to try and help his base, and he’s done so pretty relentlessly. He cut their taxes, started a trade war to try and get them jobs, and is trying to build a wall to keep out their competition. Like, I get that he’s not succeeding at helping them, because that’s not actually in the cards, but claiming he’s not trying seems wrong.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            And if you put a bill on Trump’s desk with wall funding and a trillion dollars to repair roads, bridges, dams, etc, he’d sign it in a heartbeat. Dems could pass such a thing. They will not, even if they might agree with it, because they despise Trump that much.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Conrad

            They could pass such a thing, but not pay for it. That’s more the problem, I think.

            @Walter

            You don’t understand the question because you’re thinking too big. A few % shifts on taxes and immigration numbers isn’t anywhere near the change that was promised. There’s a difference between the government promising a chicken in every pot and the government delivering BOGO chickens in every Whole Foods.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I don’t think whether or not the government can pay for things has been a serious point of contention for a long, long time.

          • Plumber says:

            @Walter

            “….Like, I get that he’s not succeeding at helping them, because that’s not actually in the cards, but claiming he’s not trying seems wrong”

            Trump sold himself as a “deal-maker” and the Party that he nominally belongs to controlled congress for the first two years of his Presidency, our last President also made lots of unfulfilled promises, but one promise, making a Massachusetts like health care system National, was effected (which wasn’t exactly the change promised, but it was a big deal).

            I don’t think anyone expects F.D.R., Eisenhower, or Johnson scale changes anymore but Trump just doesn’t seem like much of a deal-maker even when congress was the same Party as him.

          • Walter says:

            I think we mostly agree here. Like, you seem to feel that he’s failed, I agree. I think he tried/is trying, and it seems like you agree there.

            I feel like, it is easy to overestimate the presidency’s powers. President Obama is generally thought of as competent and hard working, and he spent 8 years in office and didn’t successfully close Guantanamo.

            I’m not salty Trump failed, because his goal was impossible. I guess that’s the last point of contention? Like, do we agree that nobody else in Trump’s shoes could have successfully solved immigration and brought back manufacturing jobs?

          • John Schilling says:

            President Obama is generally thought of as competent and hard working, and he spent 8 years in office and didn’t successfully close Guantanamo.

            That’s because his actual goal was to A: close Guantanamo and B: lock up everyone presently at Guantanamo in some other prison and C: definitely not A until B was complete. Unfortunately, “prison full of the worst terrorists we’ve found in fifteen years of hunting” was rather high on the NIMBY list. And of course the GOP wasn’t eager to hand him a symbolic win by paying the relocation costs.

          • albatross11 says:

            Also, Gitmo is basically a gulag for people who can’t be tried in a civilized court because we got the evidence against them with torture or illegal surveillance, or because we’ve tortured them and we don’t want that coming out in court for political reasons. Most people who oppose this on moral/civil liberties grounds don’t actually feel better about this if we move the gulag to rural Iowa instead of Cuba.

          • albatross11 says:

            Conrad:

            More to the point, they know that if they compromise there, Trump will be running in 2020 with a claim that he won a bitter fight with Congress to Build The Wall, which will probably give him a good shot at winning re-election. Democrats as a whole aren’t united on much, but I think they’re all pretty sure they don’t want Trump getting re-elected.

          • ana53294 says:

            Yeah, the main reason people dislike Guantanamo is not because it is in Cuban territory. It’s because of the human rights abuses. Many of these people where imprisoned illegally. I am pretty sure most of the evidence against them would be inadmissible in court because of how it was obtained.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Conrad

            Late reply, but… Modern Monetary Theory isn’t a mainstream position. It’s insanity.

          • brad says:

            There’s nothing insane about it. It’s merely treats inflation as an observed variable. That seems entirely reasonable given the spectacular failures of other monetary theories to actually predict it.

    • ilikekittycat says:

      If this catches on beyond Tucker Carlson and the usual TradCath guys that talk about it, things have the potential to go south fast… there’s not a roadmap for any of this, but when right-wingers start talking about the excesses of capitalism and degenerate elites and say changes need to be made so the socialists don’t become popular, it’s not a good sign historically.

      • Aapje says:

        @ilikekittycat

        I think that you are mistaking the symptom for the cause. At the same time as complaints about the excesses of capitalism and abusive elites became popular on the right, it also became popular on the left. See communism.

        My conclusion is then that there was immense discontent which the status quo among the populace, not that fascism was particularly attractive.

        Furthermore, I would argue that the lesson of that time is that the best solution was a pretty sharp political change to actually address the reasons for the discontent. This political change that seems to have worked quite well at that time was social democracy (although we may need something a bit different at this time).

    • Yakimi says:

      For one thing, the u.s. empire is the largest of the historic European settler-colonial societies, but it is rapidly (in historical terms) being de settlerized by imperialism. That’s why in the right-wing reign of President “W” (for “White”) a Japanese-American general is head of the u.s. army, another Japanese-American is secretary of transportation, while African-Americans are secretary of state and “W”‘s national security advisor (did you ever think you’d see a Black woman as the presidential national security advisor?). NASA’s chief of the technology applications division is a Black woman scientist and the head of ATF’s anti-terrorism division is a white woman cop. In Silicon Valley there are four hundred computer corporations owned by Indian immigrant scientists. Oh, there’s tons of white male privilege and white male preference here still and will be for generations, the continuing momentum of “the daily lives of millions”. But the big guys are sending a message down to ordinary white men. It’s like a bomb. In the new globalized multicultural capitalism, in the new computer society, the provincial, sheltered white settler life of America is going to be as over as the white settler life of the South African “Afrikaners” is. Forget about it.

      —J. Sakai, The Shock of Recognition (2002)

      Righties are at last realizing that the defeat of socialism did nothing to further their desiderata and in fact untethered capital from its nominal alliance with the conservative and national agenda, and that they are being done in by the very forces they unleashed. The corporate world has made its culture war allegiances unambiguously clear. I expect future iterations of conservatism to be much more hostile to untrammeled corporate power.

      • Walter says:

        I feel like ‘the corporate world’ is mostly a tale wagged by culture. Like, the HR departments aren’t on the democrat’s side because they have been secretly infiltrated by progressives, they are on the democrat’s side because being progressive is financially better than being conservative, and that’s their job.

        The right lost culture for the obvious reasons, and we aren’t ever going to get it back. We aren’t going to turn away from capitalism because it is obeying its incentives and pissing on us, if we could do that kind of thing we’d all have been progressives long ago.

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          Don’t underestimate the power of various federal and state laws in the actions of HR departments. If a company can get sued for not taking certain complaints seriously (and they can and do), then the people hired to make those decisions and avoid lawsuits are going to be really strong “supporters” of such laws. Whether they love or hate the laws personally, their actions will be extremely supportive. Not only existing laws that currently are in effect, but also the fear that an insufficient level of support for “marginalized” populations may result in new laws.

        • RalMirrorAd says:

          Different job-types lend themselves to different kinds of psychological profiles. There’s also the cascading effect of partisanship in an organization, a handful of people willing to enact purges out of strong conviction [not because they identify as being part of a conspiracy]

          Pinning it down strictly to market forces ignores the fact that this kind of signaling is very far from the median of the company’s customers and society at large, and is also of questionable profitability.

          So either 1. corporate Decision-making is increasingly being made by an unrepresentative segment of society 2. some unseen market or legal force is at work that forces to companies to unwillingly adopt a hard-line position that costs them money [but less money then they would otherwise]

          When it comes to advertisements and product development I lean strongly in favor of #1, for hiring I suspect its a combination of 1 and 2.

      • AG says:

        I expect future iterations of conservatism to be much more hostile to untrammeled corporate power.

        Revealed preferences show the opposite. Cutting taxes on the richest, emphasis on deregulation, appointees that are the exact opposite as draining the swamp, a complete lack of trust-busting, the embrace of corporate corruption by the right has never been so enthusiastic.
        (The left’s embrace of corporate corruption isn’t any better, but I’m answering the quote above.)

  43. sunnydestroy says:

    Anyone have any opinions on the sale price valuations of Asian stocks?

    I’m personally pretty iffy about Chinese stocks in particular just because I’ve gotten burnt hard before due to fraud in the books. Like, my investment went down to $0.00 level of fraud. I just don’t know if the accounting is fudged or not when it comes to Chinese books so I just stay away. It might be arguable that larger caps don’t have as much risk downside though.

    • jgr314 says:

      I don’t really trade equities in Asia, but there was a recent bloomberg article about really severe corporate governance problems in … HK. Given that they are basically the gold standard in the region (with the possible exception of Singapore), that is a pretty negative statement.

      Also, I would caution you against the view that large caps are immune to governance problems.

  44. SteveReilly says:

    Speaking of fast food, does anyone understand the EU ruling that cost McDonald’s the trademark on “Big Mac”. As I understand it, the case hinges on McDonald’s not proving that Big Macs have been sold in Europe. Did McDonald’s have really terrible lawyers, or are the EU judges just nitpicking in order to side with David over Goliath, or am I (or the journalists) misunderstanding the case?

    Edited–Oops, forgot that the Trump-fast food thread would be below this which makes my “Speaking of fast food” opener a non sequitur.

    • Unsaintly says:

      I’ve done a little digging on the subject, but am not a lawyer myself. That being said:

      If they did in fact lose the “Big Mac” trademark, it would appear to mostly be nit picking on behalf of the judge. McDonalds submitted a lot of evidence supporting their trademark as being in active use, but the judge pointed out that none of it was fully supported – as a website and affidavits could be faked or made after the fact – and said it didn’t count without being backed up by actual order records or similar. McDonalds is planning to appeal the decision, and will definitely have said order records on the second attempt.

      On the other hand, there is a chance that this story has been misunderstood and everyone is just copying each other’s mistakes. One website I found made the claim that what McDonalds actually lost was the Supermac trademark, which they had filed for but never actually used. Only one website actually made this claim, with a second loosely supporting it, but if true it would mean that the law was correctly applied due to McDonalds not using the Supermac trademark for anything

      • SteveReilly says:

        Ah, thanks. I saw that claim on the Washington Examiner about it being the Supermac trademark and that makes a lot more sense.

    • Deiseach says:

      It’s a long-running dispute between the Irish fast-food chain “Supermac’s” and McDonalds; Supermac’s are trying to expand outside of Ireland but McDonalds successfully blocked them on grounds of the confusion that would be caused between Supermac’s and themselves by the use of “Mac” in the name, and Pat McDonagh (founder and owner of Supermac’s) wasn’t taking that lying down:

      The battle comes after McDonald’s previously succeeded in stopping Supermac’s plans to expand into Great Britain and Europe on the basis of the similarity between the name Supermac’s and the Big Mac.

      Supermac’s currently has 116 restaurants across Ireland, including three in Northern Ireland. Following this judgment, it now hopes to expand into the Great Britain and Europe.

      However, the judgement seems to be on technical grounds over a limited range; McDonalds seems to have trademarked a lot of variations on “Big Mac” and “Mc” in a fashion similar to buying up Internet domain names, then done nothing with them, and that is what the court ruled about not establishing a trademark:

      “It follows from the above that the EUTM proprietor has not proven genuine use of the contested EUTM for any of the goods and services for which it is registered. As a result, the application for revocation is wholly successful and the contested EUTM must be revoked in its entirety. According to Article 62(1) EUTMR, the revocation will take effect from the date of the application for revocation, that is, as of 11/04/2017.”

      So the court seems to be saying “In the case of [special claim here] you haven’t shown that you’ve really established a trademark”. I don’t think this means that now Supermac’s can call its own burgers “Big Macs” but they can say “By using “mac” in our name we’re not infringing on you”:

      Next up, they will look at their plans for expanding. “The European office now has the opportunity to decide on granting us the Supermac’s trademark for a food service, so we can operate in the food service business basically,” he said.

  45. johan_larson says:

    There are two countries with more than one billion people: China and India. If you had to move to one or the other and stay there at least twenty years, which one would you choose?

    • The Nybbler says:

      India, because it was formerly run by the British. More English-speaking, less hostility to foreigners.

      • Randy M says:

        That’s a strong argument for India, but Chinese often want to learn English, and westerners are sometimes employed as English teachers in China. So it would be an opportunity.

      • Depends on what kind of hostility it is. Openly violent hostility then I’d avoid it, but if it’s “people avoid you” then for me that’s great. I’d really only want to move to either place if I was rich enough to be set for life, and money speaks as regards day to day hostility. Maybe decades down the line there might be the Chinese version of a pogrom against Westerners, but right now I think the West is rich enough that it seems like the worst is aimed at domestic minorities like the Uighur (and as sad as that it is, there’s no way anyone from outside is doing anything about it).

        I’d be very tempted to choose China over India (and put in the legwork to speak Mandarin and Cantonese) for the reason that China seems to be going places and India doesn’t. New Delhi and Mumbai don’t look like first world cities to me; they look kind of Brazilesque, as if modern skyscrapers have been plonked down into a third world backdrop. That’s more or less the best India seems to have. Beijing and Shanghai meanwhile give off the first world vibe that I love and need. China is still transitional in a way that places like South Korea and Japan aren’t, since they’ve achieved what modernity they have so quickly and disjointedly, but it’s leaps and bounds ahead of India in that respect. Maybe India will never have its day. The BRICS thing kind of fell through.

        China is more modern (in its areas that are modern), is headed towards being a superpower, and has a more cohesive sense of itself than India. In spite of having an authoritarian system, it feels more like a place that is fulfilling a kind of destiny like how the United States might have felt towards the end of the 19th Century. Add in some shallow reasons like preferring the food and women to India and if I was forced to choose between the two then it would have to be China. If the two were people, India would be absent minded, and China would be eagle eyed and productive.

        I can politically disagree with China, but I disagree with India on a social and spiritual level moreso.

        • India felt like a much more depressing place when I visited it, but that was in contrast to Shanghai, which I very much liked but which may not be typical of China. On the other hand, English is the second language of India, which would make life much easier–I’m not sure I could learn Mandarin starting at my present age. And my impression is that India is at this point making some progress.

        • @David Friedman

          And my impression is that India is at this point making some progress.

          I asked Google and it turns out the GDP growth rates of India and China are quite similar but China is higher (6.9% for China and 6.6% for India). In terms of GDP per capita you see China massively diverge from India in about the 90s.

          It could be that China has a higher economic potential than India, like I first suspected, but it could also be just that China got a headstart by liberalizing from 78 onwards, whereas India didn’t leave the “License Raj” until 1990. What’s weird though is that none of this seems to affect the average rate of growth in raw GDP, so it probably doesn’t matter. Scratch that.

    • Protagoras says:

      Obviously India. English being an overwhelming but not the only reason.

    • Statismagician says:

      India, I guess? English is more broadly useful, and I think their general-QoL trendline looks better than China’s for that time period. Plus I prefer the food.

    • Uribe says:

      I’d avoid the totalitarian country of China at all costs.

    • John Schilling says:

      Probably India.

      China has a larger aerospace industry and a more ambitious space program, so it’s not entirely inconceivable that someone there could make me an offer I wouldn’t refuse. And from my limited experience there, something like a professorship at Tsinghua University wouldn’t be out of the question. But it isn’t the way to bet.

      I can almost certainly find something useful to do in India. They have a decent little high-tech economy buried in that mass of humanity, they speak English if not American, they’ve inherited democratic government and reasonably functional institutions from their former colonial overlords, they are less likely to drag me into a war with people I like or otherwise use my talents for evil, their government is less likely to get in my way as I make my own way, and I think I would face less discrimination for being an outsider.

      Widespread poverty, pollution, and petty corruption are an issue in both places; I know where to find tolerable oases in China but I expect they aren’t hard to find in India either.

    • Andrew Hunter says:

      Hong Kong, which totally counts I swear, on grounds of food and infrastructure.

    • Tenacious D says:

      Until a year or two ago, I’d have definitely said China. But since then Xi’s regime has become more obviously authoritarian. It’s also becoming more obvious that there’s a segment of Indian society (and it’s the segment one would be spending the most time with as an expat) that’s very open to western/universal culture (example). So now I’d lean towards India.

    • Aging Loser says:

      Being able to read the nuances of facial expressions is a big deal, in terms of psychic comfort, and that’s a lot easier (for a Northwest European) with South Asians than with East Asians. (I live on the edge of Brooklyn Chinatown so I know what I’m talking about.)

      • Don_Flamingo says:

        I’m almost faceblind with non-whites, though I think that’s also a skill you can develop as needed.

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      This here is a good example of what I was ranting about last .75, by the way.

    • WashedOut says:

      India, of course. Unlike China, it isn’t a wholly corrupt and delusional Orwellian nightmare, and I could study meditation there pretty much undisturbed for 20 years if I had to.

      • Don_Flamingo says:

        India is much more corrupt, I think, but much less delusional.

      • onyomi says:

        Uhh… I’m no fan of the Chinese government but this is extremely hyperbolic. And yes, India is more corrupt than China. China is probably more Orwellian than the US in many ways, but I think I could make a good argument the US is more delusional than China…

    • Don_Flamingo says:

      I don’t find Indian women attractive (or at least none of those I’ve met so far). Chinese ones though are. Marrying into an Indian family would not work, anyway. Too large cultural differences. And. AFAIK casual relationships don’t happen there much.
      I also don’t like Indian English, Bollywood, colorful Saris and Bollywood dancing, but Chinese is kinda fun and I think there’s more stuff to find there for me to like.
      I do like Indian food a lot, but I wouldn’t mind Chinese food that much. Also India has too many languages. I like the Indians around me, but find it tough to often be excluded because the conversation is in Hindi or Bengali or whatever, as much as it’s in their strange English. After a couple months of learning Chinese, they can’t pull that trick on me in China.
      20 years is a long time, after all. I’d have to pick China. I think I’d fit in there less worse. If we count Taiwan as part of China (and the PRC does, so who are we to disagree 🙂 ), then it’s a no-brainer.

      Edit: Also I find the risk of dying in a nuclear war much higher in India. If China is involved in one, then it’s probably with American and it’s WW3 everywhere/end of humanity, including India, but a Pakistan/India war has no obvious reason to involve the rest of the world.
      Perhaps India can be trusted not to start one, but I don’t have a good read on Pakistan for the next 20 years.
      Also India has historically had it’s own form of minor and major progroms, which were grassroots based. What if there’s some kind of Xenophobic/racist sentiment spreading around? In China I can at least plead that I’m a German and not an American. And they really like BMW and the German government is unlikely to anger China.

      • albatross11 says:

        Actually, if you’re looking for relationships for yourself or your kids, this is a big factor–if most women wouldn’t consider dating you in India for caste/family/cultural reasons, but most women in China would consider it, that might drive you to China even if you preferred most other things about India.

      • Deiseach says:

        After a couple months of learning Chinese, they can’t pull that trick on me in China.

        Because of course there is one and only one dialect of Chinese. What, you think if you learn Mandarin they can’t switch to Cantonese? Or one of the myriad sub-dialects?

        Mandarin is the most-spoken language in the world, with approximately 1.2 billion speakers. When most people think of “Chinese”, it is Mandarin that they are picturing. But Mandarin Chinese is far from the only variant of the Chinese language – or the only language spoken in China…

        In fact, there are a great number of Chinese languages. These include eight primary spoken dialects within mainland China, which are – in the main – mutually unintelligible. Remember – this is a country which is both very large and very, very old. Different regions within the vast expanse of terrain that is China can be separated not only by great distances but also by broadly impassable topographical features such as mountain ranges.

        Understanding the situation is complicated by the fact while many Chinese people in different geographical areas of the country may not understand each other when they speak their regional dialect, they may share the same written language. Even if their pronunciation of different characters within that language may vary.

        This is even true across locations as distinct as Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example. Both share Traditional Chinese characters as their written script. But in Taiwan, Mandarin is spoken. In Hong Kong, most people speak Cantonese.

        Even Chinese movies made in one language have to have sub-titles in the other (crappy example here) and that’s for their own native audience, why do you think a foreigner would do any better?

        • Don_Flamingo says:

          Idk, I guess, I think it’s just less likely, that they can or would do it in China.
          In Taiwan, I’ve noticed, that everybody tends to speak Mandarin (or their very much intelligble dialect of it, anyway) once there’s more people involved.
          Here in Germany, I’ve even witnessed Indians doing that to each other (Me: So, what are those two talking about?
          Some Indian: No idea. I’m not from their region.). Maybe they’re just really homesick, when they do that and it’s not representative, though.

          • albatross11 says:

            I’ve heard Indians say that they often find it easier to talk to people from other regions in English rather than in some Indian language.

    • Anonymous says:

      China. (I assume you mean the PRoC not RoC or Macau or Hong Kong.)

      Parts of China are first-world, I am already familiar with dealing with low-trust post-communist cultures, the women are apparently interested in white foreigners, I know a little bit of Chinese already and pick up languages quickly, and there are significant temperate climate zones in the country.

      Whereas India is moist and hot, the economy seems largely messed up, and it’s a hygenic nightmare with half the population defecating in the open. The only thing in its favour is the official language.

    • johan_larson says:

      I’m honestly torn. China is significantly wealthier than India (GDP per capita(PPP) 16k vs 7k), which I expect makes the cities significantly nicer places to live. India features really graphic poverty. Both places have problems with corruption and over-bureaucratization. But China is run by the Communists, which means the government is into really creepy and intrusive means of social control, such as routine censorship and the social credit scoring system.

      India, I guess. Freedom over money, unless its a crapload of money.

    • Walter says:

      India. I can only speak English.

    • albatross11 says:

      I suspect the picture w.r.t. Indian intellectual potential is:

      a. Heavily confounded by widespread poverty.

      b. Quite complicated by the caste/jati system. (Lots of smallish endogamous groups that have stayed mostly unmixed for centuries.)

    • EchoChaos says:

      Definitely China.

      Their communism is pretty much pure fiction at this point, and they are certainly a high-tech spy society, but that is well within the realm of survivable if I don’t particularly want to overthrow their political order, which I don’t.

    • John Schilling says:

      This is for the simple reason that China’s population seems to have a mean IQ considerably higher than that of India’s, which, as Anatoly Karlin argues, has very important implications for the governance of the respective nations.

      Germany has had a mean IQ several points above the global mean, fairly consistently across the period encompassing the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and Reunited Germany. If you tell me that you would have chosen to live in Germany over e.g. Greece (about ten IQ points lower) in 1938, simply because of German academic superiority, I’d think you are making a mistake. And in 1942, I’d be trying to figure out how to kill you to correct that mistake, so it’s good that you’re not planning to die on that hill.

      So, yeah, most of us chose not to live in the country with the smart authoritarians who are hostile to just about every manifestation of human freedom other than the purely commercial and have put at least a million people in concentration camps, exhibit a disturbing level of ethnocentric bigotry, threaten military action in pursuit of dubious territorial claims, mostly don’t speak our language, and are smart. This really surprises you?

      IQ matters. Culture matters more.

      • Andrew Hunter says:

        If you tell me that you would have chosen to live in Germany over e.g. Greece (about ten IQ points lower) in 1938

        Uh, hell yes I’d make that choice?

        So, yeah, most of us chose not to live in the country with the smart authoritarians who are hostile to just about every manifestation of human freedom other than the purely commercial

        And instead choose to live in Greece, where the same authoritarians are in charge and want to extract value from me as a helot?

        The war is coming. My choices are between live in a country with a terrible government doing nasty things that has some level of creature comforts (until the end days, I suppose), or live in a country where that terrible government has taken over and is wreaking havoc and devestation, and does not care one whit. In neither case will that tyrannical government listen to anything I have to say. In that case, yes, I’d rather be a Nazi subject living in Germany than one living in Greece. If I try to become a guerilla, I’d expect I’d be able to have larger impact in Germany, for that matter. (I suppose Greece gets liberated a year earlier, but I don’t think it was peaches and cream between then and V-E day either.)

        What am I missing?

        I mean, in 1938 in either location I’d do anything possible to emigrate to the US, but I think that’s banned by the hypothetical.

        As for the modern China/India thing, that’s a moderately more complicated question. I’m not sure how I feel. But I think your metaphor is 100% off.

    • Lambert says:

      This isn’t about averages, it’s about maxima.
      Both countries are large enough for you to find your favourite bit and ignore the rest of the place.
      Since India seems like it’s much higher variance than China, it has a very strong advantage on that front.

    • akarlin says:

      India
      * Great food

      China
      * Great food
      * Not keeling over from drinking tap water (lower chance of that, anyway)
      * Not keeling over from heatwaves (outside the south and interior)
      * Know basics of Chinese, pretty confident I can attain good conversational fluency with immersion
      * Better chance gov’t will find some use for my skill set
      * Resulting salary will be 5x higher than in India
      * Exult in the knowledge that I will be playing my small part to undermine the supreme evil that is Western neoliberal globalism

      • Gobbobobble says:

        * Exult in the knowledge that I will be playing my small part to undermine the supreme evil that is Western neoliberal globalism

        We are overdue for another World War, aren’t we? The Pax Americana sure has generated a whole lotta surplus population to cull.

  46. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Analyzing Superman, Model 1938.
    Action Comics #1 explained that by adulthood, Kal-L/Clark Kent could “leap one-eighth of a mile, hurdle a twenty-story building, lift tremendous weights, run faster than an express train, and nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin!”
    1/8 of a mile is 660 feet, more than 22 times the real-world long jump record. The high jump record before the advent of the Fosbury flop was just under 7 1/2 feet, so a high jump proportional to Superman’s long jump would be ~165 feet… considerably lower than any twenty-story high rise. Presumably 1/8 mile was a significant underestimate and he could long jump close to a thousand feet, seeing as his high jump must be about 32x real-world limits (240+ feet). As far as running, 1938 saw the introduction of record-breaking express trains, Italy’s ETR 200 and Britain’s 4468 Mallard, which could reach 126 MPH. Assume this is Superman’s marathon rather than sprint speed, as presumably the narrator isn’t boasting that he could outrun an express train for 200 meters before stopping in exhaustion (impressive as that would still be in the real world). That’s 10 times peak human marathon speed.
    In his first appearance, he lifts a Depression-era 4-door car, which weighed a minimum of ~3500 pounds, then took a few steps and threw it, putting all the weight on the muscles of one leg. This means in a conventional gym setting, he could lift a minimum of 7,000 pounds, 12 times the real-world clean and jerk record.
    Now the big question, what does “nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin” mean? Obviously he’s immune to .50 caliber sniper rifles and crew-served machine guns, but did autocannons use High Explosive shells? Wouldn’t a 20mm shell actually be less deadly than 12.7mm Armor Piercing ammunition? Perhaps the author was thinking of infantry mortars? Also, how does the force of colliding with something at 126 MPH compare to getting hit with such weapons? Hmm, a quick calculation indicates the KE of 90 kilograms (a minimum plausible weight) at that velocity is 9.26 kilojoules, slightly more than half the maximum muzzle energy of M2 .50 caliber rounds.
    In summary, Model 1938 Superman’s leg muscles were 32x as powerful as an elite athlete’s, able to propel him to 10x peak human speed, and he was at least twice as durable as he needed to be to survive landing from his high jumps. Any experts, do those physics work out?

    • John Schilling says:

      The median artillery shell of the era was probably still a 75mm, or maybe 105mm but only if Siegel and Shuster were staying up to date on military technology. 75mm base-fused HE would penetrate about 25mm (1″) of steel armor, or twice that in mild structural steel.

      If so, the optimum anti-Superman weapon would probably be one of the more potent 20mm automatic cannons firing AP solid, which would be effective out to 400 yards or so and have a much higher firing rate than even quick-firing artillery. Alternately, the main armament of a battleship or the very largest siege guns would probably be effective with a near-miss by fragmentation effect, but unless you take him by surprise, Kal-El wil probably be clear of the blast radius by the time the salvo lands. Likewise aircraft bombs.

      If you need something man-portable, there are some 1930s-vintage antitank rifles that might suffice, but barely so.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        The median artillery shell of the era was probably still a 75mm, or maybe 105mm but only if Siegel and Shuster were staying up to date on military technology. 75mm base-fused HE would penetrate about 25mm (1″) of steel armor, or twice that in mild structural steel.

        If so, the optimum anti-Superman weapon would probably be one of the more potent 20mm automatic cannons firing AP solid, which would be effective out to 400 yards or so and have a much higher firing rate than even quick-firing artillery.

        That was exactly my line of thought: 75mm bursting shells would be plenty, and that leaves him vulnerable to autocannons.

        Note that in Action Comics #8, the government attacks him with aircraft bombs and he says of having to dodge each bomb “Haven’t had such a fine workout in a long time!”

      • sfoil says:

        The old .50 API rounds penetrate around (Wikipedia says just short of) 25mm of RHA at 100 yards. New tank designs in early WW2 drove the development of man-portable weapons with better armor penetration than that. Which would suggest that Superman’s protection was roughly in line with the state of the art in 1938 — and that stealing or rushing out production of novel weapons was a good strategy for his enemies. Imagine some villain attacking Superman from ambush with an experimental super-rifle a year or two later.

      • Don_Flamingo says:

        So you want to murder Superman?
        Do you still have those fancy Davy Crockett nuclear RPGs lying around in America?
        I couldn’t think of a more excellent use for them 🙂

    • What I like about this very early Superman is that his feats are still just about within the realms of physics in terms of the magnitude of his power (totally ignoring all the daftness and being able to pick up cars by the bumper and so on). Obviously a man can not do any of those things, but some of these feats are probably replicable with some kind of terminator like humanoid robot that could be built in the future for hunting down the last human survivors admidst the rubble*.

      As far as running, 1938 saw the introduction of record-breaking express trains, Italy’s ETR 200 and Britain’s 4468 Mallard, which could reach 126 MPH.

      No expert here, but this kind of speed, for example, is just about the limit for a comic book speedster before you have to start having extra powers like super traction and the ability to ignore air drag. If you have a coefficient of friction with the ground of 1, the normal force equals the force of friction and so you can accelerate at up to 1g, which when you take into account air drag and the posture of running, suggests a top speed similar to terminal velocity. For a skydiver falling spreadeagle, although varying based on clothes and body size, that is generally approximated to be 120mph or 55m/s.

      1/8 of a mile is 660 feet, more than 22 times the real-world long jump record.

      If he can run as fast as stated above, this is more or less fits. Using this sim, adjusting the default human projectile to be as heavy as a totally jacked dude (100-120kg), and with a launch angle of 45 degrees, the velocity of 55m/s gives the right ballpark range of 180-220 meters depending on how you adjust the other factors like diameter (is he going shoulders first into the jump or jumping like a normal person?) and drag coefficient (that cape isn’t going to help him).

      Now the big question, what does “nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin” mean?

      This is kind of vague and could be compatible with any of the things you suggested, but based off what John Schilling said, an armor level equivalent to 1” steel is appropriate for our Terminator Superman, though if he actually had steel that thick all over, it would add hundreds of kilograms of weight.

      Model 1938 Superman’s leg muscles were 32x as powerful as an elite athlete

      This isn’t outside of the realm of possibility for artificial muscle fibers (with some severely limiting caveats).

      *Battery technology isn’t good enough. Superman would be more realistic if he could only be superpowerful for a very short period of time, and then he had to refuel by eating 50 hamburgers. He would also get very hot if he operated for a long period of time and would need some cooling method beyond human sweating.

  47. JohnNV says:

    This may be considered culture-war, but help me keep it otherwise because I’m genuinely curious. Where can I read a statistically sound treatment of gun ownership in the US and the risks thereof? I’ve seen plenty of correlational garbage studies arriving at predetermined conclusions about gun ownership, but I can’t seem to find anything solid. The main question I’m curious about is for any specific individual, the decision to own a firearm has what effect on the likelihood to die by accident/suicide/homicide, and what effect on being injured by accident/intentional self-harm/intentional harm by others? And what methodology did they use to come to this conclusion?

    • DeWitt says:

      This is a decimal thread, so culture war is fine, and even then you’re not very inflammatory.

    • Randy M says:

      I don’t know, it would be interesting. But from a personal level, if you are interested enough in gun safety to check the stats, the stats of an “average” person probably don’t apply, because you are most likely going to avoid some of the risks. For one obvious one, you probably aren’t suicidal, which may or may not be included in the stats. And it probably matters a great deal who else lives in your household.

      • albatross11 says:

        Yeah, population suicide risk seems a lot less relevant than your own knowledge of your and your family’s suicide risk. If you’ve suffered from serious depression or a lot of suicidal thoughts in the past, you probably don’t want a gun in the house.

      • John Schilling says:

        Also, w/re criminal homicide and self-defense, the extent to which you hang out with violent criminals is going to dominate over pretty much everything else.

    • Statismagician says:

      You can’t read a statistically-sound treatment of gun issues. It’s like marijuana; we’re aren’t allowed Federal funding for studying it, and every person willing to spend their own money on this issue is transparently biased.

      • sentientbeings says:

        we’re aren’t allowed Federal funding for studying it

        Not so. See this Reason article from April, 2018.

        A snippet:

        Many people who support gun control are angry that the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are not legally allowed to use money from Congress to do research whose purpose is “to advocate or promote gun control.” (This is not the same as doing no research into gun violence, though it seems to discourage many potential recipients of CDC money.)

        But in the 1990s, the CDC itself did look into one of the more controversial questions in gun social science: How often do innocent Americans use guns in self-defense, and how does that compare to the harms guns can cause in the hands of violent criminals?

        The studies were not made public by the government. Eventually they were unearthed by Gary Kleck, a criminologist who has done a lot of work on defensive gun use. Kleck has been criticized in part because his estimates are much larger than the figures that gun control advocates prefer. Kleck’s initial analysis of the CDC surveys found that the surveys corroborated the numbers from his large surveys. He made an error, mentioned in the heading of that Reason article and expanded upon in a later one (his revised CDC number is lower), but the figure still corroborates the high number of defensive gun uses.

        So one interpretation is that when the CDC had funding to study the topic and found many defensive gun uses, they decided to suppress that research for 20 years. It would seem that the government might be non-transparently biased.

        If the number of defensive gun uses is very large, but research into the question is done by the government, then there are incentives for both sides of the policy question to prevent funding; one side fears the research will be biased, while the other side fears it will vindicate their opponents.

        • John Schilling says:

          Note also that there is a difference between “the CDC isn’t allowed to…” and “the Federal Government isn’t allowed to…”

          Since homicide isn’t a disease, and would seem to be more in the FBI or DOJ’s area of expertise, telling the CDC to knock it off does not seem like a crippling blow to the advancement of human knowledge.

          • dick says:

            If you had to pick either the FBI, DOJ, or CDC to do a large-scale study on how something affects the health of Americans…

          • The Nybbler says:

            @dick

            Would a study on chlordane’s persistence in the environment be better done by the EPA or the CDC?

            If you’re looking for studies on how bullet wounds affect health (spoiler: negatively), it might be the CDC you’re after. If you’re looking to know how guns get used by criminals, the CDC is out of their element. That’s criminology, even if it does affect health.

          • sentientbeings says:

            @John Schilling

            Agreed, and I’ll add that I especially disapprove of the CDC involvement as opposed to a law enforcement agency because I see it as a step in a gradual attempt to pathologize gun ownership.

            For the folks who think I’m crazy for suggesting that, look into doctors questioning patients about gun ownership, as well as recent (as in the last few years) statements re: firearms issued by the APA.

          • John Schilling says:

            If you had to pick either the FBI, DOJ, or CDC to do a large-scale study on how something affects the health of Americans…

            So, traffic accidents kill thirty thousand or so Americans every year. If we have a choice between the NHTSA, the DOT, or the CDC to study this…

            Airplane crashes aren’t so numerous, but they do capture public attention and we are going to study them. We have a choice between the NTSB, the FAA, or the CDC…

            Earthquake safety, definite health risk, so that goes to the CDC as well, right?

            This is the Center for Disease Control, and there is no usage of the English language where “disease” means “everything that can adversely affect health”. Particularly when we are explicitly talking about externally-induced physical trauma. Honestly, I can’t see how demanding that the CDC in particular be in charge of this research can be anything but mindkilled partisanship.

      • S_J says:

        echoing @sentientbeings below, the part of the Federal Government known as the Centers for Disease Control is forbidden from studying firearms-crime, if the purpose of the study is to advance gun control.

        In studying the data presented in WISQARS (the Web-based Insjury Statistics Query and Reporting System run by the CDC), it is possible to find out how many people in the United States died by gunfire in a given year. It is also possible to discover that these numbers are categorized by the CDC as suicide/homicide/unintentional. For every 100 such deaths in the United States, about 60 of them are suicide, about 29 are homicide, and around 1 is unintentional. (The CDC even has subdivisions to distinguish “Legal Intervention” from other kinds of homicide.)

        This typically isn’t considered ‘study for the purposes of gun control’, but the CDC has interpreted that rule to not publish or fund any other studies relating to the use of firearms.

        Other parts of the Federal Government do study firearms and the use thereof, by both criminals and people defending themselves from crime.

        Most of those studies are found in the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some are produced by the FBI, some by other parts of the DoJ.

        One such report, in PDF, cpvers the years 1993 through 2011. If you want to see what is available, you should peruse those statistics. I notice that the tables for “guns reported used in crime” and “guns possessed by prisoners at time of offense” are not quite the statistical categories “all guns used in crime” and “all guns used by all criminals”.

        The one category that is not covered in this type of report is the risk of suicide-by-firearm. To repeat what I mentioned above, something like 60% of all deaths by firearm in the U.S. are suicides.

        What is hard to measure and study are these two questions:
        1. Does the presence of a firearm in the home increase the odds of suicide, in a way that the presence of ropes (or knives capable of cutting open arteries in the arm) does not increase the risk of suicide?
        2. Does the presence of a firearm in the home increase the odds of dying by the hand of another person?
        2.a. If it does increase the risk, does the increase come from other people with their own firearms, or other people gaining access to the firearm that is in the home?
        2.b. If there is a risk to other people gaining access to the firearm in the home, it is more likely to be intentional harm, or unintentional harm?

        Both of these require a good understanding of who does (or does not) own a gun. For various cultural reasons, it is hard for a Government-funded study to get good data on those things in the United States.

        Anecdotally, guns are much more common in suburban or rural parts of the United States. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, homicide-by-gun is incredibly common in certain dense, urban areas.

        Any attempt to figure out the risk to a person by gun-ownership needs to untangle a lot of data about confounding factors: social class, economic level, regional population density, the typical rate of crime in the neighborhood, rate of gun-ownership in the area, rate of gun possession in the area by those who are officially forbidden from owning guns, etc.

        Apparently, no researcher has taken up the challenge in a way that is answerable to all challenges about confounding factors.

    • John Schilling says:

      You’ll need to be more specific about what you are looking for. Statismagician notwithstanding, the federal government doesn’t have a monopoly on this, and there is sound academic research on almost every area, but not all in once place. And a possible exception for suicide risk; I’ve seen almost nothing good on the marginal risk of suicide(*) from gun ownership.

      For other risks and benefits, the collected work of Gary Kleck is probably your starting point w/re rigor and objectivity.

      * Suicide generally, as opposed to suicide-by-gun.

  48. woah77 says:

    So I spend a fair amount of time online talking with some people who are proclaimed socialists and when we talk about how economies would work under their ideals I always get answers that don’t satisfy me as functional. I was wondering if anyone has tried to simulate their ideal economy or if anyone has any resources for going about setting up a virtual economy and attempting to simulate it’s function, efficiency, growth, and any other relevant factors.

    • herbert herberson says:

      I think you’re right to identify a gaping void. English-speaking socialism, at least in America, has a lot of planning and research to do before it will be ready to wield power effectively.

      If they do, though, I’m optimistic, being struck by the fact that although they eventually failed to match the west, the Soviet Union was a functional centrally planned socialist economy that existed for approximately 70 years which achieved many objectively impressive things during its tenure, all without the benefit of modern IT technology. If GOSPLAN almost worked when it was pen and paper and punchcards, I wouldn’t bet against the version of it that has machine learning and petascale supercomputers.

      (And that’s assuming you’re talking about the hardest version of socialism, rather than something more distributed and/or market-based.)

      • sentientbeings says:

        Soviet Union was a functional centrally planned socialist economy that existed for approximately 70 years

        It seems that the socialist definition of functional is set at a much lower standard than the capitalist one. I don’t think capitalists would characterize the Holodomor as part of a functional economy.

        If you’re willing to grind up enough human lives, you can make some impressive sausage for a while. Since that system isn’t good at allocating resources, it tends to run out of expendable people eventually.

        • herbert herberson says:

          And capitalism is baking the earth to a crisp despite everyone knowing exactly why and exactly how to stop it for 40 years. Pobody’s nerfect!

          • sentientbeings says:

            Do you believe the Soviets were better or worse than the United States, in terms of net environmental effects (or climate in particular)?

          • Aapje says:

            @herbert herberson

            The USSR built central heating systems where many apartments got way too hot and the solution was to open a window to vent out the heat in winter.

          • AlphaGamma says:

            The USSR built central heating systems where many apartments got way too hot and the solution was to open a window to vent out the heat in winter.

            Sounds like my first year college room (in the UK, built in the 1960s).

          • The Nybbler says:

            @Aapje

            Those were (and are, in that the systems are still around) pretty common in the US as well.

          • bean says:

            My second dorm room (c late 40s) was built that way, too. They later decided that they didn’t actually want us to do that, and fitted the central heating with a thermostat. Which was set on the top floor (I lived near the bottom) and placed under the wifi router. As a result, it was always freezing in my room.

          • Randy M says:

            Ha, bean, I was mentally calculating your age until I got to the part about wi-fi router and realized you meant the dorm was built in the 40s, not that you lived there in the 40s.

          • Nick says:

            In my junior year dorm room, one roommate and I had rooms that were always cold, while our other roommate had a room that was always extremely hot. The common room was Just Right.

          • Plumber says:

            @Aapje

            “The USSR built central heating systems where many apartments got way too hot and the solution was to open a window to vent out the heat in winter”

            I lived for 17 years in an apartment building that was built in the 1920’s in Oakland, California like that.

          • Thomas Jorgensen says:

            Here is the list of nations that built carbon free grids as soon as technically feasible: “France, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland”. The last two got it done by virtue of incredible gifts of physical geography.

            … Common factors.. Incredibly conscientious governments?
            They are all nations where politicians are generally True Believers in the virtue of governing well.

          • ryan8518 says:

            @Thomas Jorgensen
            I have a problem taking this at face value

            France being a special case, more appropriate common factors are small size of the market, abundant hydropower. France comes from need to leverage a whole of country effort to develop an independent nuclear deterrent (thanks to DeGaulle and an unwillingness to play NATO’s game), to the exclusion of a more rational energy policy. To a lesser extent early Swedish attempts to do the same before they decided the cost wasn’t worthwhile still show up in the size of the nuclear power sector.

            To note, Sweden generates roughly as much electricty as either of Tennessee/Oregon/Minnesota/Nebraska, Switzerland is comparable to one of Maryland/South Dakota/Connecticut, Norawy between Massachusets/Nevada, and Greenland is roughly Hawaii (source for US states is the EIA, for the countries its the wiki page for electricity sector in ___, *the map of which states produce US electricity is fascinating)

          • Aapje says:

            I keep forgetting that I live in a 1st world nation and that the US is a 2nd world nation.

            I kid (more or less).

        • rlms says:

          Was the British Raj capitalist?

      • See the work of British Marxist economist Paul Cockshott, such as this video on youtube.

        As for why he painstakingly builds up an alternative to using money in the first place, this video explains how a capitalist economy that uses money holds back the productive forces and technical progress by biasing production away from the most labor-saving techniques of production (in addition to the waste of labor-power that occurs during cyclical crises of generalized overproduction).

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          See the work of British Marxist economist Paul Cockshott,

          … as opposed to Paul Cockshott the feared pankration champion, as nominative determinism would have had it.

  49. Both the paperback and the kindle of my new book, Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, are now available on Amazon. I thought people here might be interested, since Scott reviewed a draft of the book and it was discussed some here.

    • Plumber says:

      Are the paperbacks only available through Amazon, or may “brick and mortar” order them as well?

      • Incurian says:

        Stop allocating resources inefficiently!

        • Plumber says:

          NEVER!!!

          INEFFICIENCY FO’ LIFE!

          • My understanding is that brick and mortar stores can order them as well. The page at the moment shows three sources other than Amazon, two at a price higher than Amazon’s, one at a price a tiny bit below if you don’t include shipping cost.

          • Plumber says:

            Thanks @DavidFriedman!

            I plan to get a local shop to order it for me.

            And while I know it’s not in thr same line I’ve been enjoying Harald, and your posts here

    • ana53294 says:

      Just a suggestion: since you self-published, it will probably be quite easy for you to create an Amazon author page. I think you can create a page and indicate which books are yours. Then whenever somebody clicks on your name, they can see other books by you, not by *every David Friedman whose books are on Amazon*.

      In scientific articles, they get around the issue of common names by assigning numbers to people. I wonder how they deal with that in the book publishing world.

  50. Machine Interface says:

    Recently I watched Elia Kazan’s “America America”, which I found decent (at least as far of the narrow genre of “historical biopics about small people making it in life in a harsh world” is concerned).

    It had the usual tropes of western fiction about the Late Ottoman Empire: Turkish “invaders” (you’d think after 5 centuries, in a country where they are the majority, they’d have earned the right to qualify as inhabitants) are all oppressors, liars and thiefs, Greeks and Armenians are innocent, opressed minorities who only want to do good, honest hard work in “their” lands, and Kurds and Jews don’t exist, all of this leaving out any kind of possibly nuanced portrait of the era — such as the fact that many professions were legally reserved for the different ethnic minorities of the empire, such that the majority of Turks, when they weren’t already part of the aristocracy or of the civilian or military administration, had very little opportunity for work beyond peasantry and were effectively stuck at the bottom of the social ladder; or the numerous instances of ethnic cleansing against muslims that occured in the Balkans and Caucasus every time Ottoman territory was “liberated”.

    What I wonder is why such one-sided portrayals of the Ottoman Empire (and their equivalent mutatis mutandi for the latter Republic of Turkey) have such prevalence in western media?

    Does it reflect a pro-christian/anti-muslim reflex? Is it because our narratives favor small minorities achieving their national independence and unification against big multi-ethnic empires? Is it because most of the stories about the late Empire have been told to us by the Greek and Armenian diaspora? Is it because they were among the losers in WWI?

    • Statismagician says:

      Depends on where you want to put the start of ‘late’ at. The very late empire, like ~1890 on, really was a pretty awful time to be an Ottoman subject – the wheels began to visibly come off the social structures that made the early/middle period Empire function, this is when the hatred of/violence against Armenians began to really ramp up, the Balkan Wars (basically a regional dress-rehearsal for WWI) were quite brutal, there were coups and major political changes going on all the time.

      For earlier periods – cultural inertia is powerful, and people are bad at thinking at critical thinking? For like ~150 years the Ottomans were not just explicitly in favor of but actually making regular, sustained progress towards conquering all of Europe; you can spot the importance of this to European thinking in things like Machiavelli (one of the big reasons why Italy needs to get its act together is because otherwise the Turks will take over) and Shakespeare (the Turks are who Othello is fighting). And we know that e.g. the Greek nationalist movement deliberately played off of European veneration of classics to get support for their independence – I think Byron was particularly bad about this, but could be making that bit up.

      EDIT: Ottoman subject, not citizen.

      EDIT2: In fact, Byron died in Greece while organizing supplies for the revolutionary army, which I had forgotten. So, yeah, he was somewhat pro-Greek independence.

    • eigenmoon says:

      I don’t know about the media, but here’s why I don’t like the Ottoman Empire:

      1) Triple genocide. Why did you omit the Assyrians?
      2) Slavery.
      3) Senseless brutality. Do you think Greeks and Armenians made all of that up and in reality they were just as brutal? Well, do Greeks and Armenians make structures from skulls of their enemies?

      • Machine Interface says:

        @Statismagician & eigenmoon

        To clarify: I am not embracing a negationist position, I am not denying that the various atrocities attributed to the Turks did in fact happen.

        What intrigues me is the systematic omission of the context of these atrocities in western discourse. That is, western portrayal makes it seems like this was basically comparable to Nazi Germany: the Greeks, Armenians, etc were just quietly minding their own business and were just persecuted without provocation as designated scape-goats to explain the faillings of the Empire.

        But in reality, these populations were all engaged in recurring violent armed uprisings fueled by nationalist ideologies and backed by western powers and by Russia — whose interest were less about the well beings of these populations and more about expansionism at the expense of the Ottomans.

        And each time these populations won a local victory, that would mean the loss of one more chunk of territory for the Ottomans, immediatly followed by the massacre and expulsions of the muslim populations of these territories, who had lived there for centuries — between the gradual loss of the Balkans and Russian expansionism in the Caucasus, over the course of the 19th and early 20th century, it’s several millions of muslims that have been massacred or deported from these territories, ending up as refugees in the remaining territories. And the atrocities commited in those cases were not any more civilized — turned out Greek soldiers could be just as cruel to Turkish peasants as in the opposite situation.

        In other words, as condemnable as Ottoman actions were, they weren’t in response to imaginary enemies: they were in fact facing a very real existential threat

        • quanta413 says:

          What intrigues me is the systematic omission of the context of these atrocities in western discourse. That is, western portrayal makes it seems like this was basically comparable to Nazi Germany: the Greeks, Armenians, etc were just quietly minding their own business and were just persecuted without provocation as designated scape-goats to explain the faillings of the Empire.

          As long as we’re talking about context, maybe we could be more specific as to some of the reasons why the Greeks, Armenians, etc. were so opposed to Ottoman rule.

          But in reality, these populations were all engaged in recurring violent armed uprisings fueled by nationalist ideologies and backed by western powers and by Russia — whose interest were less about the well beings of these populations and more about expansionism at the expense of the Ottomans.

          They were engaged in violent armed uprising because the Ottomans were terrible rulers. Not that it was necessarily great to even be royalty in the Ottoman empire what with the practice of fratricide (later followed by the kinder practice of extended house arrest). Even then, the Ottoman response was often not a response to any particular violent armed uprising.

          And motivations can be “both and”. And even if the Europeans did it purely for their own gain so what? The Ottomans only ended the slave trade under pressure from European powers. And even then the Sultan had slaves until 1909.

          In other words, as condemnable as Ottoman actions were, they weren’t in response to imaginary enemies: they were in fact facing a very real existential threat

          Bullshit. Even many Ottoman officials resisted the final bout of insanity before the empire toppled. The Ottomans could have survived without their entire territory much like many European countries did after Imperialism ended. They didn’t have to engage in slavery and make a large chunk of their population second class citizens. They didn’t have to systematically massacre an enormous chunk of their population. Most countries had slavery and had second-class citizens, but many other countries survived the transition to more modern norms. Few shed tears for European countries losing colonies. Many of which had been held for hundreds of years.

          The European powers are hardly treated with subtlety in modern portrayals. Everyone agrees that imperialism and slavery were terrible. I don’t see why the Ottoman empire should get a more subtle popular treatment.

          Imperialism and slavery are bad is a reasonable popular treatment.

          And each time these populations won a local victory, that would mean the loss of one more chunk of territory for the Ottomans, immediatly followed by the massacre and expulsions of the muslim populations of these territories, who had lived there for centuries — between the gradual loss of the Balkans and Russian expansionism in the Caucasus, over the course of the 19th and early 20th century, it’s several millions of muslims that have been massacred or deported from these territories, ending up as refugees in the remaining territories. And the atrocities commited in those cases were not any more civilized — turned out Greek soldiers could be just as cruel to Turkish peasants as in the opposite situation.

          Of course, the Ottoman actions don’t morally justify the massacres in response in the same way French actions don’t justify the massacres in Haiti in 1804.

          But few people today will tell you “French reactions were justified by the possibility of the loss of their colony”.

          • theredsheep says:

            I don’t know much about the last days of the OE, but could it be relevant that other Great Powers mostly had overseas empires? All the mutilated slaves in the Congo couldn’t feasibly march into Brussels demanding justice against Leopold, nor could the Vietnamese invade France or the Indians launch sustained terror attacks against Britain. In the Ottoman Empire, they had Greek and Armenian separatist movements, but also a lot of Greeks and Armenians living throughout their empire, right? And the separatist movements would have called the loyalty of every Greek and Armenian into question.

            My aim here is not to apologize for the Ottomans; I just think that might be a relevant distinction.

          • quanta413 says:

            The European powers often had European settlers living in their colonies. Similarly their responses to any signs of rebellion were often brutal. Travel within the British Empire was relatively free too. So it makes little difference. At the end, the Ottomans made an attempt to exterminate the Armenians.

            It’s not like the Ottoman empire was cruel in response to rebellion. It conquered people, and it was cruel. This tends to incite resistance.

          • Machine Interface says:

            I’d seriously question whether Ottoman rule was any worse for ethnic and religious minorities than, say, Habsburg rule or Tsarist rule, but I think that’s a debate best left to real historians — I do note again that recognized minorities in the Empire had lots of special rights and privileges and were often better off economically than the majority of the Turks, due to protected access to certain professions.

            I wasn’t thinking of any kind of moral justification for either side — my inquiries are not about finding who was right and who was wrong, it’s about puzzlement over a general lack of representation of the accurate context of the events in the late Empire. Whereas we have plenty of media that analyze really well and in a nuanced way, say, what lead to nazism and to the Holocaust; the idea that not all Germans were bloodthirsty nazis and that the German people had been subjected to a lot of hardships, explaining how nazism could rise, are popularly accepted.

            It does seem to me that it would have some historical relevence to know that one of the main architects of the Armenian genocide was himself a survivor of the Circassian genocide conducted by the Russians on territory conquered from the Ottomans in the early 19th century.

          • quanta413 says:

            I’d seriously question whether Ottoman rule was any worse for ethnic and religious minorities than, say, Habsburg rule or Tsarist rule, but I think that’s a debate best left to real historians — I do note again that recognized minorities in the Empire had lots of special rights and privileges and were often better off economically than the majority of the Turks, due to protected access to certain professions.

            My point is not whether they are better or worse than Habsburg or whatever. They’re all bad and that’s a pointless distraction. It’s that the Ottomans don’t deserve movies or TV shows about them that are nicer than ones we get about people living under any other form of imperialism or slavery.

            Most people don’t even know about the negative parts of the Ottoman empire unlike they do for the Nazis. Subtlety can be for history books or movies that aren’t about Armenian immigrants.

            The claims I’ve seen that minorities were typically better off look like a mixture of sampling bias and irrelevant. If you look at the top of the minorities and compare it to the median of the not minorities then of course they’re better off. The privileges of the Patriarch are not the privileges of those he rules just like the privileges of the Ottoman Sultan are not those of his subjects. And I’ve never seen anyone give a reason to believe the privileges were a net economic benefit after you subtract all the penalties for the vast majority of non Muslims. It’s not uncommon for oppressed minorities to have some privileges. Ethnic minorities in China didn’t have to follow the one-child policy. Jews in Europe didn’t have to obey Christian religious restrictions about lending.

            And the existence of some privileges does not imply those privileges caused minorities to be richer. Chinese in the U.S. have done very well economically (better than white people) and they have no privileges in the U.S. A similar tendency holds for Chinese in Malaysia.

            Whereas we have plenty of media that analyze really well and in a nuanced way, say, what lead to nazism and to the Holocaust; the idea that not all Germans were bloodthirsty nazis and that the German people had been subjected to a lot of hardships, explaining how nazism could rise, are popularly accepted.

            Seeing as how the Ottoman empire was ruled by a supreme ruler, I’d say that’s largely because the opinions of the average Anatolian peasant were irrelevant. The German people were more relevant to what happened in their own country. The blame in Germany should probably be more widespread than in the Ottoman empire.

            It would be hard to tie in a bunch of peasants to a story. I had to look up America America. It’s not a documentary about the Ottoman empire. Stories about the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective don’t typically cover the Treaty of Versailles.

            It does seem to me that it would have some historical relevence to know that one of the main architects of the Armenian genocide was himself a survivor of the Circassian genocide conducted by the Russians on territory conquered from the Ottomans in the early 19th century.

            Which might be relevant to a history of the Ottoman empire or a history of the Armenian genocide.

            You’re applying standards of a history book to a movie. There are plenty of fine history books about the Ottoman empire.

        • Statismagician says:

          @ Machine Interface

          I think, unusually for me, that this is actually a place where postmodernism has something useful to say.

          Ottoman society was basically organized along medieval lines, with religion as primary organizing factor and war as the prime function of government. Post-industrial revolution and the Spring of Nations, neither of these are sustainable principles, so the Ottomans think they’re suppressing rebels against a literally half-millenium-old government, while to modern eyes the Ottomans look like incompetent tyrants trying to restrain the self-determination of e.g. the Greek people, and they are both right within their own paradigm.

          It is really important to be clear on the degree to which the Ottoman Empire was just not a like thing to modern nation-states. This, plus the fact that within historical time they really were an existential threat to Western civilization (however defined), accounts for the pattern you notice in my opinion.

    • theredsheep says:

      I’m Orthodox, and I don’t really hate the Ottomans. Ultimately, we were undone by Western treachery and imperialism; they only dealt the deathblow. Afterwards, they were a country like any other, but did at least give us more religious freedom than we could have expected if the conquest had come from the West. Also, galaktobouriko. Mmmm, galaktobouriko.

      The modern Turks are another story; we’re far too pathetically small a minority to pose a threat to them, but they’re still going out of their way to be pricks to the Ecumenical Patriarch at every turn. I look forward to the day when demographic forces turn “Turkey” into “Greater Kurdistan.” Although I’m afraid that will not be a bloodless transition.

      EDIT: I don’t want to understate how bad the transition is likely to be, when the Kurds start outnumbering the Turks. That’s going to be ugly. I only hope there will be a day when the local authorities aren’t trying to squash our religion out of existence, is all.

  51. Randy M says:

    I’m enjoying watching Brandon Sanderson’s course on writing Sci-fi/fantasy fiction which in on Youtube. Do you have or know of good sources of advice for writing, beyond the obvious and most effective of just practice more?

    To contribute an example, in one lecture he gives the acronym MICRO for writing dialogue.
    M-motivation; what is each character trying to get out of the conversation? Important to consider to make the scene interesting.
    I-Individuality; how does the person’s class/background affect their voice? Not to go overboard with accents, but think about how to use word choice, idioms, etc. to give characterization or communicate world building
    C-conflict; having conflict in the conversation will often improve the scene (although see point one and don’t just make a character mindlessly obstructionist)
    R-realism; it’s not necessarily right to uh, you know mimic real speech … like real people use–but listen to how people talk and know what level of realism you are going for
    O-objective; how does the scene advance the plot or character arcs?

    • I wonder how many successful writers think of what they are doing in that sort of analytic way, how many just do it intuitively?

      • Randy M says:

        I think it is probably more useful in the editing or revising stage, asking “Why am I getting board reading/finishing this scene?” than in the first draft.

      • Nick says:

        When I’ve written dialogue I’ve had M and O on that list explicitly in mind. I, C, and R not so much—maybe to my detriment, since I’m not a successful writer….

      • Randy M says:

        JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books are, if I’m not mistaken, the single most popular work of literary fiction in the Anglosphere of the past couple decades. However, before the success of the first novel, none of Rowling’s teachers or coworkers seem to have judged her writing to be extraordinarily captivating, and Rowling herself does not seem to have predicted their success, given that she says she put aside the first book as a lost cause at multiple points during its composition.

        Slightly lesser example–Jim Butcher supposedly wrote the first Dresden Files book as a way of irritating his writing instructor with cliches.

        • theredsheep says:

          I read that he actually set out to write the most formulaic book possible, but not necessarily to irritate his instructor.

      • bean says:

        I think you’re looking at the concept of rules wrong. They’re not ironclad. They’re meant to provide useful guidelines to people who are likely to get it wrong if not for them. “Be exceptionally sparing with voiceovers” is good advice for beginning screenwriters, who are tempted to take the lazy way out and tell instead of showing. But someone who has moved to the next level can tell the few cases where voiceovers will work well and can make effective use of them. It’s rather like the rule “don’t try to pick stocks, just use index funds”. It’s good advice for almost everyone, except Warren Buffet, who should pick stocks, and knows enough to ignore that rule.

    • Nick says:

      I’ve profitably read some of Limyaael’s rants.

    • Unsaintly says:

      Speaking of Sanderson, I remember attending a panel with him and several other sci-fi/fantasy authors, and the subject of Sanderson’s First Law of Magic came up (An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic) and the panel split almost exactly 50/50 in whether this was obviously true and a good idea, or obviously false and counter to the idea of fantasy. It was only years later that Scott wrote the Scissor Issue Article, but in hindsight it was an excellent example.

      Do any of you have thoughts, either as writers or readers, on that law of magic?

      • Randy M says:

        In favor. It is harder to maintian tension when readers don’t know what tools the characters have to solve their problems. And it could make the earlier events something of a shaggy dog story.
        To see it in another context, imagine the characters are in a high stakes race across the country. Then they learn that one of the freeways is shutdown. Then they learn that the competitor has a head start. Finally they learn that their car is out of gas.
        “Wow, how are we going to beat them?” Bob asks.
        “I know!” Alice replies, “Let’s take the private jet!”

        That kind of thing can be used early as a way of introducing the characters capabilities, but plot-significant problems should be introduced with the readers knowing why or why not it is a concern, and the characters finding a way around their limitations that you introduced earlier should be the result of some sacrifice.

        • Aapje says:

          It’s basically the Deus Ex Machina issue: the reader’s ability to empathize with the characters is compromised, because the reader can’t think along with the characters what they ought to do, because the limitations to the choices that the characters have is not clear.

          However, it is quite possible that (large) groups of readers don’t read that way and thus don’t have this complaint.

      • eyeballfrog says:

        Seems 100% correct to me, and I’ll make the prediction that this site’s audience will heavily favor it. Though if it really was such a scissor statement, maybe it’d be good for the next poll.

      • theredsheep says:

        There are exceptions. Susan Cooper comes to mind; a lot of people love The Dark Is Rising, but she spends the whole cycle blatantly making up stark new rules of magic to manufacture tension (“If we don’t do MAGICK_TASK correctly on the first try, we’ll be blasted out of time forever”), then solving them with equal hand-wavery. And Harry Potter, well, except for the final-horcrux loophole in Deathly Hallows, she doesn’t solve problems with magic at all. None of it is ever explained in even the vaguest way. It’s just flavor.

      • Nornagest says:

        In favor, with caveats. It’s most directly applicable when you have protagonists wielding magic in a systematic way — it would feel unsatisfying if Harry Potter solved a problem with an “Endum Bookium” that hadn’t been properly foreshadowed. (Some of the Potter books are a lot better about this than others, unfortunately.) Unsystematic magic gives you more leeway — there’s nothing wrong with the bumbling conjurer archetype — but leaves you with the problem of selling the magic as eldritch and unpredictable, or unreliable in some other way. It can’t just do whatever the plot needs it to, it has to be shown to fail and cause problems as well.

        • I think I agree. If the reader doesn’t understand the magic, then magical solutions feel like a deus ex machina. If the reader does understand the magic, and the author handles it well, then the magical solution is “see how clever the protagonist was in finding the one way of using magic to solve his problem.”

          • albatross11 says:

            I like it that in your universe, people have to study some math in order to be able to really learn how magic works….

          • theredsheep says:

            I once had an idea for a world where magic works, but it works like MS-DOS: you have to enter a bewildering sequence of fiddly magic keywords exactly right, and nine times out of ten nothing useful happens because you forgot a syllable.

            I never did anything with the idea, though.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @theredsheep

            That one’s been done too.

            More generally, the idea that you have to get magic exactly right and getting it even a bit wrong results in a fizzle if you’re lucky and disaster if you’re not is a pretty common trope.

        • Joseph Greenwood says:

          My first thought is that I am strongly in favor, but then I think of moments in the Dresden Files, say, or in Significant Digits, where a character resolves a plot-crucial problem using a clever (magic) trick that was not fully explained earlier in the book, and I found I did not mind at all. Maybe it was “I have clever solutions which I keep secret” was part of their character vibe, and I expected ahead of time that the characters in question would have clever tricks up their sleeves.

          I guess the mitigating factor there was that the author was invoking the plausible preparation of a character who was known to stay prepared in order to solve a problem within a fairly well understood magical system?

          I guess I softly agree.

          • Randy M says:

            I think in Dresden Files in particular, some cases you see Harry prepare something ahead of time without revealing to the reader what it is. This is okay, since you know that the Author isn’t just pulling solutions out of his rear at the last minute.
            Best is when some clue foreshadowing the solution is given earlier, though. Like if we’d seen Harry be able to hold sunlight in a napkin prior to using it on the Vampire.
            Anyway, griping prose can paper over some loose plotting too.

          • AG says:

            Yes, one of the core elements of the heist genre is that at the climax, you finally get to see the part of the plan they didn’t let you in on, which solves their seemingly insurmountable problems (often revealing that so-called complications were all according the real plan).
            “And now I call everyone into the parlor to explain how I solved the mystery” detective stories also withhold details as a core part of their plot mechanisms.

            So it’s about building this expectation in the audience that a certain amount of deus ex machina is an appeal point in the genre. “Here be the cavalry” can be something to look forward to.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            @AG

            Yes, but there’s a difference between Ocean’s 11, where you see most of the plan but are missing critical details to see exactly how it plays out (and also see errors that bring the conclusion into doubt) and Ocean’s 12, where they throw a bunch of crap at you at the last second and you feel like there was no way whatsoever to understand what happened while watching the movie.

          • AG says:

            @Mr. Doolittle

            Well, yes, entries in the heist genre vary in quality. But the point is that the deus ex machina magic is not inherently bad storytelling. There’s a way to consistently not do rules-bound magic, and still be good writing.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            I can agree with that. The most important aspect is to not blatantly contradict your own story, followed by not creating an obvious answer to your own plot tension that you now have to ignore. If a writer can manage those things without writing our concrete rules, than I have no problem with that.

      • Jaskologist says:

        Which is more satisfying?

        1. Luke Skywalker “using the Force” to guide some missiles into the Death Star’s core.
        2. Midichlorians

        • Nornagest says:

          But we already know you can use the Force like that! There’s a whole scene earlier on where Luke blinds himself and uses the Force to guide his weapon. All he’s doing there is blocking blaster bolts from a training droid, but steering his shots into the reactor vent is just the same thing at a larger scale.

          If Luke had missed his shots and then used the Force to blow up the Death Star, then that would have been unsatisfying. As to midichlorians, they’re just technobabble; they don’t tell us anything about how the Force can actually be used to solve problems.

          • albatross11 says:

            Yeah, the training sequence was kind-of foreshadowing–he could use the Force to know exactly when and how to fire his torpedo, getting more accuracy than even the targeting computer could give him. That seems like a non-universe-breaking level of power, as well as being consistent.

            I think the critical thing is that the author needs to have worked out what the rules are, at least approximately. From the perspective of the reader (at least *this* reader), it’s important that the rules of the universe remain consistent.

      • March says:

        Medium in favor. It’s good to be able to have the ‘I didn’t see it coming but I totally could have’ realization.

        But Sanderson himself seems to want to make sure readers understand his magic all too well. The first chapter of the first Stormlight Archive book reads like a user manual.

        In general, he seems like the kind of conscientious guy who thinks things through a LOT, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses that MICRO acronym throughout.

      • Peffern says:

        In favor. The issue is when the system seems to work differently for the main characters *by virtue of them being the main characters* rather than for in-story reasons. “I pulled random magic MacGuffin out of nowhere” is fine for characters to do but only if that’s a thing that is known to occur in the story. If the magic system is large, convoluted, and poorly understood *by the characters*, then someone having a previously-unheard-of power or item is totally reasonable. However, if the system is supposed to be well-understood to the point where the author is explaining it to the reader, then it feels like a betrayal when something like this occurs.

        I personally prefer the Sanderson-esque model where the system and its rules are established first, and the characters’ dramatic moments involve thinking of clever ways to use or subvert it. I just finished Mistborn (only the first one, please don’t spoil the rest) and I am thinking in particular of the moment where Iva qrsrngf gur Fgrry Vadhvfvgbe ol nssvkvat zrgny evatf gb gur onpx bs fbzr neebjurnqf naq gura Fgrrychfuvat gurz ng uvz fb gung jura ur chfurf onpx ba gurz, gur evatf frcnengr sebz gur neebjurnqf naq gurl fgvyy fgevxr uvz.

      • John Schilling says:

        I am so strongly in favor of that law of magic, that I have to wonder if I am missing something about what the other 50% are objecting to. If it is that they actually want the sort of low wish-fulfillment fantasy where a Magic-Using Mary Sue suddenly remembers they memorized Summon Happy Ending last night then OK, just clearly label those books so I can never read any of them. But it would be very disappointing and at least a little surprising if those readers explicitly and self-consciously made up 50% of the fantasy audience, so maybe there’s a miscommunication of some sort here. What might we be missing?

        • Mr. Doolittle says:

          I am also very strongly in favor of a law of magic, but I think I can see a good alternate understanding of the situation.

          If everything is explicit rules, it can no longer “feel” like magic. It’s essentially science with a different primal physics engine in the universe. What a lot of people want out of fantasy is a sense of awe and imagination. By regulating everything, you transform it into the Industrial Revolution with magic, where everything is weighed and time-study analyzed.

          For instance, consider the fairly frequent discussions here about the practical implications of the Resurrect line of spells in D&D. It would obviously have such a practical effect if it were real, but the whole point of playing D&D is to add fantasy to the experience. Being rigorous in the Law of Magic means you can’t just enjoy having a Resurrect spells benefits without extrapolating on how that would affect, well, everything.

          I personally believe that you can recapture a lot of that feel by making the rules cleaner and clearer, as seems to be Sanderson’s approach. That takes a whole lot of time and thought, though, so the failure mode is a rigid system where things are over-explained.

          The failure mode the other way is that there are too many places for plot devices to get overridden by a Mary Sue-type resolution. The solution is not necessarily constraining the author to a rigid set of rules (which is more necessary in a game, like D&D), but to avoid cliches and bad writing. A good writer should be able to do what a good Magic Law System Creator can do, but erring on the side of “magic feels right” over “magic is consistent.”

          • hls2003 says:

            +1. Taken to its extreme – and I haven’t read a lot of Sanderson, beyond his WoT conclusions and the first Mistborn, but he seems to lean this way – his approach seems to take worldbuilding in a gamified direction. Like putting the physics engine into a video game, or a DM preemptively trying to anticipate all of the clever power combos his players will attempt.

            If you’re too wedded to mechanics, then the obvious in-world approach is to systematize it into science and technology. It’s a more sci-fi approach (postulate this advancement, what are the implications?) in the fantasy setting.

          • March says:

            Gamified is exactly the word, yes.

            I love that if you’re reading about someone just finding out how their magic works. (“Hmm, what happens if I try THIS?”) But not if you’re reading about someone who is supposed to be good at what they do.

            Probably why I hated the sections with Szeth in the Stormlight Archive introduction (dude is supposed to be highly trained at what he does, he’s not going to go around thinking ‘if I Lash my magic to the sky at half strength I’ll feel 50% lighter and be able to jump farther’, he’s just going to jump) but didn’t mind the sections where Kaladin was trying things out, accidentally Lashing himself to the sky and falling upwards.

          • albatross11 says:

            It’s okay if *I* don’t know all the rules of magic/technology in your universe. But I want you to know them, or at least have some outline of them, and to have some consistent rules that make sense, so you can’t just fix your plot problems with a Summon Happy Ending spell (or invent a Summon Happy Ending technology) that has nothing to do with the rest of the universe.

            Think of the ending to _A Fire Upon the Deep_. The ability of Old One’s godshatter + Countermeasure to s–x nebhaq jvgu gur mbarf was not at all something laid out in earlier parts of the book. And yet, it made sense in context and did not feel remotely like an authorial ass-pull to me. I don’t know that Vinge thought ahead and knew in the beginning that this was possible in the laws of the universe, but it was consistent enough with what we saw to make sense. (Vinge was writing SF, but since we’re dealing with godlike aliens here[1], their powers are a lot like magic.).

            Star Trek is almost the trope-namer for bad use of this in an SF context. This week, we solve our plot problem by inventing the Picard Planetbuster. Three weeks from now, the Planetbuster would come in awfully handy, but we’ve forgotten all about it–instead, we’ll solve this problem by remodulating the backward-biased particle defenestrators[2] to drive the aliens away.

            [1] One studies how to deal with them in Applied Theology class.

            [2] Technobabble also solves a lot of problems in the Star Trek universe.

          • Randy M says:

            It’s a more sci-fi approach (postulate this advancement, what are the implications?) in the fantasy setting.

            This should not be just a sci-fi approach. The characters in a fantasy story don’t need to be strictly rational, but given that x is demonstrably possible, the reader will wonder they x is not used elsewhere.

            Perhaps because it sometimes goes catastrophically wrong, and there really aren’t remotely comprehensible physical laws governing it–but then, it should sometimes go badly for the protagonist, too.

            Perhaps because there is superstition around it–but then, that should be shown and have ramifications if the protagonist uses x around the peasants. And even better if we find out why the superstition developed.

            Perhaps the price is too high–the blood of a loved one, say–that’s fine, but then it should only be used by evil people or in desperate times.

            Perhaps because it can only be done by a dying race with other priorities–that’s fine too, but then practicioners should probably have a wisftful–or angry, or haughty–air about them. More importantly, the climax shouldn’t come down to some other person replicating their tricks (unless you’ve shown that the reason magic is restricted to that race is because of their secrecy, etc.).

            “It’s fantasy, so the implications don’t matter” is just bad writing, assuming it is about humans. We are curious and seek advantage in the world.

          • Nick says:

            I think one of the things that makes A Fire Upon the Deep‘s ending less of an asspull is a comment early on that the zones of thought are not well understood and may be artificial. An attentive reader can pick up right there that they could be subject to change or even direct control. I’m pretty sure that line was in there, but it’s been a few years now since I read it….

          • albatross11 says:

            An extreme version of this would be something where the author followed some D&D-like rules for what his characters could do, but chose the dice rolls as needed for dramatic effect.

            One aside: I’ve had the impression, reading Harry Turtledove’s sweeping alternative history novels, that he was consulting mortality tables. Every now and then, one of the zillion minor viewpoint characters dies of some completely random, normal thing–an old man you’ve followed for 30 years of his life dies of a heart attack, say, where there’s no plot-driven necessity for his death.

          • albatross11 says:

            The early WOT books can explain a fair bit of “but why don’t they use the one power to…” by the fact that the Aes Sedai are rare, secretive, constrained heavily by rules, widely feared/hated, and have lost most of their knowledge over the centuries. The illuminator’s guild explains some similar thing w.r.t. gunpowder/explosives. Later on, we see the Sanchan, who *do* use suldam/damane pairs to do a lot of useful stuff like mining with the one power. (And the nature of the damane/suldam explains why they don’t innovate a whole lot.)

          • Randy M says:

            An extreme version of this would be something where the author followed some D&D-like rules for what his characters could do, but chose the dice rolls as needed for dramatic effect.

            Wildbow of Worm supposedly rolled dice to see who would live and die in the Leviathan fight, included the up to then protagonist.
            I’m not sure what probabilities were fatal, but it must have been pretty high.

          • hls2003 says:

            This should not be just a sci-fi approach. The characters in a fantasy story don’t need to be strictly rational, but given that x is demonstrably possible, the reader will wonder they x is not used elsewhere.

            Avoiding inconsistencies or Idiot Ball Holding is not just a sci-fi thing, true. That’s just bad writing period. But I always thought of relatively hard sci-fi as teasing out the interesting implications of a technology – at least that is what I consider the difference between a “hard” sci-fi and “soft” sci-fi. Perhaps that’s an idiosyncratic definition. I’m not saying that fantasy should embrace inconsistency and deliberately ignore its prior explication; but that you are more often getting story momentum from places other than the pure application of magic/technology.

            You can have fun books that do it either way in either genre, of course. And what makes a good or great work in any genre always comes down to marrying good storytelling with the other stuff.

          • John Schilling says:

            A common rule in fiction writing, and I think a good one, is that the writer should have a very detailed understanding of the setting, and then explain maybe 10-30% of that to the reader. That would seem particularly appropriate to the Laws of Magic, where both “I can make it up as I go along” and “Here’s the spreadsheet with the protagonist’s spellbook and manna budget” are failure modes.

            So, on the one hand, this implies an upper bound beyond which Sanderson’s Law no longer applies. On the other hand, most actual fantasy writers don’t even come close to reaching that bound. But someone warn me if David Weber starts writing straight fantasy.

          • Skivverus says:

            But someone warn me if David Weber starts writing straight fantasy.

            Um. Does The War God’s Own (and its co-universe novels) count?

            They’re pretty good fun, and conform to the First Law of Magic towards the less-explained, less-solve-y end of the spectrum. Also one of the technically-not-fanfiction-because-the-author-wrote-it short stories has the good guys accidentally summon a tank*.

            *Actually a lighter vehicle plus crew, but “tank” gets the point across.

          • John Schilling says:

            Um. Does The War God’s Own (and its co-universe novels) count?

            I somehow missed those. Thanks for the warning.

          • JonathanD says:

            @albatross11, re: Star Trek.

            Relevant

        • March says:

          I like magic that has consistent rules (which can be used by the reader to deduce certain solutions), but I also like magic that’s, well, thematically consistent? The latter doesn’t require explaining the rules, just presenting a coherent story – I’m fine with not having all the clues beforehand.

          I also think that following that law to the letter is impossible. It may be a good rule of thumb for the FINAL conflict in a story, but you’re going to have to spend time setting things up and complicating things, requiring you to solve problems with magic in ways the reader can’t predict yet, ’cause they’re learning how the magic works. If you make sure you build the conflict in logical steps that can be puzzled out by the reader, you run the chance that there’s no real feeling of risk or surprise anywhere.

          Maybe something to do with preferences for reading between the lines/explicit exposition?

        • AG says:

          The main counter-examples are mostly anime. In those cases, magic is just another part of the entire world being a metaphor for character growth. The deus ex machina climaxes are thrilling because they’re stand-ins for catharsis.
          But fantasy is often about this, as well. The Campbellian hero demonstrates that they are the extraordinary Chosen One because they can break the rules. To transcend the system is metaphor for coming-of-age and realizing that you have more agency than previously believed.

          The other element of this being the visual dimension. Certain imagery is just fun to consume for their own sake. Aforementioned anime climaxes are usually great because it just looks fucking cool.

        • Jaskologist says:

          What you’re describing isn’t magic, it’s science for a different universe. It’s no surprise that engineers would prefer it.

      • hls2003 says:

        It seems to me that Sanderson himself makes exceptions to the theory he is advocating. My reason is two words: Robert Jordan. Sanderson was (obviously) a big public fan of the Wheel of Time books (a big part of how he got the commission to finish them). But those books are some of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen about breaking rules and pulling stuff out of nowhere. Jordan literally invented a term for the authorial arse-pull (ta’veren) and I can’t count the number of times we’re told “X is impossible” in one book, to be followed by a ridiculously convenient “turns out a protagonist has a Talent for X!” moment two books later.

        I suppose one could argue that Sanderson is consistent, and that he liked Jordan’s work in spite of, not because of, that particular flaw. But it’s definitely there, and a primary example of the genre.

        I do think Sanderson believes it himself, of course, because his tendency to do “creative magical bootstrapping” was actually one of the most visible differences in the three non-Jordan finales. Like opening a tiny Gate to a volcano.

        • Another Throw says:

          But those books are some of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen about breaking rules and pulling stuff out of nowhere. Jordan literally invented a term for the authorial arse-pull (ta’veren) and I can’t count the number of times we’re told “X is impossible” in one book, to be followed by a ridiculously convenient “turns out a protagonist has a Talent for X!” moment two books later.

          I think I am going to have to disagree with you here; it isn’t arse-pulling when it is a consistent thematic element. Everything we are told is impossible is because “they couldn’t do it in the age of legends”. That is, anyway, according to the aes sedai’s ridiculously incomplete records.

          Throughout the entire series, the aes sedai are shown to be systematically close minded and parochial, huddling in their tower and obsessed with hording their surviving records. Novel research is extremely circumscribed and, in the rare event that it happens, should follow from the surviving records. When those records are faulty, of course you’re not going to get anywhere. Their penchant for secrecy and lying for in group power dynamics certainly doesn’t help, either. Even if one of them made a discovery, there is only about a 2% chance they would ever tell another aes sedai, but instead take it to their grave.

          When a new generation is not, due to exigent circumstance, acculturated in the huddling in the tower obsessing over fragments while back stabbing each other cult and instead goes out there and actually tries doing something without the baggage of faulty premises, they start to actually make discoveries. It also helps that this new generation has periodic encounters with the forsaken who, in their every act, embody how incomplete or just plain wrong the aes sedai view of the impossible is. Also, periodically capturing the forsaken and forcing them into being tutors didn’t hurt terribly much. Also, being periodically capture by the Sanchen and forced into being more competent than the aes sedai magical slaves didn’t hurt terrible much, either. (Okay, it probably did hurt, but not in the way I mean.)

          Which is a really long way of saying I don’t know why you would take the aes sedai’s word on anything.

          • hls2003 says:

            But it’s not just the Aes Sedai. Many things that the characters do are also considered impossible by the Forsaken, some of the most polished and sophisticated practitioners of their age. On multiple occasions Rand does something that mental-Lews-Therin considers impossible. Plus the popping up of plot-useful Talents or artifacts is very bad. I don’t remember which book, but one that I recall is someone saying “Gee, I wish we had more of these ter’angreal” and literally within two pages a protagonist develops a heretofore unknown Talent for replicating ter’angreal. In multiple books they’ll discover a “large depository of ter’angreal” right about the time they need something impossible done, and sure enough one of the devices will be just perfect. Jordan does that sort of thing constantly, and often in a way that renders things he’s done before (or will do later) pointless or silly.

            Suffice it to say I’m not a big fan, so I’ll defer to others on details of the books, which I haven’t read since the Sanderson conclusion. But I remember that aspect of them drove me nuts.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            I’ll agree on the ter’angreal and to a lesser extent your overall point.

            I will add that when Rand or another major character does something the Forsaken find impossible, that’s not covering plot holes, but fully intentional. It shows the arrogance and pride of the Age of Legends, but also that there is a new age being “spun” and the Wheel is intentionally creating individuals with special skills. It’s a major plot point of the books.

          • hls2003 says:

            @Mr. Doolittle

            I mean, I get what you’re saying. I understand that the turning of the Wheel and the gain and loss of knowledge from Age to Age was one of the main themes, and that he’s basically giving a cosmology for the Campbellian story form (we have heroes because the Pattern weaves them out to maintain itself). I guess my position is, just because Jordan recognized what he was doing, and lampshaded it, doesn’t mean he wasn’t violating Sanderson’s First Law. If I write a book where the rules of the world are explicitly “Anything can happen at any time, regardless of what’s happened before” and also write that it’s because there are Chaos Pockets and Lethe Pockets floating around that change the rules and make people forget what they did, technically I’ve acknowledged the issue, but I’m not sure that it helps make a subsequent resolution by magic any more satisfying.

            I suppose if the chief conflict in that book is to get rid of the Pockets, then maybe there’s sort of a meta-consistency? But if the solution is just “This Chaos Pocket wished them all away,” then that’s going to be kind of unsatisfying.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            I think at that point we’re down to individual readers deciding if they are satisfied by that response, or if that sets off an internal “this breaks consistency” metric in our head.

            I was okay with it, but sounds like it set off your alarm. I think that the difference to me is that he acknowledged and made the change part of his story, and then kept it with the new rules after that. If he made a change without acknowledgement, or went back and forth, I’m pretty sure that would have frustrated me. Some of the things that changed I felt were long-planned changes, while others seemed to be updates as he wrote and came up with new ideas. The ones that felt like new ideas (as with the ter’angreal I agreed about before) bothered me more than the stuff like the difference between the Age of Legends tech.

          • hls2003 says:

            @Mr. Doolittle

            Sure, that’s very fair to say. (Obviously I didn’t hate hate hate the books, I did read all 13 of them). I personally was not a fan of the way he used fate, the Pattern, ta’veren, etc. throughout, because I thought it gave him a crutch for whenever he wrote himself into a corner. One example that occurred multiple times throughout the series was “Rand meets with an implacable enemy who spontaneously converts and swears allegiance.” I’ll grant that there’s an explanation for it (his ta’veren aura). It just struck me as him conceding in advance that he couldn’t quite manage to get everyone in the right place and the right side at the right time, so sometimes he’d just shortcut. I would contrast it with, e.g., Tolkien’s treatment of Theoden and Denethor. Theoden really does get pretty suddenly converted by Gandalf, but it’s through the removal of an evil counselor allowing underlying nobility to shine through. He isn’t really opposed to the right side, just clouded. Conversely, Gandalf can’t “cure” Denethor, and there’s absolutely no indication that he would suddenly have sworn fealty to Aragorn if they’d been introduced. It would have been contrary to his entire character. Whereas I feel like there’s at least several implacable enemies who seem ruefully aware that they’ve just done a 180 with Rand, and can’t quite explain how, other than ta’veren.

            At this stage, though, I think we’re in pretty good agreement (or at least personal opinion “agree to disagree” territory). Don’t even get me started on his female characters’ personalities, though…!!!

      • hls2003 says:

        I am partially in favor, partially against.

        I think that avoiding explicit rule-changes and glaring inconsistencies is important. However, I think that it is much less important to have an affirmative rules-based system categorizing and classifying all magic. That seems to me to be a more modern game-based approach.

        Tolkien is the archetype of good fantasy (to me, at least, and clearly to many others). Tolkien did not have many glaring inconsistencies (e.g. if during the storm at Caradhras, Gandalf had said he couldn’t make fire, when we’ve already seen him set pine cones alight in The Hobbit). But neither did he have a spreadsheet of power levels, spells, and capabilities carefully matching each against another. When Aragorn commands the Dead, it is not because we have established him as a necromancer or wizard; it is because of a generally-undefined but understandable personal authority inherent between him and the Oathbreakers.

        So if Tolkien is lord of the genre, and doesn’t do it entirely Sanderson’s way, I can see why half the participants disagreed with his formulation. But if one views it proscriptively (don’t contradict) rather than prescriptively (always systematize), then I agree.

        • Randy M says:

          I think you can have the rules unstated, even unspecified in your own mind, and have it work if the things done are thematically relevant. Aragorn uses authority to command the oathbreakers–are rightful authority and duty to vows themes of the book? Are they concepts that the characters respect, or are they flaunted elsewhere to no consequence? Are there other characters that seem like they should be able to capitalize on authority in such a manner but don’t?

          • Skivverus says:

            Right; that’s where the “directly proportional” part of the law comes in; it’s not “this must be explicitly explained or else your protagonists can’t use it in your dramatic climax”. And it applies to more than just magic, as discussed elsewhere in the thread.

          • Deiseach says:

            And indeed Aragorn’s ability to command the Oathbreakers is backing up his claim to be the legitimate heir to the throne of the South Kingdom (as well as the North); it is because he is the descendant of Isildur that gives him the authority and right to claim the fulfillment of the Oath that was sworn to Isildur and never kept, and proving this legitimacy by successfully commanding the Dead and completing the pact bolsters his claim to be the successor by right of blood.

        • Deiseach says:

          Tolkien did not have many glaring inconsistencies (e.g. if during the storm at Caradhras, Gandalf had said he couldn’t make fire, when we’ve already seen him set pine cones alight in The Hobbit).

          I think Tolkien covered himself there; Gandalf said he couldn’t burn snow (you can’t make a fire where there’s no fuel) but in The Hobbit he did have fuel (the pinecones, the trees and indeed the wargs themselves).

          And indeed, earlier he does make a fire with wood:

          ‘You may make a fire, if you can,’ answered Gandalf. ‘If there are any watchers that can endure this storm, then they can see us, fire or no.’ But though they had brought wood and kindlings by the advice of Boromir, it passed the skill of Elf or even Dwarf to strike a flame that would hold amid the swirling wind or catch in the wet fuel. At last reluctantly Gandalf himself took a hand. Picking up a faggot he held it aloft for a moment, and then with a word of command, naur an edraith ammen! he thrust the end of his staff into the midst of it. At once a great spout of green and blue flame sprang out, and the wood flared and sputtered.

          `If there are any to see, then I at least am revealed to them,’ he said. ‘I have written Gandalf is here in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of Anduin.’

          `If Gandalf would go before us with a bright flame, he might melt a path for you,’ said Legolas. The storm had troubled him little, and he alone of the Company remained still light of heart.

          `If Elves could fly over mountains, they might fetch the Sun to save us,’ answered Gandalf. `But I must have something to work on. I cannot burn snow.’

          A different attitude to magic would indeed have a Level Whatever Spell of Burning Snow.

          • hls2003 says:

            That’s my point. It would have been a glaring inconsistency if Gandalf forgot that he was capable of setting wood on fire. Instead we get “At last reluctantly Gandalf himself took a hand. Picking up a [piece of wood – worried about filter] he held it aloft for a moment, and then with a word of command, naur an edraith ammen! he thrust the end of his staff into the midst of it.”

            Gandalf being unwilling to do so except as a last resort is not an inconsistency, as he puts it: “I have written ‘Gandalf is here’ in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of Anduin.”

            That we have absolutely no clue as to how or to what degree Gandalf can set wood on fire, does not impede the story in the slightest. Systematizing and organizing his fire-causing powers by the numbers is totally unnecessary to the story.

            Avoiding inconsistency is an important thing. Defining the magic down to the pennyweight is not.

          • Deiseach says:

            Avoiding inconsistency is an important thing. Defining the magic down to the pennyweight is not.

            Oh yeah, sure, but also you have to avoid the inconsistency of “I can make fire out of wood – and snow – and your grandma’s apple tart recipe – and the faint melancholy sensation on the first cool morning of autumn when the leaves just start to turn colour” without explaining in some slight manner “well hang on a minute here now, how exactly does that work?”

            If the Wizard Dangalf can conveniently have a spell or power for every occasion, that’s something that needs to be established at the start: is this the kind of world where Dangalf can pull a new superpower out of his pointy hat at every turn of the plot that needs it, or not? You don’t have to draw up a List of Official Magicking Rules in the preamble, but you can’t have the Wizard Dangalf able to do this but the Wizard Marusan not able to, if they are both supposed to be wizards of the same rank and type.

            Mostly this is the type of thing that happened with episodic TV shows (before the whole notion of an arc or tied-together season-spanning plot came along) where characters would in one episode have a long-lost family member/great old pal/love interest come along whom we had never heard of before, and after this episode never heard of again. Or they could/could not do this particular thing in one episode (“Joe can make a five-star meal out of the mouldy contents of your fridge!”) and then a few episodes later with a different writer, they could not/could do that particular thing (“Joe can burn water, don’t ask him to cook!”)

            That’s fine if you’re only dipping in and out of a show, but if you’re consistently following it, it’s really annoying when contradictions like that happen 😀

          • hls2003 says:

            @Deiseach

            I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I’m just taking the position that, if the Sanderson Rule means that magical systems have to be specified, detailed, codified, and quantified in order to have good fantasy, then I believe that excludes the central example of good fantasy (Tolkien) and is not viable.

            If the Rule instead means that you shouldn’t have obvious sitcom-level contradictions, including in the use of magic, then it doesn’t exclude Tolkien, and it’s fine. Though, too, the Rule would be making a much smaller statement in that interpretation.

      • bean says:

        I suspect that this is a case where you have two different groups reading different things into the statement. Everyone here reads it as “magic is unsatisfying if there aren’t rules”, and the other side is probably interpreting it as something like “only David Weber (or someone who infodumps like him) can use magic right”. Which seems like the sort of thing that is at odds with the tastes of many fantasy readers.
        (Although I’m definitely in the first camp.)

        • Nick says:

          I think the one camp is less “magic must have rules” (although some folks certainly feel this way) and more “if magic has rules, adhere to them consistently.”

          • bean says:

            But what would magic without rules even look like? I’m not even able to conceive of a system that doesn’t involve some sort of rules and isn’t bizarre and silly, with lots of “but why didn’t you do X here?” questions left for the reader.

          • woah77 says:

            It would look a lot like calvinball as an entire world.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            In any setting where magic is commonly found, especially if used by the protagonist, then you’re going to fall into the “magic has rules” side of the equation. The alternative is rare magic that’s only used by NPCs/antagonists.

          • Nick says:

            If it’s something explicitly supernatural, and not just preternatural phenomena, then I don’t think it has to be rule based. If your ‘magic’ is just “the favor of God” it could result in practically anything logically possible, right?

          • hls2003 says:

            +1

            It is just fine not to define the exact magical properties and construction of the Silmarils. But resolving the Wars of Beleriand by having someone “rediscover” Feanor’s work and “just make a bunch more so everyone gets one” would be super lame. Once you have established that the Silmarils are unique, and the light used to fill them has literally died, they have to stay that way.

          • bean says:

            If it’s something explicitly supernatural, and not just preternatural phenomena, then I don’t think it has to be rule based. If your ‘magic’ is just “the favor of God” it could result in practically anything logically possible, right?

            But at that point, you’re not able to actually solve anything in a satisfying way. (The rule is “solve problems with magic”, not “cause problems with magic”, after all.) Making the deity in your deus ex machina literal doesn’t really solve the problem that overuse of deus ex machina is bad writing. Either there needs to be some rules around gaining God’s favor and what he will do for you, or you’re back into silly, obviously plot-driven magic.

            “Sorry, God doesn’t seem to be willing to smite my enemies with fire today, like he did three episodesweeks ago, even though it would solve this problem quickly. Maybe I messed up one of my prayers this morning. Funny how it always happens that my exact level of favor with him is precisely what it will take to make the episode last 42 minutes.”

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            If it’s something explicitly supernatural, and not just preternatural phenomena, then I don’t think it has to be rule based. If your ‘magic’ is just “the favor of God” it could result in practically anything logically possible, right?

            Presumably “God” in this story has goals, methods, etc. that can be known. If the Priest character prays to his god and super magic happens, then we’re moving the meta-level up but still talking about a system with some kind of rules. If this god has limits, then those limits are the rules. If this god has morals, then those morals are the rules, etc. Such an abstraction is much easier to write within, than a “this is a wizard school where we teach the actual methods of magic”-type story.

            You could write about a follower of the God of Chaos and even do things not logically possible, and I would consider that to be “within the rules of the story.”

            If something is Inconsistent, it’s breaking its own rules, as established explicitly in the rest of the story, or as previously seen. A character saying “I will not kill” as a plot point randomly killing people throughout the story is Inconsistent, even though that’s not even magical. Depending on how well it’s written, stories can use Inconsistent points and not break immersion. Do it too often, or too easily, and the story loses coherence.

          • Randy M says:

            If your ‘magic’ is just “the favor of God” it could result in practically anything logically possible, right?

            But that is a rule–please God/a god. And people in such a world are going to be very interested in what pleases God–after all, this was seemingly our world to a great many people.
            Maybe you have a multitude of gods such that almost anything will please one of them, who will at her unfathomable whim intervene in the mortal world. But that kind of world makes it harder to tell a more satisfying story.
            More likely, there will be specific acts that tend towards encouraging the gods favor–rituals, righteous living, daring risk taking, etc. Maybe only the protagonist knows the right ones, but of course then you set up a literal platonic example of deus ex machina.

            ~

            One way the world might look if magic didn’t follow rules is that if the rules are seemingly unconnected and unknown.
            Why didn’t Hocus Pocus produce rabbits magically when I said it?
            Well, the planets weren’t in conjunction.
            Okay, the planets are in conjunction–still not working.
            No, on a Tuesday you need to say Pocus Hocus.
            How does it always work for you?
            I’m just in tune with the universe and have a knack for knowing the right ritual.

            Still probably unsatisfying, though.

            ~
            @Mr Doolittle
            “I thought you said you don’t kill?”
            “Well, gravity usually takes care of it for me.”

          • Nick says:

            Okay, I concede, folks. Magic must have rules.

          • hls2003 says:

            @bean

            But what would magic without rules even look like?

            I’m reminded of this bit from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

            “Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”
            “Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.

            and this bit from The Silver Chair:

            “Do you mean, do something to make it happen?”
            Eustace nodded.
            “You mean we might draw a circle on the ground—and write things in queer letters in it—and stand inside—and recite charms and spells?”
            “Well,” said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. “I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.”

            I will grant forthrightly that the Narnia books are probably some of the least systematic fantasy novels I can think of. I know Tolkien disapproved of Lewis’ slapdash, kitchen-sink approach (as well as his perceived didacticism). But they have a distinct charm, and their popularity has undeniably stood the test of time, though they’re not at Tolkien’s level of artistry. I would think, then, that a successful fiction world where things are not consistent, rules-based, and systematic, would look something like that – where the rules are not known, and perhaps unknowable, and things happen for the plot, but the images and snapshots of moments are sufficiently charming to engage the reader without too much thinking through the implications.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            Narnia works specifically because the protagonists don’t know or use magic.

            The Queen references the Deep Magic (if I’m remembering right…) that allows her to kill Aslan on the Stone Table, but Aslan teaches her the underlying rules. The Wardrobe works because it was made from a special tree from Narnia. The lampstand existed because the Queen brought a piece of a British lampstand to Narnia while it was being created, which encompassed something brought there.

            I agree that Lewis wrote in a way that avoided explaining how all that works, but I feel he was pretty consistent that there are rules, and that the characters follow them.

          • Randy M says:

            @Nick , lol, didn’t mean to dogpile.
            @hls2003
            Agreed, the wardrobe is pretty much a contrivance. Presumably it works when Aslan wants it to and not when it doesn’t. It specifically would be egregious if the outcome of the plot hinged (don’t pardon me, I am unrepentant) on whether they could get through it when they needed to.
            The magic of Narnia rewards the virtuous and the faithful, though not in any formulaic way. It is a fun world, charming even, but perhaps somewhat shallow.

          • bean says:

            I’m not sure Narnia is a good counterexample. First, a writer of C. S. Lewis’s caliber can do all sorts of things that lesser mortals shouldn’t. Second, I think the “solve problems” part of the law is actually rather critical. Magic used by NPCs, particularly villains, isn’t going to be under nearly as much scrutiny as magic used by the heroes. It’s easier to hide any inconsistencies offscreen. If it’s the bad guys, maybe this bad guy just doesn’t know the spell the last bad guy did that would instantly undo the party’s plans.

          • hls2003 says:

            @bean:

            I agree it’s true that the First Rule can be interpreted in a way that makes it valuable and true. Even in a less nuanced interpretation, I expect it’s excellent advice for upcoming writers. The interpretation I object to is sort of a pastiche; if one takes Sanderson’s advice as a proxy for “make sure you have a super-detailed understanding of your precise system of magic, or else your book will be badly written and you’ll ruin your plot,” then I think that’s proving too much. If one doesn’t take the First Law as a proxy for micro-managed magic, but more as a guideline to avoid “anytime you see something like that, a wizard did it,” then I agree with it. And if you want to define it more precisely to be about the exact resolution of a plot climax via magic, then I still think Narnia applies. Looking at the books:

            Lion: Plot resolved by Aslan + Deeper Magic
            Caspian: Plot resolved by Aslan + Bacchus and Silenus (?!)
            Dawn Treader: Plot resolved by Aslan + retired stars
            Silver Chair: Plot resolved by snake-killing, unraveling spells, and Aslan
            Horse: Plot resolved by minor battle (and Aslan)
            Nephew: Plot resolved by Aslan + Garden of Hesperides magic apple
            Last Battle: Plot resolved by Aslan + Father Time + falling stars

            I mean, I suppose one could argue that all the magical plot resolutions follow a system, because they’re all resolved by Aslan, who has a fixed character. “Not like a tame lion.” But poke the underlying magical systems and they’re a mishmash of umpteen myths and legends. A hundred years of winter? How is it possible the trees survived so long without spring? Why didn’t everyone run out of food in the second year? Who the heck did Ramandu marry to have a daughter? What form of the Witch would the werewolf’s seance call up? Did everyone just forget about the apples of immortality? I mean, I genuinely love those books, can’t wait to read them to my kids, but systematic they are not.

        • hls2003 says:

          @Mr. Doolittle:

          Narnia works specifically because the protagonists don’t know or use magic.

          This seems wrong to me. Lucy has her magic cordial that she got from Father Christmas, made of flowers picked from the valleys of the sun. She uses it to heal Edmund, but doesn’t attempt to use it to try to tease a spark of life back into the sacrificed Aslan. This is for obvious (book) reasons, and can be more-or-less retconned (Aslan is already dead, Edmund is not) but the point is that the rules of magic cordial and the precise healing factor of the fireflowers are not important to Lewis. Susan has a magic horn which, in Lion, does nothing but call Peter to come running, but in Prince Caspian is the primary plot point in calling Arthurian-type heroes back across space and time. Eustace becomes a dragon in Dawn Treader because he is “thinking greedy, dragonish thoughts” in a den, and is healed when Aslan appears to him in a dream. Puddleglum breaks the spell in Silver Chair in large part by a “good shock of pain” and the smell of burnt marshwiggle. Etc. There’s magic, all right, and the characters have it, or use it, or experience it working on them, and the exact nature of it is totally unclear (how does the Hermit’s viewing pool in Horse and His Boy work? Why hasn’t he created a whole industry of scrying? Why don’t others do it? Why does the wardrobe only sometimes work, other than that’s the story?). Sure, Lewis will gesture at it sometimes, but generally he just doesn’t care.

          In fact, the most systematic magic systems we see are the most unlike Lewis’ idea of regular magic. Uncle Andrew’s Rings, for example, work very predictably. One to the Wood, one to the Pools. He’s a systematizer, a “a little, peddling Magician who works by rules and books,” per the Witch. Even the Witch and her magic are more rule-bound – the Deplorable Word is a basic desecration spell that can be learned and recited; she needs her wand to turn people to stone; etc. But in general, magic is something mysterious that works the way it is supposed to, and not otherwise.

          I’m not trying to get on Lewis. I love those books. But it’s hard to see them as clearly planned-out with a coherent system of powers and magic.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            In retrospect, I feel you are more correct than I am. I most remember the first book and the last, which as you note are the most systematized. I really don’t remember much of the other books, and am more than willing to concede that I had forgotten more about how Lewis did magic than I remembered.

            (I will add that Lucy having a magic vial doesn’t mean she understands or needs to understand magic. She just puts a drop from it on somebody and it works. That she didn’t try on Aslan seems out of place, but since he was already dead it makes sense that it would not work the same anyway).

          • theredsheep says:

            The distinction is between benign and malign versions of magic. I don’t have specific cites–I believe it was Abolition of Man?–but somewhere he notes that the Renaissance was the true golden age of “magic,” in the sense of demonic or morally illicit sorcery. Magic in the renaissance sense was (for Lewis) the sickly twin of incipient science. Both were attempts to acquire dominion over the natural world.

            The more benign forms of magic aren’t systematic because they work within the natural order of magical reality, rather than being external rules imposed on it. We don’t know the rules because we aren’t really in full control. Something like that.

            Also, thank you guys for reminding me that Ayn Rand’s margin notes on Abolition of Man were a thing. Just looked them up again; one wonders how much pepto-bismol that woman went through.

          • hls2003 says:

            @theredsheep:

            Yes, I think that’s an excellent distinction. You probably are correctly remembering Abolition of Man; or possibly That Hideous Strength, which is more-or-less a novelization of Abolition.

            In The Discarded Image, Lewis also sets out his view that the scientific mindset of expecting to systematize regular rules from observations of nature is quite different from the Medieval mindset that he was fond of, which was not devoid of experiment or folk wisdom, but also had a much less impersonal aspect to it than the modern view.

            It also occurs to me that “time passing in Narnia” is another good example. A systematizer would estimate that one year in our world = 1,000 years in Narnia based on Prince Caspian. But then in Voyage several months = a couple years, and in Silver Chair you see that several months = 60-70 years. If you’re trying to discern the underlying logic of the time skips, you’re asking the wrong question.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            She uses it to heal Edmund, but doesn’t attempt to use it to try to tease a spark of life back into the sacrificed Aslan.

            This was one way the movie improved the story. Lucy got out her vial to use, but Susan waved it off.

      • Deiseach says:

        Pretty much in favour. You need to be very good and have things set up just right for a last-minute “with one bound he was free” magic solution to work, otherwise it’s just irritating.

        Part of why I really liked the second Thomas Covenant trilogy was that he kept his promise with the plot he’d been setting up; for the final book, I couldn’t see any internally-coherent way for the resolution of the plot except for the main character to die, but I was very dubious that an author would stick to the requirements of the plot and the limitations he had imposed on himself, that he would kill off the character and not have some “and out of nowhere a miracle” ending. But he did it! He killed off his character!

        It’s also why Gandalf doesn’t take Eagle Airlines to Mordor, that’s the cheating easy way out 🙂

        Now, if you’ve played fair with the reader and built up a way that the “and suddenly a miracle” gambit could plausibly work, then fine. But mostly it never works as well as hoped.

    • theredsheep says:

      Well, I’m an extremely gloomy and fatalistic person, and it tends to wreck my characters, and thus stories, by robbing them of all agency and forcing them to drift through the world like tumbleweeds. So my new one guideline for writing, before I say I’m done with each scene: “How is the protagonist moving the story forward here?” It’s fixing an awful lot of problems.

      Otherwise, I’m not much for following rules; my approach to writing tends to be more intuitive, like DF said. I learned to write by reading a lot of good writers and passively absorbing their tricks, I think.

      • Randy M says:

        I learned to write by reading a lot of good writers and passively absorbing their tricks, I think.

        That’s got to be the bulk of your training, for sure.

    • AG says:

      Jennifer Crusie is a NYT best selling author. She was so incensed by the pilot to the Lucifer TV series that it set her off into writing her own version of the story, and has been cataloguing the process every step of the way. She also has put together a good number of writing concept posts before that.
      https://writingandromance.wordpress.com/
      http://arghink.com/category/structure/
      http://arghink.com/?s=questionable

      There’s Film Crit Hulk’s “Screenwriting 101” book.

      John Rogers was the showrunner for Leverage, and was heavy on using his (now abandoned) blog and the Leverage episode commentaries to impart advice so people didn’t have to waste time going to film school. I’d go back a few pages to find posts that aren’t as context heavy for their writing advice.
      https://kfmonkey.blogspot.com

      People have been praising the The Good Place podcast, recently, but that might be more about insight into production, than writing.

  52. Samu says:

    Has there been a survey of the different musical tastes people here have?

    • EchoChaos says:

      Not that I know of, but it would be interesting.

      I listen to heavy metal and classical, which sounds like an odd combination but is actually surprisingly common.

      • Samu says:

        The same goes for me, too. I’m one of those people who unironically listen to all kinds of music. I might go from Black metal to rap to folk music in one sitting.

        Anyway, what are your favorite heavy metal bands and classical composers?

        • EchoChaos says:

          For heavy metal I lean strongly power metal, although I enjoy thrash as well.

          Favorite bands:
          Blind Guardian
          Sabaton
          Powerwolf
          Judicator
          Visigoth
          Hammerfall
          Gloryhammer

          For classical I focus most on the Baroque period, although I obviously listen to many.

          Bach is the titan of composition, and the Brandenburg concertos I could listen to over and over again
          Vivaldi
          Handel

          In the Classical period obviously Beethoven, although I prefer his earlier works over his later.

        • Incurian says:

          Tool and Chopin.

        • Plumber says:

          @Samu

          “….what are your favorite heavy metal bands and classical composers?”

          When asked that before I’ve been told that the bands I’ve named “Weren’t Metal” but actually were “Heavy Rock”, “Glam”, “Psychedelia”, “Punk”, or some other genre, and that one band that has songs I’ve liked – Motörhead only counts as “honorary Metal” so that left Black Sabbath, which I was told “only the later stuff counts”, and that the early songs I actually liked “aren’t real Metal yet”, so that leaves me liking a couple of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Venom songs, despite in my youth being at some Christ on Parade, Exodus, Metalica, Neurosis, and other bands shows, the names of which I’ve forgotten, and which I can hardly name a song.

          Motörhead – was awesome when they played the Omni, so I absolutely prefer “honorary” over “real”.

          In terms of classical I find I usually prefer 19th and 20th century composes more, off the top of my head I’ve liked pieces by Antonín Dvořák, Beethoven, Carl Orff, Gustav Holst, Henry Purcell, Lakme, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and I’ve long enjoyed the film music of Bernard Herrmann, which I’m not sure counts as “real classical”.

          • EchoChaos says:

            Metal is the king of slicing its genres into the smallest possible fragments in order to claim that they’re different than the segment over there.

            Identify a speed metal band as a power metal band or a doom metal band as black metal and you get some upset folks.

            Don’t worry too much about where the boundary falls.

          • Montfort says:

            @EchoChaos
            I don’t know, I think electronic dance genres might offer some stiff competition in that category.

            But what Plumber’s talking about is something different. There’s been a change in what the prototypical “metal” song sounds like. You can see the same thing with basic rock and roll. The early 50s stuff is something a young educated listener will know, intellectually, is technically “rock”. But it sure won’t sound like the salient examples he built his own conception of “rock” around.

            That’s not to say he’s wrong to think of Motorhead as heavy metal, any more than it’s wrong for someone to think of Elvis or Fats Domino as rock musicians. It’s just that new generations have built their fuzzy categories with different load-bearing pillars.

          • Deiseach says:

            Motörhead only counts as “honorary Metal”

            Video quality is absolutely terrible, but I pity the fool who thinks this doesn’t rock, and rock hard 😉

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @EchoChaos:

            Metal is the king of slicing its genres into the smallest possible fragments in order to claim that they’re different than the segment over there.

            OK, so in the early 1980s, Christian metal bands began to appear, and the gatekeepers of black metal argued that subgenre could never have Christians, because it’s inherently Satanic. So Christian bands with the closest sound to it identified as death metal and wrote lyrics about things like martyrdom or coined the term “white metal.”

        • WashedOut says:

          Metal:
          Primitive Man
          Vermin Womb
          Ulcerate
          Convulsing
          Portal

          Classical:
          Rachmaninoff
          Prokofiev
          Bartok

          In both cases I lean heavily into dissonance and melancholia. I can get into *some* black metal, if it doesn’t sound like it was recorded using a potato. Mgła are probably my pick of the genre.

      • CatCube says:

        One of my favorite renditions of the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14’s (The Moonlight Sonata) is on the electric guitar. It works really well, I think.

      • Well... says:

        Not an odd combination, and I would call it “unsurprisingly” common. Lots of metal sub-genres (esp. black metal, power metal, etc.) are centered around fast baroque-ish riffing on heavily distorted guitar. Even Metallica include in a lot of their songs baroque-sounding classical guitar sections (e.g. the intro to “Battery”).

    • Machine Interface says:

      Art music:

      >western
      >>the different periods of medieval choral music, the divided traditions of the migration period (Ambrosian chant, Old Roman chant, Mozarabic chant, Byzantine chant, etc…), the subsequent united Gregorian period, then the development and evolution of medieval polyphony: ars antiqua, ars nova, ars subtilior
      >>music of the Renaissance
      >> Baroque era, I like almost everything I hear from that time, Bach, Haendel, Vivaldi, Marais, Couperin, Rameau, Lully, Telemann…
      >> Classic era, much less of a fan; I do appreciate Mozart, but things really pick up with Beethoven and the transition to romanticism
      >> Romantic era, mainly Wagner and the Russian romantics, also late French romantics, transition to expressionism and impressionism
      >> The expressionist period of early Stravinsky; Debussy, Ravel… Soviet neoclassics, Khatchaturian, Prokofiev, Shostakovich
      >> Texturalism: Ligeti, Penderecki, Gorecki, and transition to sacred minimalism
      >> Arvo Pärt

      > asian
      >> Japanese art music, notably theater music and court music, solo recitals of shamisen and shakuhachi
      >> Hindustani art music, particularly sarangi improvisations
      >> Indonesian Gamelan, particularly the lively balinese varieties like gong kebyar, gong gede and jegog
      >> Thai and Thai-adjacent piphat
      >> middle eastern art music, particularly ney and oud recitals

      Popular music:

      >Jazz
      >> Swing, particularly Duke Ellington, also Count Basie, Django Reinhardt, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday…
      >> bebop, Dizzie Gillespie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk…
      >> hardbop, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, the Jazz Messengers…
      >> a bit of post-bop, free jazz, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton…

      >Soul, rythm & blues, Ray Charles, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Prince, Michael Jackson…

      > post-war French-language singers, George Brassens, Serges Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré, Claude Nougaro…

      > bossa nova, almost anything by João Gilberto or Tom Jobim.

      > movie and video game soundtracks, soft spot for the neo-romanticism going from the late 70s to the early 2000s, and for chip-tunes and synth-wave

    • AG says:

      I like maximalism. So:
      Pop music (mostly Asian idol music, but some western stuff, usually produced by Scandinavians)
      Classical music (with a preference for late Classical thru Romantic to early Contemporary)
      Musical music (with a strong background in the classic standards from the Golden Age of Cinema)
      But then I still dabble in pretty much everything else. Prefer psychadelic and British invasion trends for rock.

      Give me a fun rhythm/groove and/or a strong melody. Everything else is just execution details.

    • Well... says:

      I don’t think there has been such a survey, but I agree it could be interesting. I’ve discussed my own musical tastes on here before, at least. Some people might call them expansive, but I’m sure some other people wouldn’t:

      My bread and butter is heavy alternative rock from the 90s. My interest in rock radiates great distances outward from there but that is definitely the heart of it. (Speaking of heart, the only female rock singers I really like are Nancy Wilson and Fiona Apple.)

      I also love classical music. My favorite pieces tend to be symphonic arrangements from the 19th century, although some earlier stuff (Bach’s cello suites, Mozart’s overtures) and some later stuff (Barber’s violin concerto) really move me also. It’s rare that I’m in the mood for solo piano stuff or chamber music, but the mood does hit me every once in a while.

      I’m a huge fan of world music, in particular gamelan, the traditional music of India, and the stuff that blends traditional and pop from West Africa (I’ve got all the albums I could find by people like Habib Koite and Toumani Diabate).

      I like classic country a lot, and some modern country too. I’m not one of those guys who says he likes classic country and just means “I like Johnny Cash’s NIN cover”; I really like classic country. I’m pickier about my modern country, but artists like Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Garth Brooks, etc. do work I pretty consistently like and am impressed by.

      I like bluegrass a lot. I’ve got a fairly sizeable collection of bluegrass albums and they get rotated in plenty often. I prefer the up-tempo stuff with banjos and mandolins and fiddles in it.

      I listen to black gospel music regularly. The Winan Sisters are some of my favorite performers in that genre.

      I like a lot of rap but I’m extremely picky about it. I tend to glom onto rap songs more than rap artists. Some of my favorite rap songs are “Pop Shit” by ODB, “Gimme Some Mo” by Busta Rhymes, and “99 Problems” by Jay-Z. I also tend to like random songs by underground rappers who I wouldn’t want living within 50 miles of me…”40 Glock” by Donkey is typical of these.

      I’ve been really getting into norteña, thanks to the local radio station. I couldn’t name any artists or songs in that genre (language barrier) but I like more than 3/4 of the songs they play. A lot. So I tune into that station probably 50% of the time when I’m driving and listening to music.

      I have a soft spot for jazz (all eras, from dixieland to modern) even though when certain people say jazz is stupid part of me wants to agree. One of my favorite jazz albums is “The Infinite” by Dave Douglas. And I’ve got every Weather Report album I could find. I like some jazz singers (especially Dianne Reeves) but I can’t get over how consistently bad jazz lyrics are.

      I could listen to steel pan music all day, every day. I have a bunch of albums by Andy Narell, including “The Passage” which I think is a masterpiece.

      There’s lots of other music I like too. Pretty much the only type of music I consistently don’t like is electronic music. No matter how much I listen to it, it basically sounds like beeps and boops to me. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what exactly it is about electronic music that I can’t get past, and I still haven’t succeeded.

      • Don_Flamingo says:

        Hmmmm… electronic music is a really wide field.
        I think a lot of what you get to hear in the radio sounds uninteresting and samey, like a piece of untoasted toast dipped in milk. No texture. No taste.
        Or just downright annoying. Beeps and Bops, I’m with you.

        My parents really love Jean-Michel Jarre. He’s a pioneer in the field. Very melodic.
        I like it too. Here’s a link to his Beijing concert. Don’t mind the intro, that’s just classical musicians being very enthusiastic about being Chinese. (though tbh, I kinda like that part the most, though it doesn’t really fit into the rest of the concert at all)
        Just give it a listen in a place where you’ve got decent sound and play it in the background. It’s a lot more melodic, than modern electronic music.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzLFzToBL-I

        Otherwise Moby uses lots of electronic and synthy elements. Like in the song ‘extreme ways’, ‘Run on’ and ‘flower’. Those are fairly popular, but maybe you wouldn’t call them electronic music, per se.

        I also really enjoy listening to the soundtrack of ‘Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’, which I think stands on it’s own, even if you haven’t played the game itself. It’s a bit disturbing, maybe. Though, sneakily stealth-murdering people for America to that soundtrack is great fun!
        There’s also a remixed version of it, that has the same tracks, but uses more acoustic elements, so maybe you can isolate exactly what annoys you with that.

        The Prodigy’s album ‘Always outnumbered, never outgunned’ is great for aggressively driving a sports car on a German autobahn or on serpentine mountain roads (pushing yourself into those curves, feeling the bass and the vibrations of the engine mix, it’s incredible).
        For that I’d also recommend ‘Military Fashion Show’ from ‘And One’, but I know that song, from before I’ve learnt English, so understanding the words might make it a bit weird.

        If you just wanna zone out on an American freeway (or you just don’t have access to a real Autobahn), there’s always ‘Shallow and Profound’ from the Hungarian artist ‘Yonderboi’.
        There’s also a purely electronic (no vocals) version of ‘Riders on the Storm’ on that album, which is good for comparative purposes.

        EDIT: Hesitant to mention this, because this song is either love it or hate it, but I find “Tweet, tweet, tweet” from “Sleaford Mods” pleasing to hear.

      • WashedOut says:

        We’ve talked musical recommendations a fair bit previously, but I don’t think i’ve spotted your penchant for Country music. Are you familiar with Gillian Welch? If not, check out her albums 1) The Harrow and the Harvest [more recent, more polished] and 2) Time the Revelator [older, grittier]. I’m not a big fan of the genre in general but her stuff rocks my world.

        If you want to listen to some modern jazz, try Grievous Bodily Calm and let me know what you think.

    • dick says:

      Rap, jazz, death metal, some classical, then rock. My late-night guilty pleasure listening is rap battles (silly and bizarre, but some of the wordplay is just absurdly entertaining if you’re in to puns).

    • Montfort says:

      Not officially, I don’t think. I found two subthreads on the subject from a while ago, and there are a few more about specific genres and probably album recommendations which I vaguely remember but didn’t dig up.

      But I wouldn’t let this discourage anyone from asking again. We have a lot of commenter turnover, tastes do change, and OTs aren’t very legible to historical research unless you remember key phrases of the thing you’re looking for.

    • Plumber says:

      @Samu

      …musical tastes….

      Since the tape deck in my car is broken I resort to the radio, and while there’s many pop, R&B, and Rock songs I enjoy, between the commercials, D.J. banter, and most of the songs, I tend to avoid those stations and tune into the ones playing blues, classical, folk, gospel, and jazz instead, but those stations often have weak signals, so the genre I listen to often depends on where on my commute I am “I’m in Emeryville so time for blues”.

      In terms of songs I select myself I tend to swing between stuff like Fanstasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and stuff like Train Kept a Rollin’ as performed by The Yardbirds.

  53. decrim2020 says:

    This week we’re launching decriminalization.org

    2018 polling shows that drug decrim ballot initiatives have enough support to pass: 50% support, 30% oppose, 20% unsure

    If this result holds up after more in-depth polling, we’ll run an initiative in 2020!

    • Rob K says:

      Hi. This is neat that you’re thinking of doing this, and I’m glad to see it.

      That said, a couple questions. Do you have people on board with experience in ballot initiative campaigns? I ask because a rule of thumb I’ve learned from people with experience running initiative campaigns is that you generally want to be starting out at 60% support or higher if you’re going to take something to the ballot. For whatever reason – status quo bias seems very plausible – people tend to shift towards the “no” side of initiatives. (A few years ago I knew some folks at an advocacy organization well enough to watch the entire process from them trying to warn their coalition to be cautious to the coalition going ahead to the polling breaking steadily negative and the measure losing, not closely.)

      This isn’t a perfect rule, and in particular it assumes that there will be a decently funded opposition campaign. I’d strongly advise talking to some folks with background experience on what kind of chances those initial polling numbers give you.

      • Aapje says:

        @Rob K

        I think that another reason is that ballots result in counterarguments becoming more visible and fleshed out.

        A lot of changes seem good at first glance and presumably get a lot of weak support by people who like the sound of it, but when the debate heats up and the opposition starts to hammer the downsides, these people suddenly realize the price they have to pay and may not consider the upsides to be worth these costs.

    • Well... says:

      Was this post meant to spark debate about whether or in what way drugs ought to be decriminalized? From the OP it seems like not, but I know there are lots of people on here (including myself) who have more nuanced views of drug laws than simply “legalize’em” or “keep them illegal”. It might be productive for you (and gratifying for us) to take part in a discussion like that.

      I say that because I’ve signed up for initiatives like yours before but ended up getting swamped with communications that I thought vastly oversimplified the issue and actually turned me somewhat against the decriminalization positions I had stated I was in favor of initially.

  54. Plumber says:

    @johan_larson‘s post asking

    “…..What works of art from 2001-2018 stand a chance of being remembered and enjoyed a lifetime from now?”

    and my realization that I barely know any of the suggestions, as did the postReturn of the Jedi “Star Wars” films remind me that the farther from about 1981 a work of art was made the less likely I am to know about it (except films of the 1940’s which for some reason I know better than those of the ’50’s and ’60’s).

    So keeping in mind that if it’s from 1976 to 1986 I probably already know about, what works of culture do you recommend to me?

    For my tastes the two novels I’ve most re-read are: The War Hound and the World’s Pain by Moorcock, and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein, the two short story collections I’ve most read are British Folktales by Briggs, and Sworfs Against Death by Leiber, the two films I’ve most watched are Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Third Man, the two albums I’ve most listened two are Carmina Burana by Orff, and The Planets by Holst, and the two individual songs I’ve most listened to are Pretty Thing by Bo Diddley, and Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones.

    So what that’s not from the ’70’s or ’80’s should I check out?

    And what are your favorites?

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Uh, I don’t know that you’re missing much. I mostly read old novels and short stories, and prefer narrative poetry that’s even older. I prefer classical music. I’ve seen many films past your cutoff date, but a lot of them aren’t really good.

      So have some anime recommendations:
      Mobile Suit Gundam: Campbell-style SF where the One Impossible Thing is an extension of particle physics rather than the bog standard FTL drive. The space colonies are O’Neill cylinders, where new cultures and ideologies form. A new ideology kills half of all humans. Giant robots fight.
      Vision of Escaflowne: Portal fantasy about a tomboy transported to a parallel world in the process of being conquered by an earlier transportee (hint: it’s a famous scientist).

      • and prefer narrative poetry that’s even older.

        Any suggestions for good narrative poetry in English that’s pre-19th century?

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Everyone reads Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but have you read Troilus and Cressida?
          There’s a whole bunch of 14th century Arthurian verse romances beyond Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
          The Faerie Queene
          Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (AKA Shakespeare’s Ovid). Ditto what I call the “Dryden and friends” translation of 1717.
          The Rime of the Ancient Mariner barely makes your cutoff.
          But of course the greatest is Milton’s Paradise Lost.

    • EchoChaos says:

      If you haven’t read “Wheel of Time” I highly recommend it.

      It is a long read and there are uneven bits, but it’s great for someone who loves Lord of the Rings.

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      For film, I recommend for you Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (Pan’s Labyrinth is better IMO, but perhaps not as suited to your taste), Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, Salma Hayek’s (technically directed by Julie Taymor, but Hayek’s project) Frida, Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, Steven Spielberg’s AI, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day.

    • johan_larson says:

      I gave a list of five of my favorite novels in the earlier OT. No need to cover that again.

      Some favorite films:
      Aliens
      The Terminator
      Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
      Batman Begins
      Saving Private Ryan
      Inception
      Ex Machina
      Margin Call
      The Big Short

      TV:
      Game of Thrones
      The Wire
      X-Files
      Battlestar Galactica (the reboot)
      ER
      The Civil War (Ken Burns)
      Prohibition (Ken Burns)
      World War II In Color

      I’m not deeply enough into music or videogames to give you useful recommendations. But if you like tabletop games at all you should give Magic: The Gathering a chance to impress you.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        But if you like tabletop games at all you should give Magic: The Gathering a chance to impress you.

        How do you expect him to afford a pay-to-win card game?!

        • johan_larson says:

          Play one of the limited formats, like Draft or Sealed.

          There are also a bunch of informal ways to play that can be fun and put everyone on the same level. In this video four players are given a hundred random low-value cards to build decks out of and then play a tournament against each other. It looks like they’re having fun.

          • eyeballfrog says:

            My friend made a cube specifically designed for newer players using low-complexity cards. (And he meant low-complexity–flashback was considered too complex since it required tracking the opponent’s graveyard.) It’s a great way to get players into the game because they don’t need any of their own cards but can still get the deckbuilding experience.

            Cube draft in general is a great way to play Magic, though the fancier cubes get quite pricey.

          • Randy M says:

            Cube is my favorite way to play magic. I remake a cube every year or so. Here’s my latest version

        • Peffern says:

          I will disagree with johan_larson here. My enjoyment from MTG comes almost exclusively from the deep complexity and rules arcana (pun intended?) and as such I don’t enjoy limited a ton.
          I prefer to play Cockatrice or XMage (or TTS) which are free unsanctioned ways to play online. To play paper you can use proxies or borrow/rent decks. If you are looking to grind tournaments or events this is not a good strategy but just for your own enjoyment I strongly recommend it.
          My format of choice is Modern (all cards since 2003 are legal, with a banlist) since it is old enough to have a deep card pool and lots of crazy interactions, but new enough that it doesn’t have some of the really busted cards from the late 90s that ruin the game.

          • johan_larson says:

            How much does it cost to assemble a Modern deck that’s competitive in local tournaments?

          • Dan L says:

            Depending on how competitive you want to be, anywhere from a few hundred to ~1.5k assuming you’re starting from scratch.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            That depends on your local competition and on the local meta-game (as well as your skill in deckbuilding and playing). You could probably make a “competitive” deck for about $10, but it’s not likely to win a lot of finals very much. You’ll also lose random games due to slow starts and bad luck. I would say that, properly spent, you could do quite well with a $40-60 deck. You can spend way more than that, and may need to spend into the low hundreds in order to compete if you have a strong local scene.

            There are lots of ways to build a more savvy deck that costs less and handles most of the things that an expensive deck can handle. You might not be able to pick any theme you want, but there are quite a few guides online about putting together useful-but-inexpensive alternatives.

          • Mr. Doolittle says:

            One further thought on this if anyone is still reading this section:

            One of the biggest cost differences comes down to mana sources. Playing with lands that come into play tapped verses lands that have an option not to (pain lands, for instance) can make a huge difference on how quickly a deck can be effective, and allow a player to take control of the board. The good lands are often $20-$50 each, which goes a long way towards the total cost of a deck. Mono-colored decks can have no lands that come into play tapped, and avoid the problem. Decks that only use two colors can generally get by with basic lands as well. Trying to make Five-Color-Control decks without spending a lot of money is going to fail, but mono-colored or with a splash of a second color can work fine. There isn’t as much color hate printed anymore, so if your local scene is using mostly recent cards there isn’t a lot of concern that you’ll auto-lose for being all in one color.

            If you’re trying to save money, then most of the cards in your deck are likely to be $1 or less and still quite effective, with maybe a few $5 rares to add power. There aren’t that many $50 cards and other than a major tournament they shouldn’t ever be necessary. There are a few decks that will depend on using a really expensive card, but they aren’t going to be the only effective decks available so just make something else.

            I personally believe that player skill (both in building the specifics of the deck and in playing it) are more important than card quality. If you are a below-average player with an above-average (cost) deck, you’re still likely to lose a lot.

        • Dack says:

          How do you expect him to afford a pay-to-win card game?!

          MtG: Arena is free to play (assuming you already have sunk the cost of a PC and internet access) and currently in open beta.

    • For my tastes the two novels I’ve most re-read are: The War Hound and the World’s Pain by Moorcock, and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein

      A friend of mine who studied English at Berkely quoted his professor as saying that The Lord of the Rings would be the greatest novel in the English language–if it was a novel.

      Some suggestions for things I think post 80’s.

      Lois Bujold has written some very good science fiction, one first rate fantasy novel (The Curse of Chalion) and some other pretty good fantasy set in the same world at varying times. I have particularly enjoyed the Penric novelas.

      C.J. Cherryh has written science fiction and fantasy, both quite good. Downbelow Station has believably complicated politics. There is a fairly well defined set of coalitions at the beginning, a fairly well defined set at the end, but the structure of coalitions has shifted. It’s a pretty complicated story–I had to read it twice to have a clear picture of what was happening. My favorite book of hers is The Paladin, which isn’t really fantasy at all, more nearly a historical novel with invented history and geography–to some extent the inspiration for my Harald.

      Karl Gallagher is a very new author who has written an sf trilogy starting with Torchship. I thought they were quite good and dealt with some interesting ideas.

      Verner Vinge is another good sf author.

      And for something well before your time period, Kipling’s Kim.

    • Incurian says:

      Most everything by Neal Stephenson. Also the Aristillus series is excellent.

    • theredsheep says:

      I like Neal Stephenson, but he’s not to everyone’s taste, and some of his stuff–Anathem in particular–takes considerable reader investment. A lot of people like Game of Thrones, but I feel pretty eh about the novels. It’s Tolkien’s tropes with a gigadose of cynicism and a tendency to root for the bad guys, IMO. Also, lots of sex. But a lot of others disagree.

      Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (my anime tastes are limited to stuff I remember from Adult Swim, but LMC brought it up). The manga of Fullmetal Alchemist is good, if you can stand reading right-to-left. I can’t vouch for Brotherhood, and the original series did something daft to the plot.

      I could probably list more, but I’m drawing a blank. Oooh! Ender’s Game, if that’s past your horizon. Not so much other Orson Scott Card, with the possible exception of The Lost Gate (but not its two sequels).

      The LOTR trilogy was at least acceptable. Do not watch the Hobbit trilogy (yes, trilogy). It was a sin against cinema. The Matrix is worth watching, but again, not its sequels. Sam Raimi’s first two Spiderman movies were fun. And the series Firefly and its companion film Serenity; it’s similar to Star Wars in many respects.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Sam Raimi’s first two Spiderman movies were fun.

        Those two movies were more than fun, they were really well-constructed, 2 especially takes Plato’s concept of two souls as its theme, and does it skillfully.
        However, the most artistic superhero movie is the Greek tragedy X-Men: First Class.

      • Nick says:

        Brotherhood is good in my opinion.

    • March says:

      Yay, another fan of The War Hound and the World’s Pain.

      I like Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both by Connie Willis. History/time travel books both; the one with ‘doom’ in the title is obviously more serious in tone and subject matter than the other, but Willis is very much a funny writer.

    • Don_Flamingo says:

      “Some like it hot” directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis. Still black and white, but the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. The whole genre of screwball comedy doesn’t seem to exist anymore and what a shame.

      EDIT:
      ‘Firefly’ and the movie ‘Serenety’ which finishes the story. It’s only one season and it’s a space-western. The characters are well fleshed out and the crew of the ship feel like family. The dialogoues are quick, have an organic feel to them and many lines are now iconic. It’s not overly witty, but often incredibly comical.
      It’s probably the best written show ever made. Probably wouldn’t have been, if it hadn’t been cancelled after one season.
      It’s about outlaws in space, basically. It’s the only show, that I’d consider having a libertarian outlook, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with messages. It’s just, you really get to like the outlaws and root for for them. And the main character has an odd sense of integrity, that makes this all feel very right and proper. The world just works that way.

      The Expanse. Awesome high stakes sci-fi in a future, where everything is different enough to be interesting, but not different enough to be completely unrelatable. It’s very much about problem solving under pressure, racism (Martians, Earther vs Belters and they right back at them), ship-to-ship combat, nuclear interplanetary warfare and scary alien bioweapons.
      And one crass old lady’s struggle to insult people viciously, till they hopefully agree to not all kill each other or get everybody killed. This show looks good, it sounds good and Jeff Bezos bought it, so there’s going to be a season 4.
      Also features the most thrilling political speech/pep talk, I’ve ever heard and it’s entirely in Belter Creole!

  55. ManyCookies says:

    So uh, thoughts on the bizarre Trump serving fast food at a White House dinner episode?

    What I want to know is a. Did the players like it b. Was it hot and fresh? The players seem to have shut the fuck up and not done any interviews, which is 100% wise regardless of their stance (good job PR manager). And I’m not turning my nose up at fresh McDonalds fries, but if the non pizza shit was cold and soggy I’d be pretty fucking offended.

    Also I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find anywhere else in DC to cater, though considering Trump’s eating habits I think he genuinely felt fast food would be a sufficient and fun choice (did he eat with them?)

    • Mr. Doolittle says:

      Right-wing sources I’ve seen said that Trump paid for the food himself, and personally selected it. He is well known to like fast food, so it sounds like a deliberate choice and not meant to be an insult or anything.

      I too wondered if it was warm and fresh…

    • Nornagest says:

      A nothingburger about cheeseburgers. That’s almost too cute to live.

    • albatross11 says:

      Hey, look, a news story involving Trump that sucks all the oxygen out of the media environment for a couple days, but has absolutely no significance beyond that. Why, it’s almost like Trump is some kind of master at playing the media, and he decided he’d like some other stories to die down while everyone’s talking about the carefully taken fast-food-in-the-white-house picture!

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Why, it’s almost like Trump is some kind of master at playing the media,

        Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of people.

      • ManyCookies says:

        Ehhh, what story did he need to snuff? Non prior shifting Mueller update #258 (it was an announcement to his report iirc), government shutdown that’s been going on for weeks with no significant recent change?

        I’d buy that trolling CNN was a bonus, but I don’t think it was free clean party-split trolling, I know at least one Repub who lifted an eyebrow. And had the team been vocally offended, a real a priori possibility, the outrage/disappointment could well have been bipartisan (“Just be happy you even met the president” is a rough spin).

        And the dinner was set and planned in advance, so it’s not like he could pull that maneuver out as convenient.

        • Paul Brinkley says:

          Ehhh, what story did he need to snuff?

          No one knows. It was that good of a PR stunt.

          Eighth Dimensional Chess: Legacy: Legacy!

        • eyeballfrog says:

          Perhaps it was nothing. If you only pull stunts when there’s something to cover up, people get wise. You should always include stunts that don’t misdirect from anything to keep deniability.

          Or there’s no secret motive and Trump is just a weird guy.

          • Well... says:

            It could be that it wasn’t to distract from or cover up something else, but to create some kind of association or mental image that he can use later.

          • Don_Flamingo says:

            Maybe he just wanted to eat a cheeseburger?
            I mean, imagine you are the most powerful man on earth… and you would like to eat a cheeseburger…
            why not arrange it so, that you can eat a cheeseburger?
            I’d do it.

          • Fahundo says:

            I mean, imagine you are the most powerful man on earth… and you would like to eat a cheeseburger…

            I’d get Five Guys or something, not McDonald’s.

    • Samu says:

      The first thing that came to mind was that scene from Kingsman where Harry has dinner with the main antagonist. Other than that, not much to say.

    • S_J says:

      Not about Trump, but about a news article I read.

      The article included these two sentences.

      Note that he was admirably ecumenical in his choice of victuals. Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King; ‘If it’s American’, Trump said, ‘I like it.’

      How did Trump, and the reporter who quoted him, miss that Wendy’s is a Canadian brand, and is not from the United States?

      EDIT: my memory must be wrong: Wendy’s was founded in Ohio, not in Canada.

      • woah77 says:

        Technically Wendy’s is from America, since Canada is a nation of America. That said, it would be really funny for someone to use that example to point out how Mexicans are also American under that definition so he should like them too.

        • Gobbobobble says:

          Same question as for anyone who dredges up this tired old canard: what is your proposed demonym for the United States of America?

          • woah77 says:

            I don’t have one and was mostly pointing out a convenient political “gotcha”. I think it’s generally understood that “American” means “of the United States” but I also find that technically inaccurate and like to poke fun at it from time to time. It’d be great if we could come up with a better one, but I think it’s far more likely we’ll be welcoming our corporate, AI, or Alien overlords before that is managed.

          • Evan Þ says:

            In one abortive alternate-history novel I started writing, I used “Stateser.” At least, I had the Canadians in the novel use it.

          • Scott Alexander says:
          • ADifferentAnonymous says:

            Saying “States” or “United States” instead of “America” because Mexico is techinically also America, is actually not as great a solution as you might think.

      • aristides says:

        Is Wendy’s Canadian? Wikipedia has it explicitly American, founded in Dublin, OH and the headquarters there. I don’t see a reference to Canada. Are you sure it’s Canadian?

      • actualitems says:

        Wendy’s is an American company, no? It was founded in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

      • biffchalupa says:

        Wendy’s owned Tim Horton’s for a spell in the 2000s, and may have actually reincorporated there for the tax rates but I’m not sure. Burger King did do this in 2014, so technically is a Canadian company (recall the outrage over so-called tax inversions around that time).

      • S_J says:

        It took me a while to find the origin of my automatic response, “Isn’t Wendy’s a Canadian brand?”

        Someone in my family said it years ago, and it was at a time when I didn’t make a habit of double-checking such details. The person who said it ought to have known.

        That “family knowledge” was likely spawned from confusion about the corporate ownership of Wendy’s and Tim Horton’s (which was founded in Canada), which @biffChalupa mentioned below.

    • ilikekittycat says:

      If, around the year 2000, a photoshopped image of President Donald with arms outstretched over hundreds of McDonald’s cheeseburgers beneath a portrait of Lincoln had shown up in a Rage Against the Machine video or Michael Moore movie, everyone would have regarded it as too clumsy and banal to be real satire

      It’s like a wizard took a middling 1990s adbusters cover and read some incantation to manifest it in the real world

    • Plumber says:

      @ManyCookies

      “So uh, thoughts on the bizarre Trump serving fast food at a White House dinner episode?….”

      Once again the first place I’ve seen or heard anything about this incident is here.

      I’m doubtful it’s common knowledge and judging by how fast new outrages/events of interest come up, I think it will soon be forgotten.

      • Well... says:

        Once again the first place I’ve seen or heard anything about this incident is here.

        Same here but that’s because I don’t seek out and consume journalism. In part because these kinds of stories exemplify journalism.

        As I wrote on my blog a little while ago, any given news story sits somewhere on a plot whose two axes are importance and actionability. The more important the news item, the less actionable, and vice versa. And anything that is very important or very actionable can be easily learned about from other sources besides journalism anyway. Therefore, there’s no good reason to consume journalism unless you include the weird endorphin bump people get from being “in the know” on the latest gossip.

    • AG says:

      Honestly, I don’t get the outrage. Most of the fast food chains (especially McDonald’s) are trying to increase their ingredient quality to compete with fast casual, and even if they didn’t, there is a flavor profile that you can’t get elsewhere. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, fast food is jamming those to the max, only outdone by, like, the snack industry.

      Now, if it was Panda Express, I’d be offended. (And Subway, that would be such a pathetic downgrade from fast food.)

      • Tenacious D says:

        There’s a common project management expression that goes: “good, fast, or cheap–pick 2”. It’s honestly a bit impressive how the main fast food franchises manage to stretch that to 2.5 or so. Their food isn’t in any danger of being mistaken for something healthy or gourmet, but it is tasty and the quality is consistent. You can go to a McDonald’s almost anywhere in the world and not really worry about getting food poisoning, for example.

      • quanta413 says:

        Now, if it was Panda Express, I’d be offended.

        Fighting words. Panda Express is delicious, as is American Chinese food in general. It’s its own cuisine just like Tex-Mex.

        Sometimes I want sichuan but sometimes I just want a giant pile of orange chicken.

        • AG says:

          No, see, I am elitist about fried rice. Well, not really really elitist, but the choice of rice (its texture and stickiness) matters, dammit. And Panda fails that test hard. There are so many cheap Chinese places where you can do better.

          I’ll give you that Glistening Orange Lumps and Glistening Brown Lumps can be appealing, but again, Panda is far from quality. You might get better from the local grocery deli, but also a lot of cheap Chinese places offer it as sop to American customers, and are better than gorram Panda.
          (I’ve even recently had multiple good variations on “breaded meat drenched in shiny sauce” at different Indian buffets.)

          It’s about Panda itself, not the food genre, which I agree exists and is valid. The authenticity argument is bunk, anyways, since all of these (Tex Mex, pizza, “””italian”””, are all the result of actual immigrants expanding their recipes to include newly available ingredients.)

          Most of the chain burger places are good now, other than BK’s chicken being an abomination. Maybe that wasn’t always the case (pink slime era), and it seems like there’s local variation for chicken fast food quality, but I just don’t think Panda has kept up vs. regular Chinese takeout places.

          • quanta413 says:

            I admit I don’t eat Panda fried rice either because it’s not very good. It’s reminds me more of slightly brown steamed rice for whatever reason.

            I’ll give you that Glistening Orange Lumps and Glistening Brown Lumps can be appealing, but again, Panda is far from quality. You might get better from the local grocery deli, but also a lot of cheap Chinese places offer it as sop to American customers, and are better than gorram Panda.

            Yeah, but Panda is faster and more consistent. It’s the same value proposition as MacDonald’s or Wendy’s is compared to stopping for at a local burger joint. I’ll take Panda over MacDonald’s 9/10 times. And over Wendy’s maybe 7/10 times.

            Most of the chain burger places are good now, other than BK’s chicken being an abomination. Maybe that wasn’t always the case (pink slime era), and it seems like there’s local variation for chicken fast food quality, but I just don’t think Panda has kept up vs. regular Chinese takeout places.

            I go the opposite way. I think most fast food burgers are more behind the typical local burger joint than Panda is behind local Chinese takeout. Unless you’re in Chinatown in a major city where it flips.

            Although if I’m ordering a chicken sandwich instead of a burger it’s more of a toss-up between fast food and local. Wendy’s has a really good spicy chicken sandwich.

          • AG says:

            Huh, what’s your local grocery chain? Ours is Safeway, and their deli section offers good chow mein and orange chicken that you can immediately pick up.

            As far as local burger joints go, I’m not evaluating them against the fast food places because the price points are different. Whereas cheap Chinese places are price-comparable to Panda. A lot of them also offer a cafeteria-style pickup during rush hours, so speed isn’t an issue.

          • quanta413 says:

            Schnucks and Meijer. I haven’t noticed any orange chicken or chow mein at the Schnucks. I don’t remember what is at Meijer.

            As far as local burger joints go, I’m not evaluating them against the fast food places because the price points are different.

            Where I am, I can think of places with comparable price points, but they do tend to be a bit slower. There are also a couple places that are slightly more expensive (like chipotle expensive) but way ahead.

            On the other hand, the local chinese food has some places similar to panda some of which are a little better and some of which are a little worse. And then a bunch of places that I like a lot more than Panda, but are a different cuisine. Although you can order Panda like food there, I just have no interest. They’re also out of my way at lunchtime. They might have much better American Chinese food like you say.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      The President clearly does not speak Republican as a native language, as he did not have Chick-Fil-A.

      Much ado about nothing. Some college students got to see the President and ate free fast food. Whatever.

    • quanta413 says:

      I’m disappointed a chance may have been missed to serve supreme pizzas topped with big macs and fries.

    • Chalid says:

      Was it hot and fresh?

      This doesn’t seem logistically possible, if they were actually coming from a real fast food kitchen? Surely it would take more than ~20 minutes to pack everything and drive it over, clear everything through security, and serve it?

      • albatross11 says:

        I have this mental image of him inviting everyone in to this fake display of fast food, straight-faced, and finally relenting and inviting them into the actual cooked-by-his-celebrity-chef fancy dinner.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      I thought it was adorable. I would love to eat burgs in the White House.

    • suntzuanime says:

      I wept tears of joy at seeing the gorgeous White House fast food photography. This is exactly what I elected him to do.

      • Walter says:

        I do like fast food. I had similar feelings when folks were dumping on, I think Mitt Romney, for saying his favorite meat was ‘hot dog’? Like “Why are you laughing? He’s right!”

        I mostly elected him to pull us out of foreign wars and appoint SC justices, but having a fat guy like me in charge gives me, what do they call it? Representation, yeah, a nice feeling.