Politics 2025

[Buster's Uncle]

I had this argument once w/ a boy wonder at WPC - he was coming from theoretically it -a monopoly- ought to be more efficient.  He was a lot easier to slap down.

I dunno why I care about being in this, it being one of those things like arguing about Reagan sucked that anyone who doesn't see it is speaking in tongues in my book, living a dream.  I shouldn't engage.

Minimum wage, like the standup comedian said, is the bossmen's way of saying "If we could pay you less, we would."  It's all of a piece, and you're siding with the bad guys this time.

[Elok]

EDIT: Also, if you could knock it off with the Bulverism, that would be nice.  I don't try to psychoanalyze your arguments, I just address them.  Or try to, anyway.

Your arguments about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior shift each time you learn what the actual facts of the matter are, but your position doesn't. What point is there in addressing each new argument? You'll surely come up with another.

I stopped discussing or even consuming politics online six months ago because it was making me too angry. I thought maybe I had calmed down a bit in the interim. Apparently not. Sure, I'll knock it off.

You're not obligated to continue the discussion or anything, but I wanted to think it over before replying.  I think I earned this reply with my little weasel-dodge after you brought up the outcome of the case.  I should have acknowledged it more directly: yes, this would be an example of the state forcing a corporation to discontinue obnoxious behavior, and if nothing else it certainly would have accelerated and streamlined the road to the desirable outcome of getting us all functional browsers.  But all this was in the context of Warren's fight to regulate large companies, so I wanted to ask, A, was the behavior in question monopolistic in intention (was he actually securing a present or future revenue stream for MS, as opposed to being a Frank Lloyd Wright style megalomaniac who wanted control for control's sake, even though it was stupid?) and B. did all this actually cause Microsoft to be a less dominant player overall?  The way I see it, Microsoft made itself such a pill that it poisoned its brand by the late nineties, making it very hard for it to expand into new opportunities when they arose.  With the result that now it's a pathetic appendage to the industry.  The lawsuit itself may have done them a small favor by forcing them to stop doing something self-destructive (and MS absolutely did self-destructive things in the name of its vision for how things ought to be).

But I hate admitting I'm wrong even about trivial things so I came off looking like a little weasel [complaint or disagreeable woman].  So yeah, fair.  For the record, I think of myself as a practical, rather than principled, libertarian; I would be perfectly open to the government regulating the hell out of everything if it got better results.  It's just that our government, if not every government, seems to be really good at messing everything up.  It picks dumb goals and pursues them in dodgy ways for half-baked reasons, and unlike Microsoft it doesn't shrink into a joke when it screws up.

[Elok]

I had this argument once w/ a boy wonder at WPC - he was coming from theoretically it -a monopoly- ought to be more efficient.  He was a lot easier to slap down.

I dunno why I care about being in this, it being one of those things like arguing about Reagan sucked that anyone who doesn't see it is speaking in tongues in my book, living a dream.  I shouldn't engage.

Minimum wage, like the standup comedian said, is the bossmen's way of saying "If we could pay you less, we would."  It's all of a piece, and you're siding with the bad guys this time.

A real monopoly could in theory be terrifyingly inefficient.  The government is a monopoly.  Where I disagree is this idea that a monopoly is actually all that easy to acquire, without doing things I think we both agree should be illegal (which basically means street-criminal behavior against rivals, or getting favors from the government).

The bossman would pay everyone but themselves less, if they could.  There's no point taking that personally.  They'd pay me less for sure, and they did.  Then they noticed that all their RTs kept jumping ship for the hospital across town, so they told HR to look into it, and hey, turns out you can't get away with paying RTs crap wages post-covid!  So I got a big raise last year, with everyone else.  The hemorrhaging of labor promptly stopped and we are now fully staffed, at least for day shift.

With minimum wage, this kind of calculation doesn't apply, because literally anyone can do the job so you are always, always replaceable.  Those jobs are good for high schoolers and kids working their way through college, bad for anybody else.  There are always more kids saving up for a first car.  Ideally, all those people should be moving up to more skilled labor as they age.  If they are not, that is the problem that needs solving.  Making the employer pay more, well, you can get away with that up to a point, but ... crikey, it's late.  We can get into Elok's General Argument Against Protectionism some other time.  Or not.  Gotta get up early for work tomorrow.

[Buster's Uncle]

I had a PM political argument on Facebook a few years ago -that's a quadruple yuck by my lights- the topic "You say you're not a republiKKKan, but you take their side every single time and have little to say that isn't their talking points, and mostly nasty conservatroll slams at that.  -He's a cousin's son I used to play with a lot when he was little, so I didn't need to be super-polite.  I didn't bring it up, but he's big into th' Jesus these days, I suspect in an actual KKK church.

In the course of things, I posted a .gif of AOC shaking her head in a reproving NO.  I was trolling, yes; I did it aware of how rationally those people react to her.  I got flooded with about 20 memes and .gifs in very short order, which would have won the argument for me had there been an impartial judge, and I did declare victory - but you know, no real victory w/ conservatrolls, ever.

So, the point of the story is, the meme that stuck with me was a defacement of Rachel Maddow, no joke that's lingered in memory.  Like her or not, that woman is gracious to an actual fault and ought to be left out of such monkeyshines.  She ended her show one night wishing corrupt war criminal and ground-breaking fascist Dick Cheney the best when he was going in for surgery.  She used to have Pat Buchanan on regularly -he's far-righter than right, but one of the people who GENERATES rightwing talking points, and reliable about having new ones- for a goodly part of a year until he said something too racist and horrible.  Gracious. to. a. fault., she is, and ought to be left out of the dumbest, ugliest poo-slinging stuff, by any standard of decency.

And that relates to how I feel about disrespecting Dr. Warren.  -Absolutely NOT gracious to a fault, but a rare example of a democrat at the national level with adequate fight in her in these loathsome times we find ourselves trapped in.  She's SO much better than the cheap-shots and koolaide that goes around about her, as is Ms. Occasional-Cortez and Dr. Maddow.

-Note that I haven't even mentioned Mrs. Pelosi and Mrs. Clinton, and that all are women and, coincidentally, prime targets of the cheap shots and koolaide - Elok, YOU'RE better than that, too, or at least should be.  The koolaide has poo in it.

[Elok]

Erm, okay?  She's a pit-bull for the economic left.  I don't think she's corrupt or actually stupid, merely fighting a battle that doesn't need to be fought out of bad principles.  Since the hard economic all-business-is-bad left pretty well consists of her and Bernie, like you said, she does little harm that I can see.  But I like American economic dynamism and don't want her message to spread.  I can respect that she is sincere, I suppose.  But so was Lev Trotsky.

EDIT: I should specify that I don't think every idea she has is bad.  I have no objection to being more aggressive towards white collar criminals, for example.  Let out some prostitutes and druggies to make room.

[Elok]

Honestly, this is probably not a particularly productive conversation to have, or one we are going to find common ground on.  I'd suggest we leave off here, or at least I should leave off here and let somebody else talk politics with you if they like.

[Buster's Uncle]

Pretty much agreed on all that.

American economic dynamism is in zero danger these days, though.

[Green1]

I picked up a booklet called Work by the Antifa-aligned group CrimethInc at a zine shop in New Orleans—one of those places filled with "banned" leftist books like Steal This Book, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Ethical Sl-t, etc as well as very obscure more modern titles that would be at home with any book burning.

Now, I don’t agree with the anarchist endgame. A lot of them seem like trust fund kids playing revolutionary tourist. And The Beatles and The Who wrote great songs about what's messed up about it. But one image from the book stuck with me: a backstage photo of the president, flanked by armed guards, captioned:
“You will never make it to that stage. You are not even allowed to talk to these people. You do not know these people. They don’t know you.”

And it’s true. Most of us never interact with real power. We just get the media version or what the bots or power moderators allow on comment boards. I used to work banquets for politicians at a 5 star hotel. Senators, governors, mayors, even a president. They’re all smiles in person, as long as you’re the help or one of them. Even the 'bad" ones.
But here's the reality: a group called RepresentUs found that when the public wanted something, and business interests wanted the opposite, the public lost—70% of the time, regardless of who was in charge.

That tells you who really runs the show.

[Buster's Uncle]

On background to what I articulated so poorly/weakly to Elok here, an old lefty thread:  Fight the System

-Starts out more personal finance talk w/ Green, picks up Cryopyre and Jarlwulf, an American socialist and an actual Russian communist who'd put his life on the line for his belief.  Worth reading in full once the topic broadens to the whole system we talk of fighting...

[Trenacker]

Dunno what to say here; I was pretty convinced by that debate performance that Biden was simply not competent to be president anymore.  Of course the other fellow was unfit to be president any number of ways, but it remains a matter of concern that they concealed, for an unknown but apparently substantial period of time, that the president sometimes descended into utter senility.  Some unknowable percentage of decisions from the White House were made not by the elected president but by unidentified minders nudging him along.  That this was hushed up to such an extent was a serious unforced error that definitely contributed to [Sleezebag]'s return.  Yes, [Sleezebag] is awful, but he passed the very low bar of being able to complete comprehensible, if rambling, ugly, and stupid, sentences.  He never said we have to beat Medicare.

As for me, I remain an atypical libertarian.  We are spending money that does not exist and a reckoning will inevitably come due and when it does it will be ugly.  Neither party is serious about addressing this--the Democrats are presently somewhat less spendthrift but that doesn't really count for much with me--nor are they interested in serious and comprehensive defense of civil liberties.  Each party is in hock to illiberal radicals, which it refuses to condemn because it needs their help against the other side's illiberal radicals, who are ostensibly much worse.  This is not new.  I hate them both and generally turn my eyes away from the problem because I have no power to fix it.  I wrote in Justin Amash in the last election.

EDIT: I sort of wish Elon Musk well in the VERY narrow context of his America Party venture.  It will fail, because he is an arrogant nerd who is very good at a very particular kind of leadership but sucks at politics, and also probably whacked out on ketamine.  But he is at least trying, ineffectually, to draw attention to the problem before we either default on our debt, or hyperinflate and THEN default on our debt.

I agree with the analysis in your first paragraph up until the final sentence.

The truth is, because Biden aspired to play by the rules of conventional politics, including answering some hard questions and treating the debate as a serious forum (however inadequate) to address policy questions, he was subjected to a different set of expectations than [Sleezebag], who is generally allowed by media and his own voters to behave in a manner that is problematic in a way that is equivalent to senility, or worse.

[Sleezebag] lied his way through the debate. I don’t think we can really say he “answered” questions except inasmuch as his replies gave us a sense of how seriously he takes the implied obligation of a politician to speak to his constituents, and how dishonestly he planned to govern, if elected. [Sleezebag]’s own command of facts is questionable at best, and his own communications are frequently incomprehensible until they are either sanewashed by “conventional” media that is trying to report something coherent to its readers, or spun by friendly media that is trying to advance his candidacy in order to achieve desired policy goals. More than “rambling, ugly, and stupid,” Donald [Sleezebag] is often incomprehensible, factually wrong, and, plainly, imbecilic. He says whatever his audience wants to hear. He is a performer.

The two parties are not equivalent. Democrats are largely powerless right now because they don’t have majorities in any of the three branches of federal government, but make no mistake: the Republican Party of the 1990s and early 2000s has been completely replaced by social media grifters whose success in the polls rests entirely on their willingness to enable a leader they know is corrupt, stupid, and racist. [Sleezebag]’s success essentially rests on his willingness to tell unhappy people that their problems and anxieties are the fault of someone else and that they needn’t accept uncomfortable realities. His voters long ago gave up on electing people to try to solve actual problems—they are willing to settle for someone who will use his bully pulpit to stroke their ego. They don’t really care about fiscal austerity or civil liberties. Policy explanations are increasingly just a shield they throw up to avoid having to admit that what they really like is the emotional catharsis they receive when [Sleezebag] upsets people who Fox News tells them are responsible for making life too complicated.

All that to say, the 2024 election was like the decision about whether to apply a tourniquet. Joe Biden was the tourniquet: an unwelcome choice that wasn’t really good, but would have avoided much bad.

Does anybody really believe that [Sleezebag] doesn't farm out major decisions to underlings? And what's the difference between someone who abdicates power to others and someone who is unwilling to accept accountability when things go wrong? What's the difference between a leader who sometimes can't tell you where he stands, and someone who never will?

[Lorizael]

You're not obligated to continue the discussion or anything, but I wanted to think it over before replying.  I think I earned this reply with my little weasel-dodge after you brought up the outcome of the case.  I should have acknowledged it more directly: yes, this would be an example of the state forcing a corporation to discontinue obnoxious behavior, and if nothing else it certainly would have accelerated and streamlined the road to the desirable outcome of getting us all functional browsers.  But all this was in the context of Warren's fight to regulate large companies, so I wanted to ask, A, was the behavior in question monopolistic in intention (was he actually securing a present or future revenue stream for MS, as opposed to being a Frank Lloyd Wright style megalomaniac who wanted control for control's sake, even though it was stupid?) and B. did all this actually cause Microsoft to be a less dominant player overall?  The way I see it, Microsoft made itself such a pill that it poisoned its brand by the late nineties, making it very hard for it to expand into new opportunities when they arose.  With the result that now it's a pathetic appendage to the industry.  The lawsuit itself may have done them a small favor by forcing them to stop doing something self-destructive (and MS absolutely did self-destructive things in the name of its vision for how things ought to be).

But I hate admitting I'm wrong even about trivial things so I came off looking like a little weasel [complaint or disagreeable woman].  So yeah, fair.  For the record, I think of myself as a practical, rather than principled, libertarian; I would be perfectly open to the government regulating the hell out of everything if it got better results.  It's just that our government, if not every government, seems to be really good at messing everything up.  It picks dumb goals and pursues them in dodgy ways for half-baked reasons, and unlike Microsoft it doesn't shrink into a joke when it screws up.

I probably could have just linked you here rather than get angry. I don't even have a strong stance on what to do about monopolies or how bad they are. I've just become increasingly agitated by our (society's) inability to even agree on what the basic facts of the world are. So when I see an instance of that, it can set me off.

[Elok]

I probably could have just linked you here rather than get angry. I don't even have a strong stance on what to do about monopolies or how bad they are. I've just become increasingly agitated by our (society's) inability to even agree on what the basic facts of the world are. So when I see an instance of that, it can set me off.

I actually read that Scott post, embarrassingly enough.  I see that everybody disagrees on ground-level reality--and just wrote about 370K words of weird fantasy meditating on that general theme over the past few years--but I'm at the point of more or less accepting it as a fact of life, and wondering in a vague just-how-hosed-are-we-way how this will all shake out.  It's possibly not totally coincidence that you work in the hardest of hard sciences and I make up magic systems for fun when I'm not doing a medical job that frequently entails dispensing placebos.

The particular instance that got you mad was mostly me trying to type up replies in a hurry and then not wanting to face up to typing up replies in a hurry (yes, I write enormous posts, but as noted, I've kinda had practice at writing a tremendous amount in one go).  Anyway, you're my oldest friend and you deserve better.

[Buster's Uncle]

Elok, you're only guilty of being stubborn on the internet.  It's infuriating at times, but nothing to be contrite about.

You do you.

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's how hard-up for conversation I am at the moment...

Jeffery Epstein.  <- There's a name and a man whose picture I wouldn't' mind never seeing again if it wasn't for political reasons.  The Pig is not only politically vulnerable to this kind of thing -I wasn't there and do not know- but he's a proven serial philanderer, semi-convicted rapist and so openly obsessed with what he considers attractive women that the Attorney General and his press secretary could be sisters - and it's the former who's prettier.  It actually seems likely that he's done something, there, him being him, and given his well-known problems with his pants.


When he was convicted of the 34 felony fraud counts, mind, I looked over at Mom's smiling face and said "let's make this" -supper when we heard- "an actual party".  -And we got out ice cream. 

It was almost nothing, but it wasn't actually nothing for him to be actually convicted of 34 of his thousands of serious crimes...

[Geo]

It was almost nothing, but it wasn't actually nothing for him to be actually convicted of 34 of his thousands of serious crimes...

And still he was allowed to run for president.

The other day I saw a short of a press member asking to some I think Judicial member of the current US government how she felt about [Sleezebag]'s presidential immunity for things done during tenure 'protects' former president Obama from [Sleezebag]'s latest set of accusations and threats to Obama.