kava

don't leave. same reason i remain in florida. that's why they want. if all the sane people leave, you raise the % of insane to sane.

we counter intuitively need more progressives to move and live in florida and texas. these are going to be the two most important starts in the upcoming century

plus while the government is insane, there are many varied and diverse communities in these states. i live in an immigrant heavy community in florid and absolutely love it more than the blue states i've lived in the past. minus the state government, needless to say

Texas will inevitably be blue. Just like what happened with California.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/rfk-jr-wants-to-send-people-on-antidepressants-to-government-wellness-farms/

afaik he mentioned this one on the campaign trail in 2024 on a remote interview

where he wanted to legalize cannabis and create wellness farms where instead of going to jail, drug offenders can go there to grow "organic food" and learn to be part of a community. he said that others could voluntarily go there if they want, such as people addicted to opiates and prescription drugs like benzos, SSRIs, benzos.

it made the news cycle last year and it was taken mostly of out ccontext and it's making the news cycle again, I guess.

my personal opinion is the guy is a loon but this is a distraction from the realtime dismantling of the government we're witnessing right before our eyes

If AA helped you, I’m glad it did. But there’s no science behind it and AA’s success rate is between 5 and 10 percent. It does help some people mainly because it’s a form of group therapy.

And rehab and treatment has an even lower success rate. Turns out we don't really know how to fix addiction. It's really a cultural thing and we can't put a bandaid with a little bit of therapy.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html

From what I've seen AA / NA is at least as effective as other treatments, some research indicates it's more effective, and considering the fact that it's free compared to thousands of dollars minimum for any kind of treatment you're looking at a massive price delta

NA helped me get clean from heroin and at no point did anybody push religion and everyone made it clear the language is like that cause it was written a long time ago in a different time. They encourage people to take what they can use and throw away the rest.

I think his is absolutely the right course of action. We as humans have a weird psyche and we sometimes externalize internal issues and project them outwards either onto ideas or people.

So for example, incels have serious issues with self-worth and they externalize those issues into hatred of women and society at large for their position in life. They feel, perhaps, they are not the man they feel like they should be- strong, handsome, wealthy, etc. And so they take blame at external circumstances in order to lessen the cognitive dissonance that if they are lonely and undesired- it's almost always due to their own decision making and perspective on life.

So for example a young male teen may feel all sorts of negative emotions and decide that gender dysphoria must be the diagnosis- when maybe he's just a little feminine and attracted to men. But if they start to identify with the trans label prematurely, they could end up doing unnecessary damage to themselves and their development.

I wholeheartedly and unapologetically support trans people and in my opinion if transitioning is determined the most effective treatment to gender dysphoria by one or two clinical physicians, I would absolutely support my kid transitioning. Trans kids have a very high rate of suicide so this is actually a very serious life and death diagnosis. It's more dangerous statistically than some types of cancer. And if my kid had cancer, I would want to obviously look at all possible treatments plans we could take.

But just like the dad, I would start with regular therapy and work our way up. See what else is going on. I would also spend time with my kid and really try to get a sense for what's troubling them. I don't think there is a substitute for a parent who cares.

Anyhow, interesting post, thanks for sharing this intimate exchange. It's a reminder that we are all humans and even those who we may label as "conservative" cannot be condensed down to one statement. This is one of the reasons, for example, I love Florida even though it's a red state. I'm the furthest thing from right wing, but you'll find that many Latinos who identify as right-wing have many views that would be considered "progressive".

We're all ultimately people who hold multitudes.

Get an old Kindle. The new ones make it hard for you to connect to your computer. They require you to download a "convenient" piece of software meant to allow you to transfer files. But conveniently it also makes it so you can't transfer files easily without it.

Even just a couple of years back you could plug in your Kindle to your computer through a USB and just drag and drop files. It only reads the proprietary .mobi format but Calibre, an excellent piece of software, will automatically convert .epub files to .mobi for you and it has a great algorithm.

Then all you gotta do is look up whatever you want on libgen and for the price of one kindle you can have a virtually infinite library of books.

I've actually had my first generation Kindle for about ~14 years now and my newer one for about ~3 years. I won't ever buy a new one, but the ones from ~3 years ago are excellent pieces of hardware.

You just have to disconnect it from the internet and never turn on the wifi. If you do, Amazon will fuck with your settings and make your life difficult.

Basically, if you're on a budget a used Kindle from ~3 years ago is a great choice in my opinion. If you want something new, stay far away from Amazon.

this was was always going to end with Russia taking a large chunk of Ukraine. there was some collective delusion for a while that it wasn't because of strong state war propaganda

but Russia is always going to care more about Ukraine than the US. It's their neighbor who they have more or less controlled directly or indirectly for hundreds of years.

US support was always limited and self-interested. Just like every time US hypes up some international ally to inevitably discard them. Remember the Kurds? I'm guessing Taiwan is the next one going forward

i'm kind of lost on how to respond to this. we weren't talking about games, the card analogy was to show that even with a relatively small set of starting conditions you can get to relatively absurd possibilities very quickly. it was to highlight the chaos theory that rules our lives.

the OP wasn't about winning or losing anything, it was about "having experienced all life has to offer". that would necessarily include both winning and losing combinations, no matter your subjective definition of "winning" or "losing"

and even having said all that and to follow your analogy- there are many games where drawing a face card (a-k) is a bad thing.

you ever play rummy? you want the least amount of points at the end of the round and face cards are worth more points.

you can make a straight flush with a 2 3 4 5 6 in poker, a face card can be enough to bust you in blackjack, etc.

this is the wildest statement i've seen all month

the breadth and depth of the experiences that life has to offer is unfathomable. do not be so brazen to assume you have experienced even a tiny drop of vast ocean of what humans have actually lived through

From suicide in the trenches to the raising of a child; from gazing upon Earth from space to hunting a predator with a spear; from meditating in silence for weeks to leading a entire nation through a crisis; from winning a chess tournament to starting a business—and losing it all in a bankruptcy—existence is infinite, or may as well be.

think of it this way

there are 52 cards in a deck. that means every single deck has a specific order, right? what are the chances of you getting one specific order of cards if you shuffle? Well, how many different combinations are there? 52! ( ! means both factorial and emphasis here)

That's 52 × 51 x 50 ... all the way to × 2 × 1

That's 8x10⁶⁷

That's 8 with 67 zeros. Here

80000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

For reference.. the number of seconds since the Big Bang is estimated to be about 4×10¹⁷

Now think of your life and human life in general. Think of all the variables. Hell, there are 7 days in a week. 52 weeks in a year. Coincidentally the same as a deck of cards.

If you do something different every week, there are going to be 8000000000......... different ways your year could turn out.

So, please do not fall victim to this type of irrational thought. I’m not sure if it’s arrogance, depression, or something else leading to that delusion, but it’s a wild statement—absolutely nuts

I guess the main difference is that I think things are salvageable

To be honest, I think we are very ideologically aligned. I agree that government power is something that should be used with very precise care. Look at what happens for example when we introduce Pell Grants, giving lower income kids the opportunity to go to college.

That sounds great, right? Who doesn't support that? Well, I sure want poor kids to be afforded the opportunity to go to school.

But look at what actually happens. Now you have a whole new class of people with a sizable chunk of government money. The demand for college goes up. Tuition rates skyrocket. The few thousand you get from the Pell Grant is now meaningless and it counter intuitively costs you more even with the grant.

Who benefits? Not the kids. Not the working class. The college administrators.

Kamala was campaigning "taxes incentives for first time homeowners!" Great. Who is going to say to no to that, right? Support young families. Sure.

What would inevitably happen? Large increase in spending => large increase in price. So if they get a $10,000 tax credit but the houses are $15,000 more expensive- what's the difference? These are arbitrary numbers, obviously, and not borne out of some analysis.

But who would benefit? Not young families. Banks and land owners.

Government action, usually disguised as something to help is almost always going to be twisted to hurt average people.

But yes, I agree 100%. I rather like Chomsky's take on this. I'm not an anarchist but he has advocated before for a system where every single use of government power should be consistently and continually challenged. Every single time the government spends a dollar, it needs to be transparent and justified and there needs to be a way to challenge it.

The thing is, government spending is not inherently a bad thing. Government action sometimes is exactly what is needed. For example in an economic crisis, government stimulus can be enough to turn things around or at least ameliorate the situation for the working class.

But and the big but - and the but that basically had made me lose all faith in democracy over the last 10 years or so is the way you put it

But no, “drugs bad,” and the public wants to control “bad” things

Politicians do not do what is rational. They do what is popular. These are two separate things entirely. And even worse, they can modify what is popular with a variety of mechanisms. For a simple example- look at the death tax. You ask average Americans whether they support a death tax, they will say of course not. It sounds absurd, right?

If you call it an inheritance tax, all of a sudden majority of people support it.

So yeah, I think you're right in that we more or less align on what the ideal system should be but you still believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment and believe that egalitarianism and liberty is possible.

I think humanity is brutal and stupid by nature and we are bound to be ruled by people with strength. I think all government systems eventually deteriorate into fancy feudalism.

For a bit of an absurd statement- I think what we need to do is create a constitution that is very explicit. And then what we need to do is let an AI enforce it. Assuming the AI is objective and not able to be influenced, I think then and only then would we have a free society. And the irony is- we wouldn't be in control of it.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist about human nature. Don't misinterpret me, I consider myself a humanist. I like humans. I feel empathy for others. I want the best world possible for everyone.

But I think humans in a group are stupid. The crowd is like a locust swarm, destroying without thinking. It's sad

You said you’re not pushing socialism, but you didn’t offer what you do support, so I’ll speak broadly.

I'm a bit of a pessimist here. I think free market capitalism is a terrible system that will inevitably crash and fail. It is also the best thing we have come up with so far. Essentially Churchill's quote. I only hope that after our next foray into fascism we will come out the other side with a new 21st century ideology that is somehow able to fix the fundamental contradictions.

I really support Liberalism (and I mean you know, freedom of speech, free market, pursuit of happiness, etc). I would always prefer to live in a society that gives me the freedom to live life on my terms. In theory, we could have a socialist version of this, but I think like we discussed it falls victim to precisely the same fate. When the Soviets initially took power, they were genuine in their desire for revolutionary emancipation. They did many great things- they created written languages for all of the local ethnicities that didn't have them. They put local leaders in positions of power. They increased literacy and invested in education strictly for altruism.

That only lasted a couple short decades, however, because the wheels of power inevitably turn. I shouldn't have to go into detail on the horrific abuses of power that resulted from the developed Soviet state

Here's the thing, I think you make great points. And the solutions you propose would benefit the system both in the short and long term. But I think collapse is inevitable anyway, and specifically collapse into fascism. Perhaps in a system where the institutions are strong and we have policies in the line of what you're suggesting (campaign finance reform, proportional representation, etc. I'd even say higher salaries for politicians counter intuitively) the descent will be slowed for a long period of time.

But ultimately, it's the classic criminal versus police officer. You can put up a border wall to stop drugs coming in, they'll go under the ground. You put ground penetrating radar sensors, they build DIY-submarines. You invest in a coast guard, they build drones. Etc Etc

It's a constant battle that requires constant vigilance. However, here's the kicker. Here's the reason why it will always inevitably fail.

The people with significant wealth and by extension power- they will always have incentive to change the system to their advance and they will always have the ability to influence it. They will never stop trying to come up with new ways to either exploit current laws or create new ones.

The average people, the consumers and voters, they will sometimes have the incentive to change the system and they will sometimes have the ability to influence it. In times of trouble, people get upset and they start protesting. They start voting for new measures, different policies get enacted. Like you mentioned, we broke up Standard Oil. Or when we broke up the Bell Telephone Company.

During that time people were both discontent, which means they had the incentive to change the system and coincidentally that also gives them the ability to influence the system- politicians are only scared into making positive change for the average person when there is large scale dissent.

But what happened to both of those examples (and virtually every other anti-trust regulation we've ever tried to implement)?

Today, Bell Telephone's descendant is AT&T- a behemoth of a megacorp that participates in an oligopoly over the telecommunications market. Today, Standard Oil's descendant is Exxon Mobil and remains the largest oil and gas company in the US.

What happened here? Well, the public interest eventually fades. Some other crisis shows up on the news channels and people become content with their lives. If the economy is doing well, people are paying their bills, etc, they don't care. If they economy isn't, the politicians have become exceedingly proficient at redirecting that discontent towards scapegoats (today it's immigrants for example).

So, it's a simple math equation. Let's say the corporations win 51% of the coin flips and the free market / law abiding public wins 49% of the time. For a very long time, it can stay more or less even. Cops versus robbers- the equilibrium stays intact.

But imagine a limit that goes to infinity. What happens? Eventually the interest of wealth wins. Now, different societies can have different coin flip ratios.

I think our society is nowhere near 51% / 49%. I think your solutions would bring us closer to that 50 / 50 but due to again, the very nature of the capitalist system- the law will never be in the driving seat.

Two very simple axioms determine that, which we have discussed above

1. wealth tends to accumulate due to economies of scale

2. wealth leads to power and power self-perpetuates

It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas

This is where I think you may have misinterpreted me. I'm not trying to push socialism. I think we're genuinely fucked and there is no way out.

Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market

This is a fantasy. We talk about "free market capitalism" as if it's some pristine, untouched mechanism that would work perfectly fine if only the government followed the rules. But the moment big money arises, the entire political field is lured in. Wealth itself becomes a gravitational force that pulls legislators, laws, and lobbyists into its orbit.

This is not a bug, it's a feature. It's fundamental to the system. A free market can never remain a free market. For two very simple reasons.

a) economies of scale. It's cheaper to a lot of something per thing compared to a little of something per thing. so there is a financial incentive to get bigger and that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually at the end of the game of Monopoly, there's only one landlord standing who bought everything else up.

b) wealth is power. if you have power, you will use it to ensure your position is improved. this is human nature. this works the same in any other political economic system.

It’s not that a pure free market is corrupted by government, or that a pure socialism is corrupted by incompetent central planners; both are myths in the sense that they never truly exist in the real world. We either get forms of crony capitalism or state-managed capitalism, but the “free” part is always an abstraction.

What we need to acknowledge is that the political and economic systems are not two separate worlds that only overlap by accident. They’re conjoined twins. Pretending one can neatly excise government from the economy is a fantasy—just as fantastical as imagining the perfect socialist utopia.

The trick is to recognize that the moment large-scale wealth accumulates, it necessarily accumulates political clout. And from there, the “free market” gradually becomes a marketplace that’s anything but free.

This is what people mean by late stage capitalism. It's capitalism that has eroded all of the public institutions and in a short amount of time fascism will take root. We're witnessing the transition right now as we speak.