BeautifulMind

BeautifulMind , 19 days ago

I enjoy the schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but there is a frame in which this kind of confusion does actually make sense.

It's the frame in which you acknowledge that our system of justice isn't about holding everyone equally accountable to the law, it's instead been an institution to keep the poor and marginal in their places- that is, it's about enforcing an unspoken social, class, gender, and racial hierarchy that a lot of the MAGA folks take for granted and really want to defend and uphold.

That is the order they're talking about when they say 'Law and Order'. The order is a social, racial, gender, and class hierarchy, and the law is the means by which the hoi polloi are kept in whatever the powerful in it regard to be their 'rightful places'.

For these people, the idea that the law might actually apply to everyone is an attack on the basis of order as they understand it. Of course they're mad.

BeautifulMind , 20 days ago

At what point does this sort of thing stop being politics and start being organized crime?
So now I halfway-hope the vigilantes that try to do this will end up facing criminal charges for it

But, I also halfway-expect cops and prosecutors to look the other way if the victims of this kind of crime ends up being the kind of people they'd be disproportionately policing and convicting anyhow

BeautifulMind , 20 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

It's been maddening to watch people call price-gouging "inflation", honestly.

That's not fucking inflation when someone in the supply chain made things more expensive and pocketed the difference as a wider profit margin; it's the symptom of non-enforcement of antitrust laws.

I mean, most foodstuffs markets (in the supply chain between farm and grocer or farm -> restaurant) are controlled by very few people or corporations; when the farmers get less for their products but the grocer must pay more for them, that's not inflation. It's price-gouging, the symptom of the kinds of market failures that follow regulatory failures to prevent corporate mergers that would reduce competition in those markets.

When you look at food, fuel, housing, the enshittification of basically everything, the acquisition of yesterday's hot-fresh-streaming services and re-packaging them to be just as predatory as the cable was when you cut the cord and went to streaming- it's all what we get when private equity owns a piece of everything and they're running it all to squeeze more out of everyone they can, and they also ensure regulators don't do a damned thing about it.

There was once a time when regulators had the will to block corporate mergers, and they had the will to tax windfall profits at 100%.

BeautifulMind , 20 days ago

If inflation isn’t based on most prices increasing… What is it based on?

It's the devaluation of currency that happens when too much of it chases too few goods in the marketplace. It's purely a monetary thing, you get that when the supply of money grows more quickly than the value of real goods in the economy does.

Ideally, we print money (and take it out of circulation) at a pace that keeps the money supply more or less balanced to the value of available goods and services in the economy. If we were to print too much money, or not take enough out of circulation (note: paying taxes does this; when you pay taxes the money doesn't go into some account somewhere, it's used to zero out the bonds issued to create it), the amount of money in circulation would become greater than the amount of real valuable goods in the economy. When that happens, the resulting bidding contest to secure those goods (after all, money doesn't have intrinsic value, it's only good for buying things that do) drives up the price of those goods in monetary terms.

BeautifulMind , 20 days ago

Its consistently worse than home cooking. But not everyone has the luxury of a functional kitchen or a stocked fridge or the time to prepare the meal.

You're not wrong here. It's not good food, but it's easy and touches the makes-me-crave-it neurons, it's often available in food deserts (where it's legitimately difficult to really stock a kitchen) and sometimes it's only cheap in the context of whether or not you have that home infra and time to use it or not.

I just use my privilege (I have a pretty functional kitchen and the ability to stock it mightily) to not fund a business model that looks to me like it's hostile to labor (yeah you, McDonalds and most of the rest), tends to give money to politics I can't abide (looking at you, chick-fil-a), and I really prefer to patronize businesses whose employees don't have the energy of beaten animals. I get that it's my privilege to do that, but being someone with that to work with, using it appropriately seems the right thing to do.

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Grew up in a rural red state. I've spent a lot of time trying to really understand their politics, and as best I can summarize, here it is:

• They are angry about how life has gotten worse for them, economically and culturally.

• They have very good reason to be angry about that, because it has.

• They are misinformed about what changed since the 50s and 60s, and too many of them seem to think more racism and sexism will restore their prosperity and dignity

• They have decided the only thing to do about it any more is to burn everything down until they get the respect they feel entitled to

• They are sincerely sad and angry it hasn't worked yet

The shorter story here, of course, is that the establishment GOP of the late 70s underestimated the willingness of its fascist wing to not die and completely didn't do the necessary things to prevent the party from being almost completely taken over by fascists

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

23k is the max annual contribution

If you're over 50, you can put $30,500 in your 401k, the extra $7500 per year is called a 'catch-up contribution'

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

Has finance guru Dave Ramsey looked at the cost of housing compared to what working people earn? It's very different now than it was when the boomers were able to buy houses on the income of a single entry-level wage earner per household.

One wonders whether 'finance gurus' aren't just out-of-touch boomers any more

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

It's true that the cultural left didn't suppress wages or unions or offshore manufacturing jobs or cause all those farms to fail or any of those other things, but one thing that made the left vulnerable to such charges is that when the Democrats embraced neoliberalism, they implicitly became the party of credentialed professionals.
When the Democrats abandoned the working class to compete for the donor dollars the right had long enjoyed, it meant that the working class went from having 1 party for it to having 2 parties actively working against its interests.

It's so wild to me that the GOP has been considered the working man's party by anyone since the 1890s

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

Consider the possibility that the game here does not depend on Trump winning in the Electoral college- all that needs to happen is Biden not winning 271 or more EC votes for the congress to decide the presidency via the Contingent Election process outlined in article2, sec1 clause3 of the constitution, later modified in the 12th amendment.

In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.

If the smart money in the GOP has decided Trump won't win but it still wants him in the oval, anything that prevents Biden from getting 270+ gets them better odds than any other pathway

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

If the penalty for a crime is a fine, that just means it's legal for the wealthy/only a crime for the competition that doesn't have money to burn.

Frankly it's about damned time criminal corporations had to worry about having their charters yanked

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

When you have financial engineers overriding the decisions of mechanical engineers, you get crashy airplanes and eventually, caught up murdering people that might talk to investigators in order to defend those juicy profits

...sort of like how when accountants and insurance folk and lawyers and judges override the decisions of doctors and nurses, you end up with highly profitable hospitals and people dying for it

...all a bit like when the bean counters run your software company, layoffs designed to boost stock price by showing investors 'fiscal discipline' leaves your engineering teams shorthanded and forces them to de-prioritize bug fixes and dealing with technical debt and rigorous testing and you end up shipping lots of bugs when you release your product

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

The US is monetarily sovereign and can always issue enough currency to meet any demands upon it.

Yes. When congress appropriates funding and it's signed into law, the effect is that the US Treasury spends that money into existence. The mechanism, of course, is that Treasury directs the fed to issue bonds to create the money, and when you pay taxes that money doesn't go into an account Congress can spend from, it goes back to the fed to zero out the bonds used to create it.

Of course, if we continue cutting taxes the way we have, that will eventually balloon the amount of currency in circulation and that can be problematic if it's untethered to reality

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago

Damn you, I'm in

BeautifulMind , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

“should we get rid of the cap so the rich pay a fair share or keep it and collectively pay for things by way of inflation?”

The problem with the latter is honestly that inflation hurts the poor a lot more than it does the wealthy and if anything, gives the wealthy a lot more power. Power is really the issue here- when the rich have the ability to override democracy by spending money, that's a big damned problem

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

I think the biggest problem isn’t the tax rate, but the fact that the billionaire class can circumvent the tax system entirely

That's only possible because they're allowed to buy influence in the system to make it allow for that.
In reality, the other threats (they'll take their wealth to other countries and leave us poor) are bluffing; most of their wealth isn't portable.
Also in reality, most of the policies they demand (and get) aren't democratically popular, they're only viable because they spend so much collective money on propaganda and think tanks to get people thinking the money will trickle down or that without them as 'job creators' all will be spoiled or lost.

It's bullshit, and it only works because we let it work. Apparently we need to move in hundred-year cycles between letting the titans of industry squeeze everyone dry before we remember to assert public power to prevent that

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

My optimistic side thinks this will be monitored, at least some of the names he gets will be wrong in ways that will identify him as the leaker when their names become public or they are harassed by MAGA types.
My pessimistic side thinks this is the way our justice system works- with rules that don't apply to wealthy or powerful people and even though he's repeatedly set his flying monkeys after his enemies or those he wants to 'go through some things', they'll let him because he's innocent until proven guilty again

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Ranked Choice Voting? 100% approve.

Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.

Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from 'we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong' when obvs. that doesn't work too well

Tax prep companies... I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.

Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it's about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.

One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

Yes, the downsides of at-large reps would surely be that if no one rep is responsible for particular local issue(s), it's possible that none would take it up and that would leave some constituencies unrepresented. My thought about that is that when district maps are drawn to purposely divide particular constituencies (I mean, look at all those pack-and-crack maps that split minority groups into districts that mostly elect people that don't represent them), an at-large system might allow those constituencies to unify around particular at-large reps?
I don't know, I'm spit-balling here. But thank you for taking up the question constructively!

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

While they're at it, why not cap processing fees as junk fees?
It for sure doesn't cost 2.9% of your grocery bill to facilitate the payment- it's all automated and there's little to no labor involved in the actual processing, it's just collecting economic rent

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

It’s like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the amendment was poorly worded

That, or they had an outcome they wanted and found a way to get it

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

During his impeachment trials, the GOP argued that impeachments are not a criminal proceeding, they are a political one- so they acquitted on politics saying that this is for the courts to decide.
Now that the matter is in the courts, they argue it's for congress only, not the courts.

With a justice system like this one, who needs torches and pitchforks? /s

BeautifulMind OP , 3 months ago

IMHO one of the biggest failings of the media for the last 50 years has been in the assumption that fundamental policy areas like antitrust (whether enforcement, or non-enforcement) isn't 'newsworthy'.
The prosperity our reactionaries keep on going on about (that of the 1950s and 60s) owes a lot of its existence to successful antitrust enforcement, and a lot of our dissatisfaction with otherwise-favorable economies today owes itself to un-checked monopoly behavior.

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

there are a lot of birthrights which are increasingly only available if you have money

This is the logical consequence of the anti-new-deal/anti-desegregation/anti-civil-rights jurisprudence that turns on capital supremacy and property rights trumping the notion that the state has an interest in protecting any other sort of right; it's something the capital supremacy folks have always wanted but which the desegregation crowd finally joined in on when they thought they could get segregation back by backing capital's ability to smuggle discrimination under the skirts of its property interests.

When you look at the White Flight phenomenon and correlate it to the widespread disappearance of public 3rd places, When you notice that state colleges and universities lost funding and started hiking tuition shortly after desegregation meant black and brown people could attend them, it sure looks like Americans were faced with the decision to have desegregated public wealth or no public wealth, they chose the latter

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

Oh he knows what it actually does- it effectively criminalizes the sort of health care tangentially related to abortion, and when you've driven reproductive health care out of your state and made it illegal to travel to get it, you're that much closer to having total control over women's bodies. He doesn't give a shit about babies, he knows that defining embryos as babies will give reactionaries and jurists the ability to treat women of child-bearing age as presumptively criminal if they don't seem to know 'their place'.

The whole pretending-to-care-about-babies or life is just a pretext to make pursuit of the thing they really care about- controlling women- socially respectable.

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

It works.
They know that banning abortions just drives abortion into back alleys, the point is they need that sort of autonomy in women to be effectively criminalized in order to regain the kind of control they had over women's bodies back when the boomers were still teenagers. They know abstinence-only teaching doesn't prevent unwanted pregnancy, they don't care and they want criminalizing abortion to be socially acceptable again.

They understand that the people demanding 'election integrity' are just using those words to make their real project- winning power despite having unpopular policy options on offer- seem respectable.

It doesn't matter that you're saying things too stupid for people to believe, the stupid ones will believe it anyways and the evil ones will use the stupid people to make civil politics uncivil

BeautifulMind , 3 months ago

Every time he says some out-of-touch dumb-as-shit thing like this I get hopeful that this will be the thing that's too absurd, too stupid, too off-the-rails... and then I realize there are so many people that eat this shit up and the real despair sets in

BeautifulMind , 4 months ago

I met my wife while I was shrooming
That was 23 years ago
We're still together

BeautifulMind , 4 months ago

This is the stupidest timeline

BeautifulMind , 4 months ago

When doing the right thing, or even doing right by your conscience, is a crime... you live in a place and time in which politicians haven't been tarred or feathered and run out of town on a rail in too long

BeautifulMind , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Also genX, I went hard in corporate life for a long time, survived many rounds of layoffs and watched good friends go for reasons that are bad ones- until one fine day I was laid off with 18,000 others. Meanwhile they kept hiring H1B workers and doing stock buybacks and doing mass-layoffs every 2 years to keep the regional labor market full of competition and wages depressed.
Knowing that they're not interested in keeping their promises of stability and prosperity goes a long ways towards me never going above and beyond

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

He's already a felon, FFS. The only reason he's out walking around is Trump pardoned him

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Yep this is the logical consequence of turning your state into un-free shitholes ruled by petty authoritarians

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

He's mad that there's a move afoot to sell seized Russian assets and use the proceeds to fund Ukraine's defense. The signal is: if you buy these things (yachts, real estate, whatever) Russia will see to it as a matter of official policy that you will fall carelessly out of a high window somewhere. The quiet part said out loud, tho, is that Russia now claims that anything it ever held, whether as the USSR or imperial Russia, or the current Russian Federation, is theirs forever no takebacks.

Basically the read on this should be: Russia is having trouble laundering rubles into non-sanctioned currencies (those foreign assets are basically conduits to do that) and is now saying essentially that if they can't keep our offshore loot they'll just seize all of Eastern Europe and demand tribute from their vassal territories

...of course, if Russia could actually do any of that it already would have

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Is there a possible way that both the NYT and OpenAI could lose?

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Because of course that's the top priority for Kentucky Republicans right now 🙄

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Good, smaller federal government

This isn't about the size of government, it's about who rules- and whether or not they answer to the public.
The buzzword-talk you hear about 'burdensome regulations' revolves around pretending that if you get rid of regulatory agencies that there will be no regulation in the spheres they regulate- but that's not how that works. Taking away the authority of a regulatory agency really means handing regulatory authority back into private hands, the way it was before regulators answering to the public were authorized.

So, what happens when you take away the SEC's power to regulate banks, or the EPA's power to regulate environmental matters? Power to regulate banking reverts back to trade associations made up of... banks, and the people who will be in charge of protecting the environment will be the people profiting by polluting it. https://prospect.org/economy/rise-of-neo-feudalism/

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Well maybe the intelligence community is gonna turn against you when you had access to info on sources and methods and those sources started turning up dead.
Giving Trump access to classified material and not expecting him to monetize it for himself is insanity, really

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley claimed the US has “never been a racist county” pandered to racists during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

fixed it

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

They’re not the ones being affected by the boomers.

My dude, they've been riding us our whole lives

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Rhetoric of this sort just promotes distrust in election systems, which of course prompts demagogues like Trump to promise voters they can fix it if they gain power. The fun thing here is that the right here needs you to believe things that aren't true in order to justify them doing a coup, the stupid thing is that stupid people take this kind of talk seriously.

But seriously, American voting is relatively secure- it's just that where lawmakers don't want voters deciding the 'wrong' way they've gerrymandered them into districts to prevent them doing it, and they've done things to strip voters of their voting rights and to suppress voting and to make it inconvenient or difficult to vote. This has been a bipartisan thing in the past, but today the GOP are the chief offenders.

Also, Putin's Russia is in the stage of democracy where elections are an exercise in flaunting the death of democracy itself, and nobody should ever take his talk about elections as being in good faith, ever

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

nOboDy wAnTs tO WoRk aNy MorE

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

Article IV, section 4 : "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." [~https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S4-1/ALDE_00013635]

The 'guarantee clause' was both a promise that the federal government would help suppress state-level insurrections and protect member states from foreign attack, and a requirement that in order to be a member state, you had to have a government in the form of a republic (i.e., no monarchy-states, no dictatorships). This can be read to mean that democracy of some sort is required, as republics implicitly derive their public authority from the people living in them.

BeautifulMind , 5 months ago

It could, depending on how the court is feeling about it that day, and on whether or not congress writes legislation to provide specifics to just what Article IV, sec4 means. (This seems to have been one of those clauses the framers left as a to-do for future legislators to fill out)