Philorandroid

Speaking of laughable ignorance, what other munitions does the US military have besides precision munitions if precision is no longer a concern?

Venezuela thought the same thing. Keeping a full-scale deployment at arm's length, and 'only' targeting military targets with exhaustive use of precision missiles is poor strategy, but if a military victory were the US's only ambition the Iranian regime has no capability that could prevent its country from being turned into a smoldering parking lot.

Doctrine isn't the same as inability.

I think that's an unfair assessment. Depleting a stockpile of a particular munition (since missile strikes are less unpopular than a full-scale deployment) because of overreliance shows a particular strain, not a pervasive weakness.

In catastrophic circumstances perhaps, but the metric for actual starvation in the US is so low that finding a solid figure is difficult. Malnutrition, while higher, seems strongly correlated to child/elder abuse/neglect, and not homelessness. Street muggings for nourishment by a starving underclass is a fantastical and disingenuous narrative. And, surely, you see the dissonance in suggesting that poverty leads to crime, while also suggesting criminalizing low-wage labor?

> While this is true for you it is not true for the society as a whole...

Why isn't it? What about using the legal, practical market means at your disposal is exclusive to some privileged section of society, and why does it include me and nobody else in hard times?

Your 'rebuttal' is just a broad, dismissive gesture to theory and platitudinous insults.

Having lost a job suddenly, any employment is better than none. A perfect job that provides everything you need is pretty far detached from "this is sufficient", or even "this will slow my fall while I work something else out", and this kind of bitter resentment towards anything less than a job that pays out an idyllic American existence is what causes them to be priced out by legislative fiat like the minimum wage.

More to the point, not every skill level or job is _worth_ that kind of compensation (as uncomfortable as it might be to entertain), and attempts to circumvent market forces by making lower wages illegal at some arbitrary point have substantially more damaging externalities than 'low wages' -- which are as much a system of slavery as gravity or magnetism, and just as resilient to ideation.

> Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me.

My disagreement is that the ongoing or imminent unlawful destruction of property should be allowed to be met with _appropriate_ deterring force, whether by law enforcement or by the property owners. I argue that because in a system of individual rights that include property ownership, the position that an impassioned crowd has more right to that property than the owner (by damaging or destroying it in this case) is morally indefensible.

> once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted use of force.

That is untrue for at least the last decade or so. After the 2015 Baltimore riots, President Obama couldn't even popularly get away with referring to rioters as "thugs"[1] after ~300 businesses were damaged, 60 buildings set on fire, 113 police officers injured and 27 drugstores looted. Since then, there have been plentiful riots and mass demonstrations that either turned violent or otherwise sheltered violent activity, including the moment in 2020 that spawned the "mostly peaceful protests" meme of the reporter with a building burning down behind him because of the rose-tinted glasses public analysts used in their coverage. Mayors and governors gave lip service to violent demonstrations like CHAZ/CHOP [2] while violence was taking place, and only tepidly supported law enforcement's presence to curtail it after the fact.

_To this day_ those actions are routinely and popularly dismissed as racial outrage, justified, etc. largely along political boundaries, all to the detriment of the thousands of individuals whose livelihoods were damaged or destroyed as result. The idea that good consciences will win the day and protestors will distance themselves from n'er-do-wells among them is, as a standard, irreconcilable with the countless recorded hours of protest footage that exist.

Rights aren't trumped by implicit public vote to destroy your property, any more than two thieves can vote that they need their victim's wallet more than them, or a gang of rapists can hold a 5-1 vote for consent. QED, immediate and active threats against property should, morally and legally, warrant an appropriate amount of force to defend it.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/us/baltimore-riots-thug-n-wor... [2] https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/chop-seattle-mayor-walks-b...

If threat of injury is what stops someone from destroying your car, then it's appropriately leveraged.

I'm also curious, what kind of effective, 'non-violent' means are there to control the initial mob-martyrs, and ensure level-handed justice is served? Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so.

This reads like you suppose the only thing to do is let rioters vent their outrage against whatever objects happen to be in their way at the time, and hope that there exists some legal comeuppance after the fact.

Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used to prevent property damage? What moral dilemma exists that makes protecting property deserve a comparison to executing someone?

Are chemical irritants preferable, then? Or just LEOs in riot gear with rubber batons? There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane, and the mindset of "I'll turn violent and/or destructive if my participation in civil unrest is punished" is a perfect justification for these systems to exist.

That's a naive way to see it. People vote _against_ the other candidate, against what they fear is worse. And, if the theory that the frontrunner is the best representation of the party holds true, it speaks quite poorly for the Democrats appointing Harris despite Biden winning the vote of his party, no?

And, again, tu quoque; even if the GOP was exhaustively comprised of reality-evading lunatics, voters and all, it wouldn't excuse stooping to their level -- the DNC's _explicit_ support of racial identitarianism, benevolent racism, and biological denialism run in direct opposition to this supposed moral high ground they tacitly hold.

So biological denialism is a morally superior position to hold, then? Democratic leaders can't ever seem to acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, certainly not with regards to competitive advantages.

As for it being "core policy", I'd need to a see a citation, otherwise it's conjecture. The 2024 GOP platform [1] doesn't mention climate change, global warming, IPCC, et al. once, whereas the DNC's platform [2] discusses it at length.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024 [2] https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...

Unequivocally. Remember that the parties aren't diametric opposites, and are capable of evading reality simultaneously.

Tu quoque; Republicans harboring fringe beliefs in some cases isn't a response to Democrats' mainstream acceptance of beliefs that the scientific method doesn't accurately reflect reality.

Journalists always overlap their coverage. Even 'exclusive' stories will get articles describing the exclusive coverage. A story/theme being covered from multiple sources is hardly evidence of conspiracy in a vacuum.

I honestly am not sure what it is, I don't know who that is or could be?

"Antisemitism" could be replaced with "racism", "transphobia", "homophobia", etc. and your point would hold true. At some point popular discourse became such that escalating disagreements to accusations of tangible transgressions was fashionable.

I don't think a _job_ is the quintessential experience so much as _productive value,_ doing something that brings you joy from the act of creating, whether it's making music or art, assembling Lego kits, antique engine restoration, etc. Getting that satisfaction from your job is totally possible, so perhaps to some people it is!

As far as crafting a post-scarcity economic model goes, it's not the problem of dreaming one up, it's the pervasiveness of scarcity. Even if all of humanity's basic necessities are one day a given, scarcity won't disappear, just shift around (maybe as transportation for the otherwise-infinite supply of consumer goods? Or living space away from dense urban centers? Maybe even the kind of heuristic analysis abilities humans are unmatched in to keep the matter replicators functioning?)

More to the point, saying that this kind of luxury will exist in a thousand years doesn't nullify the concerns of the present, and probably wouldn't convince most people to forfeit their employment to machines likely owned by the uppermost classes.

It's not a narrative so much as a leftover from what I was originally going to post, in that the creative/expressive/stimulating work is what's being touted as the first thing to be eliminated by AI.

That aside, what exactly is suspect about finding meaning or joy in work? Is the quintessential experience meant to be soulless and grating?

They make the cynical case that automation is coming for us all, and it will eventually replace every ounce of fun or meaning in gainful employment, but that it's okay because of some nebulous societal good. It's not a convincing argument.

> MBIC

No need to start flinging poo.

> Social-capitalist economies (the “social democracies” and adjacent) tend to do better job at this particular thing.

Can you point to a social capitalist country that does a demonstrably better job as a direct result of being a social-capitalist/social democratic/democratic socialist policies? From a cursory search, the US shares in wage theft being a problem with the UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden (granted to a lesser extent for the last two), and I have no doubt a slew of others as well.

It's hard to interpret "We basically put a big flashing sign right out front saying whose interests are the top priority" as anything but distaste, just as it's hard to parse "the name “capitalism” states whose interests are favored in our system" as anything but a favorable verisimilitude. Whose capital? Construction contractors? Service industry bosses? How exactly are they favored? Clearly wage theft is a well-understood phenomenon, so wouldn't it be a greater indictment of the legal system backing the law than the system that rests on top of it? How is any of this unique to a capitalist system and prevented in, say, command economies?

Again, you've made no claims, only voiced vague notions of your distaste

That's such a yellow-press non-answer. Annoyed interpretations of the name of something doesn't offer any insight into, or affect the reality of, the thing.

"Just take it by force" isn't the rational answer you think it is

> I doubt any of the legislators actually know the full contents of bills like this that they sign.

Let alone any of their constituents, who are just as soon to believe the Saving Puppies and Kittens Act really is about saving puppies and kittens.

> We don't live in a theoretical universe...

You're absolutely right, we live in an objective reality where the basis of an idea can be analyzed and tested against said reality, and not invalidated because we don't like the person who said them.

> Ideas are instrumental, they're advanced to achieve a specific purpose and their truth and falsity is important to the extent that they affect the instrumentality. > ...why are we paying attention to this one, right now, towards what ends?

Absolutely, and Andreessen makes it clear he thinks his set of ideas would benefit the conditions of humanity as a whole, there's no ambiguity there.

> You simply cannot separate out an idea from the person advancing the idea...

You absolutely can, and it would be of enormous benefit to assess an idea independently of inflammatory rhetoric surrounding the speaker.

You as well as the author seem to be of the mind that Andreessen's holding of these ideas are wrong based solely on the fact that he himself is wildly successful, not because of any thoughtful critique of the ideas themselves. Intellectual default isn't a virtue; either address the claims themselves, or stop pretending that conspiratorial meta-analysis is an honest addressment.

Greetings! With an equal helping of non-confrontational spirit:

Your focus seems to primarily be on highlighting supposed hypocrisies between the man and the ideas he espouses, and using the former in an attempt to discredit the latter. Criticizing an idea by criticizing the person who holds the idea isn't criticizing the idea at all, it's ad hominem. It's fallacious at best, and malicious at worst, and you spend the first four paragraphs of the article painting Andreessen in the ugliest light possible before touching on the content of his thoughts (which are still punctuated with bitter assertions of his being fundamentally flawed as a person, to put it politely).

Whether he speaks from 'privilege' or not is irrelevant to his ideas holding water or not; if the richest, most-obnoxious caricature of man on Earth were to say "drink plenty of water, get at least light exercise in every day, avoid toxic environments and be sure to get enough sleep to lead a healthier life," would it make it any less valid than if a homeless man said it? The former could just as easily be dismissed as speaking from a place of privilege, being in a position to be able to satisfy all of those things without worry of being stuck in a toxic work environment, living in a noisy apartment complex that prevents a healthy sleep cycle, or not having access to clean water, but that's entirely irrelevant to whether they are healthy habits to adopt or not.

Perspective is also an arbitrary qualifier to an idea's validity. If one man throws a rock at another's head, and he screams and clutches his head, both immediately become acutely aware that getting hit in the head with a rock hurts a lot. The act of not personally receiving a terrible blow to the head does not prevent that understanding. Likewise, whether or not someone is rich enough to have no worldly concerns is irrelevant to an idea being substantiated by empirical evidence and philosophical validity.

Another commenter mentioned that they'd like to see Andreessen's brain picked further on the matters he listed to see if he actually possesses a nuanced understanding of what he's saying and can rationally defend them, or if he's just chosen arguments that support pre-existing notions based on a topical understanding of them. I feel that that's what it would take to accurately assess his personal connection to the ideas as it relates to his status, if that's your aim. If critiquing the ideas themselves are your goal, it would take an evaluation of the value hierarchy of the ideas themselves for contradictions or inconsistency, probably starting by reading some of his cited authors.

If he's actually a troll (I don't know, I don't recall hearing of Andreessen before), then responding with a hate letter addressing his claims doesn't help the author's case

This whole thing reads like it's trying very hard to present itself like it's discrediting Andreessen's ideas, but it feels like it's going after the man himself for one reason or another. This is thanks in no small part to the article being punctuated with how rich and white he is and how few problems he has -- generally how much you should hate him, as a person, overall -- in between swear-laden paragraphs vaguely detailing that his entire thesis is wrong because of individual circumstances.

It's an unfocused rant pretending to be a refutation.

I totally agree, which is why it's disheartening that universities like Harvard use it as a metric to exclude Asians: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/harvard-disc...