5 ms·

>it shouldn’t be surprising The current flavour of politics is not pragmatic. It’s a luxury belief system. The left wing excesses of the 2010s were luxury bel

by mikrl 2y ago

>it shouldn’t be surprising The current flavour of politics is not pragmatic. It’s a luxury belief system. The left wing excesses of the 2010s were luxury beliefs, the current thing is all just luxury beliefs too. Basically, when people are economically comfortable and have no real problems, they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something. I have luxury beliefs of my own, many people do. We are free to hold them in North America. But there’s a cost, and that cost shouldn’t be surprising.

curiousgal 2y ago
> We are free to hold them in North America You are, as long as you're not brown.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > You are, as long as you're not brown I’m brown. I’m fine. This administration is at war with Americans who aren’t rich. My taxes are being cut. I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. They’re mostly white. But they’re not rich.
  - jancsika 2y ago
    > I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. I don't understand this sentence. Are you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump? I’m buying cropland from creditors. They can sell it because the farmers are behind on their loans. They’re failing to make payments because we’re in a trade war. As an ethical limit, yes, I look up the property owner and have only been buying if they’re registered Republican. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump. (Though they’re all in heavily Trump-voting precincts.) And I don’t think people should lose their farms just because of how they voted. But it does increase the chances I’m not profiting from someone who had nothing to do with a mess they found themselves in versus someone who sort of brought it on themselves.
      - throwup238 2y ago
        Thank you for doing the lord’s work.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        I’m doing work that makes me money. It’s entirely orthogonal to my skin tone. My point is this administration isn’t helping poor white men, the folks who voted for him, he’s just advantaging those who were lucky enough to start this imperial transition with capital on hand.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Isn’t the trade war only a few days old?
        TimorousBestie 2y ago
        Anything smaller than the largest factory farms have been fighting for survival for an entire generation, sometimes longer.
        alphabettsy 2y ago
        There was one in the first term too. Farmers suffered quite a bit if I remember correctly.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- mikrl 2y ago
  Poor people get hurt most by wasteful belief systems. Sure the demographics might correlate positively or negatively with poverty, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s primarily economics. After all, rich people can eat the extra $$$ imposed by tariffs. Maybe with grumbling… but, at a certain income level paying $5 vs $2 for a can of corn or soup won’t materially affect you, so you can use that extra $3 you paid to complain about immigration, or hierarchies or whatever.
  - exe34 2y ago
    he said brown, not poor.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
sorcerer-mar 2y ago
Don’t let internet memes like “luxury beliefs” do too much of the heavy lifting of actual thinking for ya
- mikrl 2y ago
  It’s an apt description of a perennial feature of politics. People have a pain in the foot, so they shoot a hole in it and complain about having a bullet wound. Is there better, less charged terminology?
  - hydrogen7800 2y ago
    More like: they are no longer starving, and can now tend to the pain in their foot. I've heard similar versions of this argument, usually something about modern poor people having it pretty good because they have microwave, while Carnegie didn't. >I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. [0] We're now complaining about people studying painting, poetry, etc. [0]https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17800512jasecond https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...
    - mikrl 2y ago
      That Adams quote is nice, and has a similar historical flavour to some of Milton Friedman’s arguments. That said, choosing a field of study only has the risk of bankrupting yourself. The excesses of the 21st century, whether that’s blowing up the supply chains that got you out of stagflation, or injecting Maoist rhetoric into academia, will have a much larger and more destructive blowback.
mullingitover 2y ago
The defense of this regime's economic strategy (particularly the market crash and looming economic hardships) is doing political horseshoe theory and entering Maoist territory with surprising speed. "You'll be rich because we're so good with the economy" has raced over to "We've been rotting in decadent lifestyles, true strong patriots will be happy to sacrifice for the glory of the fatherland."
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  Yeah its remarkable. "Tons of people globally are screwing screws into iphones. We are going to bring those jobs here." "Inexpensive goods from overseas aren't actually prosperity. You don't want these things." "You probably didn't earn your job in the government anyway." True decadence is looking at a society that is broadly functioning and deciding "we need a fight" and blowing it up just for some aggressive notion of dominance.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  That's an authoritarian one in general, though, not just Maoist by any means.
rgbrenner 2y ago
This is the fallacy of composition. A party is made up of diverse independent groups who are demanding different things. When one of those groups gets "comfortable", it allows other groups to become (relatively) louder and steer the party toward their demands. It's not all the same person, getting comfortable and making up problems.
deeg 2y ago
> they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something. Does this mean that when we're all poor the Right will stop demonizing trans people?
rco8786 2y ago
> The left wing excesses of the 2010s What on earth does that even mean
- rsynnott 2y ago
  99% of the time, it means that the speaker is deeply offended that trans people exist.
  - mikrl 2y ago
    Hating LGBT people is itself a luxury belief. The spendthrift belief is to just not care what people do with their personal lives, what bathroom they use, etc. And, of course, comprehensive sex ed that reduces the negative externalities of human sexuality on society, and doesn’t interfere with the positive.
    - naenin 2y ago
      > what people do with their personal lives This isn't the issue. What people choose to do in their personal lives should be accepted or at least tolerated, as long as it's not harming anyone. > what bathroom they use This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women. > etc. This includes males in women's prisons, males in women's changing/locker rooms, males in women's sports. All of which are violations against women. It isn't about "hating LGBT people" as you suggest, but about compelling males to respect women's and girls' boundaries. For far too long, a subset of males have been getting away with not doing so, just because these males express a desire to be female. It's quite absurd that it's taken Trump of all people to attempt to rectify this. The political left should have reeled in their activists, who were promoting all this, a long time ago.
      - mikrl 2y ago
        Look at that, our luxury beliefs collide! Mine, lax and libertarian, perhaps too unconcerned with traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Yours, worried and authoritarian, focused on an imaginary moral panic propagated by reactionary Internet forums. So, which luxury belief costs more? Mine might require a transition to single user bathrooms, yours depriving a gender minority of liberty…

by mikrl 2y ago

curiousgal 2y ago

> We are free to hold them in North America You are, as long as you're not brown.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> You are, as long as you're not brown I’m brown. I’m fine. This administration is at war with Americans who aren’t rich. My taxes are being cut. I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. They’re mostly white. But they’re not rich.
- jancsika 2y ago
  > I’m buying investment cropland on the cheap from idiots who voted for him to trash their livelihoods. I don't understand this sentence. Are you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump? I’m buying cropland from creditors. They can sell it because the farmers are behind on their loans. They’re failing to make payments because we’re in a trade war. As an ethical limit, yes, I look up the property owner and have only been buying if they’re registered Republican. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump. (Though they’re all in heavily Trump-voting precincts.) And I don’t think people should lose their farms just because of how they voted. But it does increase the chances I’m not profiting from someone who had nothing to do with a mess they found themselves in versus someone who sort of brought it on themselves.
    - throwup238 2y ago
      Thank you for doing the lord’s work.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        I’m doing work that makes me money. It’s entirely orthogonal to my skin tone. My point is this administration isn’t helping poor white men, the folks who voted for him, he’s just advantaging those who were lucky enough to start this imperial transition with capital on hand.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Isn’t the trade war only a few days old?
      - TimorousBestie 2y ago
        Anything smaller than the largest factory farms have been fighting for survival for an entire generation, sometimes longer.
      - alphabettsy 2y ago
        There was one in the first term too. Farmers suffered quite a bit if I remember correctly.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mikrl 2y ago
Poor people get hurt most by wasteful belief systems. Sure the demographics might correlate positively or negatively with poverty, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s primarily economics. After all, rich people can eat the extra $$$ imposed by tariffs. Maybe with grumbling… but, at a certain income level paying $5 vs $2 for a can of corn or soup won’t materially affect you, so you can use that extra $3 you paid to complain about immigration, or hierarchies or whatever.
- exe34 2y ago
  he said brown, not poor.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

sorcerer-mar 2y ago

Don’t let internet memes like “luxury beliefs” do too much of the heavy lifting of actual thinking for ya

mikrl 2y ago
It’s an apt description of a perennial feature of politics. People have a pain in the foot, so they shoot a hole in it and complain about having a bullet wound. Is there better, less charged terminology?
- hydrogen7800 2y ago
  More like: they are no longer starving, and can now tend to the pain in their foot. I've heard similar versions of this argument, usually something about modern poor people having it pretty good because they have microwave, while Carnegie didn't. >I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. [0] We're now complaining about people studying painting, poetry, etc. [0]https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17800512jasecond https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...
  - mikrl 2y ago
    That Adams quote is nice, and has a similar historical flavour to some of Milton Friedman’s arguments. That said, choosing a field of study only has the risk of bankrupting yourself. The excesses of the 21st century, whether that’s blowing up the supply chains that got you out of stagflation, or injecting Maoist rhetoric into academia, will have a much larger and more destructive blowback.

mullingitover 2y ago

The defense of this regime's economic strategy (particularly the market crash and looming economic hardships) is doing political horseshoe theory and entering Maoist territory with surprising speed. "You'll be rich because we're so good with the economy" has raced over to "We've been rotting in decadent lifestyles, true strong patriots will be happy to sacrifice for the glory of the fatherland."

UncleMeat 2y ago
Yeah its remarkable. "Tons of people globally are screwing screws into iphones. We are going to bring those jobs here." "Inexpensive goods from overseas aren't actually prosperity. You don't want these things." "You probably didn't earn your job in the government anyway." True decadence is looking at a society that is broadly functioning and deciding "we need a fight" and blowing it up just for some aggressive notion of dominance.
rsynnott 2y ago
That's an authoritarian one in general, though, not just Maoist by any means.

rgbrenner 2y ago

This is the fallacy of composition. A party is made up of diverse independent groups who are demanding different things. When one of those groups gets "comfortable", it allows other groups to become (relatively) louder and steer the party toward their demands. It's not all the same person, getting comfortable and making up problems.

deeg 2y ago

> they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something. Does this mean that when we're all poor the Right will stop demonizing trans people?

rco8786 2y ago

> The left wing excesses of the 2010s What on earth does that even mean

rsynnott 2y ago
99% of the time, it means that the speaker is deeply offended that trans people exist.
- mikrl 2y ago
  Hating LGBT people is itself a luxury belief. The spendthrift belief is to just not care what people do with their personal lives, what bathroom they use, etc. And, of course, comprehensive sex ed that reduces the negative externalities of human sexuality on society, and doesn’t interfere with the positive.
  - naenin 2y ago
    > what people do with their personal lives This isn't the issue. What people choose to do in their personal lives should be accepted or at least tolerated, as long as it's not harming anyone. > what bathroom they use This is the problematic part. A male using the women's bathroom is committing a violation against women. > etc. This includes males in women's prisons, males in women's changing/locker rooms, males in women's sports. All of which are violations against women. It isn't about "hating LGBT people" as you suggest, but about compelling males to respect women's and girls' boundaries. For far too long, a subset of males have been getting away with not doing so, just because these males express a desire to be female. It's quite absurd that it's taken Trump of all people to attempt to rectify this. The political left should have reeled in their activists, who were promoting all this, a long time ago.
    - mikrl 2y ago
      Look at that, our luxury beliefs collide! Mine, lax and libertarian, perhaps too unconcerned with traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Yours, worried and authoritarian, focused on an imaginary moral panic propagated by reactionary Internet forums. So, which luxury belief costs more? Mine might require a transition to single user bathrooms, yours depriving a gender minority of liberty…