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Joined 10 days ago
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Cake day: January 12th, 2025

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  • Seriously. I want a world where everyone can have the basics of subsistence without qualifications. UBI is one way to do it, but even direct provision is fine.

    Universal healthcare is an obvious one, but for as wealthy as developed countries are, providing basic food and shelter shouldn’t be that difficult either. For food and shelter, I think we should just offer anyone that wants it the basics of life.

    Every county should have a government depot in it that you can go and get a certain quantity of basic staples per month. Rice, beans, flour, that kind of thing. It need not be fancy or the best food on Earth, but enough of what people need to keep them alive. And you keep the demand for the service reasonable not by putting in place applications and qualifications, but simply by personal preference. Not many millionaires are going to go down to the depot every month and get their government-issued bag of rice, even if they could if they wanted.

    Same thing with housing. There should be state-run dorms or boarding houses in every city in the country. Need a place to stay? Go down to the city dorm. I would build them just like college dorms - small shared rooms with bunk beds and communal cooking/bathing facilities. And anyone, from the richest to the poorest, can stay there if they need to. If Bezos wants to go live in the government dorm, he can. You keep demand for it low, and the cost of providing it reasonable, through personal choice. Most people don’t actually want to live their whole life in a dorm room. Keep things clean. Keep them sanitary. But keep them simple and utilitarian.

    Even within existing capitalist societies, we can provide for the basics of life for everyone. And instead of putting strict requirements, you open the programs up to all. You keep the demand for the services low by focusing on utilitarian versions of the benefits you provide. Anyone down on their luck can stay in the government dorm if they want, but very few people actually want to unless they really need to.






  • Biden also announced he wasn’t enforcing the law. The TikTok operators saw the writing on the wall and realized they need to bend the knee to Trump.

    Don’t get too hung up on specific dates. Laws are not some physical law like gravity that are present and universal. They exist within a fuzzy context of enforcement and interpretation.

    Biden made clear he wasn’t going to enforce the law. Trump made clear he was going to make a decision based on how well Tiktok flattered and bribed him. So that’s exactly what they’ve done.




  • [CITATION NEEDED]

    He’s had people involved in backroom negotiations for months. Yes, it is a dirty tactic. This has a lot of undertones of Reagan’s deal with the Iranians. He didn’t have great intentions in negotiating a ceasefire, but he did manage to do it. And Trump has shown a willingness in the past to hold US military aid as a stick to change the behavior of allies. It’s reasonable to think he did the same thing here.

    The US DOES have substantial control over Israel. Reagan for instance dramatically affected Israel’s behavior by withholding weapons. Biden was more permissive of Israel than Reagan was.







  • A slightly bigger bomb won’t change anything materially on the ground in Gaza. The only significant change recently has been a cease fire. Whether it will hold or not is as yet unknown. But at least so far, Trump has somehow actually managed to be better on Gaza than Biden. Trump has shown a willingness to actually use the carrots and sticks of US foreign policy to produce outcomes. Biden offered unconditional support to Israel, while Trump seems to have forced them to come to the peace table by threatening to withhold support. In other words, Trump did what Biden’s base had been begging him to do for a year.

    It’s possible all this falls apart. And it is possible that Trump will prove far worse, for example by allowing an annexation of the West Bank. But so far at least, Trump has actually been a lot better for the Palestinians than Biden. Biden and Harris fundamentally do not accept that Israel should ever be held accountable for anything.

    I don’t think Trump did the cease fire out of moral concerns; I’m sure it was purely self-serving on his part. But he was actually willing to use the US’s various carrots and sticks to force through a cease fire agreement. That is something Biden never had the balls to do.


  • Refusing to hold Democrats accountable is also voting for Fascism. If your vote is 100% reliable to the Dems, they don’t have to do anything to win your vote. And thus, they can completely ignore you and everything you care about. The Dems have moved so far to the right that modern Republican Fascism doesn’t seem completely unreasonable to many people by comparison. After all, Democrats firmly embraced what was far-right immigration policy just a few years ago. Democrats have made a hard turn to the right. This has forced Republicans to move even further right into Fascism. And if things continue down this path, with Democrats never being held accountable, eventually both Democrats and Republicans will be overtly Fascist.

    That is what happens if a party is never held accountable.


  • Where do you draw the line? The problem with “vote Blue no matter who” is that you give the Democrats more and more license to drift further and further right.

    Kamala thought wrongly that she could completely abandon the progressive base. She fully embraced conservative positioning on Israel, the US border, and other issues. She ran a right wing campaign, compromising issue after issue to appeal to centrist Republicans.

    Kamala’s degeneracy was only possible because of the attitude you espouse. Because as long as progressives are willing to “vote Blue no matter who,” there is nothing to prevent Democrats from drifting ever-further to the right.

    The modern political landscape exists precisely because of the fact that for decades, progressives have been voting “Blue no matter who.” Democrats haven’t had to work hard to secure their base; they’ve taken them for granted. This has allowed Democrats to slip further to the right. As Democrats have slipped further right, Republicans have responded by moving into outright Fascism.

    You are unwilling to ever hold Democrats accountable. And by doing so, you guarantee that eventually the presidential race will be “KKK vs neo-Nazis,” as Democrats themselves drift into Fascism.