SSC - 2020-05-20 - Open Thread 154.25 - Comments

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ONLY TEN MORE YEARS TILL THE TURCHIN CYCLE REVERSES! HANG IN THERE, PEOPLE!
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OPEN THREAD 154.25
P OS TED O N M AY 20 , 2020 BY A READ ER

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1,066 RESPONSES TO OPEN THREAD 154.25
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1. johan_larson says:
May 28, 2020 at 4:34 am ~new~
The aliens with the giant spaceships have wiped out all our electrical power plants. Pinpoint strikes
by orbital deathrays have destroyed them all, whether powered by coal, gas, hydro, solar, wind,
oil, geo-thermal, or nuclear reactors. All our gear that uses electrical power is still in place, as is
the electrical distribution grid. Batteries are untouched, as are household and building-sized
generators. But anything that can power even a neighborhood is gone.
How screwed are we?

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2. chrisminor0008 says:
May 24, 2020 at 4:05 pm ~new~
@John Schilling, this comment didn’t age well.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/05/open-thread-146-75/#comment-849971
3. SearchingSun says:
May 24, 2020 at 4:03 am ~new~
Anyone have experience with the FOCI biometric device (https://fociai.com/)? I sometimes have
trouble focusing when working at my computer, and this seems like it could help.
4. Uribe says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:41 pm ~new~
One pro-Trump argument I often hear but have never bought is he is less likely to start a war.
Now he’s withdrawn from Open Skies and it sounds like he has no intention of renewing START.
These aren’t the same as “starting a war” but he seems more likely than any president in decades
to prefer nuclear proliferation to treaties which prevent it.
What’s the argument that he’s likely to prevent nuclear proliferation? Is it wise of him to reject the
renewal of START?
o cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:51 pm ~new~
Neither open skies nor START has much to do with nuclear proliferation. nuclear proliferation
usually refers to new countries getting access to nuclear weapons, not existing nuclear armed
states building more of them.

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 Uribe says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:04 pm ~new~
Then let me use the less elegant “nuclear arms build-up” instead of proliferation.
 sfoil says:
May 24, 2020 at 11:31 am ~new~
One aspect of non-proliferation is that current nuclear states shouldn’t take actions that incentivize
non-nuclear states to build their own weapons. I don’t think either of these particular treaties
particularly matter in that regard, but I guess you could argue that it creates an atmosphere of
hostility by one of the big nuclear states or something.

o ana53294 says:
May 24, 2020 at 2:30 am ~new~
Producing more nuclear weapons is quite different from sending Americans to foreign lands so they
can return in body bags.

o Radu Floricica says:
May 24, 2020 at 5:42 am ~new~
The reflex counter argument here (based on things like the Paris Agreement) is that he actually
read the treaty and disagreed with the content. So there’s likely a discussion to be had on what the
treaties actually say they do, vs what the consequences really are. Not having read the treaties I
have no opinion either way.

o BBA says:
May 24, 2020 at 9:13 am ~new~
The argument was that he was less likely to start a war than Hillary Clinton, which could appear in
the dictionary under “not saying much.”

5. proyas says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:10 pm ~new~
Is there such a thing as “whole-body sign language”? Like a semaphore technique that involves
moving and/or repositioning your limbs and body so as to form letters or whole words that
someone else can see from a long distance?

o GearRatio says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:19 pm ~new~
I don’t mean to be snarky here, but isn’t that Semaphore? What’s semaphore not doing well in this
category?
 proyas says:
May 24, 2020 at 7:00 am ~new~
Semaphore requires that you have to little flags. What if you don’t have them?
 johan_larson says:
May 24, 2020 at 7:18 am ~new~
You just use your arms. The flags are just there to make the position of your arms clearer. They’re
not actually necessary.

 proyas says:
May 25, 2020 at 2:16 pm ~new~
You’re right!
Hide ↑
6. proyas says:
May 23, 2020 at 3:16 pm ~new~
Power armor is mildly feasible, mechwarriors are probably not, and giant Jaeger robots are
definitely not.
https://www.militantfuturist.com/what-color-is-your-power-armor/
o Le Maistre Chat says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:43 pm ~new~
So what are you supposed to do if Kaiju appear in your world? Use nukes on your own territory?
Pray to Jesus for a Christian moth Kaiju to defend you?

 Leafhopper says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:50 pm ~new~
Distribute humans equally across the surface of the Earth so it takes longer for them to
exterminate us.
Alternatively, if you want to get all boring and IRL-ish, conventional heavy weaponry.
 GearRatio says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:11 pm ~new~
Distribute humans equally across the surface of the Earth so it takes longer for them
to exterminate us.
The God-Emperor Leto would like a word with you about your limited vision.
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:13 pm ~new~
anti-ship missiles will fuck them right up.

 beleester says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:02 pm ~new~
Let them collapse under their own weight as the square-cube law asserts itself?
If that doesn’t happen, reverse-engineer whatever wonder-material allows the kaiju’s bones to
support that sort of weight, and make tank armor out of that stuff. (Bolos – the tank-lover’s
answer to giant robots!)

 Le Maistre Chat says:

May 23, 2020 at 7:09 pm ~new~
Let them collapse under their own weight [and]
If that doesn’t happen, reverse-engineer whatever wonder-material allows the
kaiju’s bones to support that sort of weight, and make tank armor out of that stuff.
Very X-COM. I think we have a winner.
 Jake R says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:15 pm ~new~
I like to joke that if kaiju existed we would hunt them to extinction for their bones. HE missiles to
the jugular ought to do the trick, assuming they have a jugular and can bleed out. The real
challenge is finding a way to join their bones together to build a space elevator.
 John Schilling says:

May 23, 2020 at 7:10 pm ~new~
Take whatever miracle-metal you imagine your giant Jaeger robots are made of, forge it into a nice
big kinetic-energy penetrator, strap it to a solid rocket motor for about Mach 6 terminal velocity,
laser guidance up front, hang the whole thing off an F-15E or if necessary an old B-52, then wait
for the opportune moment when the Kaiju mouths “what does that do?” in Japanese and show him
what that does.
Or, if you want to be boring about it, hit him from fifty miles away while he isn’t paying attention.
 jaimeastorga2000 says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:15 pm ~new~
Get everyone who can fight together and try to hold them off until a golden mute with long hair
and a beard shows up to drive them away?
Alternatively, just hit them with more dakka. It worked wonders during the Salvation War.
 Lambert says:
May 24, 2020 at 4:06 am ~new~
Crash a load of oil tankers into it then bomb them in the early afternoon.
With any luck, the burning oil slick will become a firestorm and consume all the oxygen nearby.
 anonymousskimmer says:
May 24, 2020 at 9:36 am ~new~
Be friends with them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zGIS-WWZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddkImTt6tyA
Failing that, parasites plus chemicals work quite well at taking down larger animals (see Bees vs.
verroa mites and nicotinoids). We may be a little large to be parasites, but our carnivorous pets
would probably do quite well.

o ltowel says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:23 pm ~new~
Gundam tries to dance around this by introducing magical particles which make radar and radio
communications worthless – so, that being said, are the robots still tall enough to make artillery or
fighter planes a better option even if they can’t communicate with spotters/other units?
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:28 pm ~new~
I mean, the kaiju are hundreds of feet tall. sit on top of a decent hill and you’ll be able to see them
from dozens of miles away. And what the observer sees, he can shout to the battery at the base of
the hill about.

 Watchman says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:50 pm ~new~
If only we had communication technologies that allowed people to coordinate armies prior to radio.
And if only our military were taught such things as contingency…
Its hard to see how humanity could fail to beat large monsters that appear in low numbers without
so many invocations of non-scientific powers that the question becomes how long before humans
figure out how to tap this power source as well?

May 24, 2020 at 6:00 am ~new~
There was a very underrated real mecha fight about a year ago. This is a random link, I don’t have
the energy right now to look for the interesting bit. But some very interesting things happened.
They scheduled a number of rounds, and by sheer accident and noobness… the first one was
actually for real. And scary. So scary they immediately reverted to a completely different format.
It’s a very small thing, less then 10 seconds – what the japanese did was to just rush the US
machine and punch it. But given that it’s literally the only real-ish mecha fight in existence, I think
it’s worth more talk than it got. For example it’s clearly in the “mech” category from your link, and
yet it’s nothing like described. If it ever gets to be used for real it’ll be a lot like the Tachikomas in
GitS, with leg wheels that are actually a lot more agile than a regular car (imagine you have a
meter long movable suspension) but can be used to also climb stairs, even if awkwardly.
 Lambert says:
May 24, 2020 at 9:47 am ~new~
Now I want to see an illegal underground BostonDynamics robot fight. Give them cordless angle
grinders or oxyacetylene torches to hold.

7. Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:
May 23, 2020 at 1:29 pm ~new~
A random one from the archives: Setting the default

A quick retreat to a simpler situation: suppose Adam really wants to keep all the
windows in the house open all winter with no heat on, so that the inside
temperature is 10F and the house is full of snow. Steve does not want to do this.
Both of them want to stay together for the sake of the kids, but this do-we-freeze-
our-house thing is really getting in the way.
This problem is easy. Adam, you’re crazy and your preferences are stupid and don’t
count. Suck it up and keep living with Steve at normal-person temperatures.
Another retreat in the other direction: suppose Adam wants to sometimes take a
shower, but for some reason the thought of Adam being in a shower pisses Steve off
and he refuses to allow it. Once again, both of them want to stay together for the
sake of the kids, but this can-Adam-take-a-shower thing is really getting in the way.
This problem is also easy. Steve, this time your preferences are stupid and don’t
count. Suck it up and let Adam take a shower.
I’m kind of surprised since I’m usually a 100% Scott fanboy, but I totally disagree with this. Weird
preferences shouldn’t automatically be dismissed in a relationship. If my GF wanted my to never
shower, I wouldn’t say “your preference is stupid and doesn’t count”. I would say “I love you and
wants to make you happy but you understand that not showering is kind of impractical?” And then
we could find a compromise. Maybe I could take baths instead of showering, or not shower for a
week during vacations or whatever.
What society think is “normal” has nothing to do with this, beyond setting the limits for practical
behavior (I need to clean somehow to keep my job). Like, in my mind there’s no difference
between my partner wanting me to do a “normal” thing (like doing an elaborate proposal) or
“unnormal” thing (like letting her go to kink clubs). In both cases I would do a cost-benefit of how-
much-discomfort-does-this-cause-me vs. how-much-happines-does she-get and figure out if it is
worth it or not. (Yes, I’ll do an elaborate proposal even if it isn’t really my thing, but I’m way too
jealous to let you near kink clubs.)

o A Definite Beta Guy says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:07 pm ~new~
What society thinks is “normal” matters a lot. I signed up for marriage with my wife for better or
worse till death do us part, but I signed up for a very specific set of quirks. And obviously people
change, but there’s a degree of change that each of us should be able to expect. That means
maybe I get really into model trains or my wife gets really into yoga. We can compromise on that.
But if she decides she wants to stop taking showers, that’s WAY beyond normal, and it’s my right
to shame her back into Normal People Behavior, and it’s the responsibility of her friends and family
to shame her back into Normal People Behavior.

 GearRatio says:
May 23, 2020 at 3:33 pm ~new~
In this scenario it’s not even that reasonable – She decided YOU aren’t allowed to take showers.
That’s potentially important – It’s not just that she wants to be cold, she’s demanding you also be
cold. She doesn’t want to be dirty, she wants you to be dirty.

 Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:32 pm ~new~
As I said, I don’t really see the difference here. My partner wants me to do something for their
happiness. The important factors to me are: 1. How uncomfortable is the thing they want me to
do? 2. How happy does it make them? Why does it matter if the thing is “normal” or not?
I think it’s reasonable to ask your partner to take actions in relationships. Sure, if my girlfriend just
demanded that I stopped taking showers it would be a big red flag. But if she brought up her
desire, motivated it (maybe it turns her on or she has a phobia of people slipping in the shower or
something) and was willing to find a compromise, than all is fine. Isn’t those kind of tradeoffs kind
of an important thing in relationships?

 GearRatio says:
May 24, 2020 at 7:29 am ~new~
@Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit
I think this is a situation that’s helped by looking at extremes. Starting with an extremely easy
one:
My partner has always been very turned on by me eating peaches; I like peaches,
but given my druthers would always have plums, which I like only slightly better
and traditionally always keep in the fridge. They are also legitimately distressed by
the thought that I won’t eat peaches, and terrified of plums. I’d rather just eat plums
and continue not eating peaches- isn’t she/he being unreasonable?
This is the kind of thing that works well with your “Well, don’t you care about him/her?” scenario.
We have a reasonable adjustment; one person is asking for a reasonable small adjustment that will
increase their happiness a ton at a minimal loss to the other person. This is normal and happens all
the time, and pretty much everyone agrees on this.

My partner, knowing I am terrified of peaches and find them nauseating, is
demanding I eat them. It’s somewhat reasonable because they are terrified of the
plums I usually eat and are super turned on by peaches, but I would be as distressed
by eating peaches as she is by me eating plums. Both my revulsion to peaches and
her need of them are recent, but genuine.
This is a whole different territory. Now, I’m not talking about a “I give a little, you get a lot”
situation – I’m talking about a situation where we both have reasonable, relatively equal claims to
utility that are opposed to each other. If one party wins, the other loses; they have opposed goals.
This is the first thing you aren’t acknowledging about this situation – you’ve said something like
“Well, why can’t I give on little things like showers? Don’t I love them?”. But there are situations
where both parties are being reasonable, but still aren’t dealing with little things that are easy to
negotiate about.
If you don’t acknowledge that peaches guy’s needs and preferences exist and can be important
too, then yeah, it’s easy to go “why won’t this asshole negotiate?”. But once he has equal human
value and can need things, it gets more complex.

My partner knows I can’t eat peaches due to an irrational but incurable fear of
stone fruit. It’s something we talked about at length before we got married. They
have recently decided they want me to eat peaches as a sort of sexual dominance
thing; they’d get off on the power. They have made clear that they will be unhappy
and unhappy with me if I don’t do this, and that they will die on this hill and ruin
our relationship over the issue.
Now we have a situation where one person’s utility is more legitimate than the other – they are
legitimately damaged by eating peaches, while the other person wants an illegitimate form of
control over them. Sub in this common real-world form of this:
Bob and Jane get married – Bob has never mentioned any unusual needs. Suddenly, Bob
decides Jane can never leave the house and cannot have any friends; he doesn’t like her
friends, and he’s afraid she might cheat on him. He demands she stay close to home at
all times, only leaving with his permission for necessities. Jane emotionally needs and
wants outside friends and feels like a prisoner.
Bob’s demand injures Jane, and Bob is changing the terms of their “deal” midstream. Bob might
very well want Jane to stay home a great deal, and he might derive pleasure and satisfaction from
having this level of control over Jane. Are you prepared to tell Jane “I don’t see what the problem
is – don’t you love Bob enough to compromise?”.
To have this conversation honestly, you must consider these things:
1. Is this an ask, or a demand?
Anything can be asked about, with the understanding that certain asks (example: “let’s buy rabbits
and kill them!”) reveal things about a person. But Scott’s examples weren’t simple asks moving
into negotiation – you had couples who were opposed to each other’s goals(one wanted to cheat on
their partner all of the sudden, and the other didn’t want to get cheated on, one was irrationally
angry when the other did a normal, necessary act and the other wanted to do the normal act). If
it’s a demand or a “I can’t be happy unless I have this, we can’t be together unless I have this”
ultimatum, it’s a different thing.
2. What does the utility balance look like?
If Bob absolutely loses doing X and Jane doesn’t win about X being done one way or the other or
wins in only a small amount, then Bob has a lot more negotiating power and his ask/demand is
more reasonable.
If Bob absolutely loses doing X and Jane absolutely loses if X isn’t done, then the “Just negotiate!
Didn’t you say you cared about this person?” stance loses all it’s power unless you devalue one of
the humans in the equation.
3. Was this a pre-existing thing both partners talked about, or is this all of the sudden?
Bob knows Jane is revulsed by being peed on and has known from when they started dating to well
past long-term commitment stages of the relationship and then suddenly demands Jane be peed
on or he will never be happy and will scorch their relationship. This is different than if they had
never talked about it, or if it came up at the beginning of the relationship when the cost to walk
away was much less.
Jane may be unwilling to change the terms of the “deal” here, but ignoring that Bob knew the
terms of the deal and agreed to them and is now unilaterally demanding a change is a mistake.
4. Does this damage the other person?
Demanding someone never takes showers is a thing that normally damages them – it makes them
less appealing to most other people, less healthy, makes them feel less clean, and makes them feel
worse about themselves. It decreases their ability to work in most situations.
Saying “Hey, baby, could you eat an apple for me?” when baby doesn’t have a huge problem with
apples is reasonable, and they should probably be willing to do it in a nice relationship. Saying
“Hey, baby, I think it would be hot if you really let your dental care go to an extreme degree” is
different. Ignoring that is a mistake and is willfully devaluing the needs of one person to
inappropriately focus on the needs of the other.
Overall, I think you might be ignoring a few or all of these to make your point. Yes, normal couples
negotiate and try to maximize their group happiness. No, it’s not always reasonable to expect
someone to give up ground to the other person in situations where they have equally reasonable
personal utility claims. Doubly so if one person’s demands are unreasonable or “changes to the
deal”.
I often make sacrifices for my wife and she often makes them for me because we care about each
other, but we are also both aware that there are limits to the demands we can make on each other
before the demander is simply being abusive, disregarding the other person, being unfair, and
should be resisted.
o Kaitian says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:31 pm ~new~
In a relationship, you probably wouldn’t phrase it as “your preference is stupid and doesn’t count”.
You’d try to figure out what exactly they’re trying to achieve by wanting to leave all windows open
in winter, and then find some way to give them that without actually doing the ridiculous thing. But
at the same time, there’s no way you’re actually leaving all the windows open.
The example about monogamy is supposed to be an edge case. In many social groups, it would be
“no way are you allowed to have sex with anyone else”, but in other groups allowing it would be
the expected outcome. I think that’s what Scott is trying to describe: certain options are just not
on the table unless all involved really want it.

May 23, 2020 at 11:36 pm ~new~
But my point is that to me, all options are on the table no matter if they are normal or not. If my
girlfriend wants to do X, I don’t care if it is normal or not. I just care about how much
effort/unhappiness it requires from me and how happy it makes her.

o yodelyak says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:17 pm ~new~
Scott writes long-form for a reason. It doesn’t seem to me your excerpt does any justice to what
he was arguing for, or against. It seems to me your quote has omitted his thesis, which I think is
pretty clearly and openly stated at the end. So, I’m not surprised you find you disagree with the
impression you appear to have formed of what he meant.
Maybe try directly challenging his thesis, as you would state it? I think it relates to the idea that he
has recently (as of that article) learned something which makes him more sympathetic to *both*
progressive culture warriors *and* traditionalist culture warriors. Maybe the specific thesis is
“culture wars sometimes need to be fought because culture provides the default.”
If you disagree with that as a general statement, explain what you mean. Maybe try imagining if
you noticed a cultural shift that was likely to make it harder for you to keep your job, and see if
that makes you sympathetic to the folks who see other cultural changes as important (whether in a
good way or a bad way).

May 23, 2020 at 11:52 pm ~new~
I don’t see how I’m doing Scott injustice. I’ll cite him at the end for you:
UR said that “the sovereign is the one who sets the null hypothesis”. Once you’ve let
the culture set a default – going to fetish clubs is a reasonable request, going to
fetish clubs is an unreasonable request – then given sufficiently good liberal norms
people who want to deviate from the default can absolutely do so, but as soon as a
conflict springs up the identity of the default option still matters a lot.
So Scotts thesis is that what is normal is important. If kink clubs are normal, Adam “wins” the
discussion by default. If kink clubs aren’t normal, “Steve” wins. And as you said, “culture wars
sometimes need to be fought because culture provides the default.”
And I disagree with this. In my relationship, I don’t care about the default. If my girlfriend wants
me to do X, I only care about the costs and benefits, not about if X is normal or not.
Sure maybe I should fight the culture war to make the relationship norms more like my ideal
relationship norms. But that seems to be an entirely different issue to me. Also, it isn’t obvious
what to fight for. It might be good for me to fight against my ideal norms if it increases the my
ratio of matches. So submissive men should probably not fight for a greater acceptance of
submissive men, since that could make the ratio of submissive men/dominant women even worse.
 Orion says:
May 25, 2020 at 2:02 pm ~new~
A culture might hold that “X is normal”, that “not-X is normal”, or that “both X and not-X are
normal.” You sound like a partisan for the third faction, what you might call a maximalist
normalizer. Normalizers still count as culture warriors, in my book. If you don’t feel like a warrior,
spend a few minutes thinking about how you feel about the people who insist that X is pathological
(or not-X is abnormal) and then get back to me.

o DavidFriedman says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:05 pm ~new~
I think what society thinks is normal is relevant to the implicit default rules of a contract, including
a marriage contract. The parties are free to contract around those rules, but common practice is
evidence of what they took it for granted was included if not contracted around.
Suppose I bet you ten dollars on a coin flip, and you win. I’m a poor loser, so I take a ten dollar
bill, shred it, and hand you the shreds. I’ve reneged on our agreement, even though we didn’t
specify that the ten dollars had to be undamaged.

May 23, 2020 at 11:56 pm ~new~
Sure. But marriage contracts can be broken. If my girlfriend wakes up one day and suddenly
decides that she wants me to do X, it doesn’t really matter if X is normal or not. If I don’t want to
do it and we can’t find a compromise, the relationship is over. It doesn’t really matter if X is
“normal” and my my girlfriends “wins by default”, or if X is unnormal and I “win by default”.

8. proyas says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:41 am ~new~
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-3, 1863. It’s traditionally thought of as the turning
point of the U.S. Civil War, and innumerable alternate history books and articles have been written
about what would have happened if the Confederates had won.
To help answer that question, it’s very useful to ask how many reinforcements were, in OTL,
marching towards Gettysburg, and would have arrived on July 4, 5 and 6. For example, even if the
South had won the battle, what would it have meant if, two days later, an extra 50,000 Union
troops arrived but no new Confederates arrived?

o cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:58 am ~new~
That depends a lot on how decisively the confederates won. IIRC, the forces brought to bear were
something like 100k union and 75k confederate troops. Both sides lost about 25k, with casualties
disproportionately high among the officers on both sides. So if the battle went just as it did, but the
union broke and ran at picket’s charge the confederates would have been in real trouble if a fresh
army had showed up, given they were licking their wounds and low on ammunition.
Of course, it’s very unlikely that that would have happened. First, because if the union army broke
and ran it’s unlikely that a smaller army would have been sent charging into the fray. Second,
because the odds of picket’s charge working were pretty minimal. more plausible scenarios usually
involve the confederate attack on the left flank on day 2 succeeding and forcing a union
withdrawal. If that victory is a rout, then the confederates are in a good position to defeat multiple
union forces in detail, but it’s not clear how long they can keep that up. Anything less than a rout,
though, and the situation for them gets rapidly worse as more and more union troops get pulled in
from all directions and they get lower on supplies and take more casualties.
o Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:01 pm ~new~
The Civil War was weird. The confederates didn’t want to be the bad guys and march into DC and
burn it down and/or try to hold the government hostage, etc. So they mostly just flailed around
attacking different union forces instead of going after any meaningful locations. Thus there weren’t
any big stakes to winning or losing at Gettysburg for either side. That just happened to be where
the momentum changed. Even if the south had crushed the north at Gettysburg, they were already
doomed to lose the war by that point.

 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:10 pm ~new~
By that late in the war, DC was ringed with forts and had 10s of thousands of men defending it on
top of the field armies. I don’t see how the confederates had a chance at taking it after a year or 2.
 Belisaurus Rex says:

May 23, 2020 at 12:14 pm ~new~
I had heard that DC at the time was the most fortified city on the planet.
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:28 pm ~new~
It was by the end of the war. I’m not sure how far along it was by 1863.
Hide ↑
 Watchman says:
May 24, 2020 at 12:04 am ~new~
Cassandra,
Probably already there. It’s not as if any other industrial nation was fortifying its capital at that
point (although I suspect several European cities were heavily defended).

Hide ↑
 AlphaGamma says:
May 24, 2020 at 4:56 am ~new~
In terms of heavily-fortified European cities, I think the most fortified at that point might have
been Luxembourg, although I’m not sure if that even counts as a city at that point- the garrison
may well have outnumbered the civilian population within the walls.
(Luxembourg at the time was part of the German Confederation and in personal union with the
Netherlands. The garrison were Prussian- the Dutch had the right to contribute troops to it, but
never did.)
Hide ↑
 Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:29 pm ~new~
Yeah, like I said, they were already doomed by that point. For the “storming DC” tactic to work,
they would have had to make the first move. But they didn’t want to conquer the north, they didn’t
see themselves as the villains, they just wanted the union to back down so they could part ways.
o John Schilling says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:35 pm ~new~

and innumerable alternate history books and articles have been written about what
would have happened if the Confederates had won.
They’d have rampaged around Pennsylvania and Maryland for a while, but the Union was by 1863
too far committed to the fight to give in for anything a Confederate army could have done along
those lines. Nor, with interior lines working in the Union’s favor for a change, could Confederate
logistics have supported an invasion that would have given them a materially decisive win.
The decisive battles of the Civil War were 1st Bull Run/Manassas, Forts Henry & Donelson, and the
Wilderness Campain. The first decided that the war was going to be long and bloody, that the
Confederates were capable of defending the Northern Virginia front well enough that there would
be no quick victory of marching into Richmond and a quick collapse of Confederate morale and
unity. That could have gone differently, but it didn’t. The second guaranteed that the long bloody
war would end with a Union victory by control of the inland waterways, opening a broad flank in
the west that the Confederates couldn’t defend. That also could have gone differently, but it didn’t.
The Wilderness campaign was the Confederate’s last chance to run out the clock to the 1864
presidential election with the sort of bloody repulse that might have displaced Lincoln and led to a
negotiated settlement. None of the other great battles were going to change the fundamental
geographic, logistical, and political constraints of the war.

 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:47 pm ~new~
I think I’d include the peninsular campaign over Forts Henry & Donelson. A victory in 1962 would
not have been exactly quick and bloodless, but it would have been a lot more so than what we got.
Reasonable people can disagree on which particular McClellan mistake was the most damning. I’d
probably say the aftermath of 7 pines, but it’s been a while since I read Sears.
 Evan Þ says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:00 pm ~new~
A victory in 1962 would not have been exactly quick and bloodless…
Uh, no, it wouldn’t have been.
But I agree the Peninsular Campaign was at least the fourth-most-significant point in the war. An
1862 victory would’ve been very different than the one we got in that the war would’ve finished
before emancipation.
 Lillian says:
May 23, 2020 at 3:30 pm ~new~
The Wilderness campaign was the Confederate’s last chance to run out the clock to
the 1864 presidential election with the sort of bloody repulse that might have
displaced Lincoln and led to a negotiated settlement. None of the other great battles
were going to change the fundamental geographic, logistical, and political
constraints of the war.
Lincoln’s actual plan for in the event he lost the election was to attempt to win the war during the
lame-duck part of the term, which before 1937 extends to March 4th. It is highly unlikely he would
have succeeded in actually doing so, but he could have had the war won enough that his successor
wouldn’t want to come to a negotiated settlement when he can instead have a victory and claim
the credit to boot.
Moreover, the successor in question would have been McClellan, who wasn’t even in favour of
ending the war through any means other than military vicotry. The reason he was running for
President – aside from political ambition – was that he felt he was treated unjustly by the Lincoln
administration and believed that he could do a better job of pursuing the war. It’s hard to posit a
scenario in which the Democrats nominate someone else, because the Copperheads already
succeeded in hijacking the convention away from the War Democrats and wrote a party platform
calling for immediate cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement, yet they could not unseat
McClellan. Which in turn resulted in the Democratic 1864 presidential campaign being marred by
the nominee having to publicly repudiate his own official platform.
So all that a bloody repulse at the Wilderness would have accomplished was give validity to
McClellan’s argument that in a time of war the United States needed an experienced military man
at the helm. Should he succeed in taking the helm, he would then continue to pursue the war to
victory, and for all his incompetence as a field commander, McClellan was a genuinely brilliant
army organizer. As long as he is not personally leading the armies in the field, and he won’t be, the
United States will still win the Civil War decisively. There is simply no political path to victory for
the Confederates via the 1864 election.


May 23, 2020 at 6:27 pm ~new~
The pop-cultural reduction of the American Civil War completely leaves out how fascinating being
fought through elections with both belligerents being representative democracies made the war.
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:53 pm ~new~
I could absolutely see McClellan trying to lead armies as president. I’m not saying he definitely
would have, I’m just saying it wouldn’t be out of character for him. Of course, by 1865, even Mac
probably couldn’t have convinced himself he was vastly outnumbered at every turn.

May 23, 2020 at 7:18 pm ~new~
I could absolutely see McClellan trying to lead armies as president. I’m not saying
he definitely would have, I’m just saying it wouldn’t be out of character for him.
Unfortunately, we know what happens when McClellan tries to lead an army, command an army, or
administer an army, and there’s no particular reason to assume he had gotten any better at it
since 1862. He’d certainly have wanted to be victorious over the Confederacy, but his excess of
caution would have precluded a quick victory and if we’re positing a Lincoln defeat in 1864 there’d
have been no further patience in the North for long wars.

Hide ↑
 DavidFriedman says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:11 pm ~new~
None of you think that if Jackson hadn’t been shot at Chancellorsville he would have succeeded in
forcing the surrender of something like half the Union army, and a defeat that big would have
resulted in the Union settling?

 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:29 pm ~new~
There is a lot of difference between half the army of the Potomac being forced to retreat and
surrendering. Given that the union forces at gettysburg knew that there were a lot of other union
troops around and marching towards them, surrender seems very unlikely.
Hide ↑
May 23, 2020 at 10:02 pm ~new~
I was talking about Chancellorseville, not Gettysburg. Hard to retreat when you are in dense
wilderness, on the enemy side of the river, and the enemy is behind you as well as in front of you.
Which was the point of what Jackson was trying to do.

Hide ↑
 spkaca says:
May 24, 2020 at 2:44 am ~new~
On Chancellorsville specifically, I think it unlikely. Even without getting shot, Jackson would have
found it difficult getting his troops to make a further attack at that point, from exhaustion if
nothing else. The fact he was (as I recall the circumstances) looking into the possibility of a night
attack shows the problem – night fighting on any scale was very rare in the Civil War, for good
reasons.
This leads to a more general point – the Army of the Potomac was so big that it was hard to control
effectively, but also so big it was hard to annihilate. And this also goes for all the major Union field
armies. Repeatedly, the Confederates gained tactical advantages or victories that they couldn’t
quite turn into total victories because there was just one more Union division or Corps in the way,
and because the Confederates were exhausted. I’m thinking here for instance of Stones River/
Murfreesboro and Chickamauga.
Of course, outnumbered armies can win victories of annihilation. Cannae happened, and we could
also talk about some of the German victories in 1940-41 similarly, or the British conquest of
Cyrenaica in 1940-1. But the circumstances have to be perfect. Thinking about my examples, they
were all cases where one side enjoyed a big advantage in mobility, and achieved encirclements.
That was very hard to do in the Civil War, where all the heavy fighting was done by footslogging
infantry. One curious factor in the Civil War was that although the Confederates had excellent
cavalry, it had strikingly little strategic effect – plenty of exciting raids etc, but not apparently
much of a factor on the field of the major battles – there was not, for instance, ever much idea on
either side that Confederate cavalry might achieve a decisive battlefield effect by getting into the
rear of Union positions. Why this was so I don’t understand, though I speculate it was because the
cavalry was not quite numerous enough.

Hide ↑
9. proyas says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:09 am ~new~
Jim Crow laws were pitched as being “separate but equal,” and while they may have been on
paper, in practice they never were. It makes me wonder: Were there any postbellum laws that
were explicitly racist, in that they singled out black people for inferior or degrading treatment?
Something like “A black person may not speak ill to a white,” with that polity not having a law that
said the opposite in the spirit of fairness?

o Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:16 am ~new~
There was the whole bus seat thing.

 Pandemic Shmandemic says:

May 23, 2020 at 11:21 am ~new~
Was the bus seat thing codified in law or just a ‘private bus company does what private bus
company feels serves its business interests better’ ? Same with privately-owned swimming pool
and drinking fountains on premises of private businesses ?

 Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:38 am ~new~
Good point. I don’t know what the statutes actually said, but I found this on wikipedia:
In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by
race. Conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal. According to
the law, no passenger would be required to move or give up their seat and stand if
the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by custom,
however, Montgomery bus drivers adopted the practice of requiring black riders to
move when there were no white-only seats left.[24]
The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites.
Buses had “colored” sections for black people generally in the rear of the bus,
although blacks composed more than 75% of the ridership. The sections were not
fixed but were determined by placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in
the middle rows until the white section filled; if more whites needed seats, blacks
were to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus.
Black people could not sit across the aisle in the same row as white people. The
driver could move the “colored” section sign, or remove it altogether. If white people
were already sitting in the front, black people had to board at the front to pay the
fare, then disembark and reenter through the rear door.[25]

May 23, 2020 at 11:53 am ~new~
A city ordinance is a law for this purpose, but it is carefully crafted to adhere to the separate-but-
equal presentation, doesn’t say black people have to go in the back and says that noone could be
forced to move. The equality-breaking part was left to the drivers and protected by lack of practical
recourse.
Hide ↑
 Buttle says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:51 pm ~new~
I don’t know about buses, but segregation on trains was by force of law. When an eastbound train
hit El Paso, “colored” and “white” sections were marked out by removable signs. To the point of the
original question, though, I very much doubt that inferiority of “colored” accomodations was in any
way required by law.

o zzzzort says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:37 pm ~new~
There are a smattering of times when they didn’t bother to put in the ass covering bit, e.g.:
“No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in
hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed.”
“The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set
apart or used for the burial of white persons.”
Real estate covenants also often explicitly excluded non-whites, whether or not you consider those
laws is another matter. They also weren’t confined to the Jim Crow south; the Romney’s had a
cottage in a neighborhood in michigan with a covenant until the 60’s.
How races were defined was also asymmetric, with white being e.g. >15/16th caucasian ancestry
and black being >1/16th african ancestry., e.g
“All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of
negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.”
 Buttle says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:54 pm ~new~
Real estate covenants also often explicitly excluded non-whites, whether or not you
consider those laws is another matter. They also weren’t confined to the Jim Crow
south; the Romney’s had a cottage in a neighborhood in michigan with a covenant
until the 60’s.
I remember my parents consulting a lawyer to figure out whether the racist covenant on the house
they bought in 1972, in New Mexico, was enforceable. By that time it was not. Real estate redlining
not too much prior was very much federal government policy, and extended to all states.
o Eugene Dawn says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:45 pm ~new~
Yes, there were. In general, the laws to look up are the so-called Black Codes; some of these were
racially neutral as written, or at least were partially so. But others explicitly targeted black people;
the most notorious is an example from Louisiana that forbade any “negro or freedman” from:
coming within the town limits without special permission, rent or keep a house within town limits,
hold public meetings, etc.

 Buttle says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:56 pm ~new~
There is also the example of Oregon, which shortly after attaining statehood banned black people
from moving in. I don’t think this particular law was ever enforceable, but the sentiment was clear.
o sharper13 says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:48 pm ~new~
One of the reasons the Democrats had to pass explicitly racist laws in the South is that many
businesses were fine serving blacks (a lot of the newer rich, the professional class, the
entrepreneurial class, etc… moving from the North were Republican, compared to the old Southern
Democrats) and thus would out compete more racist competition without a law forcing them to all
comply.
o Chalid says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:45 pm ~new~
I was rather strongly under the impression that anti-Chinese laws were explicitly racist. However,
after doing a bit of research, it’s hard for me to tell if a law against “Chinese” targeted only Chinese
nationals or not, which gives a bit of wiggle room.
e.g. here is the 1879 California State Constitution, which says e.g. that “no corporation now
existing or hereafter formed under the laws of this State, shall, after the adoption of this
Constitution, employ directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chinese or Mongolian.” I’d read it as
the ethnic group (especially “Mongolian,” why call out tiny Mongolia when Japan is probably
sending 100x as many immigrants as Mongolia) but you could make the case for it being about the
nationality.
I think the section on voting has to be specifically about the ethnic group. The people who aren’t
allowed to vote are: “no native of China, no idiot, insane person, or person convicted of any
infamous crime, and no person hereafter convicted of the embezzlement or misappropriation of
public money.”
10. proyas says:

May 23, 2020 at 9:57 am ~new~
I’ve heard that a big reason why the U.S. economy was so strong in the 1950s and 60s was
because the average age was younger, so there were relatively few old people and hence less
spending was devoted to Social Security, pensions, and healthcare spending. That meant more
money was freed up for things like the space program.
However, the overall dependency ratio–which counts children in addition to old people–was actually
lower in the 1960s than it is in the slower-growth modern times (ignoring the acute economic
shock of COVID-19).
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4038714-demographic-dividends-of-past-and-headwinds-will-
shape-us-growth-in-trump-era
So why did the economy grow faster in the 1960s even though the non-working share of the
American population was actually higher than today? Old people gobble up money, but so do kids.
[Note: I suspect the answer will be that an old person takes more money out of the economy than
a child, and if that’s the case, what’s the average per capita cost disparity?]
May 23, 2020 at 10:37 am ~new~

So why did the economy grow faster in the 1960s even though the non-working
share of the American population was actually higher than today?
You are assuming that the explanation you offered at first is correct, and just has to be tweaked to
take account of children. There are lots of other possible reasons for more rapid growth. Hong
Kong went from dirt poor to a higher per capita income than the U.K. during the same period in
which China went from dirt poor to dirt poor.

o Thomas Jorgensen says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:00 pm ~new~
Central banks responded to the oil crisis, and the inflation it caused by creating unemployment to
stop wage growth. This worked at stopping inflation, but since (real) wage growth is the very
definition of economic growth, they have been strangling economic growth across the west ever
since.
Dont believe me? Go read the announcement about why every interest rate tightening was
necessary for the past 20 years. There are archives of them. The words “overheated labor market”
will appear a very great deal. What that actually means is that unemployment was lower than the
central bank liked. They dont wait for actual inflation to show up, they kill booms when people get
jobs.
 m.alex.matt says:
May 24, 2020 at 1:14 am ~new~
Real wage growth is, by definition, not inflationary.
Central banks try to get out ahead of inflation during expansions because they began to
understand the role expectations play in inflation rates. If people expect inflation to go be going
up, this will, in part, make it go up. So, if they wait for inflation to start before raising rates, what
happens isn’t: See 4% inflation tick as unemployment drops to 3% or something, raise rates, have
inflation tamper down to 2% and unemployment says at 3%, what happens is: See 4% inflation
tick as unemployment drops to 3%, raise rates, inflation goes to 2% andunemployment goes to
5%. Or worse, they are over-cautious in their rate hike and inflation starts going up to 5 and 6%
anyway. Then they have to raise rates even further, meaning inflation drops to 2% but
unemployment goes to 7%.
They obviously want to avoid repeating the situation that occurred in the 1970’s where breaking
inflation required elevated unemployment. They’d like to hit that sweet spot where inflation
expectations remain dampened because the central bank’s inflation target is credible in the eyes of
the public and unemployment is allowed to stay at its natural level. This is NAIRU: The non-
accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.

 Thomas Jorgensen says:

May 24, 2020 at 2:21 am ~new~
Thing is.. I am morally certain that central banks have been undershooting that goal consistently.
You can tell this because there have been zero episodes of significant actual inflation occuring. If
central bank aim had been clustered around that rate, they would sometimes be overly doveish,
and that never happens. Implication: Their actual aimpoint is way to low.
May 23, 2020 at 1:56 pm ~new~
This is a question with no satisfying answer. You will get better results asking whether Black Holes
are surrounded by firewalls, because at least then you won’t have ideological trenches being dug
around that battlefield.

 zzzzort says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:39 pm ~new~
It seems you haven’t gone to the spicy black hole talks.

o sharper13 says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:10 pm ~new~

share of the American population was actually higher than today?
Because while the working/non-working share of the population influences economic growth, it’s a
minor influence at best?
Consider the labor force participation of women:

In 1950, the overall participation rate of women was 34 percent. (See table 4.) The
rate rose to 38 percent in 1960, 43 percent in 1970, 52 percent in 1980, and 58
percent in 1990 and reached 60 percent by 2000. The overall labor force
participation rate of women is projected to attain its highest level in 2010, at 62
percent.
Wouldn’t that offset any other demographic factors for the same time periods, at least in terms of
people in the workforce?
My off-the-cuff opinion would be that the biggest difference makers are going to be:
1. Law of diminishing returns in various technological areas (Internet is biggest exception to that)
2. Government consuming more and more of the productive economy via size increases (4x per
capita inflation adjusted spending and 3x higher revenue) and increased regulatory burden
o DeWitt says:
May 24, 2020 at 3:40 am ~new~
share of the American population was actually higher than today? Old people
gobble up money, but so do kids.
Kids can’t vote themselves into receiving a plethora of benefits the way old people can and do.
o Chalid says:
May 24, 2020 at 4:34 am ~new~
You are thinking about the wrong measure. Economic *growth* can come from *change* in the
employment/population ratio, not the level.

o anonymousskimmer says:
May 24, 2020 at 10:05 am ~new~
At what age would kids typically start working in the 60s?
Jobs for kids, even those jobs that are still legal for kids to take (
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor ), are disappearing. Most paper routes are now only
doable by adults (I delivered papers from 10 – 14 in the late 80s early 90s, and then again from 26
– 28 in the 00s). Landscaping companies cut lawns. I assume teenagers still babysit, but I could be
wrong about that.

 Dack says:
May 24, 2020 at 10:19 am ~new~
Kids are still able to be employed delivering newspapers according to the DoL. But I don’t recall
seeing it happen for 10-15 years. I’m guessing newspaper companies just decided to stop doing it
for some reason? Or is it that parents stopped letting preteen kids go around unescorted?
May 25, 2020 at 8:43 am ~new~
Yes to the first. Many newspapers shifted to an early morning schedule (papers delivered to the
door by 6 or 7 AM). With the loss of subscribers they also shifted to larger, more spread out routes
that necessitate a motor vehicle to deliver.

11. ana53294 says:

May 23, 2020 at 8:08 am ~new~
One of the positions I’ve seen stated on the Internet, and that thoroughly baffles me, is that those
who have a domestic worker should continue paying them despite not receiving any work. As a
moral, although not legal, obligation.
Like, why? No contract will state that, that’s for sure. If the government gives those who employ
domestic workers a subsidy to pay for the furloughed domestic workers (like in France), sure, I’d
say it’s your moral obligation to do the paperwork and pass along the money. But why should you
be paying your own money for cleaning your house while cleaning the house yourself/living in a
dirty house? I don’t think you should. Sure, you shouldn’t fire workers because they stopped
coming. And if you’ve got a contract with your domestic worker that gives them a certain amount
of paid vacation, you can pay them for what.
But why anybody should pay for work they don’t receive while the government is the one that has
decreed you shoudn’t be getting that work, I don’t see. If it’s the government’s fault, the
government should pay for that. Maybe next time they get the idiotic idea of locking an entire
country down, they’ll realize they don’t have the money for it, and they’re still paying for the
previous time they did that.
I can see why people would do that; those people are good employers. But that doesn’t mean
those who don’t do that are bad. They just don’t go above and beyond what they should do.
May 23, 2020 at 8:19 am ~new~
What does “should” mean? I think it would help to unpack it a bit. “Should” as in mandatory,
definitely not. “Should” as in “the right thing to do”, that’s at the very least a reasonable point to
discuss. “Should” as in “the world would be a better place if more people did it”, yeah, sure.
Could be people just make up a meaning for “should” and move on, without spelling it out.
 ana53294 says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:28 am ~new~
It is seen as a moral obligation by the comments I’ve read. Verbs like have to and must are thrown
around, too.
Not in the general the world would be better if everybody did that sense.
o Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:37 am ~new~
It seems hard to describe this as anything other than literal charity. And sure, you are obligated to
help out those near you—if your brother or sister were cash strapped and you could help, you
should, allowing some very important caveats. I think it’s harder to argue that for a domestic
worker you employ, though. If nothing else, some other people come first, like your own family
and close friends.

 ana53294 says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:42 am ~new~
Yes, exactly.
I do think you have a moral obligation to help those close to you when they’re in need, as long as it
doesn’t harm you or them: your parents, your siblings, spouse, children. A weaker one to help your
friends and members of your community.
A worker you hired is only due what any other worker is due by the law: fair pay for their work,
and, if negotiated and agreed, vacation and sick pay.
So I’m surprised by the number of people who see it as a duty.

 Radu Floricica says:

May 23, 2020 at 9:14 am ~new~
I kinda see the point.
Don’t get me wrong, I read one Ayn Rand book some 15 years ago, including the whole of John
Galt speech, so I’m now psychologically incapable of approving forced charity.
But relations go more commercial the larger the whole system is. Families live in literal
communism. Corporations in (sometime savage) capitalism. Small firms and yes, domestic workers
have some elements of feudalism: you count on your [maid] to get you out of deep shit when it’s
her day off, the kid is sick and the inlaws are at the airport. But a small firm owner also tends to
protect its employers. Lines are blurred. There is more loyalty involved. Sure, it’s far from being a
given and probably affected by local culture as well, but it is a thing.
It’s probably people with different experiences overusing their PoV. If you had a good long term
nanny growing up, you will throw around words like “must” and “have to”. If you have a
commercial relation with a cleaning lady that comes 3 times a week, you’ll be justifiably quite
perplexed.
 ana53294 says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:31 am ~new~
Well, if it is the kind of worker who is willing to work extra when you’re sick, or wait for you when
you’re stuck in traffic and the kids are waiting, sure, I’d say there is some degree of obligation, but
only because it goes both ways.

I don’t know where you get such domestic workers. The ones I’ve observed, they come, they work
their hours, regularly leave, and demand increases in pay. There is no reciprocality, so I see no
need for that.
I’d say that if workers are willing to work for no pay when the employer is going through tough
times, the employer has an obligation to pay for no work when the employees are going through
tough times. But only as long as it’s reciprocal.
I’ve seen way too many family businesses destroyed and families indebted due to giving personal
guarantees for their businesses to keep workers. Workers were never thankful for those sacrifices,
taking that as due.
So I think that small companies need to cut their losses too, when they are starting to lose money,
and fire workers.

Hide ↑

May 23, 2020 at 10:14 am ~new~
I don’t know where you get such domestic workers. The ones I’ve observed, they
come, they work their hours, regularly leave, and demand increases in pay.
Like I said, most likely different experiences leading to different opinions.
There’s also something else I thought of – moral foundations, yet again. Haidt says some people
(usually “the left”) see most things through a harm/care framework. Some probably more than
others. So if you take the more intense half of that and intersect it with people that have had the
good kind of experience with domestic help – you end up with a pretty vocal minority.
As far as my own opinion on this… I’m on board with using the “feudal” label and mindset. You
receive loyalty and trust, you have to offer loyalty and protection. It’s the natural response – if the
situation applies.
But it’s a strictly personal decision for each individual instance, and nobody’s business but those
involved. (I wasn’t kidding with that Ayn Rand quip btw, that speech is powerful stuff.)
Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:40 am ~new~
Once upon a time, when working relationships were longer, there was mutual loyalty between
employer and employee. The hypothetical person who cleaned my house for the past 10 years
might not be part of my family in the same sense as my sister, but they are still part of my
extended family in some sense, perhaps more so than a second cousin at 3 removes I’ve never
actually met.
This is a lot less true for whoever the cleaning service sent the week before the lockdown, who like
as not wasn’t the same person they sent the week before.
Your mileage clearly varies, or you only have the second kind of employeer-employee relationships.
 edmundgennings says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:20 am ~new~
Employees, particularly in the case of a long term domestic worker strike me as pretty high in
one’s order of charity. Now the details of the arrangement matter a lot. The live in butler in a
victorian estate who has worked for the family for his entire life is in a very different position than
the recently hired maid who works for 20 different families.
The Victorian butler comes in after one’s siblings and closest freinds but still relatively high.
Then again I think that the best way to cash out the Catholic Church’s teaching on just wage that
goes beyond paying the market rate and avoiding fraud is through the order of charity.
 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:31 am ~new~
Yeah, I think that’s all true as far as it goes. Except that it sounds like the cases Ana is talking
about are more like the hired maid who works for several families than the live-in butler? After all,
the live-in butler can stay home and do his job. 😉

o Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:58 am ~new~
I don’t know if “should” enters into it, but some people I talked to told me that they were
continuing to pay for various services they weren’t receiving as a sort of retainer. In other words,
they are saying (with money) “Don’t give away my spot in the daycare/martial arts studio/house
cleaning schedule/etc.”
If you consider your cleaning person/etc fungible, then no I wouldn’t expect you to continue paying
them. But if you want that specific person back when this is all over, it may make sense to give
them some money. Otherwise, they may already have a full schedule when you are ready for them
to come back, or they may have even had to go find different employment entirely.
 ana53294 says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:35 am ~new~
I can see how paying the nanny who takes care of your children and has good chemistry with them
makes sense. I don’t think it’s an obligation, though.

 dndnrsn says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:51 pm ~new~
This is how I feel. You pay for things you aren’t getting any more, or pay some fraction, in the
hopes that it increases the chances that the good or service will still be available when this is over.
My gym gave people the option of putting memberships on hold, but indicated that it would be
appreciated if those who could afford it didn’t. I want there to be a gym when this is over, so I
didn’t put my membership on hold.

May 23, 2020 at 9:49 am ~new~
There’s a plausible argument that pay (possibly at reduced rates) during temporary externally-
forced work stoppages is implied by a normal agreement of employment unless explicitly agreed
otherwise. I’d certainly consider it a breach of trust if my employer suddenly told me to take a
week off without pay. As with any other implied agreement, it’s probably unenforceable, but it may
be morally obligatory in the same way that e.g. tipping for good service is morally obligatory once
you’ve ordered a meal at a restaurant in a customary-tipping culture. If, on the other hand, your
employees have insisted that you hammer out an explicit contract with their union rep under
penalty of strike, then they can’t really expect anything beyond what’s written in that contract.
It is certainly morally virtuous to do so where practical, and it’s practically advantageous to do so
where you expect the employment relationship to continue. The fuzzy parts are, A: whether the
coronavirus lockdown counts as a “brief work stoppage” and B: whether domestic workers are
employees or contractors. As a rough guideline, if you expect the same exact individual to be
cleaning your house when this is over, you’ll probably want to keep them on retainer in the interim.
o flauschi says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:53 am ~new~
I continue to get paid 100% from university while working from home (or instead clean my flat,
nobody cares). My cleaner (who has worked for me for about 5 years now) lost basically all her
income and still had to pay rent. I paid her 50% of what she would usually get.
i feel morally obliged to do so (and maybe to pay more than that, but obviously i am too cheap for
that). i am not terribly interested in why i feel that moral obligation (i don’t claim my moral feelings
follow any consistent system, and generally find it a bit silly if people pretend that theirs do). but i
assume it is the combination of closeness/familiarity (i know the person) and fairness (why should i
get paid and not she?) there may be lots of people or causes more worthy of donations, but as i
said i am definitely not a utiliarist, and none of my immediate family or friends needs my financial
assistence.
o Andrew Hunter says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:36 am ~new~
“Morally obligated” is a strong claim; that I’m not sure of.
That said: the woman who cleans my apartment does a great job, never causes me trouble,
generally makes me happier and saner, and does all of it for an amount of money that I will not
miss. I have positive social feelings towards her, and I’d like her to think well of me. So I’m paying
her. In my case, I think this is the right thing to do, as frustrating as it is.
(My ex girlfriend is instead just hiring her to come over and clean her apartment, which makes me
feel a bit screwd over for paying something for nothing…)

May 23, 2020 at 8:18 pm ~new~
We are continuing to pay the family that normally comes over once a week for a couple of hours to
clean our house. Part of the reason is that we told them to stop coming before there was an official
lockdown, since we had decided to self-quarantine. So at that point it was a matter of our telling
them not to come, contrary to a well established pattern of employment.
In addition to which, they are nice people and we can easily afford it.
I don’t think we were or should have been legally obliged to continue pay them, it felt like the right
thing to do.
May 23, 2020 at 10:44 am ~new~
I think the underlying intuition comes from the idea that servants are junior members of your
family, for whom you are responsible. If circumstances beyond the control of either of you make
the usual division of labor impossible, it’s still your responsibility to see that they don’t suffer, at
least if you can manage it without suffering yourself.
That intuition is less compelling when the “servant” is someone who spends a few hours a week in
your house, and does the same for other customers, but it’s still there.
Consider, as an analogous case, the widespread idea that people in America should care about the
American poor much more than they care about foreign poor, and similarly for other countries.
Your fellow citizens are part of a sort of very extended family, and all of us feel somewhat
responsible for making sure that our fellow members are all right. That explains why people argue
for immigration restrictions to protect the American poor, even if they realize that the immigrants
who would come to compete with the American poor are much poorer and would gain much more
than the American poor would lose.
It makes much less sense in terms of free market relations among people, but our moral intuitions
have not entire caught up.

o psmith says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:52 am ~new~
Noblesse oblige.
 A Definite Beta Guy says:

May 23, 2020 at 2:19 pm ~new~
Just this. If you’re hiring domestic workers, maybe you have an obligation to start giving a little
something back.
 Conrad Honcho says:

May 23, 2020 at 6:52 pm ~new~
Also, if your state is open, go out to a restaurant and tip heavily.

 Evan Þ says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:01 pm ~new~
Even if it isn’t open, you can order takeout and tip heavily.
May 23, 2020 at 10:52 am ~new~

But that doesn’t mean those who don’t do that are bad. They just don’t go above and
beyond what they should do.
It does mean they are bad to those who think of this in the moral way you say they are speaking.
Plenty of people think businesses in general are morally evil when they unilaterally make
employment decisions- due to the implicit power differential# in the employer-employee model. If
a person thinks this way morally, then it’s natural to extend the moral framework to domestic
workers.
I presume these people would be morally okay with a mutual renegotiation of terms between the
employer and domestic servant (e.g. no work, so I’ll pay you a smaller retainer to immediately
come back to work when I need it, what retainer would be good for you?).
In terms of house cleaners and landscapers my main issue is how much more unkempt* the place
will be when this is over and the employer wants cleaning done again. This will take extra time and
labor on the part of the cleaner/landscaper. I hope the employer pays appropriately for this extra
work. For other kinds of servants there are still the ramp up requirements after a long break.
# – In the rare occasion where an employee wields more power than the employer I think people
with this morality would think badly of the employee for leaving their employer in the lurch.
* – If you can keep your place better than a person who specializes in this job, you might think
about hiring someone else.

o Doctor Mist says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:01 am ~new~
I’ve been dropping my barber the price of a haircut every month, mostly because I’ve known him
for a long time and I shudder when I imagine having an honorable line of work that is flat illegal to
pursue. I have no idea whether I am making any difference to his life: He thanks me for my
generosity, but it’s got to be a drop in the bucket compared to his expenses.
I don’t have any local restaurant that I have felt particularly bonded to, so while I am getting
occasional take-out deliveries, I have been mostly unmoved by exhortations to patronize
restaurants so they will survive.
Regarding:
If it’s the government’s fault, the government should pay for that.
It’s rare for me to feel charitably toward the government, but this is one situation where there are
no good answers. The U.S. government is spending trillions of dollars that they don’t have and
apparently aren’t even trying to borrow (who would they borrow it from?), just making it up out of
air, and from what I hear it’s not really enough. It may be judged afterwards, or by some, now,
that the near-universal lockdowns were a stupid idea, but it sure as hell didn’t strike me that way
in early March. So I’m reluctant to try to analyze the situation in terms of “fault”. But I agree, what
I give my barber is charity, not an obligation — except to the extent that he is in a bad place and I
am fortunate to be in a good place.

12. Deiseach says:

May 23, 2020 at 6:04 am ~new~
Well, my anonymous Tumblr stalker has popped up again *waves “hello!” to him/her/them/it* with
a pippin of a question regarding the manifold wants and needs of a woman:

Is the reason you decided to be asexual that none of your partners was ever man
enough to make you feel like a woman in bed?
This is so sweetly jejeune, so artlessly callow, so candidly simple-minded, a view of How That Sex
Thing Works For Women, that I’m still chortling.
My dear interlocutor, should you be lurking, I told you there and I’m telling you here – saving that
you’re the lovechild of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis and your godfather was Frank Harris, you
are too young and unworldly for an unexpurgated, full and frank answer to that 😀
o Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:55 am ~new~

Is the reason you decided to be asexual that none of your partners was ever man
enough to make you feel like a woman in bed?
He used the singular! I’m impressed. Few stalkers have the presence of mind these days to
compose their threats, love letters, insults, entreaties, jeremiads, cris de coeur, or philippics in
correct English. It redeems just a little the otherwise awkward sentence structure.
 Deiseach says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:14 am ~new~
Well, such command of the language is nothing less than I would expect from someone who I
strongly suspect followed along after me from here or the sub-reddit 🙂
One does presuppose a certain facility and ease, a set of high standards, in one’s stalkers if they
are drawn from the pool of this community! Anything less would not be worth the candle 😀
 Aftagley says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:25 am ~new~
Wait, none is singular? I totally would have “were”d there. Basic Googleing shows me that none as
a plural is synonymous as “not any” turning this phrase into “not any of your partners were…”
which scans correctly.
On the other hand, none a singular synonymizes to “no part” which implies that the individual parts
of the lovers were insufficiently manly which… huh, actually works also.
 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:46 am ~new~
The singular means “not one,” which works here. Cf. the etymology. 🙂
 Aftagley says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:53 am ~new~
Right, that was a long walk to what was, in retrospect, kind of a stupid joke.
Just so I stop doubting my grammatical sanity, the plural form would also be correct, though,
right?
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:58 am ~new~
Yeah, plural would be fine, certainly in vernacular English. I just noticed it because hardly anyone
ever does it anymore, but should someone go all prescriptivist, that’s what they’d prescribe.
Hide ↑
o Pandemic Shmandemic says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:11 pm ~new~
How does one even stalk on tumblr – a site designed for maximum navigational confusion ?
 Deiseach says:
May 24, 2020 at 5:45 am ~new~
that’s why I think my little friend has followed me over from here or connected places, though I’m
also constantly stumbling over people on Tumblr who I know from elsewhere and going “oh hey,
it’s you!” 🙂
I think it’s mostly to do with associated interests; if you and Elsie were part of the Fungi Fandom
on some other site, then eventually if both you and Elsie are on Tumblr, and following Fun With
Fungus blogs, you’re likely to meet once more.

13. Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:

May 23, 2020 at 3:38 am ~new~
Does anyone know any good WW1/WW2 British/American patriotic song about victory and fighting
the good fight? I want something simple, upbeat and easy to sing while walking. Maybe something
like The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done, but with a more marching/chanting feel. Most
other things I can find is either sad or about “my baby across the ocean” or whatever.
Reason I’m asking is that I’ve got Tomorrow Belongs to Me stuck in my head and I’d like to replace
it with something that is 1. authentic and 2. from the not-evil side.

o johan_larson says:
May 23, 2020 at 3:49 am ~new~
The Battle Hymn of the Republic is older, but plenty pugnacious.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/02/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic/308052/
Or perhaps the Marines’ Hymn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marines%27_Hymn
May 23, 2020 at 4:01 am ~new~
Thanks! These are great!
If anyone’s interested I also just found The washing on the Siegfried Line which is silly and very
British, but quite catchy.

 Aftagley says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:41 am ~new~
Wait, did you just hear the battle hymn of the republic for the first time?
If so, I am incredibly jealous. That song gives me goosebumps every time I listen.
May 23, 2020 at 8:02 am ~new~
I guess I’ve heard the tune before but never really listened to the lyrics. But I got it on repeat right
now. And it really gives the chills. 🙂

Hide ↑
 DarkTigger says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:07 am ~new~
Seriously I only knew the other songs sung to this melody (“John Brown”, and “Blood on the
Riser”)
Hide ↑
 SamChevre says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:43 am ~new~
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was borne across the sea,
With a glory in His visage that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us die kill to make men free,
Out God is marching on.
It’s unforgettable words and a very catchy tune, but to me it will always be the jihadi hymn.
Hide ↑
 Robin says:
May 25, 2020 at 3:24 am ~new~
@DarkTigger You don’t have abecedarian children?
But seriously, I’ve grown fond of the song through the film The Hallelujah Trail.
Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:14 am ~new~
I think of the battle hymn of as the anthem of blue tribe going to war, written at a time when they
made absolutely no bones about what they were doing and their motives for doing it. It really is
magnificent, especially when they don’t chicken out on the last line. “As he died to make men holy,
let us die to make men free,” is one of the noblest sentiments ever expressed.

May 23, 2020 at 6:35 pm ~new~
The Battle Hymn is such thoroughly “blue tribe” Christianity that State Atheism didn’t prevent it
from being a choir standard in the Soviet Union.

 Bergil says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:30 pm ~new~
It should be mentioned the the Battle Hymn of the Republic is based on “John Brown’s Body”. If
you only know “John Brown’s Body” from the chorus (as I did, from old cartoons) you might think
it’s a funny song, but the full version is, in my opinion, even more awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSn3NddwFQ
I don’t know why they changed it, unless it was in some way too spicy for the 19th century.
 littskad says:
May 24, 2020 at 12:29 pm ~new~
The tune of “John Brown’s Body”/”Battle Hymn of the Republic” was based on a song “Say,
Brothers, Will You Meet Us?” which was sung in the camp meeting circuit in the United States in
the late 1700’s. There’s an interesting article in the New England Magazine of 1890 on the origins
of “John Brown’s Body” (available here, for instance). Julia Ward Howe apparently wrote the lyrics
for “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the suggestion of a reverend friend after they heard soldiers
singing “John Brown’s Body”. She claimed that she woke up the next morning with the lyrics whole
in her mind and immediately wrote them down.

o AlphaGamma says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:08 am ~new~
While also significantly older, try Heart of Oak.

We ne’er see our foes but we wish them to stay,
They always see us and they wish us away,
If they run, why, we follow and run them ashore,
For if they won’t fight us, what can we do more?
May 23, 2020 at 8:40 am ~new~
Hearth of Oak is good at what it does, but it’s kind of campy (sorry brits!) for my purposes. Also
not that melodic.

o Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:47 am ~new~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Field_Artillery_March
AKA Caissons Go Rolling Along

May 23, 2020 at 8:40 am ~new~
Good one! Thanks!

 CatCube says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:37 am ~new~
The Army Song (the march sung at the end of all US Army functions) was derived from it.
o edmundgennings says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:54 am ~new~
WW1 and WW2 seem oddly lacking in songs like this. There are more songs about the heroic
resistance to the Hanoverian Usurpation (Jacobite risings) though many of these songs were
written after the fact, than the world wars.
The Ballad of Audie Murphy is probably the best example of your looking for but it is too
complicated musically to fully replicate, There will always Be An England suffers from the same
problem.
But there are lot of good historical songs which match your description much better. Heart of Oak
as mentioned before.
The British Grenadiers is fun.
The British Light Infantry is particularly amusing for the American Tory but the loyalist subtext is
sufficiently vague that it is possible that it does not exist.
But generally civil wars- wars of secession seem to generate a far better musical legacy than
foreign wars.
May 23, 2020 at 9:13 am ~new~
Those British songs are a bit too old-fashioned to suit my purpose. They are more jolly than
inspiring to me.
 psmith says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:55 am ~new~
there are lot of good historical songs which match your description much better
In this vein, I’ve been known to get a few verses of Garryowen stuck in my head on long walks. Or
“Men Of Harlech.”
 Nornagest says:
May 26, 2020 at 9:29 pm ~new~
There’s so many different versions of “Men of Harlech” that it’s more a tune and a theme than a
song as such. The most famous is the one from Zulu, but this one is my favorite.
o Algirdas Vėlyvis says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:01 am ~new~
Too bad you specify British/American (on account of being able to understand lyrics?). If you were
to expand you criteria to include Russian, that would neatly include The Sacred War.
(A bonus point: you can use lines “The rapists and the plunderers, / The torturers of people” to
calibrate your irony meter settings at 11, given the conduct of Russians themselves during the
war.)
If we stick to English-only, I’m surprised no one mentioned Praise the Lord and Pass the
Ammunition yet. I personally prefer Serj Tankian’s version 😉

May 23, 2020 at 9:15 am ~new~
The Russians sure knew how to make plain patriotic music for the common man. But I’m not sure
that they count as on the not-evil side. :/
Second song was exactly what I’m looking for! Thanks!

 ana53294 says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:16 am ~new~
I don’t know if the Russian song counts as “not evil”.

o cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:38 am ~new~
The soviet (now russian) anthem is amazing, and I can’t hear it without wanting to run up a red
flag and start slitting throats. If you’re not keen on praising great Stalin, there are a few sets of
lyrics to choose from, and I’m sure you could come up with your own. Also, the history of the
anthem is an excellent soviet union joke just on its own. the original lyrics were condemned in
1956, but not replaced until 1977, so for 20 years you were supposed to just sort of hum along
with the tune.

 AlphaGamma says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:38 pm ~new~
the original lyrics were condemned in 1956, but not replaced until 1977, so for 20
years you were supposed to just sort of hum along with the tune.
This is still the case in Spain. La Marcha Real had no lyrics when first composed, but various sets
were added later. It has officially had no lyrics since 1978.

o SamChevre says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:50 am ~new~
Might not be quite what you’re looking for, but Over There for WW1 and Praise the Lord and Pass
the Ammunition for WW2 probably fit.
Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy (for WW2) is very American, but not particularly patriotic.
o S_J says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:32 pm ~new~

There was a song from WW1 era that made it into a patriotic movie during WW2.
It’s titled Over There.
Does that count as a victorious song, or similar as a marching/war song?

o AG says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:19 pm ~new~
Pshhh, who needs lyrics? Humming Stars and Stripes worked great on my last hike. I actually put
together a playlist of marches for this purpose.
On the slightly comedic side, you’ve got this from film musical It’s Always Fair Weather, but that
“March April May June” bit hits differently now…
You could also go with whistling the Colonel Bogey March.
And then there’s John Williams Is The Man.
And finally, you can completely muddle any connection between lyrics and meaning by going with
Aida’s triumphal march, featuring Italian words about Egypt beating Thebes, even though that
kinda violates the “from the not-evil side” requirement. But that’s why going with foreign language
lyrics is great.
I mean, if actual squadrons can use Barbie Girl as their marching chant, why not?
o Silverlock says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:21 pm ~new~
There’s always It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.

o Beck says:
May 24, 2020 at 8:27 am ~new~
Sink the Bismarck by Johnny Horton maybe.

o Robin says:
May 25, 2020 at 3:29 am ~new~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball
To the melody known as the River Kwai March, perfect to be stuck in the head.
o borkblue says:
May 26, 2020 at 8:09 pm ~new~
Ballad of Rodger Young

May 23, 2020 at 2:55 am ~new~
To be a member of the Megadeath Club, you must be principally responsible for at least one million
deaths. The club considers both the total number of deaths and the applicant’s degree of actual
influence over the events or policies that led to those deaths, when making membership decisions.
Who are the living members of this most exclusive of clubs?

o Imsoindiethatmyblogdontfit says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:26 am ~new~
Most leaders and ex-leaders of the major powers could probably have saved a couple of millions of
lives trough effective charity. But I wouldn’t really count their degree of actual influence to be big
enough, since politicians typically are doing lots of stuff. That leaves us with colossal fuck-ups.
The Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are big enough to have clearly caused a
million deaths and fit quite squarely in the “colossal fuck-up” category, but the initial leaders are
dead. Kennedy and Brezhnev would be good candidates if they were alive, though you could
debate their degree of culpability. I guess we don’t take points of for good intentions?
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t really seem to have the numbers to make a million
deaths, unless you count hard-to-define second order effects. Wikipedia claims that the “War on
Terror” could have more than a million deaths, so maybe we can blame Bush for messing up the
9/11 response. Kind of hard to debate a counterfactual, but I can see a million lives saved by not
invading in the ME and spending the TSA money on malaria nets. But is that realistic?
The Second Sudanese Civil War and the Second Congo War are quite recent and seem to have
death tolls well above a million. I don’t know much about these conflicts but I’m guessing the
responsibility for them should be shared by a diffuse group of guerilla leaders and juntas, so no-
one gets to enter the MD Club?
About 700.000 Americans have died from AIDS. I knew the initial response to it was somewhere
between lacking and a total disaster, but I wouldn’t blame it all on Reagan (who is dead, anyway).
This got awfully US centric, but I guess that’s the streetlight effect. Russia and China are probably
the best places to look. But then it gets kind of hard again. E.g. Would democracy in China cause
prosperity equal to a million lives saved, or would it cause a civil war? How much could Putin really
increase the wellbeing of the Russians?

 Ninety-Three says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:15 am ~new~
E.g. Would democracy in China cause prosperity equal to a million lives saved, or
would it cause a civil war?
I’m not sure this is sort of counterfactual is the right way to measure things. Consider the fictional
country of Murderstan, where the West Murderians hate the ethnically distinct minority of East
Murderians. In every universe without a foreign invasion to impose outside government,
Murderstan ends up appointing a genocidal government based on popular support for its “Kill all
the East Murderians” platform.
The sort of logic you’re using seems to imply that whoever ends up overseeing the genocide
doesn’t get into the Megadeath Club, because unless he managed to rack up a million deaths more
than the marginal replacement dictator, he’s just serving market demand and so in a sense didn’t
really cause those deaths. Viewed through a certain lens this seems perfectly reasonable to me:
the West Murderian electorate is really what killed those people and Adolf Stalin-Zedong was just
following orders. But this seems to obviously be a different lens than the one through which we
normally talk about whether or not someone is responsible for a death. It seems intuitively weird to
use a framing where we can say that political leaders don’t have great influence over their policies.
May 23, 2020 at 5:22 am ~new~
Good point. Then it gets kind of hard to get any Chinese and Russians into the club? They haven’t
caused any major wars. The Uyghurs are mistreated but not to the count of millions of deaths as
far as I can see. China executes a couple of thousand people a year, which isn’t enough to add up.
Another runner-up is North Korea.

May 23, 2020 at 7:41 am ~new~
There are twenty-eight million people in Venezuela, I wouldn’t be shocked if you told me Maduro’s
economic illiteracy has lowered standards of living enough to kill 4% of the population over his
seven year term, and his terrible policies don’t seem like an inevitable response to popular
sentiment.
Hide ↑
o Oldio says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:51 am ~new~
If Covid-19 turns out to have originated in the wuhan biolab, would whoever decided to cut corners
on safety procedures that week count?

May 23, 2020 at 7:42 am ~new~
If it didn’t come from a lab, can we nominate the guy who ate that bat?
May 23, 2020 at 8:09 am ~new~
If he or she died, they should get the Darwin Award, and The Golden End of the Food Chain.
May 23, 2020 at 8:37 am ~new~
Not a million deaths yet, bat guy will have to wait a couple of months.

May 23, 2020 at 8:57 am ~new~
Currently Covid is at 341k and over the peak. It will probably reach 1 mil eventually, but it’s not a
given. And I’d really really want to see numbers of lives saved from reduced pollution. Problem is,
those non-deaths are really hard to count – who’s gonna track 3% less Alzheimer in the next 50
years?
May 23, 2020 at 9:02 am ~new~
If we’re counting reduced pollution for lives saved, we also have to count reduced economic activity
leading to lower standards of living and lives lost. I find it pretty plausible that the recession COVID
is causing kills more people than respiratory failure.


May 23, 2020 at 9:35 am ~new~
I don’t know. I’m fully in favor of reducing lockdowns now, and I’m sortof arguing against it but…
are most countries really at the level where economic activity is coupled with survival? I’d think we
passed that, sometime in the last 100 years. I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no, but I am
saying that Occam is asking for arguments for increased deaths.

Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:46 am ~new~
@Radu Floricica says:
We know that GDP is (weakly) correlated with LE and the money poured into covid related stuff is
money that can’t be spent on other things. If a year from now GDP is lower than it would have
been if we toughed it out and we have billions of dollars in masks and respirators lying around that
no one needs, that is in theory going to lead to earlier deaths.
Of course, lockdown is probably also leading to fewer non-corona related deaths by, say, reducing
the number of car crashes. I’d actually be very curious to see how the raw death rate has changed.
Hide ↑
o Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:11 am ~new~
Kennedy, O’Connor, Souter.

 Evan Þ says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:10 pm ~new~
+46,413,319
 Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:27 pm ~new~
9,282,663.8 and counting each. (Assuming we also attribute one fifth to the already deceased
Blackmun and Stevens.)

 Noah says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:05 pm ~new~
Are you counting all abortions in the US? Because even if states were permitted to ban abortions,
many wouldn’t (setting aside what the rate of illegal abortions would be; I haven’t seen good
attempts to estimate this, though they doubtless exist).

 Watchman says:
May 24, 2020 at 1:31 am ~new~
I kind of doubt they do, as that would imply the abortion argument has been conducted in goid-
enough faith that one group or another has shifted from its all-or-nothing position. I don’t think
either side would look kindly on that sort of defection….

 Dack says:
May 24, 2020 at 7:04 am ~new~
Are you counting all abortions in the US? Because even if states were permitted to
ban abortions, many wouldn’t (setting aside what the rate of illegal abortions
would be; I haven’t seen good attempts to estimate this, though they doubtless
exist).
These are fair criticisms; however, they are still firmly in the megadeath club even if we only count
the total number since 1992.
24,957,003 total 1992-2020 (estimated numbers 2017-2020)
Let’s suppose that about 40% of those don’t happen due to red state bans.
That’s still 9,982,801. Almost 2 million on each justice’s doorstep.

o salvorhardin says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:09 am ~new~
Henry Kissinger.
May 23, 2020 at 10:50 am ~new~
Is there anyone still alive who could be blamed for the Biafran war? I think that’s estimated to have
killed about a million Biafrans and some smaller number of Nigerians.
Similar question for the various Hutu/Tutsi conflicts, one of those claimed to be responsible having
recently been arrested. Anyone surviving from the Khmer Rouge who was high enough up to be
credited with a significant fraction of their body count?
The famine during the Great Leap Forward killed many millions, I think the estimate I have seen is
about thirty. Mao is dead, but there might be someone who you could claim was responsible for a
few percent of that still alive.
15. Orion says:

May 22, 2020 at 7:52 pm ~new~
I have a hazy recollection of seeing someone post on a recent open thread trying to recruit players
to test a superhero-themed RPG they’d designed. I went back to look for the posts just now and
can’t seem to find them. I was surprised to see them, in any event, because this hadn’t occurred to
me as an appropriate venue to advertise such a thing. Does anyone else remember seeing them?
Were they in fact deleted? If this is in fact a venue where one could recruit players, I’d be inclined
to do some recruiting myself.

o Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:14 pm ~new~
It was here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/17/open-thread-154/#comment-897980

16. Genarment says:

May 22, 2020 at 4:24 pm ~new~
Question for any history buffs in the audience.
Many fictions nowadays try to supply sympathetic or convincing villains. Example: the movie The
Rock (1996), in which a celebrated general takes over a prison to force the government to
acknowledge black ops and compensate the families of those killed in such operations (not really a
spoiler, it’s shown very early in the movie). Such villains often have a good point, even if their
methods are over-the-top, poorly-reasoned, or hideously unlikely to work (*cough* Thanos
*cough*).
I’m thinking about those fictional villains, in movies, comics, manga, anime, books…and I’m
wondering about their real historical counterparts. Did such extreme supervillain-esque plans ever
actually work?
Throughout history, what seemingly villainous acts or plans driven by good intentions have actually
had a net positive impact on the world? Or which ones have at least accomplished the
(unambiguously good) objective of the seeming wrongdoer? I’m willing to bet that the number is
very low – that most such plans have horrible unintended consequences, or simply fail entirely.
May 22, 2020 at 4:38 pm ~new~
You’d be surprised at the number of supervillain-esque plans that worked, but (unambiguously
good) is a high bar to clear for them. If you believe monarchy (at least by a foreign dynasty) is
unambiguously bad and democracy unambiguously good AND that the Republic of China really
existed for awhile rather than the Qing immediately being followed by warlordism, Sun Yet Sen’s
powerful international secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Chinese government basically
made him the Mandarin without the crashed alien spaceship or “being written uncomfortably by
white people”.
 albatross11 says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:28 pm ~new~
How about the political conspiracy by British colonists in North America to break away from the
crown?
May 22, 2020 at 5:33 pm ~new~
Doctor Franklin, inventor/conspirator. Huh, I hadn’t pattern matched that before.

 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:38 pm ~new~
Sun Yet Sen’s powerful international secret society dedicated to overthrowing the
Chinese government basically made him the Mandarin
I can’t tell if this is intentional and/or problematic. Regardless – well played.
 Genarment says:
May 25, 2020 at 11:50 am ~new~
I’d settle for edge cases of “mostly good” or even “their society would have considered it a good
result in the end.” Still, this is a great example and maybe the best I’ve seen yet. Others have
offered the French Revolution, the Irish Republican Army, Oda Nobunaga, and even Mao and the
Great Leap Forward for possible further study. Forgive me for being poorly versed in Chinese
history, but do we know why the Tongmenghui had a sub-goal “to expel the Manchu people”? Is
this really a grudge based on a 300-year-old conquest? What other reasons were there to form this
particular goal?
o Belisaurus Rex says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:07 pm ~new~
Why does treason never prosper? Because if it prospers, none dare call it treason.
There is your real answer.

o cassander says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:22 pm ~new~
Oppenheimer built a bomb of previously unimagined power using super science in a secret
government facility.

May 22, 2020 at 5:26 pm ~new~
… while being inspired by a religion rare in his society.

 J says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:35 pm ~new~
Everybody knows the “now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” line, but that’s just the
cherry on top:
If a thousand suns were to rise
and stand in the noon sky, blazing,
such brilliance would be like the fierce
brilliance of that mighty Self.
All Dhritarashtra’s men
and all these multitudes of kings–
Bhishma, Drona, Karna,
with all our warriors behind them–
As moths rush into a flame
and are burned in an instant, all
beings plunge down your gullet
and instantly are consumed.
You gulp down all worlds, everywhere
swallowing them in your flames,
and your rays, Lord Vishnu, fill all
the universe with dreadful brilliance.
Who are you, in this terrifying form?
Have mercy, Lord; grant me even
a glimmer of understanding
to prop up my staggering mind.
Vishnu:
I am death, shatterer of worlds,
annihilating all things.
With or without you, these warriors
in their facing armies will die.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bhagavad_Gita/vReHRlO2GGsC?
hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=thousand%20suns
 Genarment says:
May 25, 2020 at 11:31 am ~new~
Okay, that is absolutely fascinating.

Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 6:09 pm ~new~
What Belisarius Rex said. But from the outside view, top marks probably goes to the various
schemes to conquer some significant portion of the world and impose a Pax Whateverica.
o qwints says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:32 pm ~new~
Aside from the American development itself, I think the Soviets stealing the nuclear bomb probably
ended up a net good for the world. I think the Korean War still happens, and McArthur might have
convinced Truman to use nuclear weapons if the US was still the only country with the weapon. I
feel like that’s net positive impact. You might even make the case that the Soviets goal was to
prevent the US from using the weapon again and that was unambiguously good.
 Dack says:
May 23, 2020 at 8:22 am ~new~
Everything in Korea worth bombing was still leveled. I don’t see how that’s net positive.
 Noah says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:10 pm ~new~
MacArthur might have convinced Truman to use nuclear weapons on Beijing.

 Dack says:
May 24, 2020 at 7:18 am ~new~
If they had wanted to bomb Beijing, they would have bombed Beijing. Nuclear or not.
Tokyo and Dresden were not A-bombed, but suffered greater levels of destruction compared to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were fire-bombed. I don’t see a material difference, I don’t see
a moral difference, I don’t think I could convince a survivor of Operation Meetinghouse (the single
most destructive bombing attack in history) that it is somehow a net positive that “Hey, at least it
wasn’t a nuclear attack.” on Tokyo.

Hide ↑
 Scoop says:
May 24, 2020 at 9:07 am ~new~
Tokyo and Dresden were not A-bombed, but suffered greater levels of destruction
compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were fire-bombed. I don’t see a
material difference,
The bombing of Dresden required more than 1,000 planes to be sent four times. Doing that to
Beijing would have required a much greater commitment than sending one plane with an A bomb.
Hide ↑
 Dack says:
May 24, 2020 at 9:23 am ~new~
So the net positive is what? Gasoline savings to the attacker?
Also I don’t think 1 a-bomb is enough to take out 1950s Beijing (Pop. 2-3 million). There’s a reason
the a-bombs that were dropped targeted cities with only a few hundred thousand residents.
Hide ↑
17. souleater says:

May 22, 2020 at 2:37 pm ~new~
Is the “Gay Accent” something people are born with, or is it developed to fit in with the culture? Is
it found in foreign culture (specifically Islamic, or Asian) It seems from my experience like it might
be something innate.. if that’s the case, what exactly IS it? Does it have any interesting
implications?
o qwints says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:47 pm ~new~
Have you seen “Do I Sound Gay”?

 souleater says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:21 pm ~new~
I heard about it, and that was what made me want to ask the question here. The reviews I heard
told me it didn’t dive into it’s premise seriously

o Belisaurus Rex says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:05 pm ~new~
I have asked a few gay people and they say that they do it on purpose. So it is a learned trait
intended to signal that they are gay. If you want your own data point make sure to ask politely.
 Orion says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:35 pm ~new~
Some do it on purpose, some pick it up accidentally by spending a lot of time around other people
with the same accent. There’s some evidence that some features of it may be inborn (particularly
the sibilants).
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:45 pm ~new~
Quote Dave Sedaris, from his hilarious collection of essays, “Me Talk Pretty One Day” link
I could have believed my mother and viewed my lisp as the sort of thing that might
happen to anyone. Unfortunately, I saw no popular students. Chuck Coggins, Sam
Shelton, Louis Delucca [going to speech therapy]: obviously, there was some
connection between a sibilate s and a complete lack of interest in [football].
None of the therapy students were girls. They were all boys like me who kept movie
star scrapbooks and made their own curtains. “You don’t want to be doing that,” the
men in our families would say. “That’s a girl thing.” Baking scones and cupcakes for
the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals
for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing.
In order to enjoy ourselves, we learned to be duplicitous. Our stacks of
Cosmopolitan were topped with an unread issue of Boy’s Life or Sports Illustrated,
and our decoupage projects were concealed beneath the sporting equipment we
never asked for but always received. When asked what we wanted to be when we
grew up, we hid the truth and listed who we wanted to sleep with when we grew up.
o FrankistGeorgist says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:15 pm ~new~
My recollection from my linguistics days:
The secret is that “gay voice” doesn’t correlate with gayness as much a you’d think.
When you have people rank perceive gayness of (male) speech, in general the big giveaway for
people is from variation of pitch over time. In American English, whether your voice is high or low
generally, the pitch of male speech is expected to stay within a comparatively narrow band, while
female speech has wider variance. This is less true in other languages/cultures (Polish, IIRC,
having more pitch variation expected of men than in English, and Slavic more so than Germanic
languages generally).
Thus greater pitch variation in male speech has the effect of signaling “gender nonconforming”
broadly. “Sounding girly” etc etc. The standard leap to take from this is that men speaking this way
have adopted a kind of accent from their feminine peers. Feminine -> gay is the cultural pathway
for men. This doesn’t actually work out cleanly in the phonetics the way people want it to, but it’s
the sound byte people understand. Southerners and Californians, for instance, have higher pitch
variation than other Americans. Californian accents are often read as more feminine.
The “lisp” (not a lisp, where s -> th but actually sort of the opposite where s ->sharper, more
sibilant s) is frankly way less common than people think, and most common in children, and then
doesn’t cleanly correlate with any of the stuff you’d think later in life. It may be its cultural coding
went from infantilization->feminization->gayness, but my view is it started as an s-variant (some
of which we as a society deem wrong and call “lisps”) and the cultural baggage came later and
need not have been.
There’s something interesting about vowel space/duration/something-wit-vowel which applies to
both lesbian voice (identifiable, but less so, in those gayness-ranking studies) as well as gay voice
but I don’t think it ever replicated.
There are cultural variations of the gay voice in men, but a lot of the studies of this happened post
gay liberationist America, which magnified and broadcast a lot of the stereotypes which now define
gayness to the wider world and muddy attempts to navigate the moving parts. Globalization
marches on. It’s hardest to study in the places it would be most interesting to study (North v.
South Korea? swoon).
As to innate ness, probably a blend in that it’s downstream of brain chemistry, but so tied up with
cultural gender stuff and the bewilderingly intense feelings people have about talking “correctly”
that I don’t expect the knots to come undone cleanly. The gayest voice I’ve personally encountered
was a straight man whose native language was Arabic.
The “gay man has undeniably gay voice before ever realizing he’s gay” is a nice story but people
overestimate their gaydar. People clock sexuality from voice better than chance but only I the
60%ish range. The acculturation to feminine speech patterns thing is getting outside my domain.
As to why it persists and intensifies in out men, I’d argue that’s part code-switching/cultural
marking, as well as a side effect of behavior leading to sex/intimacy being behavior you’ll want to
repeat, even subconsciously.

May 23, 2020 at 7:55 am ~new~
The “gay man has undeniably gay voice before ever realizing he’s gay” is a nice
story but people overestimate their gaydar. People clock sexuality from voice better
than chance but only I the 60%ish range.
I think this is misrepresenting the case. Not all gay people have “the gay accent”, and “all (or
most) gay people sound it” is a substantially different claim from “all (or most) people who sound it
are gay”. When you hear the most extreme caricature of the “lispy queer”, how many of those
people do you think are straight?

As to why it persists and intensifies in out men, I’d argue that’s part code-
switching/cultural marking, as well as a side effect of behavior leading to
sex/intimacy being behavior you’ll want to repeat, even subconsciously.
I’m not usually that guy, but to put on my Robin Hanson hat, SIGNALING. Homosexuality is
practically the perfect example of a preference that you would like certain other people to be able
to recognize, and affecting a particular style of speech is a really good solution to the problem of
other gay men not approaching you because they don’t know you’re gay.
 AG says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:39 pm ~new~
Interesting, I have a perception that the American Southern drawl can obscure that gender
correlation by changing it to an age or status correlation. A man with a higher-pitched voice going
“Oh, bless yer heart, darling” doesn’t necessarily get dinged on his masculinity. On the other hand,
a Southern woman saying the same thing does do slightly different enunciations (a kind of clucking
affect), and a guy doing that does regain that GNC feel.
18. salvorhardin says:

May 22, 2020 at 1:14 pm ~new~
I’ve been kicking around a steelman of “state capacity libertarianism” to try and come up with
something concrete that could sensibly go by that label; that is a coherent set of things a
reasonable person could consistently believe; and that the sort of people throwing around the term
probably would mostly nod along to. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
1. The highest priority for the state is the efficient and effective production of public goods, in the
narrow sense of goods which are unusually nonrivalrous and/or nonexcludable. These include the
night watchman functions but also the production of new scientific knowledge and the provision of
natural-monopoly infrastructure, as well as certain genuinely public health and safety measures
like cleaning the air and controlling infectious disease spread. If the state isn’t doing these things
well, other things it does should be deprioritized and/or defunded as necessary to get it to do them
well.
2. There should be a strong though rebuttable presumption that consenting adults can do whatever
honest, peaceful things they please with their own property without asking permission. Advocates
of regulating honest, peaceful conduct by consenting adults should bear a burden of showing that
the conduct to be regulated has substantial material negative externalities that aren’t feasible to
internalize through judicial remedies (e.g. nuisance suits) or Pigouvian taxes, and that their
proposed regulation passes something like the RFRA “least intrusive means of achieving a
compelling state interest” test. Regulation should not be used to address mere aesthetic or
pecuniary externalities, to paternalistically protect people from themselves, or to prevent
“exploitation” or otherwise advance social justice goals.
3. Redistributive social welfare or “social insurance” spending programs are sometimes justified on
utilitarian grounds but should be subject to several operational constraints. Namely, they should:
(a) work through empowering individuals whenever possible– i.e. if a program’s goals can be
achieved by cash transfers or vouchers, those are preferable to other methods; (b) refrain from
creating perverse incentives, e.g. extremely high implicit marginal tax rates; and (c) be long-term
PAYGO, i.e. they should not result in an increase in the debt to GDP ratio over the course of the
business cycle, even if countercyclically deficit-financed in downturns.
4. Broad-based taxation, even at high levels, can likewise sometimes be justified on utilitarian
grounds, but it should be designed to raise the revenue necessary to fund (1) and (3) on a long-
term-PAYGO basis with a minimum of deadweight loss, and where possible to internalize
externalities (Pigouvian taxes); taxation should not be used to reduce inequality or otherwise
reward the politically favored and punish the disfavored.
5. The goals of foreign policy should be, first, the gradual, measured, cautious step-by-step
reduction of barriers to the free movement of people and goods; and second, improving the
effectiveness and efficiency of the public goods provision from (1) through international
cooperation (so e.g. defensive alliances, international research partnerships, international
environmental treaties). Military action in any but the most narrowly defensive context bears the
burden of showing that it will so greatly advance these goals as to improve human flourishing in a
way that decisively outweighs the damage it inevitably does; a large majority of historical military
actions, including military actions by democracies in living memory, don’t meet this burden.
What do folks think? Is this something you read and say “yep that sounds like state capacity
libertarianism to me” and/or “yep that sounds what the George Mason or Reason or Niskanen
Center folks (or whoever else is your favorite example) probably believe” or is it too vague, or too
unlibertarian, or too unfocused on state capacity, to qualify?

o cassander says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:05 pm ~new~
what about “The state shouldn’t do a lot, but what it does it should do well. In particular, it should
try to stay the hell away from anything that distorts price signals or creates non-explicit costs.”
May 22, 2020 at 5:49 pm ~new~
+1
Sometimes, you need government to do stuff that’s very hard to do via markets or donations or
public-spirited donors or whatever. In most of your life, and most of the time, government
shouldn’t be much involved–when you go to the coffee shop and order something to drink, or go
get your hair cut, or go listen to a concert, the state shouldn’t really be involved unless some really
exceptional thing happens. (*cough*)
In order for that daily life to go well, though, there’s a lot that your government needs to get right.
Public-access roads, flood control works, lots of public health stuff (mosquito and rabies control, for
example), along with stuff like national defense and police and courts. And your daily life with little
direct government intervention will go a lot better if the government does those things
competently.
Also, there are exceptional events which really work better with a government response. If there’s
an invasion, a riot, an earthquake, or (say) a pandemic, you’d probably like a government
response. But again, it’s really important for government to do these things well.
In general, I think there’s a tradeoff curve here. The more competent and honest your government
is, the more things it can do without making a mess of it, and probably the more things your
government can do to the benefit of your citizens.
At one extreme, imagine a not-very-competent-or-honest government. You want to keep its
functions down to the minimal ones needed to allow your society to work–probably that’s down to
courts, cops, soldiers, maybe public-access roads, common weights and measures, a few other
things. Letting your government get into funding the arts or building big public works will mostly
just end up with expensive boondoggles, not anything especially beneficial.
At another extreme, imagine an extremely competent and honest government. You can afford to
give it more functions. Maybe it can manage large-scale retirement savings programs without
dipping into them, fund science and art and big public works and get a lot of bang for the buck,
etc.
o Christophe Biocca says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:06 pm ~new~
Worth re-referencing the original article that came up with the term.
The description you have is coherent and sounds like a pretty sane way to run a country. The
biggest issue I have with the steelman you wrote is it has little to do with “state capacity” per-se.
Take the Koyama and Johnson definition that Tyler links to:
State capacity can be thought of as comprising two components. First, a high
capacity state must be able to enforce its rules across the entirety of the territory it
claims to rule (legal capacity). Second, it has to be able to garner enough tax
revenues from the economy to implement its policies (fiscal capacity).
By both of these measures the US federal government has extremely high state capacity. It has an
ability to enforce its laws in all territory it claims and then some (FATCA is a good example of US
laws followed by almost all financial institutions in the world). The US has substantially higher tax
compliance than Germany and most of the Eurozone.
By that definition “State-capacity libertarianism” reduces to just “libertarianism” in the US, which
already has state capacity by the bucketload.
“Competence in spending money” might be the missing factor here (especially for improving
infrastructure and K-12 schooling, two areas Tyler Cowen mentions and which are already awash in
money, with lackluster results to show for it). I have not seen basic conjecture, much less solid
evidence, on how the US might be able to get more out of every dollar it spends.
o Mark V Anderson says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:10 pm ~new~
@salvor
All those concepts sound reasonable and compatible with moderate libertarianism. But I’m not sure
if they match state capacity libertarianism. Of course I never understood how the concepts as
expressed by Tyler Cowen was related to libertarianism at all. If he expressed it like you have, I’d
be fine with it. But Cowen’s discussion on this seemed incoherent to me. I may just not understand
what he’s getting at.

o matthewravery says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:00 pm ~new~
IMO, the only thing that gets “state capacity libertarianism” vice “libertarianism” is (1). The state
should aggressively identify and correct market failures. A broad view of these is okay, so long as
the state’s actions are efficient. Another conceptualization of this might be “Aggressively limit
opportunities for rent-seeking,” though that’s probably too broad.
Another aspect is legal. Clear and regularly-enforced laws are vital, as are unambiguous and
uniformly-enforced regulations. Regulatory agencies should be independent of the industries they
regulate in exactly the way that most US regulators today are not.
It’s this last point where I think Cowen’s notion is most salient and differs strongly from a more
traditional form of libertarianism. Most libertarians tend to adopt the view that government
regulation and regulatory bodies should be weakened and dispensed with to the extent possible. A
state capacity libertarian might think that regulations are useful for eliminating market failures
attributable to externalities, and that if the regulations are necessary, then it’s vital that their
enforcement be robust and independent. Robust to ensure that firms are competing on a an even
playing field and independent to ensure that winning firms are the most efficient at making
something rather than most efficient at playing rent-seeking games with the regulator.
o Trofim_Lysenko says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:14 pm ~new~
I’m not sure that captures the “State Capacity” part of things, but it’s a good summation for
moderate libertarian or maybe conservative thought, I’d say. It’s certainly a statement that closely
captures my own personal feelings (minus a few American bugaboos. I’m willing to tolerate a
higher level of negative externalities to preserve things like expansive 1A and 2A rights, for
example).
o LadyJane says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:56 am ~new~

I don’t know if it’s a good description of State Capacity Libertarianism, but it certainly describes my
own views to a T.
o SamChevre says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:00 pm ~new~
I think this is a description of something coherent, but I’m not sure it does a good job of capturing
what “State Capacity Libertarianism” is about and what is distinctive about it.
A common slogan-ish understanding of “libertarianism” is “the philosophy that the government
should be smaller”, and the size of the state is frequently expressed by the percentage of GDP that
is state spending. “State Capacity Libertarianism” seems to be saying “not exactly smaller; it
should do less things, but it should do them capably (no police who are so poorly paid and
supervised that they are basically an extortion racket) and directly (not via work-arounds and
kludges–setting up a national network of free clinics might be more libertarian than Obamacare
even if it cost more.)

19. Edward Scizorhands says:

May 22, 2020 at 12:46 pm ~new~
I hadn’t paid attention to Tara Reade, but reading up on recent news, I’m now 90% sure the
assault didn’t happen, and at least 50% sure that she knows it didn’t happen.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/21/tara-reade-biden-expert-testimony-274460 She lied
under oath, as an expert witness, about getting an undergraduate degree, and had a string of
excuses which in turn turned out to be lies.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/15/tara-reade-left-trail-of-aggrieved-acquaintances-
260771 She left a long list of people angry at her lies and manipulation.
It would really suck if Joe Biden’s one sexual assault ever was against someone who would later
turn into a serial liar. He shouldn’t get away with it if it happened. But it didn’t. [1]
Tara Reade seems to be another person, like Hunter Biden, whose one useful feature was to tell
people “I know Joe Biden.” She used it everywhere to wheedle things out of people. And likely
what she’s doing now.
[1] If you want to drag Joe over the coals for not wanting to give other defendants the benefit of
the doubt he has, go for it.

o meh says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:44 pm ~new~

the short version starts about 40 seconds in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju1ZFuvjzYc
o souleater says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:34 pm ~new~
I’m right wing and have problems with Donald Trump so I’m probably sitting out this election like I
did last time. For these reasons, I’m not following the Tara Reid stuff closely, but I give the
opinions of the SSC commentators a lot of weight due to the climate of fairness we have here. 90%
sure they didn’t happen seems high to me, but like I said, I’m probably not following it as closely
as you are. Do you have any biases that might be relevant here?.
Politco isn’t a website I trust to be fair, but the first link is interesting to me. I’ll have to think about
it more.
The second link seems like the type of thing that could be written about a lot of people if a news
organization set out to write a hit piece, then called everyone you ever knew over the course of 40
years. It doesn’t take that much for a few people who have butted heads with you decades ago to
embellish the right things to push a narrative.
It seems equally feasible for politico to write a story interviewing people who would attest to her
character instead, but chose a negative slant for political reasons.
This stuff frustrates me, because I don’t think I could see any evidence to convince me one way or
another. So much is on the line, and so many people have a vested interest in swaying our
collective opinions. I wish we could just make a national agreement to ignore sexual assault
allegations against politicians if they happened more than a decade ago.

 Evan Þ says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:24 pm ~new~
If you’re sitting out, why not vote third-party?

 souleater says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:40 pm ~new~
I actually will vote third party, but I kinda see that as just writing down my protest vote, more than
taking a partisan side
Edit: I voted third party last time too, I’m not sure is I voted libertarian of constitution
 Evan Þ says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:15 pm ~new~
I usually see it as a written protest vote too, but I view that as very different from sitting out the
election. If I sat out an election, I’d be indistinguishable from my neighbor who blows off
everything about politics. When I vote third-party, I’m telling everyone who looks at election
results that I care enough to show up to vote, and that I dislike both the major candidates.
Hide ↑
 Edward Scizorhands says:

May 23, 2020 at 10:19 am ~new~
I’m probably not following it as closely as you are. Do you have any biases that might be relevant
here?.
I had ignored it for a while, but I saw it come up again in legal circles because a prosecution expert
witness was lying on the stand.
My stance on Tara Reade, previous to this, was similar to my stance on Christine Blaissey Ford: I
wasn’t in the room, and I have no way of figuring out the truth. “Just listen to them talk and decide
who is lying” is unlikely to inform me objectively.
I’m probably going to vote for Biden. I had never painted myself into a corner of “believe women”
so there was no need for me to invent weird counter-factual or dig through yearbooks or decide
that Reade making small edits to an old Medium article was proof of anything or otherwise tear her
down as a lying liar. There’s no need for that. I had moved on.
There was a single credible accusation against each of Kavanaugh and Biden, which isn’t enough
for me to throw them out. Maybe, if they had been revealed much earlier in the process, we could
have said “why take the chance?” and selected someone else. But in each case this accusation was
sat on and revealed past the point-of-no-return, so, nope.
Just like you can probably find one accuser for each person, even if innocent, you can probably find
one person in everyone’s backstory that would talk shit about them. But when a bunch of people
proactively speak up “yes, this person has scammed me, and made it clear they thought I was the
sucker who deserved it,” you are dealing with another category.
And someone who deliberately sits on the witness stand and says lies in order to make money and
send someone to jail, that’s an entirely different category than the story being slightly different in
each re-telling. Reade had every opportunity to decide not to be an expert witness, to decide not to
lie about her credentials, to not make up an additional this-is-easy-to-disprove-but-I-bet-you-
don’t-have-the-guts-to-check-it-or-he-doesn’t-have-the-guts-to-accuse-me-of-lying lie of “it was a
private arrangement between me and the President of the University.”
So this person has demonstrated the willingness to say lies that cost other people dearly if it gives
herself a relatively minor payout.

o salvorhardin says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:52 pm ~new~

Your interpretation is plausible, and certainly these news stories do significantly raise the
probability that Reade isn’t telling the truth. But 90% seems high to me because:
1. as souleater says, the people Politico interviewed may have their own credibility problems
and/or axes to grind;
2. you have to figure out what to think about the people who corroborate that Reade told them at
least about bad behavior by Biden, if not the full details of the alleged assault. Are they in on the
scam? If so, it becomes a pretty complex coordinated effort to pull off. Or are they telling the truth
about what she told them, but she was lying to them just as she lied to the media? If so, Reade did
a fair amount of consistent lying to a bunch of people over decades when she couldn’t necessarily
have known it would serve her purposes (e.g. Lydia LaCasse says Reade told her the story in 1995
or 1996).
 Deiseach says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:37 am ~new~
The contentious part of me says that if Edward Scizorhands is at least 90% sure Tara Reade’s
accusation is false, then I think Tara Reade should be treated the same way as Julie Swetnick, who
also made very exaggerated accusations. But such an accusation was also included in the heap of
“evidence or at least hearsay that Kavanaugh is a bad ‘un”, including, I regret to say, some people
within the rationalist community (which in turn has caused me to devalue their opinions, though it
does prove their common humanity with the rest of we biased and prejudiced ordinary slobs: “this
guy has particular opinions on particular causes where I am on side A and he is on side B, so I’m
predisposed to think he’s a bad ‘un from the get-go, but I’m going to use what I think are fair
evidential processes to prove he’s a bad ‘un, even if that means including the kinds of silly stories
I’d toss out if they were about someone on side A of my position”).
So I’d like it if all the media and bloggers and opinion piece writers and commentators, who are
now saying this about Reade, had treated Swetnick the same way – instead of breathlessly
repeating over and over that Kavanaugh was being accused by three different women of sexual
assault and treating all three accounts as of the same level of credibility (including Yale alumni,
which makes me downgrade my estimation of the graduates of that institution).
To be fair, some outlets did give the same kind of treatment to Swetnick as Reade is now getting.
But a year after Kavanaugh was sworn in to the Supreme Court, some outlets were still flogging
the horse in regard to Deborah Ramirez’ story of ‘drunken frat party shenanigans’. Will the fearless
reporters of the New York Times still be engaging in investigative reporting in order to bolster
Reade’s accusation a year after Biden is elected president (should that ever happen)? Well, what
do you think?
 CatCube says:
May 23, 2020 at 11:12 am ~new~
Yeah the part in this that makes me angry in this isn’t that Joe Biden’s accuser is getting
investigated and the story found to be wanting. It’s the sheer, rank hypocrisy in which the
accusations against Kavanaugh didn’t.
Tara Reade’s story was always weak. She didn’t have a place or date nailed down enough that
Biden could effectively defend himself. One of the easiest ways to defend yourself, after all, is to
prove you were elsewhere at the time of the alleged incident. If the accusation doesn’t have a
place or time, though, how can you find an alibi?
But Ford’s story had the same flaw! And you were a woman-hating monster for pointing that out!
Seeing people ready to set themselves on fire in the Rotunda about Kavanaugh not getting canned
due to accusations flimsy enough that couldn’t either be proven or disproven who then go on draw
little circles on the floor with the toe of their Birkenstocks and mumble about how, well, Reade’s
story has a bunch of holes and she seems dishonest so why should we hound Biden mercilessly? is
enraging.
A wider problem for both is that these seem to be such isolated incidents. Joe Biden just forcibly
fingerbanged one person and never tried anything like it before or since? Kavanaugh was supposed
to be a scumbag rapist unfit to be a dogcatcher, but never sexually harassed his clerks?
When you look at examples like Cosby, Weinstein, Lauer, etc., once somebody works up the
courage to make an accusation, a whole river starts gushing out. Where’s the accusations (even
anonymous) after Reade came out saying, “Oh yeah, Biden once bent me over a desk and rubbed
his crotch on me. Fully clothed, but still….” or after Ford, “Yeah, Kavanaugh once showed me his
dick at the Christmas party.” The people with the mental defects that make them treat subordinate
women this way typically don’t just start and stop with one; it’s part of who they are and how they
interact with people.
But Kavanaugh can get viciously slandered for months by the media, while Biden gets the actual
benefit of the doubt that both should get.

o edmundgennings says:
May 22, 2020 at 3:12 pm ~new~
My sense from a close friend who is and works with expert witnesses in civil cases is that far more
egregious lying and misrepresentation about educational background is rampant in civil cases. Ie
witnesses claim to have the PHD with honors at a university which does not grant honors in the
PHD program, or claim to have gotten their PHD specializing in whatever is relevant to the case. Or
have done post doctoral studies in X at Y meaning they got their PHD in some entirely unrelated
field and attended a conference on X at Y. Thus these people formal training in the field he is
claiming to be an expert in is less than 15 hours. People introduce themselves as Doctor N. despite
not having a doctorate. “My friends call me doctor” This types of things can be demonstrated to the
judge and not merely are these people not rejected in shame and possibly charged with perjury
depending on details, their testimony is accepted and they continue to be professional expert
witnesses happily despite their fraud being relatively open knowledge.
If Tara’s Reid’s high profile can start a crackdown on expert witnesses credential fraud, I would be
happy.
Given the pervasive over representation of credentials by expert witnesses (in civil, not sure if this
transfers to criminal), the relatively minor misrepresentation that is not particularly relevant for
expertise and then snow balled makes her look like a run of the mill shady character which
certainly damages her credibility but not as much as if she were a unique case.
 Well... says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:00 pm ~new~
witnesses claim to have the PHD with honors at a university which does not grant
honors in the PHD program, or claim to have gotten their PHD specializing in
whatever is relevant to the case. Or have done post doctoral studies in X at Y
meaning they got their PHD in some entirely unrelated field and attended a
conference on X at Y. Thus these people formal training in the field he is claiming to
be an expert in is less than 15 hours. People introduce themselves as Doctor N.
despite not having a doctorate. “My friends call me doctor” This types of things can
be demonstrated to the judge and not merely are these people not rejected in shame
and possibly charged with perjury depending on details, their testimony is accepted
and they continue to be professional expert witnesses happily despite their fraud
being relatively open knowledge.
You’re describing journalists. (Actually journalists have even weaker credentials but are even more
widely believed and respected.)

 Scott Alexander says:

May 23, 2020 at 1:43 am ~new~
Is this just a dig at journalists, or is there some common tendency for them to fake their degrees?
 Eugene Dawn says:

May 23, 2020 at 5:05 pm ~new~
This is a very weird hobbyhorse of Well…’s that he’s brought a few times without ever defending.
Hide ↑
 Well... says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:44 pm ~new~
@Scott: I don’t think journalists typically fake their degrees. Maybe they should, since journalism is
essentially the superficial impersonation of the kinds of authority that tends to come with advanced
degrees. This isn’t a dig at journalists by the way, just an attempt to describe journalism for what
it is instead of what it dresses itself up as.
@Eugene Dawn: Yeah, it’s a hobbyhorse. I’ve certainly defended it. Many times, including in the
comments you linked to!

Hide ↑
 Eugene Dawn says:

May 24, 2020 at 3:57 pm ~new~
Yeah, that’s unfair; I even thought of editing my comment to be more precise but in the end
decided to leave it. What I really meant was that your defenses were almost entirely based on your
own repeated assertions with no evidence, but I don’t really want to get into this for real, so I’ll
withdraw the claim.

Hide ↑
o mtl1882 says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:54 pm ~new~

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/21/tara-reade-biden-expert-testimony-
274460 She lied under oath, as an expert witness, about getting an undergraduate
degree, and had a string of excuses which in turn turned out to be lies.
In past threads that discussed what made something “credible”, I have mentioned that the Larry
King episode was, to me, significant enough to make me view the allegation as plausible/credible.
By that, I didn’t mean I thought it was probable or that I believed it. Just that it indicated
something went on before any of the current political drama started, which I give more weight to
than most other factors. I said one of three things were true: 1) it happened basically as she said,
2) there was an incident(s) but not what she describes, the kind of thing one might go to the
media over, which meant it was probably about Biden’s conduct (maybe more mild sexual
harassment), or 3) she has had some sort of mild “vendetta” against Biden all these years.
Afterwards, I reflected that it may have come across as though I was portraying #3 as an absurd
suggestion relative to the others. I wasn’t. There are a lot of people who develop negative feelings
about someone and occasionally repeat them to others over a long period, without any grand plan
to blackmail the person when they become super famous. When I say the Larry King episode
means something went on, it could be as simple as that, while she worked for him, she developed
a personal animosity toward Joe Biden. This could be for a good reason, a bad reason, or an
incomprehensible reason. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it is easy to imagine a situation in
which the job didn’t go well or she was fired, and she rationalized this to her mother, her friends,
and even herself by making false or exaggerated claims. I think stuff like this happens all the time,
and not by people who are obviously “crazy” or diabolical, though they probably have a pattern of
lying to explain things away.

Since then, a number of stories have come out indicating that such a pattern may be present here.
There are clearly people with a desire to discredit her at all costs, so I’m wary of believing rumors
without contemporary evidence. But it would not surprise me to learn that this is the case.
o Pandemic Shmandemic says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:29 am ~new~
The expert witness thing like the Trump-Ukraine accusations is far more worrying because of the
underlying institutional rot that it sheds light upon – how can someone be recognized as an expert
witness with such low level of diligence about confirming their credentials and level of expertise ?
 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:18 am ~new~
I’m reminded of the Baffler piece “Adam Wheeler Went to Harvard.”


May 23, 2020 at 6:02 am ~new~
“Ongoing Online Visiting Professor since 2007 for various Student BA packet
reviews: Review the final papers with students via phone and email; provide
guidance for final BA,” reads one line from her résumé.
That’s one creative use of the word ‘Professor’
 Aftagley says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:37 am ~new~
how can someone be recognized as an expert witness with such low level of
diligence about confirming their credentials and level of expertise ?
You’re thinking about it from the wrong persective. Put yourselves in the shoes of the lawyer who’s
hiring this expert witness. You want someone who is cheap enough for your client (or almost
certainly your client’s insurance) to be able to pay for and will reliably say what you want them to
say and be able to hold up under cross examination.
Actual status as an expert is secondary to being able to convince the jury/judge of whatever
position you want to… and if one side has an expert witness, the other side likely has another
expert being paid to say the exact opposite of whatever you were saying, so it all comes down to
charisma anyway.
And think about it – what actual “expert” in their field is willing to put their practice on hold for a
couple of days and spend all day in court so they can be aggressively questioned by lawyers? You
never get actual “experts” you get people who have established themselves as being reliable
interlocutors for either plaintiffs or defendants and this is how they earn a living.
Personal aside: This might be an artifact of growing up in a family of opinionated lawyers, but for a
long time I thought the word prostitute was just how you refereed to the kind of person who makes
his living as a professional expert witness.


May 23, 2020 at 10:09 am ~new~
Except in this case the lawyer hiring this expert witness was the prosecutor, paid by the state.
IANAL so I don’t know what options and obligations the defense lawyer had for challenging or
scrutinising expert witnesses, but the fact that this can happen when it was supposedly should
have been preventable by both sides is what I mean by institutional rot.
And I’m not even talking about where we as a society should want to see the bar for expertise in
courts proceedings placed, just about being able to carry out the simple act of verifying that the
expert witnesses actually posses the credentials they claim to.

20. matthewravery says:

May 22, 2020 at 11:22 am ~new~
Today, The Lancet published a large study on the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine and similar
drugs on COVID-19. The study includes data on 96k COVID-19 patients, about 15k were treated
with Hydroxycholoquine or something similar.
Beyond the headlines (these things don’t appear to work and may be actively harmful), they have
tons of estimates for relatively risks from demographic characteristics and comorbidities. One thing
of note, given recent discussion on this blog, is that “current smoker” is a comorbidity that
increases likelihood of death by ~30% (~7 to 56% w/ 95% confidence).

Important to note that folks weren’t assigned to treatment or control groups randomly, so there’s
likely some selection effects occurring with who got one of these drugs and who didn’t. The authors
use propensity scores and the litany of aforementioned demographic covariates and comorbidities
to try to control for this, but it’s not quite the same as a randomized trial. Having said that, to
overcome the significantly negative effects some of these medications seem to have on outcomes,
you’d have to assume very strong selection effects.

o broblawsky says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:24 pm ~new~
Good god, ACE inhibitors have a hazard ratio of 0.509. How does that work?
Edit: I see – ACE inhibitors weren’t being given to people with COVID; it’s the hazard ratio for
people with ACE inhibitors vs those without. That’s still a large impact, though.
 matthewravery says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:10 pm ~new~
It’s a huge effect. I recall reading articles about blood clotting being an unexpected cause of death
among younger COVID-19 patients. This suggests that immediately putting everyone diagnosed
with COVID-19 on blood thinners might save a ton of lives.
Interestingly, patients treated with ACE inhibitors had the same rate of ventricular arrythmia (the
other outcome highlighted in the Lancet article) as those who were not being treated with ACE
inhibitors. Not being a doctor, I have no idea if this is consistent with the above or contradictory to
it.
 Cheese says:
May 24, 2020 at 2:35 am ~new~
ACE has not much to do with coagulation as a direct effect. ACEis are antihypertensives. They may
have some small effect on coagulation in that vascular and haemodynamic disturbances tend to
have broad and far reaching effects but probably not enough to matter.
Basically everyone with severe COVID in all major hospitals worldwide is getting prophylactic
anticoagulation if they’re in a high dependency to ICU level of hospital care. Some suggestion that
the hypercoagulability is such that normal prophylactic doses aren’t enough and you have to move
to what we would term theraputic doses (more). The issue is that obviously risk of bleeding
increases, so I don’t think putting everyone with positive disease on heparin/equivalent would
really be a great solution. Depends on the relative risk of bleeding. Usually it’s an individual
assessment in terms of patient risks.
I’m not aware of any direct connection between ACE inhibition and ventricular arrythmias. It’s
unlikely they prevent or cause in any meaningful way. As compared to say, hydroxychloroquinine
or Azithromycin which both have QTc prolonging effects and thus can precipitate ventricular
arrythmias in those who might be predisposed (e.g. be old, have a few complications and be
infected with a virus that directly or indirectly inflammes the heart). To be honest the whole
HCQ+Azithro thing is very annoying. Increased risk of death due to arrythmias was an entirely
predictable outcome due to the aforementioned effects and why they haven’t been used in
moderate to severe (ie hospitalised) COVID patients in my country. I still think there’s a reasonable
prophylaxis argument for HCQ but we need to wait for better data.
There’s been a bit of back and forth about ACEis and ARBs since the start of the pandemic. Some
arguing ACE2 upregulation caused by the drugs might worsen initial infection. Others arguing that
with hypertension as a risk factor for death from COVID19 as well as other things that stopping
them might be worse. We now have good data that they’re neutral to protective. Interesting that
there’s a dramatic ACEi vs ARB difference. This suggests perhaps a direct ACE2 effect. Although it
would be hard to disentangle from the antihypertensive effects modifiying that risk factor given
that ACEi are largely still first line for hypertension compared to ARBs. Unlikely we will know why or
be able to predict other theraputic avenues from it for a while.

21. qwints says:

May 22, 2020 at 9:51 am ~new~
This is an explanation of some recent online drama that seems to me to break a few of my
expectations about the people involved. The drama itself will likely to have little-to-no effect on the
world, but I think it’s a good case study in some social dynamics.
New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino wrote a blog post a couple days ago discussing her father’s prior
conviction for fraud. Essentially her father and his mother ran a business in which they recruited
teachers from the Philippines to work in the US and found school districts to hire them. The
conviction relates to obtaining visas using job offers which had been rescinded before the visa
application was fired and resulted in a few months probation but significant asset forfeiture.
Tolentino’s piece portrays this as her father being unfairly forced to take a plea because the school
district lied about when they rescinded the job offer to avoid liability.
For context, Tolentino is generally considered to be an exceptional essayist who has a large
professional network. One of Tolentino’s first media jobs was at the website Jezebel (part of
Gawker) and one of her early New Yorker articles was a 2016 profile of a podcast called Chapo
Trap House (“CTH”), which has been a central part of leftist media for the last few years. CTH and
other more leftist media (which I’ll call “the Left”) have been exchanging criticism (sometimes
personal) with more moderate and prominent media (“Liberal”)since the 2016 election, but
Tolentino has not really been a part of this despite being very much in that milieu. A few dozen to a
few hundred people appear to rely heavily on this interplay for their income, either writing about it
freelance or raising funds via things like Patreon – CTH has the single highest revenue there at
over $150,000/month.
Tolentino’s essay was widely praised, and there were numerous people who offered expressions of
support, including writers at publications like the New York Times, Vox and the Atlantic as well as
leftist activists, Tolentino stated her motivation for writing the piece was that it was being
discussed on a subreddit associated with a small podcast called Red Scare run by two women with
some social connections to the New York leftist media scene and an unusual worldview
In the last 48 hours or so, Tolentino’s essay and the reaction to it has been highly discussed on
left-of-center social media and has become a hot topic in the left-liberal feud, with many lower-
level Left media figures arguing that Tolentino’s parents’ crime was more serious than she
portrayed, and that people shouldn’t express public support for her because of that. It’s a weird
dynamic because essentially everyone agrees that Tolentino doesn’t have anything to do with the
crime, and the issue is long resolved. There’s also a values conflict where organized labor has tried
to denounce the hiring of immigrant teachers without opposing immigration by portraying the
system as abusive to the immigrant teachers. The highest profile mention of the case prior to
Tolentino’s most recent essay was a 2009 teacher union report.

This may fizzle out quickly, but it’s been interesting to see a dynamic for a few reasons. Tolentino
was apparently motivated to write the piece by very low level discussion she found actively
searching for mentions of herself, presumably out of loyalty to her parents. That response
significantly the news itself (Streisand Effect) and the people who brought it up in the first place.
All sorts of internal discourse norms are being violated – people’s families are normally off limits,
ICE is generally considered bad, and posting addresses is normally considered doxing. It reminds
me a lot of the initial stages of prior media controversies where the focus quickly shifted from the
original accusation to attacking the coordinated response to that accusation, but I’m not sure I’ve
seen that no the left before.

o Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:36 am ~new~

It reminds me a lot of the initial stages of prior media controversies where the focus
quickly shifted from the original accusation to attacking the coordinated response
to that accusation, but I’m not sure I’ve seen that no the left before.
How much traction is this getting on the dirtbag left?
 qwints says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:59 am ~new~
Tough to say – it was the outrage of the day but appears to be fading. Nothing above the level of
social media and the people with the largest platforms have stayed pretty silent.
o Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:00 pm ~new~
Tolentino was apparently motivated to write the piece by very low level discussion she found
actively searching for mentions of herself, presumably out of loyalty to her parents.
This is why ego surfing is a bad idea, if you don’t have really thick skin.
o j1000000 says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:58 pm ~new~
“In the last 48 hours or so, Tolentino’s essay and the reaction to it has been highly discussed on
left-of-center social media and has become a hot topic in the left-liberal feud, with many lower-
level Left media figures arguing that Tolentino’s parents’ crime was more serious than she
portrayed, and that people shouldn’t express public support for her because of that.”
Do you have links to those tweets? Are they saying that she’s covering something up, or leaving
out details? Or just that doing exactly what she described is indeed more problematic than she
makes it sound?
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:13 pm ~new~
From a quick survey of the tweets backed up by a bit of dedicated googling. I’m not 100% sure if
this is true, but here’s the stream of allegations:
1. It looks like her parents’ company would pay for (allegation: bribe) school district officials to fly
to the Philippines and interview candidates to be teachers. These interviews were managed by the
company.
2. Interviewees paid the company around $10,000 if they got selected, and then were on the hook
to pay some ongoing percentage of their income to the company. They did this because they were
told doing this would get them a good life and US citizenship.
3. Once in the US, it’s alleged that the company held onto the migrants’ passports and documents,
had them live in badly-built structures and controlled their ability to move freely.
4. The workplaces of the migrants’ also allegedly took liberties with the migrants.
5. In some cases the promised jobs didn’t actually exist. In this case, the migrants would hopefully
find other jobs… but, not always as teachers.
In short, it might not have been what you think of when you hear “human trafficing” but it certainly
wasn’t as rosy as she portrays it. At the absolute best, those migrants were facing a significant
power disparity and at worst were kinda being farmed for profit.
 qwints says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:46 pm ~new~
The former, aftagley summed it up well. Here’s a good example . To be clear, Tolentino is saying
the exploitative stuff in the indictment did not occur at all, and that her dad only pled because
asset forfeiture, legal costs and harsh treatment in jail compelled him to.
22. Matt M says:

May 22, 2020 at 7:20 am ~new~
Somewhat related to the HCQ discussion below… how exactly do “side effects” work in the medical
field?
I’ve always been under the impression that it’s basically binary. A specific person will either
experience side effects, or they won’t, and that the side effects will manifest and become
apparently relatively quickly. So if a drug is known to cause side effects “in 10% of people” what
this means is that 10% of people will experience side effects, not that each individual pill consumed
has a 10% chance of causing a side effect in whoever takes it.
So if someone has been consistently taking a certain dose of a certain medication for some time,
and has not experienced side effects, it can be assumed that they are unlikely to experience side
effects at all. It is not the case that if a medication has a “side effect rate” of 10%, then for every
10 pills you take, you should expect to experience roughly 1 side effect.
Am I way off base here?

o matthewravery says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:25 am ~new~
I think it depends on the drug and the side effect.

o Anteros says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:29 am ~new~
I’m not a medic, but your description is pretty much exactly my understanding of side effects.
o Buttle says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:38 pm ~new~
That has not been my experience. I was once prescribed lisinopril for hypertension. The doctor
warned me at the time that a persistent cough was a known side effect, but that it might take a
while to manifest itself. After several years (sorry, don’t remember how many), it did, necessitating
a change in prescription.
Some time later I told this story to my mother, who said that she was on the same medication.
She told me that our relatives were concerned about her, because of her persistent cough. She
said she wasn’t sick, she just couldn’t help coughing. A new prescription for her and all was well.
o Kaitian says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:56 pm ~new~
For some side effects your argument is true, for example if .1% of people are allergic to some
drug, that probability will be much lower in people who weren’t allergic at the start.
But most side effects have some non-zero chance of happening after some time even if you didn’t
get them initially. And there are many side effects that only ever manifest after you have been
taking the medication for a while.

o Cheese says:
May 24, 2020 at 2:43 am ~new~
You are broadly on base, but with exceptions. Broadly, I think people should be wary of a
‘rationalist’ approach to medicine. We don’t have a true understanding of what is an incredibly
complex interacting system, such that what we might think is the logical effect of some treatment
or effect is often proved to be completely wrong by clinical data.
Things can change over time, or there can be issues which might manifest as long term
consequences which aren’t apparent in the short term. Someone below mentions their issues with
ACE-induced cough, which is typical of the progression of that particular side effect. A change in an
indirectly related parameter or system may precipitate a specific side effect. Others like SSRI
mediated gastrointestinal effects work differently in that they affect a lot of people early on but
attenuate reasonably quickly in many.

23. Bobobob says:

May 22, 2020 at 5:45 am ~new~
What is your go-to website for reliable, nonpartisan, just-the-facts world and national news? I can
no longer deal with CNN and NBC News.

o SamChevre says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:50 am ~new~
I wouldn’t say “non-partisan”–it’s very much a cosmopolitan liberal paper–but The Economist
seems to usually get the facts right and concentrate on the important ones.
 Loriot says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:27 am ~new~
Note that this is “liberal” in the traditional sense, i.e. Free Markets Good Government Bad.
Although, they’ve become more liberal in the US sense over time, mainly due to Republicans going
off the deep end.

 Buttle says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:42 pm ~new~
They’re consistently anti drug war, pro “free trade” agreements, pro gun control, and pro climate
alarm. Their obituaries are excellent. I was a paper subscriber for quite a few years, but gave it up
recently (it’s fairly expensive).

May 22, 2020 at 3:50 pm ~new~
Their obituaries are excellent.
Including the one where they credited Mao with ending famine in China?
Hide ↑
 Elephant says:
May 22, 2020 at 4:39 pm ~new~
@DavidFriedman
The Economist’s obituaries are excellent. This does not mean that every single obituary is
excellent. In the same way, your comments are excellent…

Hide ↑
 Buttle says:
May 23, 2020 at 6:41 pm ~new~
@DavidFriedman,
I think the Mao obituary was before I became a subscriber, I do not remember it. As Elephant
hints, uniform excellence is truly a high bar.

Hide ↑
 Eternaltraveler says:
May 24, 2020 at 10:07 am ~new~
As Elephant hints, uniform excellence is truly a high bar.
i gotta say, crediting the one who committed genocide with ending genocide, has got to lose
whoever does it a heck of a lot credit for a hell of a long time. Especially if their primary role is as
an information source.
Hide ↑

May 25, 2020 at 6:53 am ~new~
“Today, we mourn the passing of the hero who killed Adolf Hitler.”
Hide ↑
 OutsideContextProblem says:
May 23, 2020 at 1:18 am ~new~
I like the Economist enough to pay for it, but it’s very far from ‘just the facts’. It reports
selectively, and normally writes stories into narratives with a clear view point. The BBC and Reuters
are good for ‘just the acts’.

o Dack says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:03 am ~new~
I’ve been going to Reuters. I don’t think they are ideal, but I haven’t found anything better.
 Anteros says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:33 am ~new~
Funnily enough, I’ve been procrastinating over stopping reading the BBC (which drives me nuts)
and both Reuters and The Week (mentioned by @AG just below) are my potential alternatives.

May 22, 2020 at 1:56 pm ~new~
Whenever I see someone mention the BBC on SSC I have to stop for a second and figure out if
they’re talking about BBA or HBC.

o AG says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:06 am ~new~
Web news is always captured by the need to attract clicks.
Every time this subject has come up, I recommend the The Week magazine (their online branch is
garbage, though).
Otherwise, listening to NPR on my commute (and not even every day, or in the afternoons) isn’t
completely non-partisan, but gets me enough of the gist and highlights.

o Tatterdemalion says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:14 pm ~new~
The BBC web page. Slightly left-leaning, but only slightly, and extremely reliable and with a high
facts-to-analysis ratio.
 Lambert says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:38 pm ~new~
Facts then a picture of Laura Kuenssberg then analysis.

o Skeptical Wolf says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:10 pm ~new~
I recommend allsides.com for this. It isn’t a news source in its own right, it’s a news aggregator
that categorizes the sources it aggregates from according to political bias. In the absence of more
ideal journalism, I find I’ve had to settle for looking across the spectrum and sifting facts out of
what multiple sources agree on.

 Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:35 pm ~new~
Wow, Allsides.com looks great. I love those little LLCRR boxes under each article. Thanks!
 Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:44 pm ~new~
For example, I found this article, which is an interesting SSC-style analysis I would never have
come across otherwise (I’m not sure I’m convinced, but it certainly echoes some views that have
been expressed here):
How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns

May 22, 2020 at 2:22 pm ~new~
Off-topic, but the linked article makes the common mistake (by folks who like the “lockdowns” and
folks who don’t!) of not having any idea what they’re talking about when it comes to interpreting
models. They take predictions made ceteris parabis and gnash their teeth when people change
their behavior and then the modeled estimates no longer seem to match up.
(This criticism is independent of the rest of the material in the article, which in my view is right
about some things and wrong about others.)

Hide ↑
o Well... says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:04 pm ~new~

reliable, nonpartisan, just-the-facts world and national news
That’s a non-sequitur. What makes the news the news is the posture it assumes, intended to make
it look reliable and nonpartisan, when it isn’t. News that didn’t assume this posture wouldn’t be
news. Content that actually had the qualities you listed wouldn’t be news either.
If you want intelligent discussion from a wide range of viewpoints about things that are going on in
the nation and the world, read SSC comment threads and post questions about whatever you want
to know about if you don’t see it already being discussed.


May 22, 2020 at 4:10 am ~new~
In a recent video, Jason Pargin, formerly Executive Editor of the humor site cracked.com, answers
at length an interesting question about how the shift from browsing the internet on PCs to
browsing on phones forced a shift in how articles had to be written to get attention.
TL/DR: In the PC era, people had their own bookmarks, and periodically visited a manageable set
of their favorite sites. In the mobile phone era, nobody sets bookmarks. Instead people use
aggregator sites (particularly Reddit and Facebook) and follow links to whatever looks interesting
wherever it happens to be. This meant that in the PC era, writers and editors had some room to
maneuver, and because they had built a certain level of trust with their audience, which meant
they could write about some unlikely topics, confident the regulars would read whatever they
published. In the phone era, because the readership is so much more transient, it is much more
important to grab eyeballs by being immediately interesting, often by writing about something
provocative or threatening.
o viVI_IViv says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:46 am ~new~
I don’t think the issue is bookmarks. The issue is that once the internet became mainstream,
everybody and their dog started to write articles, and the ensuing cutthroat competition resulted in
a race to cater to the lowest common denominator.

o Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:52 am ~new~
I’d be curious to know what the percentages are now of people browsing on phones vs. browsing
on laptops.
I used to deal with this issue all the time–I wrote/managed a site for a (once major) national
platform, netting myself a couple of million page views per month. It was fascinating to use Google
Analytics to see how people were accessing the information, but as of two and a half years ago
(when I left) it was only about 20 percent phones and tablets.

 Kaitian says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:59 am ~new~
Doesn’t it really depend on what kind of site it is? Like, very technical pages where most people
would access them at their job probably still get most of their traffic from laptops and PCs. But
most general interest sites with short form content are probably 80% mobile these days.
o Two McMillion says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:26 am ~new~
Counterpoint: I use bookmarks on my phone quite a lot.

 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:40 am ~new~
I didn’t know it was even possible to bookmark on my phone. But I don’t do much Internet
browsing on my phone. That’s all on my PC, where I do bookmark.
…Now that I’m checking, it turns out I’m logged into the same account, so I can access them from
my phone. And huh, apparently I have 501 bookmarks.

o Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:26 am ~new~
Man, kind of a hard interview to watch for me.
I used to work for Cracked as a freelancer and contractor. I both wrote some articles and was one
of their community managers/first-line editors. We basically did the initial reviews of community
submissions, and helped people get a suitable first draft together before bringing it to a senior
editor. I got an inside look at the site from it’s relative peak until it fell apart.
While what he’s saying is true… the shift away from standalone platforms and towards social media
aggregators back then definitely played a part, but the site also made a bunch of other unforced
errors. They chose to pursue strategies like the pivot to video, expansion of columnists and content
bloat that had a major effect on Cracked’s quality and reputation. I love the site and community
and learned so much about writing online from Jason, DoB and the rest of the team, but I think
he’s trying to spin a cohesive narrative out of a million tiny factors here.
 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:37 am ~new~
You call pivot to video an unforced error, but wasn’t everyone doing that at the time? Or did
Cracked lead the pack or something?
Incidentally, I’m reminded of an argument I read a year or two back, arguing that pivot to video
was driven by misleading statistics published by social media (I think by Facebook?) about how
many views videos were actually getting.

 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:00 am ~new~
Answering your second question first, yes the pivot to video was a lie. The traffic never scaled as
high as we were told and the money CERTAINLY didn’t come following.
As for the pivot, well, they had a collection of really talented writers who were for a while there,
making the best list-based content on the internet. The dirty secret of Cracked was that pretty
much every article (at least at the start) was “written” by the same small team of well-trained and
talented writers. You’d basically write up a draft that had all the facts, content and citations and
then one of the staff editors would put it in the “Cracked voice” by making it snarky and funny.
IF you hung around for a while you’d learn how to write in that voice naturally, but it wasn’t
uncommon to see final drafts from new writers that had over 3/4s of their content rewritten. I’ve
never seen another platform that operated this way – no “normal” editor would accept a draft that
needed to be entirely re-written, but this practice let them maximize the time of their talented staff
by offloading the non-creative part of the work (idea generation/research) and focus on having
them create funny content.
When they pivoted to video, however, they now split the time of this funny staff to have the
write/star in reams of video content. Now the same team that previously had been creating all the
written content was also trying to make video content (which some of them enjoyed way more and
got increasingly focused on).
ETA – calling it an unforced error is probably only true with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, it
likely seemed the best path forward… but it did have the net effect of beginning the brand dilution
that I think eventually did Cracked.com in.

 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:37 am ~new~
Thank you for elaborating! That makes sense.

IF you hung around for a while you’d learn how to write in that voice naturally, but
it wasn’t uncommon to see final drafts from new writers that had over 3/4s of their
content rewritten. I’ve never seen another platform that operated this way – no
“normal” editor would accept a draft that needed to be entirely re-written, but this
practice let them maximize the time of their talented staff by offloading the non-
creative part of the work (idea generation/research) and focus on having them
create funny content.
That reminds me of how TV writing sometimes works; a big team of writers start with a draft by
someone (sometimes not on the team) and go over it two, three, five times. I’ve heard that the
secret to the success of The Simpsons was that their writing team went over the script dozens of
times.
(ETA: Timestamped the video, in case folks don’t want to watch a thirty minute video to hear the
relevant fifteen seconds.)

Hide ↑
 Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:40 am ~new~
You wrote for Cracked? I was always impressed by Cracked’ article ideas/execution (at its peak, at
least). Not to mention how it went from being a second-rate MAD competitor (in print) to eating
MAD’s lunch (on the web).

 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:12 am ~new~
Yeah, never as a columnist or anything though. My written stuff for them was as a freelancer.
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:22 am ~new~
What was your most successful/popular piece?

Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:40 am ~new~
Not trying to ignore you, but I anything I posted to Cracked had my real name attached to it and
my comfort with being clocked in meat-space has drastically declined since then.
Sorry
Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:42 am ~new~
100% understandable.
Hide ↑
 watsonbladd says:
June 1, 2020 at 7:41 pm ~new~
MAD had some of the best cartoonists in the world. The pictures added significantly to the
magazine, and no on else could get that down against a bunch of people who had been doing it for
40 years. Online that matters a lot less.

 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:42 am ~new~
Aftagley, I probably know you – were you in the xmoderate chat?

 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:08 am ~new~
I was!
ETA: removed since that links back to my real name/identity. Email me at aftagley.email at
gmail.com if you want.

 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:43 am ~new~
n = 1 but I went from visiting cracked every day to avoiding it entirely when they started going
political
 Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:48 am ~new~
+1/2.
I was a fairly sharp turn to politics, but there were still some quality articles for awhile. They got
hard to pick out pretty quick, though.

 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:57 am ~new~
I don’t remember whether it was politics that made me stop reading. All I distinctly remember is
that I stopped being interested in the new stuff; when I wanted some Cracked, I ended up
rereading a piece from John Cheese or something. So I can’t really say if it was them or me. It’s a
shame, regardless, because back in high school Cracked was one of my daily stops.
Hide ↑
 gbdub says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:57 am ~new~
+1/2 here too. It was kind of a combination of 3 things:
1) The rise of “earnest” political articles (mostly political, just written in a somewhat snarky voice)
to become a larger proportion of content
2) Reduced quality of the humor articles (Mostly that they were generally less funny, but to a
lesser degree, the increasing intrusion of partisan political jokes)
3) Too much content in video and audio. I’ve read cracked.com for years, hundreds or thousands
of articles, and have watched maybe one or two videos and never listened to any audio. Maybe I’m
missing out, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for when I visited Cracked. I’d always be
disappointed when a promising sounding premise turned out to be a video.

Hide ↑
 Jaskologist says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:18 am ~new~
I liked the videos, mostly. After Hours was brilliant, and Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder was
always enjoyable. But watching those generally meant that Cody’s Daily Show knock-off ranting
about Republicans would come in the queue next, so I made sure not to let them keep playing. So
that’s probably politics combining with the poor profit margins of video to work against them.
Hide ↑
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:26 am ~new~
I liked the videos, mostly. After Hours was brilliant, and Obsessive Pop Culture
Disorder was always enjoyable.
I adored After Hours. Cracked TV was their first effort and I loved it, even though it was really just
the Michael Swaim show. Swaim’s still making videos on his own now, but for some reason they
just aren’t funny.

Hide ↑
 Jake R says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:36 am ~new~
“Ragtagging” is such a useful verb to have around. Although watching the video again just now it’s
about 30 seconds worth of clever idea stretched out to 5 minutes.

Hide ↑
 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:49 am ~new~
Fun Fact: I wrote that script.
Edit: It’s definitely long for the joke, you are correct.
Hide ↑
 Jake R says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:37 am ~new~
@GearRatio
Well now I feel awkward for criticizing it. It’s one of the only Cracked videos I still remember after
several years. To this day when my friends and I are watching something and the trope gets a little
too blatant or predictable we’ll comment on the poor saps about to get ragtagged.
Hide ↑
 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:20 pm ~new~
Don’t feel bad! After I pitched that some of the specific writing directions were very much
something like “I want every single way this trope was ever applied to a kid’s movie covered”. The
format at the time liked a certain length, so some videos that needed more time would be
compressed to fit that time-frame, while others would be stretched beyond what was good for the
joke. You are 100% right and I’m not the least offended.
Fun internal video facts:
1. A very similar concept was once done by CollegeHumor. I was unaware of it at the time (so were
they) but I was very gently and nicely asked at some point if I had plagiarized it. To this day I’m
not 100% sure I didn’t see the collegehumor video, forget about it, then accidentally rip it off
whole-cloth. It haunts me on a deep level.
2. I wanted their team to be called the Wisconsin Cheese Yankees. This joke was cut for not being
funny.
3. Adam Scott was at one time going to play the coach, and then he backed out.
4. All the “dog playing baseball” stuff wasn’t mine; it was added in on re-write.
5. I was told I wasn’t allowed to write anything with kids ever again; apparently it’s a pain in the
ass to include kids in internet videos.

Hide ↑
 Bobobob says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:25 pm ~new~
I wonder if College Humor earned any $$$ when Nickelodeon took that “Dora the Explorer” parody
and turned it into a real movie.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 1:34 pm ~new~
The best part is “when I became head coach of the West Memphis Country Clubbers…..oh god
we’re f**ked!”
Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 3:07 pm ~new~
@GearRatio –
Re: (1), the human memory is a extraordinarily fallible, and jokes are like memes and calculus.
People with similar backgrounds growing up in similar cultural milieus and working in similar
formats will often converge on similar ideas.
I know is a Big Deal among stand-up comics, and I completely support giving credit where due,
and for good reason. But I don’t think the existence of a similar video should make you worry that
you “plagiarized” it. Even if you had seen it but didn’t remember at the time, I don’t think you
should hold yourself morally responsible if the only similarity was the premise.
Hide ↑
May 23, 2020 at 10:28 am ~new~
@GearRatio
5. I was told I wasn’t allowed to write anything with kids ever again; apparently
it’s a pain in the ass to include kids in internet videos.
Very, very important semi-colon addendum. Thanks for the laugh. 🙂
Hide ↑
 CatCube says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:38 am ~new~
For me, it was when the articles stopped loading on my phone. I would pull up cracked.com every
morning when I got on the train and start reading articles (still maintaining the loyalty discussed
above), but somehow either an ad or some other piece of JS or whatever caused my phone
browser to hang about 1/3 of the way through every article. Eventually I gave up trying.
I do admit the politics was starting to annoy me, but that was minor compared to the “I can’t
actually read the articles anymore.”

 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:46 am ~new~
For context for people: the ads were at some point on the site nearly but not quite as
bad/intrusive/malicious as a manga translation aggregator site, and there were a ton of them that
were poorly integrated so often the site wouldn’t load right, even on a full desktop tower.
The ads thing was a big thing that I think gets ignored a lot. And David Pargin is in large part
accountable for that, although I’ve never seen him admit it.
There was a huge problem with intrusive ads or even malicious ads, even during the latter years.
People would ask Pargin about it on the forums and he’d make long explanations that all boiled
down to “Well, that’s just how ads are – you can’t control what they show at all, so we are at their
mercy and there’s no solution at all”. But of course there was a solution, and even if the questioner
didn’t know what it was he’d know it must exist since people would go to other sites with ads and
not have their browser crash.
So you had this big problem that made the site unreadable for a not insignificant amount of people,
and the official take on it was “That’s just the internet for you! Nothing I can do!”.
And a lot of things were like that in the sense that he was the final word on the reality that Cracked
was willing to accept. The readership feedback was consistently and strongly against politics, and
his reaction to that was always to post graphs about how the readers were wrong and they really
did like shitty political takes replacing other content, deep down.
Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 10:39 am ~new~
I remember complaining to the NYTimes that some ad on their website was driving my CPU to
100%. Since they didn’t want to hear it, instead they insisted I had spyware. . . on my minimal
Linux installation.
Hide ↑
 MisterA says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:06 am ~new~
The readership feedback was consistently and strongly against politics, and his
reaction to that was always to post graphs about how the readers were wrong and
they really did like shitty political takes replacing other content, deep down.
Is it possible he was right?
Something I have seen Ezra Klein talk about on his podcast is that the type of articles he would like
to publish on Vox, and the type readers say they want, is often not what they actually publish.
The reason being that what readers say they want, and what they actually click on, seem to bear
almost no relation to one another. If you have a bunch of reader feedback saying they want X, and
a bunch of actual traffic statistics saying Y, I’m going to believe Y every time.
Hide ↑
 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:10 pm ~new~
Is it possible he was right?
It’s absolutely possible!
None of what he used to post about this is really available anymore – they closed the forums at
some point – but to my memory it was mostly breakdowns of demographics, I.E. “See, most of our
readers are blue tribe”. At some point during the transition to being political most of the time, their
public-visible traffic statistics (read x times counters) started being fluffed, then got insanely
unreliable, and then were eventually cut entirely. Hard data is limited.
Given all that, there’s an at-least-plausible model where enough of their readers were a
combination of on the left, not bothered by politics on their joke site or not bothered by politics on
their joke site that confirmed their beliefs to an extent that the gain outweighed the loss.
The reasons this isn’t my personal beliefs are varied and a lot of it has to do with “well, I was there
and it didn’t feel like that” unproveables. But Cracked went from top-of-the-world to bottom-of-
the-barrel entirely during this period – they were doing undeniably well during it and sank pretty
fast after it started. This is absolutely subject to confounding – the transition to video might have
killed them too, or cell phones like Wong says, or a number of things.
All of this to say that it’s definitely possible he was right, but the shift was accompanied both by a
pretty large decrease in site success and a pretty large amount of people who said that was why.
It could have in reality been completely contradicted by their data, but looking at it from the
outside, what I could see were tons of people saying they abandoned the site for that reason, very
few people saying they liked the political tinge, and the collapse of the site’s success.
Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:31 pm ~new~
If I remember correctly, he also had a standing policy of “if you mention adblockers, I will ban you”
which tended to filter for people who didn’t mind ads.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 1:55 pm ~new~
I can also believe high heat-to-light ratio* posts can get you many short term clicks but lose long
term fans. The first time you insult my mom, I’m going to pay an awful lot of attention to that
insult, and pass it around to my friends and get them to come check it out and back me up that my
mom is not at all like what you’re saying and I’d like you to issue an apology and not talk like that
again, but by the fifth time you insult my mom I’m done with you completely and am no longer
paying any attention. The fact that I’m heavily engaged with the first insult does not mean I
secretly want to hear my mom insulted and am going to keep coming back for more of the same.
* I can never remember how this goes. Doesn’t it always depend on whether you want heat or
light? I mean, I want my electric blanket to give me heat, but no light, and I want my living room
lamp to give me light, but no heat.

Hide ↑
 Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:10 pm ~new~
You want your discussions to illuminate, not get people all hot under the collar.
Hide ↑
 souleater says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:25 am ~new~
+1
It wasn’t even a moderate leftwing bent, it was extreme, constant, and it seemed to come out of
nowhere. If it was a little bias sprinkled into mostly good content I would just shrug and keep
reading, but I remember being struck by the fact that around 50-70% of their content suddenly
turned to dunking on the right/center.
It wasn’t even a slow cultural drift, someone, somewhere, decided their new business model would
be to produce left wing “think” pieces at the expense of what was once very good content. It still
bums me out because I haven’t found anything quite like Cracked at its peak.
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:24 am ~new~
I see this argument all the time in discussions of Cracked – it was originally good but it went
downhill when it “went political.” This is normally framed as having been some kind of conscious
choice, that the editors decided to primarily focus on politics at the expense of their other content
in some kind of effort to target in on liberals. This isn’t what happened but explaining why requires
a bit of backstory. Here’s how Cracked’s writing process worked during the very early days:
Cracked was a content farm in the best possible sense of the word. They would advertise heavily
for new writers, had some pretty detailed guides about what they were looking for and how to
write a proper pitch. The basics of a “cracked pitch” were to identify a weird trend in some topic
and then find 6-7 examples of that trend. Cracked also had a team of paid moderators who
interacted with the public, helped people design their pitches and bring them to the editors when
the pitch was in a presentable state.
If your pitch was accepted, you were given two weeks to turn the pitch into a finished article and
submit it. The editors would then do a final pitch and, assuming everything checked out, would buy
your article for a couple hundred dollars. They would then basically rewrite the entire thing, putting
it in the Cracked “voice” and a week or so later it would show up on the front page.
This process worked, like I said below, because it let funny writers focus entirely on just being
funny. They didn’t have to research, fact check or even come up with the theme – they just had to
take existing writing and make it funny. Most of the best Cracked articles you’ve read came up
through this process. It was pretty exacting – Cracked prided itself on being mostly fact-based so
the sourcing had to be pristine and absolutely nothing went through that could be considered an
opinion. Everything had to be grounded in facts.
The problem was that it didn’t scale particularly well. We’d get some number of pitches per week
and between 20-30% of them would eventually make it to the editors, and around half or so of
those would become articles. People forget this, but early Cracked only published two or three
articles a day, and that was it. That was the content you were getting today, come back tomorrow.
This worked for a time, but eventually Cracked (or, depending on who you ask, the people who
owned Cracked) wanted to increase the amount of content (and therefore ad views) people would
see. When you rely on community submissions for the majority of your content, however, you can’t
increase the amount of content easily. You can’t tell the internet to bring in more/better
submissions, so they turned to Cracked Columnists to fill in the gap.
Columnists were the same group (mostly) of people who edited all the articles. It has always been
a thing to have Cracked Columnists writing articles, but in the early days, they mostly stuck to
writing listicles also, just ones a bit more out there and personal to them and their writing style
than you’d get by going through the normal process. They were also more free to express opinions.
Now, on average these articles never did as well as the “traditional” Cracked content. Sure, there
were some exceptions (David Wongs articles almost always set page-view records) but most of
them only did ok… But they were also the easiest knob to turn when the site wanted more content.
So, that’s what happened.
Cracked started reaching out into their stable of regular freelancers and bringing the most prolific
of them on as columnists as well as hiring on a few other funny voices from across the internet.
They also began to centralize operations out of their office in LA and loosened norms about what
columnists should write about. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what they chose to write about was hot
takes on current events and they did so from a perspective on the left.
This is where the political slant of Cracked started to rise – it wasn’t that they explicitly wanted
more leftist thought on the platform, it was that a group of people who all happened to lean left
were now given more editorial freedom to write opinion pieces and the site began relying more on
opinion pieces to shore up their content. There was also a friendship bias – people got hired on to
produce content as a result of their relationships with some of the other editors and columnists; all
of this reinforced the bubble.
(It also didn’t help that the most reliably conservative voice on the site got kinda maybe outed as a
pedophile and was exiled to Siberia.)

 souleater says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:51 am ~new~
Thanks for taking the time to write this out. I always wondered what the full story was but never
knew the full situation.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 10:52 am ~new~
OT, but you constantly amaze with your eclectic background.

Hide ↑
 Anteros says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:43 am ~new~
@Edward Scizorhands
I thought the same thing. Maybe @Aftagley is the whole Cracked diaspora under one name..
Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:40 am ~new~
Count me in as one of those who thought that the video is the best content that cracked produced.
the various o’brien, swaim, and friends shows were all delightful.
o Erusian says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:46 am ~new~
As I’ve said many times, the news industry is still very viable and potentially lucrative. In fact,
just… last week? two weeks ago? I attended a web-conference (canceled due to Covid) where
someone made a strong case that media was an underappreciated market precisely because it had
such good fundamentals but almost no one was taking advantage of it properly. His argument was
to monetize it like a freemium subscription model and then pointed out cost of producing stories is
actually extremely cheap compared to SaaS. (No research and development costs, reporters get
paid two to four times less than engineers, etc.) He pointed to several new media companies doing
so (and argued that this was similar to the model of old newspapers anyway.) I think he might be
a bit too rosy but there is a reason you can still raise VC money for a content network.
Because the just so story here is absolute bunk. You’re seriously going to argue that having a
bookmark is more influential than having an app on the person’s phone? The conventional media
failed to innovate and suffered for it. They’re still fairly uninnovative.
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:22 am ~new~
Because the just so story here is absolute bunk. You’re seriously going to argue that
having a bookmark is more influential than having an app on the person’s phone?
Is that what he’s saying? My takeaway from this is that he’s saying that an app was equivalent to
(or maybe better than?) a bookmark on an individual basis, but while he could get a lot people to
bookmark his site, he couldn’t get many of them to download the app.

May 22, 2020 at 8:32 am ~new~
Right. Having a separate app for every web service one has to use is needlessly cumbersome. If
the only way to e.g. read Slate Star Codex is to download and install the SSC app, sure, I’ll
probably do that now. But I doubt I’d have done it back when SSC was (for me) just a thing that
I’d seen referenced on Marginal Revolution a few times, and so when MR went south I’d have
probably just given up on the interwebs as a source for interesting and thoughtful discussion where
instead I just gradually shifted the frequency with which I used the respective bookmarks.
 OutsideContextProblem says:
May 23, 2020 at 1:10 am ~new~
“…when MR went south”
Given we’re discussing trends in internet content quality, would you mind expanding on this?
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 5:20 am ~new~
John Schilling has mentioned MR’s comments section getting worse and worse, which I think is
what he’s referring to. I’ve not heard him say the blog was getting worse, too.
Hide ↑

May 23, 2020 at 6:59 am ~new~
Mostly what Nick says. I do have a sense that the quality of the actual Cowen/Tabarrok posting has
declined as well, possibly due to the lack of useful feedback. But the commentariat was as
important a part of Good Marginal Revolution as were Cowen and Tabarrok themselves, and when
they let the comments section go to hell, I found I wasn’t all that interested in just passively
reading their essays.

Hide ↑
May 23, 2020 at 1:35 pm ~new~
This was my experience with MR as well. Both rapidity and magnitude of the decline of the quality
of the comments section was shocking.
On the topic of the content of the blog itself, the quality declined when Tyler began publishing a
national column.
Hide ↑
 pdbarnlsey says:
June 1, 2020 at 7:49 pm ~new~
This doesn’t reflect my MR experience at all. I’ve been at least a weekly reader since maybe 2002,
and I’ve never known a time when the comments were good. To be fair, I’ve only ever dipped into
them to confirm that they’re still bad, but whenever I’ve done that I’ve been disappointed but not
really suprised.
I posted something in the MR comments about the yawning gap between blog and comment
quality maybe three or four years ago, and, yeah, they’re really terrible. But when was the alleged
heyday?
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:30 am ~new~
What I understood him to be saying is: People used to have high engagement through bookmarks.
But people use bookmarks less these days so readers are more generally low engagement. Yet the
presence of apps, an even higher engagement tool, would seem to be a counterexample.

 DinoNerd says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:45 am ~new~
If I were to install the apps for everything I use, there’d be so much on my phone I’d never find
any of them. I have one small screen for icons for apps, and it’s full – no room for apps for every
web site I commonly visit. Yes, I can create additional screens full of icons – and even search
among the whole collection of apps. That’s inconvenient though, so I essentially don’t do it.
As an example, I was forced to install the Amtrak app as the only way I could buy a ticket, one day
when the ticket vending supposedly at the station proved not to exist. A couple of years of it self
updating later, I uninstalled it, having never used it in the meantime. (I.e. getting your app onto
my phone won’t induce me to use it again.)
I currently have 24 apps on the main screen of the iPhone I use for work – plus 4 in the “dock”,
which appear on all screens. Your hypothetical app has to be good enough and relevant enough to
displace one of those. Because if it gets pushed to the second screen, I won’t think to use it.
 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:49 am ~new~
I feel the same. I’ve downloaded very few apps of my own on my phone. A few games, Google
Translate, Outlook for work, Feedly, Uber, Imgur, and the app for riding my local bus. I think it’s
insane that every website ‘has’ to have an app. The whole concept is anathema.
 AG says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:14 am ~new~
Apps are garbage. They’re just a way for the makers to bypass certain privacy/security regulations,
so they’re far more intrusive and unsafe than anything developed for the web, which is already bad
enough.
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:32 am ~new~
Right. You’re missing my point: we are not talking about general users, we are talking about a
decline in highly engaged users, people who bookmark and visit a site daily. I’m pointing out that
there are even more ways to have even more highly engaged users even more engaged.

May 22, 2020 at 10:11 am ~new~
Where do your highly engaged readers come from? There’s a fairly straightforward path for web
pages, from “I’ve never heard of your site”, to following a recommended link from a site that you
do follow, to noticing that you’ve followed links to that site three or four times in recent memory
and deciding to bookmark it, to putting that bookmark on your “visit daily” list. All of those are
very low-effort steps, designed to promote increasing engagement without barriers. Having to
download and install an app is a much larger barrier, and it occurs early in the process when
there’s much less reason to expect it will be worth the bother. Where you could have had a high-
engagement user in a few months, you’ve got someone who briefly contemplated downloading
your app and moved on to something else (or just stayed where they were).
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:17 am ~new~
I can make customer journeys too: From “I’ve never heard of your site” to following a
recommended link to subscribing to a newsletter to downloading an app so it doesn’t get lost in
your email.
Also, I don’t think downloading an app (a process involving two button clicks) counts as high
barrier. It might be slightly higher than bookmarks, but if that was the main driver, why are
bookmarks declining in use and apps increasing? Empirically plenty of people are making this
switch, just not Cracked.

Hide ↑
 CatCube says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:12 pm ~new~
ISTR Cracked having an app. I refuse to use apps for website content as a matter of principle so I
never tried it, but I swear I can recall getting begging ads about switching to their app whenever
I’d read an article on my phone. This was when I was normally reading their site on my desktop,
and only occasionally on my phone, before I drifted into reading it on my commute.
This would have been a number of years before the events that lead to my dropping the website
because it wouldn’t load on my phone. Maybe 2011ish? It’s possible this is a fever dream, though.
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:09 pm ~new~
ISTR Cracked having an app.
Could do. But there’s more to having a successful app than just literally having one.
Hide ↑
 The Pachyderminator says:

May 22, 2020 at 1:15 pm ~new~
I’ve never understood why RSS isn’t more of a thing in the smartphone era. Almost all news
sites/blogs still have it available, and it works perfectly well on a phone. You can use just one app
(I use Feedly; I’m sure there are others just as good) to aggregate all the content you choose.

May 22, 2020 at 5:55 pm ~new~
RSS died when Google killed Google Reader.

Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:40 pm ~new~
The problem seems to be supply-side. I suspect that if I collect your content via RSS, you don’t
profit as much from pushing ads and collecting and selling data about me, particularly if I do my
RSS via some third party (e.g. Feedly?)

Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:46 pm ~new~
@DinoNerd
Yep. Some sites even sabotage their rss by only having the first hundred words from the article,
stuff like that. It’s really annoying.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 7:24 pm ~new~
Yeah, that’s definitely an issue. Even an RSS feed that just consists of links to the full articles is
useful, though, since it eliminates the need to keep checking every site you want to follow for new
content.
Hide ↑
o Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:09 pm ~new~
I went to cracked . com just now to see if it’s still around. It is, and while I didn’t find anything
riveting, I did get to play the game of “how many different ads can I have on screen at once?” I
got a high score of 5, with bonus points for multiple being animated.
25. Uribe says:

May 21, 2020 at 10:21 pm ~new~
Why isn’t The Patriot Act a big controversial thing? I’d vote for any politician, even Trump, whom I
despise, if they said they’d repeal The Patriot Act. But it isn’t politically salient. Why not?
o sharper13 says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:56 pm ~new~
Sadly, virtually all the members of Congress (with the exception of a handful of principled hold-
outs) don’t mind the Feds having that power. In some ways, it’s their power also, despite the
rhetoric around their fears of specific Presidential Administrations misusing it.
For most of the population, the details aren’t important enough in terms of their impact on them to
look into closely, so there isn’t a popular movement against it outside the fringes.

May 22, 2020 at 7:13 am ~new~
with the exception of a handful of principled hold-outs
The good news is that an amendment to install privacy protections got 59 votes in the Senate.
The bad news is that that was one vote short, and 4 senators, including Bernie Sanders, didn’t
bother to show up.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/us_spying_laws/
o Controls Freak says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:33 am ~new~
Which part of the Patriot Act are you against? This gets complicated, because many parts of the
Patriot Act sunsetted over a decade ago. Some have sunsetted multiple times. Various pieces have
been reauthorized, but this has been done in a few different vehicles, and there have been a
plethora of changes along the way. One of the things this implies is that “repealing the Patriot Act”
probably doesn’t actually mean much; repealing something that has already sunsetted literally
doesn’t do anything; it’s the other laws, the reauthorizations, that would have to be repealed.
…and to do that, we’re sort of back to the top-line question, “Which part of the Patriot Act are you
against?” Because that’s going to tell us which one of the reauthorizations we have to argue
against. …and we’re going to have to argue against it’s current instantiation (with all the extra
privacy protections and such it’s gained over the years), not the original instantiation. That turns
out to be more difficult, because many of these laws have genuinely improved, culling some of the
more controversial aspects and retaining the less controversial (and widely considered good)
aspects.
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:37 am ~new~
Indeed. My perception is that while most people have strong opinions about the Patriot Act, very
few people, including those who are generally pretty politically aware (and including myself) have a
solid understanding of what’s actually in it.
Without a clear sense of “here’s how your life will improve if it goes away” it’s hard to muster up a
lot of political support for change. Inertia wins the day.

o DinoNerd says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:52 am ~new~
My somewhat elitist response is that 99% of the population now believes the name. I.e. to oppose
the “patriot” act means you are not a patriot, are against patriotism, etc. etc.
 Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:35 am ~new~
Really? My impression is that it has become the opposite, a go to example of an obviously
manipulative title that ended up doing little good, for at least half but probably more like 2/3 of the
population.
o Well... says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:06 pm ~new~
I remember it being quite controversial at the time, at least among the high school teachers,
college professors, and their leftist student fanboys/girls I was often in physical proximity to when
the Patriot Act was still fresh. (I know it was far less controversial among congresspeople.)
26. broblawsky says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:02 pm ~new~
Warning: CW-heavy even by hidden thread standards. Not intended as a personal attack on
anyone here.
Trump’s affection for hydroxychloroquine – which is of dubious efficacy for COVID-19 treatment –
is pretty well-known here at this point. However, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Trump-like president, is
also a hydroxychloroquine fan. Additionally, Hungary and India – both governed by right-wing
populists as well – banned export of hydroxychloroquine early on in the pandemic and never
rescinded this decree; AFAIK, other nations that have major local HCQ producers (e.g. France,
Israel) haven’t taken this step.
Is there something that makes right-wing populist leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, and others more
susceptible to pseudomedicine memes like belief in the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine? Belief in the
effectiveness of this drug, along with pseudoscientific explanations for its properties (like the
infamous now-debunked Medium post claiming that COVID-19 somehow destroyed hemoglobin)
seem to me to be much more popular among the populist right than in the rest of the political
ecosystem. Other pseudomedical beliefs, like anti-vaccination, seem more evenly distributed
among the political spectrum, so I’m curious as to what makes faith in HCQ so unevenly
distributed.
Edit: India did start exporting HCQ again, although it appears to have done so specifically because
Trump made a direct appeal to Modi.

o LesHapablap says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:10 pm ~new~
Very speculatively, it is an old school medicine. It conjours up romantic images of british
colonialists drinking gin and tonics, of adventurers like Teddy Roosevelt. Trump and Bolsanaro have
probably been on African safaris, at which gin and tonics are served constantly.
 mtl1882 says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:04 pm ~new~
Good point. That was *my* association with it, having read so much about the use of quinine. The
media never seemed to make this connection, and were treating it like this bizarre thing. I initially
thought it was hydroxychloroquinine, and I remember googling it, figuring they must be related,
and I swear Wikipedia and others at the time referred to it as a synthetic version of something
else, I think “chloroquine,” making no mention of quinine. So I thought I was wrong, but since then
the Wikipedia post has definitely been rewritten to go into the deeper controversy, and now it is
easy to find references to it as synthetic quinine. Idk what that was about.
I think Trump may have just brought it up as one of many options he’d heard of from doctors or
scientists. He naturally gets excited about things and really wants something to turn up, so he
reacts with optimistic comments. The media reacted absurdly for weeks, therefore increasing
Trump’s interest and desire to push back on it. Tons of tests have been done using it, with varying
results, and the pathetically politicized conversation has been really disgraceful. I would say it at
that point became a symbol around which people sorted themselves into tribes. I can’t be sure, but
the connection may simply be from that. Bolsonaro knows people lump him in with Trump, and
that they both drive a certain crowd crazy. Like Trump, he enjoys taunting. He may have
developed an interest in the drug mainly to make that crowd flip out, which it did, possibly to
distract from his other troubles. Orban openly admits to his “peacock dance” of creating
international culture war drama to distract from other more substantive things he’s doing. India is
likely to have a lot of access to a drug like HCQ because it is cheap and because they have a
history of quinine use. It may be the only drug they have a decent supply of in some lower-income
countries.
Basically, if there’s a meaningful connection between any of this, it’s unlikely to be related to
politics itself. Trump is more Bolsonaro-like and Orban-like in personality than in politics or
governing style—they like to tangle, which means they make good opposition leaders—at least in
the current era, that personality works well with populism. I think it is quite likely that Trump has
started taking the drug in part because of the absurd pushback he got, particularly the suggestion
that it was extremely dangerous and he was too callous to care about death that could result from
following his advice. If he’s willing to take it himself, it’s clear his comments weren’t as reckless as
some portrayed them. I mean, when he announced he was taking it, he said he’d been waiting all
week to watch their eyes light up at his remarks. He didn’t try to hide the taunting aspect.
Or, it may be that quite a few leaders of all backgrounds are trying it, given their likelihood of
exposure and its availability, but that the ones afraid of being associated with Trump now
(insanely) can’t admit they are taking it without causing a scandal. The NHS can’t admit to giving
Boris Johnson special treatment so it is has refused to comment on the issue of what medications
might have been tried with him. It’s quite possible this one was used.
+1 for GearRatio’s point below:

To answer your question more specifically, the question “Why does Trump and
other Trump-ish people like this potentially useless drug?” is fair, but it’s no more
fair than “Why are the media and a majority of world governments willing to single
out a potentially helpful drug in such a way that has rendered difficult or impossible
to study?”.
o Another Throw says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:31 pm ~new~
Question: how the fuck would Trump even know how to pronounce the word if somebody in the
CDC/FDA/whatever hadn’t told him about it?

Never tell the boss about a promising new opportunity unless you want him to give everybody in
his Rolodex an elevator pitch about it. That is the bosses job! It is therefore not a surprise that the
people in Trump’s Rolodex have invested exactly as much into the subject as you would expect
them to from receiving an elevator pitch from Trump. The responses, naturally, run the spectrum
from “I told you to never call me at this number again” to “I hadn’t heard of that so we’ll look into
it” to “that sounds good enough to have my people call your people.”
This is exactly the range of response one expects from receiving any elevator pitch. And the
organizational responses neatly maps onto the response one would expect from being asked by
their boss to look into it in light of the publicly available information on the subject. So honestly it
is hard to say that Trump has even been particularly unsuccessful in this regard.
Honestly I don’t see anything CW here. Ignoring of course the media hysterics on the subject.
o GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:43 pm ~new~
So I know jack-shit about this drug in particular and how Covid is likely to react to various drugs in
general, but keep this in mind:
There’s a near-0% chance that Trump just spontaneously knows about this obscure
drug, is fond of it, and has decided to hitch his horse to the drug for no reason in a
situation where it clearly doesn’t work.
What’s hugely more likely in the “generic contest” version of this story with his name stipped out is
that he was at some point early on briefed about possible Covid treatments and this was one of the
things mentioned. As we know, the entire establishment media then dog-piled on it as if it were the
world’s most ridiculous thing – but it’s incredibly likely they were dog-piling on something that was
proposed by a top-notch public health scientist or doctor.
I find the above to be the most likely possible situation. After that happens, we have a few
possibilities:
A. The drug doesn’t work. Trump sticking to his guns is possibly killing people. (If there’s a
confirmed case of someone dying of this drug when not plausibly being poisoned by their spouse,
omit “possibly”)
B. The drug does work. The media in its efforts to hurt Trump is for-sure killing people.
C. The drug possibly works; either the media sticking to its guns in trying to fuck over Trump or
Trump sticking to his guns to spite the media is making it harder to research if it’s useful or not.
A quick check then produces this. This NPR article indicates that C is probably correct.
So what you have here, I think, is a situation something like this: Trump was almost certainly told
by a qualified advisor that a drug was potentially helpful for Covid. He mentioned this, and the
Media/Twitter crowd decided it wasn’t and then spent a few months accusing him of murder over
mentioning it. Trump refused to back down. Now it’s very difficult to see if it works or not because
of needless controversy, caused by both sides, over a potentially needed or potentially useless
pharmaceutical.
To answer your question more specifically, the question “Why does Trump and other Trump-ish
people like this potentially useless drug?” is fair, but it’s no more fair than “Why are the media and
a majority of world governments willing to single out a potentially helpful drug in such a way that
has rendered difficult or impossible to study?”.
I’m on the right, so it doesn’t take much squinting for me to see a “fuck this drug, no matter what
it is, because we secretly hate Trump” mindset existing. Doubly so because I vape – “Fuck this
seemingly safe alternative to smoking people like because we secretly hate smokers” is the
currency of the public health realm on that topic. So I’m not sure it’s as clear cut as the “Why do
dumb people like this stupid drug?” version of your question I see some places – to me it’s just as
easily “Why is public health often willing to sacrifice people’s lives to punish a disliked other?”
 gbdub says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:49 pm ~new~
+1 to all of this.
 broblawsky says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:08 pm ~new~
FWIW, I’m just trying to understand why Trump and Trump-like leaders are trying to support the
use of HCQ. I’m not trying to imply anything about the mindset of rank-and-file conservatives.
As to your point, I don’t see an easy way for the media to modulate their discussion of
hydroxychloroquine in such a way that they can convey that people shouldn’t take it without a
doctor’s recommendation without making people think that it’s dangerous. The average person is,
in my experience, bad at taking a nuanced approach to medicine. The onus is at least as much on
Trump as it is on the media, though – he’s the President, after all. The power of the bully pulpit
comes with special responsibilities, in my opinion. I just want to know why he’s so hell-bent on
promoting the stuff.

 GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:05 pm ~new~
As to your point, I don’t see an easy way for the media to modulate their discussion
of hydroxychloroquine in such a way that they can convey that people shouldn’t
take it without a doctor’s recommendation without making people think that it’s
dangerous.
I don’t think there’s any way to prove this, but I’d be pretty shocked if a world where the media
had let Trump mention he was taking a particular medication and thought it was good mostly just
pass would have resulted in more people knowing about this drug than not.
Before this subject hits me “let’s think hard about this” filter, I 100% want to take this drug
because the tribe part of my brain is going “It’s pretty clear the president has been prescribed this
by his doctor; at least some uber-high level physicians think it’s a good idea. The media / CDC /
FDA say not to, but all of them pretty demonstrably hate me and want me dead for other reasons
and are usually or always choosing their actions based on their own self interest.
Now, I have a “let’s think about this again” reflex I’ve built, but some don’t; I’m not sure the “Let’s
amplify the ‘Trump likes this drug but we don’t angle to a huge degree, but then tell them not to do
it” math works out in favor of less unauthorized use.

FWIW, I’m just trying to understand why Trump and Trump-like leaders are trying
to support the use of HCQ. I’m not trying to imply anything about the mindset of
rank-and-file conservatives.
I don’t know that this is knowable, but I’d guess it’s a combination of these things:
1. Medical advisors have told them it’s a good idea or potentially a good idea; in a world where the
other available advice is “Well, ventilators if it gets bad, I guess, and maybe a vaccine eventually?”
they are motivated to mention other potential treatments.
2. Behind closed doors, more people than just these few think the drug has potential and/or works,
but barring hard proof don’t want to let Trump dunk on them.
3. The current popular media narrative is “The only acceptable way to talk about this drug is to say
there’s no reason to believe it works or could work and to then talk about how dangerous it is to
take”. In that environment, if one party affiliation is more likely to be able to get away with talking
in the non-approved way, that’s the party that you will see doing it.
On the flip side, you also have:
4. Trump Et Al are stupid or corrupt in some way; they especially like the name of this drug or
something to the point where they take it and laud it for no reason, or they have money invested
in or coming from companies that make this drug.
To me, it feels very plausible that there was some legitimate interest and hope in this drug before
Trump mentioned it and made it a republican pharmaceutical, and that whatever interest and hope
remains in it in the medical/ph are to some extent suppressed from what they would otherwise be.
I know that doesn’t feel equally plausible to everyone.

May 22, 2020 at 10:39 am ~new~
To me, it feels very plausible that there was some legitimate interest and hope in
this drug before Trump mentioned it
I am pretty sure I remember seeing some positive coverage, representing it as a drug there was
some reason to think might help and one that had been used a lot for other purposes so was well
known, before Trump mentioned it. I believe there had been some early positive news on it from
China.
Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:38 pm ~new~
As to your point, I don’t see an easy way for the media to modulate their discussion
of hydroxychloroquine in such a way that they can convey that people shouldn’t
take it without a doctor’s recommendation without making people think that it’s
dangerous. The average person is, in my experience, bad at taking a nuanced
approach to medicine.
I just don’t see how you can argue the coverage was anywhere near proportional or motivated
mainly by concern. This isn’t about whether it was biased against Trump, but whether it seemed
almost driven mad for weeks. There was a frankly deranged and counterproductive quality to it
that probably made no one safer. Trump is responsible for what he says, but it’s not clear what he
said did any damage. As much as he enjoys war with the media, I don’t think even he could have
predicted that meltdown by the media on this particular issue, so I can’t really hold him responsible
for the fact that it made the drug harder to research. They also did it again a few days later with
the disinfectant comment—again, he advised no one to take it, but brought up a vague suggestion
that could hardly be followed up on. There was really no need for the media to protect the public
from the effect of those remarks. And I remember the Atlantic posting a dramatic article titled,
“The World is Laughing At Us,” mainly about that comment. They weren’t worried about the public,
or even the pandemic, but that other countries laughed at us because Trump said silly things. Good
God.
All day long, people can scroll through Twitter and everything else and see all sorts of possible
suggestions for things that might work, including medications like HCQ, some from doctors and
scientists and other influential people. Does the media spend any meaningful time rebutting these?
Trump didn’t tell anyone to take it, which would have been different. Most people know you don’t
take random prescription medication and don’t have easy access to it. If he’d recommended
something easily found in household stuff that seemed harmless (like fish tank cleaner, but that’s
pushing it)–say he’d recommended large doses of Tylenol or something—that would have been far
more dangerous and worth correcting. Yes, people are dumb, and some will order it off the internet
or something, but most people who are dumb about this stuff don’t put in that kind of effort.
People really determined to try some drug could have found references to it from people other than
Trump all over the web. There was no reason to assume the mere mention of HCQ posed a threat
to any significant number of Americans.
You can say, “well even one is too many, can’t be too careful” but if hysteria is now the appropriate
standard in the face of any threat, where was all the hysteria about the bad advice being given by
tons of other politicians and health organizations? The danger there was vastly greater. The point is
not “whataboutism,” or even right/left, expert/non-expert, but that the media response had
precious little to do with HCQ, and a great deal to do with Trump. The HCQ thing at times
overshadowed the entire pandemic! And usually it wasn’t warning about needing doctor’s advice, or
giving any other particularly protective information, but rather insisting that the drug hadn’t been
proven effective. The message was not, “so you should hold off as we wait for more studies, and
hope we find some good news eventually,” but that Trump had been wrong.
There was so much going on that could have used a response of such energy. For example, in
Boston and other places, the messaging about COVID-19 was so apocalyptic and also vague that
people were afraid to go to the hospital even with life-threatening health problems. Some seem to
have thought they could wait it out, what with messages that we were ending the latest two-week
period and no officials being honest that this wasn’t going away anytime soon. As you say, some
people don’t understand the complexities. So you had children with burst appendixes waiting way
too long because of their parents’ fear—the risk to children is clearly low enough that the appendix
issue should override any fears for someone who is well-informed. But many people were not well-
informed, because the government unintentionally portrayed the hospitals as COVID-19 only and
probable death traps that you should avoid at all possible cost, when they meant to convey you
should avoid them unless it is reasonably necessary and urgent. It would have been helpful for the
press to have gotten in there and corrected the message for the sake of the public, as I’m sure the
threat was greater. I could give several examples in that line.
In another post, I explained why I thought Trump promoted it. Initially, he wasn’t promoting it,
just mentioning it along with other things. Then he started tangling with the media, and sometimes
mentions it to get a rise out of them. It developed a life of its own. He often develops little fixations
on things that don’t appear to have much of a deeper meaning. It’s really not specific to this drug.
I’m sure there are other things or people he’s been more stuck on lately.
 gbdub says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:55 am ~new~
As a bit of data supporting you, CNN continues to refer to HCQ in their headlines as “Drug touted
by Trump…”
Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:31 am ~new~
The simplest answer is probably something like: Given the perception that right-leaning leaders
want to re-open as soon as possible, while left-leaning leaders want to keep extending lockdowns
indefinitely, possibly until a vaccine is developed (note, I am not saying this is true and I have
argued against it in the past, but it does seem to be the common perception)… right-leaning
leaders are more likely to positively promote any promising short-term solutions that would justify
re-opening quickly, whereas left-leaning leaders are more likely to be skeptical and poo-poo such
potential solutions.
And note that it’s not JUST HCQ. Trump has also been mocked/criticize for favorably endorsing
other potential remedies, which the media gleefully reported as “Trump suggests injecting Lysol”
and “Trump thinks blasting yourself with UV rays will kill COVID”
People see what they want to see. Trump wants to see “there’s stuff available that can help us fight
this and get back to normal in the short-term.” Trump opponents want to see “We need stronger
lockdowns probably until a vaccine.” So Trump sees some evidence HCQ works and anchors to
that, his opponents see some that it doesn’t and anchor to that…
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:38 am ~new~
I don’t see an easy way for the media to modulate their discussion of
hydroxychloroquine in such a way that they can convey that people shouldn’t take it
without a doctor’s recommendation
It’s a prescription drug. It is not legally possible to take it “without a doctor’s recommendation.”
Taking any prescription drug without a doctor’s recommendation is something people shouldn’t do.
What the media, and various anti-Trump politicians, seem to be arguing is that people shouldn’t be
allowed to take HCQ even with a doctor’s recommendation which basically undoes decades of
precedent of allowing off-label prescribing. What they are implicitly saying is that even doctors
cannot be trusted to properly judge the risk/reward of this drug, and the option of prescribing it
should be taken away from them.

 mtl1882 says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:45 pm ~new~
What the media, and various anti-Trump politicians, seem to be arguing is that
people shouldn’t be allowed to take HCQ even with a doctor’s recommendation
which basically undoes decades of precedent of allowing off-label prescribing. What
they are implicitly saying is that even doctors cannot be trusted to properly judge
the risk/reward of this drug, and the option of prescribing it should be taken away
from them.
Good point. I kind of forgot that part. I think it was actually banned in some cases, by certain
states, hospitals, or organizations. As far as I could tell, it was mainly driven by a desire to signal
that what Trump was doing wasn’t okay, as it seemed politically risky under any other
circumstances to ban anything that could possibly help, unless the FDA objected.
Also, this just came out — totally nuts.
Klobuchar mocked Trump for taking HCQ, saying it causes hallucinations, which, whatever, but last
month, she indicated her husband had probably been treated with it. She explained it depends on
what your individual condition is and what your doctor recommends, which is surely sensible. She
then said, “I think people have to look at what works. I believe in science, something this president
has been not listening to.” Somehow, it is just not possible to use this medication without being
seen as siding with Trump, and it requires extensive justification and distancing.
GOP Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly was also diagnosed with COVID-19 back in
March, and he told ABC’s The View he was treated with hydroxychloroquine,
shocking host Joy Behar who responded, “Wow. I can’t believe anybody with a
brain would take that stuff, but you seem like an intelligent guy,” she responded.
“You’re a representative in Congress. Why would you take that drug? There are
terrible consequences.”
This is just absurd.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, however, who contracted COVID-19 and was critical of
the president’s use of hydroxychloroquine, was treated with Potentized quinine,
according to his wife Cristina.
How did we get to this point?
Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:39 am ~new~
So what you have here, I think, is a situation something like this: Trump was almost
certainly told by a qualified advisor that a drug was potentially helpful for Covid.
He mentioned this, and the Media/Twitter crowd decided it wasn’t and then spent a
few months accusing him of murder over mentioning it. Trump refused to back
down
My recollection of this is that support for HCQ got popular on Fox/other conservative media circles,
then Trump started talking about it. This makes me thing the process was more like: Trump sees
something about it on TV, gets interested in it, mentioned it…” I don’t think there’s any necessary
implication of the qualified advisor telling him HCQ is worth pursuing.

 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:48 am ~new~
If this is true, it would change my views on this somewhat – I’d have to think about how much.
 gbdub says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:52 am ~new~
I mean that’s a possibility, but then that would show that HCQ was not some crackpot Trump
snake oil but something that had been being promoted as a possible treatment.
Which is how I remember it, FWIW. I heard about HCQ before Trump and CNN started fighting
about it, and from a non-right wing source, as something some doctors believed might be a
promising treatment.
 Chalid says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:04 am ~new~
Right, it was promising initially. It was fine to be optimistic about HCQ back in March (though of
course, if Trump had been an SSC reader, he would have known that the vast majority of early
promising results don’t hold up).
Then a bunch of better-quality studies came out showing no significant positive effects on average,
but Trump is sticking to his guns, because Trump is not the sort of person who backs down to a
bunch of nerdy scientists who probably didn’t vote for him anyway.
(It is true that lots of HCQ boosters think that HCQ needs to be applied early in the illness to have
an effect, and the studies largely didn’t do that. OTOH Trump claims he is taking HCQ when he’s
not even sick, and that’s just a completely crazy thing to do AFAICT.)
Hide ↑
 gbdub says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:39 am ~new~
Certainly, you can criticize Trump for getting ahead of the science, and then sticking to his guns for
too long as the science started to fall apart. But you should be equally critical of the media
narrative that got way ahead of the science when they more or less immediately turned “Trump is
being overly optimistic about a promising but unproven treatment” into “Noted anti-science
dumbass Donald Trump pushes obvious snake oil… HOW MANY MURDERS IS HE PERSONALLY
RESPONSIBLE FOR?!”
because Trump is not the sort of person who backs down to a bunch of nerdy
scientists who probably didn’t vote for him anyway.
I don’t think that’s fair. To be sure, Trump is not the kind of person to readily admit his mistakes.
But the fact that this got turned into a partisan issue almost instantly left him with no way to
gracefully shift his position without this getting used as further ammo against him. In a friendlier
media environment, the President could both promote a promising treatment to give people some
good news and let the issue quietly die when it didn’t pan out. But that’s not the environment we
are operating in.
It’s less “screw those science nerds” and more “Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” so it
should be no surprise he takes the route that doesn’t require standing in front of his opponents and
admitting he was wrong.

Hide ↑
 Chalid says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:59 am ~new~
the fact that this got turned into a partisan issue almost instantly left him with no way to gracefully
shift his position without this getting used as further ammo against him
Sure there is. He could have just stopped talking about it and everyone would have moved on to
other things by now.
you should be equally critical of the media narrative
eh maybe. If someone was calling it snake oil in March that’s definitely bad (though urging people
not to go out and take it would be good).
But Trump is claiming that he’s taking it right now when he’s not sick, and AFAICT that fully
deserves to be called snake oil.

Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 8:04 am ~new~
I think this is correct. Utah embraced hydroxychloroquine before Trump did so, or at least before
Trump did so publically. Reports from pharmacists suggest it was being used for COVID-19
treatment even back in early March.


May 22, 2020 at 7:19 am ~new~
Yep. This is what Scott calls a “flag” issue.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-movement/
Then came the rallying flag: a political disagreement over the succession. One
group called themselves “the party of Ali”, whose Arabic translation “Shiatu Ali”
eventually ended up as just “Shia”. The other group won and called itself “the
traditional orthodox group”, in Arabic “Sunni”.
Does it matter whether we eat our eggs from the fat end or the skinny end? Well, eating them the
wrong way is how our outgroup does it, so yes, you better believe it matters!!
My start position on hydroxy is that it probably “has slight benefits, generally not worth the side
effects.” I am not at all tightly wedded to that spot, but it gives me lots of breathing room.
Maybe in time HCQ will prove to be a good treatment. Maybe it will turn out to be a bad treatment.
Possibly neither, but if it does turn out to be one of the first two cases the people in a given camp
will resist the evidence as long as they can.

 Wrong Species says:

May 22, 2020 at 8:35 am ~new~
People don’t like to hear it but our beliefs really are that shallow and smart people aren’t resistant.
Sure, everyone has their own core beliefs that they actually care about but everything else mostly
comes down to group dynamics.

May 22, 2020 at 5:13 pm ~new~
Resisting this is one reason for Paul Graham’s advice: Keep Your Identity Small
Whenever a question of fact is a moral or tribal issue to you, you’re sabotaging your brain.
Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 5:02 pm ~new~
When Trump started talking about it, hydroxychloroquine was one of the standard drugs that
hospitals were trying on their very sick C19 patients. This was at a time when hospitals were trying
all kinds of different protocols in hopes of doing *something* for their patients. I’ve heard a couple
interviews with a NYC doctor on TWIV where he talked about his hospital’s protocol for C19, which
was hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin + (I think) steroids at some point. At other hospitals they
were trying other things–cortisone, zinc, whatever the hell they had that they could throw at it.
I imagine he heard about it then from his advisors, and decided he’d give it a shot. I gather more
recent data suggests it’s not too useful, but that’s still debatable. (Also, I think taking it
preventatively probably never made sense–the mechanism I’ve heard hypothesized for how it
might help in COVID involved suppressing the immune overreaction that messes up your lungs,
and if that’s going to happen, it will probably be a week or two after you’re infected.)
 Cheese says:
May 24, 2020 at 2:55 am ~new~
“(Also, I think taking it preventatively probably never made sense–the mechanism I’ve heard
hypothesized for how it might help in COVID involved suppressing the immune overreaction that
messes up your lungs, and if that’s going to happen, it will probably be a week or two after you’re
infected.)”
This is not correct.
The theorised mechanism of HCQ in prophylaxis is via direct inhibition of viral entry and unpacking
via effects on lysosomes. That’s a mechanism based on some very well established in vitro data in
other viral infections. Cue unresolved questions about in vivo effects and relevance to COVID.
The immunosuppressive effect of HCQ as used in inflammatory arthropathies and SLE is an effect
via a different mechanism that takes a long time to manifest. Separate from the prophylaxis
discussion.
o chrisminor0008 says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:45 pm ~new~
You’re assuming HCQ isn’t actually effective, which is not clear in the slightest. The hypothesized
effect is as an antiviral, which would mean you need to get it early in the course of the disease or
prophylactically. There’s been no RCT of such a test; all of the studies so far have been with people
at deaths door already. It’d be nice to see such an experiment. Bonus points if zinc is tested
alongside. The popular reporting on this has been abysmally ignorant.

May 21, 2020 at 9:01 pm ~new~
The original hypothesized use of HCQ wasn’t prophylactic, per the well-known Raoult paper, dated
March 20th, where it was used for both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients. Subsequent
observational studies (including one with n>1000) have not demonstrated any statistically
significant improvement in outcomes, with or without azithromycin. Studies on prophylactic
treatment with HCQ are harder to come by, but those that have been performed have thus far
found no prophylactic benefit, and simulations suggest that massive doses would be necessary
even if it was effective. Obviously, proving that a drug has no prophylactic benefit is challenging,
but thus far, I haven’t seen any substantial study supporting hydroxychloroquine as either a
prophylactic or therapeutic intervention. All of the supporting evidence seems to me to be primarily
anecdotal, and basic medical precaution would suggest that using it is extremely unwise.
 chrisminor0008 says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:19 am ~new~
I don’t really want to get into a debate about the science of whether it’s effective. I’m not an
expert, but there are a lot of other experts who are not convinced by the papers you linked (And
why should they be? They’re flawed.) You asked a question about why this group of people you
don’t seem to like that much are taking HCQ, when the obvious hypothesis is that their
doctors/advisors judge in the totality of all evidence that it’s safer to take HCQ.
May 22, 2020 at 8:08 am ~new~
If so, the question is, why do their doctors/advisors believe that HCQ is safer when the majority of
the medical establishment doesn’t seem to think so, AFAICT? If Trump isn’t the source of HCQ
becoming a conservative shibboleth, who is?

Hide ↑
 205guy says:
May 23, 2020 at 1:27 pm ~new~
> who is?

When I first heard about HCQ from a French doctor, I was hopeful because I am biased to believe
the French are competent in medical science. But when I saw a photo of Dr. Raoult, it rang all my
alarm bells for attention-seeking iconoclast.
https://www.google.com/search?q=raoult&source=lnms&tbm=isch
Which I realize is purely an appearances-based judgement, but there are also other details such as
living and working in the south of France (equivalent of conservative Orange County in California,
not liberal Santa Cruz). Reading his Wikipedia page, he’s definitely not a quack, but I’m inclined to
believe he has blind spots.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 7:35 am ~new~
We should all reread https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/
People on one side will pick apart the studies that show results that disagree with their priors. They
are flawed. And they are right: all studies are flawed.
There are studies that show positive effects of HCQ. There are studies that don’t show it. I have
zero interest in trying to debunk or whatever the studies on one side or the other.
May 22, 2020 at 8:09 am ~new~
That’s fair. AFAICT, the bulk of the evidence is on the anti-HCQ side. There are some studies that
show positive effects, but they tend to have much lower sample sizes than those that show no or
overall negative effects.

Hide ↑
 gbdub says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:44 am ~new~
My gut sense, and maybe this is wrong, is that “the bulk” of evidence is against HCQ as an all
purpose anti-COVID drug, but it may still be useful in certain cases and in certain cocktails.
Sort of like how every study of SSRIs shows them as having only small effects, but in reality it’s
more like a bimodal distribution – for many people a particular drug doesn’t help much or at all,
but for the right patient it is very effective.

Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 8:58 am ~new~
I think that may well be correct, but the risks associated with HCQ are substantial enough that
extensive use is not net-positive.

Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 5:19 pm ~new~
1. People tried *lots* of things early in the outbreak, and are trying new ones still, and that will
continue until we end up with either a treatment or a vaccine or the disease burns itself out.
Hydrochloroquine was one of the early things people tried that seemed like it worked and plausibly
might work. Most such things turn out not to work when you examine them carefully. Probably
that’s the way to bet for HCQ as well, but who knows?
2. If Donald Trump or his detractors’ stated position on HCQ has any effect on your evaluation of
this question, you’re probably sabotaging your brain. Trump isn’t any kind of great source of
medical advice, but he’s also not an inverse weathervane. Nor is the NYT.
Hide ↑
 Tatterdemalion says:
May 22, 2020 at 2:47 am ~new~
I think the weaker assumption that the balance of the evidence provides no reason to believe that
HCQ is beneficial, and does definitely show that it carries risks, is clear, and is sufficient to support
the OP’s point.
After all, there’s no clear evidence that, say, marsh marigolds aren’t effective against coronavirus
either.
 chrisminor0008 says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:51 am ~new~
broblawsky cherry-picked countries. HCQ is the standard of care in South Korea and Italy, too.
May 22, 2020 at 8:10 am ~new~
Even if that’s true, it doesn’t prove that it’s effective.

Hide ↑
o Loriot says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:02 pm ~new~

Is there something that makes right-wing populist leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro,
and others more susceptible to pseudomedicine memes like belief in the efficacy of
hydroxychloroquine?
A distrust of experts that are perceived to be liberal-aligned.
May 21, 2020 at 7:34 pm ~new~

I think part of the answer, not for that drug in particular, is that the scientific establishment is
viewed from the right as largely captured by the left — consider the case of Scientific American —
hence its advice, even on non-political matters, is distrusted.

 LadyJane says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:06 pm ~new~
I feel like this is mixing up cause-and-effect? Or at least mixing up correlation and causation? I
don’t think these people distrust the academic and scientific establishment because they’re right-
wing populists, I think they’re right-populists because they distrust the establishment. Both their
distrust of skepticism of liberal politics and their skepticism of the academic/scientific/medical
establishment comes from a deeper set of assumptions about the world and how it works.
 GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:27 pm ~new~
Both their distrust of skepticism of liberal politics and their skepticism of the
academic/scientific/medical establishment comes from a deeper set of assumptions
about the world and how it works.
This, and the rest of your post, seems like it means this:
They don’t think. It’s just raw instinct, they don’t have any reasons.
Does it, or does it mean something else?
 LadyJane says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:07 am ~new~
Does that seem like a charitable reading of my comment? Do you think this interpretation is true or
necessary?
Hide ↑
 GearRatio says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:02 am ~new~
LadyJane: That’s why I’m asking. David posted something that said, essentially, “These people
don’t trust this drug because they don’t trust these people, and they don’t trust these people
because they believe them, based on some evidence, to be subverted by politics”. You posted
something else that asks if it’s for another reason, but it’s hard for me to parse exactly what you
are saying that reason is.
If somebody’s reasons to distrust the establishment are reasons that have to do with what those
things are, it’s a different thing from “Well, those people just have deeper assumptions about the
world in general, that’s just how they are”.
But I specifically didn’t/don’t want to make an uncharitable assumption her. So I’m asking
something like this:

You are replying to a post where someone says people distrust science for action
reasons based on experience by saying they dislike science because they dislike
things they perceive as establishment – to me, this reads a lot like saying their
reasons for disliking science are a lot more instinctual/emotional than rational. Is
this what you are saying, or are you saying something different?
I’m not accusing you of saying that – I’m asking for clarification.
Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 11:02 am ~new~
Let me give my personal angle on Lady Jane’s point.
I grew up at the core of an academic insurgency that largely won. That makes me much more
willing to distrust a current professional consensus than I would otherwise be.
To expand on that. A fellow Harvard undergraduate, c. 1963, commented to me that he couldn’t
take an econ course at Chicago because he would burst out laughing. I am reasonably confident
that he did not know that I was the son of the leading figure in the Chicago school.
I think his comment accurately reflected the attitude of most of the Harvard econ faculty, including
whoever taught the introductory course he had taken, and most of the elite profession, at the time.
People broadly associated with the Chicago school ended up getting at least four Nobel prizes in
economics, and some of the views that were at the time confidently rejected at Harvard and MIT
eventually became part of the orthodoxy of the field.
I think that is part of the reason that, on issues such as population and climate, my attitude is not
“I am told that all the experts believe X so it is probably true” but “what are the arguments and
evidence for X?” Also why I find it more interesting to look for arguments against current
orthodoxies than for them.
I can easily enough imagine analogous experiences in other contexts leading other people to be
skeptical of the orthodoxies they were confronted with.

Hide ↑
 LadyJane says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:44 pm ~new~
@GearRatio: No, I don’t think they operate on “raw instinct” like unthinking beasts. “Less rational”
and “more emotional” might be part of it, for some of them, but that’s not quite what I was getting
at either. If anything, I’d say a better description would be “more inclined to trust conventional
wisdom and traditional folk solutions than the findings of experts,” which isn’t necessarily irrational
or emotionally-driven (though it often can be).
I’d say the modern anti-establishment skeptic movement is a somewhat uneasy alliance between
those types of folksy “common sense” traditionalists, and intellectuals who reject the orthodox
academic consensus for some sort of heterodox academic theory, as David Friedman described. It
could be equated to a rebellious teenager siding with his grandfather against his father.
As for my own stance, I’m mildly skeptical of establishment sources, but I still tend to trust them
far more than I trust the bulk of anti-establishment sources. I weigh news from CNN and BBC
higher than what I’d see on Drudge Report, and vastly higher than anything I’d ever see on
InfoWars. If someone starts talking about how the Holocaust never happened, or how the USSR
was actually a workers’ paradise and it’s only capitalist propaganda that says otherwise, or how the
government is actually run by a cabal of DMT-using Satanists who get their orders from
interdimensional lizard aliens trying to eradicate all life of Earth, I won’t be inclined to take them
very seriously.
Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:11 am ~new~
I read it as possibly indicating preferences about, among other things, control, legibility, and
efficiency, and “Righteous Mind” type “flavors” of morality. Sounds like I was incorrect, but it made
me think of something that keeps nagging at me.
While I do think things like receptivity to folk wisdom and an awareness of expert fallibility are
often involved, rarely mentioned are people who may not listen to any of the experts and also not
listen to folk wisdom. There are people out there, and I don’t think they’re all populists but I’d
imagine there is significant overlap, who just take life as it comes. They don’t look for a lot of
advice or feel a need to plan with certain expectations in mind. They don’t feel a need to take
responsibility for every contingency and head it off. They don’t need outside validation, and don’t
respond to people telling them what to do. They may not have particularly negative feelings toward
experts, and they generally don’t have crazy beliefs, but they lack a proactive approach that
appears to many irrational and gets them lumped in with anti-vaxxers. Like, some of them may
have no real objection to vaccines, but just never get vaccinated because they’re not big on
doctors. But that doesn’t mean they’re into alternative medicine. They probably have a general, “if
it’s my time to go, then it’s my time,” attitude towards death. Most people have such an obsession
with feeling in control that they won’t acknowledge this group.

Hide ↑
May 23, 2020 at 2:26 pm ~new~
No, I don’t think they operate on “raw instinct” like unthinking beasts.
The point I like to make is that all of us function largely on second-hand information, because
nobody has enough first-hand data. If you have found a particular source of information, say your
church’s pastor, to be reliable in the areas where you have interacted with him, it’s rational to
accept his view in other areas where you think he knows more than you do, not as certain but as
what you are willing to go on. If he tells you that evolution is nonsense invented by atheists to
discredit the bible it is rational to believe him unless knowing whether evolution is true is actually
important to you, in which case you might want to look for additional sources and perhaps examine
the arguments yourself.
This is true on the “scientific” side of an argument too. Most of the people who believe in evolution
couldn’t give an accurate explanation and defense of it. It’s even true of the scientists. If you are a
climate scientist whose specialty is elaborate mathematical models of climate you may believe you
are competent to know what views of global warming and its effects are true but you are not,
because you have to take on faith both the other scientists producing information feeding into your
work and the people taking what comes out of your work, and that of other workers, and deducing
from it the effect on the world. The expert on climate models isn’t an expert on the use of proxies
for past climate or the effect of CO2 concentration on crop yields or lots of other things that
combine to produce the final conclusion.
Getting back to LadyJane’s point, if in your own experience you have found what was represented
to use as the expert consensus to be wrong, you will rationally lower the weight you give to it on
other issues.
Hide ↑
o Uribe says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:03 pm ~new~
I think there is a good chance Trump is lying about taking the drug, simply because he’s not as
dumb as he acts. The Qanon fans I follow on Twitter have a made a big thing about how this drug
saves lives and the media says it doesn’t because they want people to die. I suspect Trump lied
about taking the drug in order to play to that part of his base but more importantly to control the
news cycle.
Bolsonaro has simply hitched his wagon to Trump.

May 22, 2020 at 4:09 am ~new~
Doesn’t seem like a big mystery, if you take the timeline into consideration. A populist leader wants
to be seen as able to solve problems, and is less likely to hedge his bets. In the beginning hcq
looked good, was a possible solution and gave something to do. So the default thing for a strong
leader to do is say “we’re ok, we’re doing X and Y and Z and look, we also have a drug that works”.
And make moves to buy/produce/protect it. Once you do this you kinda have to stick with it,
especially since it hasn’t been clearly invalidated. And even then, the default political move is to
still say “yes it works” but only when you really really have to, and ignore it the rest of the time.
What’s unique to HCQ is that it was an obvious possible solution at the time. What’s unique to
those leaders is they want to be seen as problem solvers and they’re less afraid to be publicly
wrong.
o SolipsisticUtilitarian says:
May 22, 2020 at 5:04 am ~new~
Your assumption is wrong. Many non right-wing authoritarian countries have included HCQ in their
treatment guidelines, for example the Netherlands, Italy, Korea and China. On the other hand, the
fact that Israel did *not* ban the export of the drug also seems to not support your thesis, as
Netanyahu is as right-wing as Trump is.
The only unique phenomenon that is left is two right wing policians very publicly endorsing the
drug, Bolsonaro and Trump. Since they are both invested in the virus not being a big deal but less
invested in being truthful, them promoting an unproven drug to reduce fears among the population
does not seem surprising at all.

o psmith says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:58 am ~new~

the infamous now-debunked Medium post claiming that COVID-19 somehow
destroyed hemoglobin
Your link doesn’t strike me as a debunking so much as a lot of dark hinting that the original
Medium piece is bunk without any actual argumentation or new facts about hemoglobin
pathologies. I don’t have a strong opinion on the fact of the matter one way or the other, but I
didn’t before, either.

May 22, 2020 at 8:12 am ~new~
The “evidence” for COVID-19 attacking hemoglobin is basically nonexistent; it consists of a single
set of simulations. I don’t think anyone needs to put any extra effort into disproving a theory when
there’s no actual experimental evidence in support of it.

o Cheese says:
May 24, 2020 at 3:07 am ~new~
Without making political comment, what has struck me is that the debate in mainstream/political
areas is often not congruent with the debate in scientific/medical circles. They’re two parallel
arguments that largely don’t interact outside of a) initial studies or b) paradigm shifts. That’s true
for lots of things but more magnified in this situation.

27. GearRatio says:

May 21, 2020 at 5:01 pm ~new~
Electric Guitar guys and electrical engineers of SSC:
I’m shielding an electric bass, which involves lining the inside of the thing with copper tape. My
understanding is this copper bubble has to be grounded; if I line the bass in such a way that the
output jack is in pretty good contact with it once it’s bolted back in, do I have to solder it on still?
I’m not sure how robust the contact has to be since I’m imagining it’s a pretty weak current.
o sfoil says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:41 pm ~new~
Current has nothing to do with it. If there is no contact, it won’t be grounded. If it is “not robust”
i.e. in contact some times and not others, then sometimes it will be grounded and sometimes it
won’t. The switch between these two states will involve noisy transients, probably literally noisy in
this application.
 GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:54 pm ~new~
I’m probably making this unnecessarily hard by being unclear, sorry. Let me put it another way:
I’m pretty sure I can cinch it underneath the washer that sits underneath the output jack nut well
enough that it should never not have some decent level of contact. If it did slip, it would be an
easy fix. Is there any reason to think that an interruption, if it happened, would be damaging for
the device or dangerous to me?

 sfoil says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:06 pm ~new~
Oh, so that’s why you mentioned the small currents. No, you and the guitar should be fine.
Although I still think it’s probably worth it to solder it just to save possible trouble later.
 Uribe says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:14 pm ~new~
When I was a teenager playing in a garage band with my Les Paul Deluxe I would often play
barefoot and also sometimes get shocked by my guitar. Don’t know what the issue was but
someone told me I was dumb not to wear shoes and could have been electrocuted.
 GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:11 pm ~new~
I’ve had minor shocks from several basses before; I could never figure out why or get it to re-occur
on any schedule besides “once every couple of years”.
Gonna be honest: That’s a pretty sick guitar for teenaged you to have.
Hide ↑
 Well... says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:09 pm ~new~
Gonna be honest: That’s a pretty sick guitar for teenaged you to have.
I mentally inserted “Epiphone” in front without even realizing it, but yeah you’re right.
Then again, there was this band at my high school mostly comprised of the “rich kids”. The lead
singer and guitarist played a legit SG.

Hide ↑
28. oriscratch says:

May 21, 2020 at 3:17 pm ~new~
Say we have two people with headaches, Bob and Joe. Bob has a severe headache that’s quickly
getting worse, so he takes some Tylenol. The Tylenol calms his headache back down to a mild
headache. Joe, on the other hand, only has a mild headache that doesn’t seem to be getting much
worse. So he doesn’t take the Tylenol.
Later, Bob and Joe both go to the doctor.
“Aha!” says the doctor. “Bob and Joe both have headaches. Bob took Tylenol, while Joe didn’t. And
yet Bob and Joe’s headaches are both equally mild! I guess Tylenol is pretty useless for
headaches.”
After reading Scott’s latest Coronalinks post, I’m wondering if something like this might be
happening with all the countries that have different levels of lockdown measures, but still seem to
have similarly severe outbreaks. The most prominent example would be Sweden (analogous to
Joe) vs neighboring European countries (analogous to Bob, who takes the Tylenol (lockdown
measures)). Is there any evidence confirming or going against this interpretation?

o keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:23 pm ~new~
If I’m understanding the point of the analogy, you should look at how much pain each patient was
having before they took/chose not to take Tylenol. The problem is that we have many patients that
by the end either had major headaches (Wuhan, Lombardy, Iran, New York) or moderate
headaches (rest of USA, rest of Europe) or no headaches (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan) and some
strange mix of them took some strange mix of supposed painkillers, at different dates, but some
ended up in each group.

o NostalgiaForInfinity says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:31 am ~new~
This was my impression too. I think the timing of when lockdowns were implemented relative to
how many cases or deaths there were – or from day of first / 100th case – would show a stronger
effect for lockdowns rather than “did place lockdown or not” vs “how bad is it now”.
May 22, 2020 at 4:27 am ~new~
Sweden vs rest is probably the most logical part of the whole situation. We have pretty much what
we expected to have: Sweden has many more deaths now, less economic harm, and best we can
guess, will end up with about as many deaths overall – but we won’t know for sure until it’s over
and probably argue a lot about ways to count. The only unexpected factor is that they managed to
avoid overwhelming their ICUs. And actually as far as I can tell, overwhelming only happened in
Wuhan and Lombardy (and in a lot of small hotspots, like Suceava Romania). I don’t think we’re
risking it anymore, now that we know a bit more about how Covid works.
As far as differences vs cofounders, that’s due to how the situation is structured. You have a bunch
of factors that each can influence R quite a lot. A good guess would be around 20. Some are the
same for neighboring countries – like weather, some differ quite a lot – like how many seniors live
in retirement homes. Which leaves you with a very spotted map, overall. Add to this the timing of
when various measures were implemented, where a two week difference can move the height of
the peak either A LOT (for countries with a high R) or not that much, if R was closer to 1 from the
beginning.
So you end up with a picture that doesn’t lend itself well to any simple explanation or model.

May 22, 2020 at 7:49 am ~new~
If 30% of Sweden has gotten or gotten over coronavirus, like I thought a week or two ago, they
are probably halfway to herd immunity and may be able to restart their economy sooner [1]
without ever overwhelming their hospital system.
If 5% of Sweden has gotten or gotten over coronavirus, like recent research suggests (see thread
below), then we are probably going to have a vaccine [2] long before herd immunity matters.
[1] Their economic picture right now doesn’t look better than their neighbors right now. The hope
was that they would get over it sooner. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-
economy-to-contract-as-severely-as-the-rest-of-europe.html
[2] Maybe a risky vaccine with 1-in-10,000 side effects, but that’s safer than the disease.

May 22, 2020 at 9:11 am ~new~
Between common sense and financial predictions by respectable institutions, I’ll go with common
sense with over 80% confidence. Sure, economies being globalized means getting away completely
is out of the question, but I’d be shocked if there weren’t benefits for lighter lockdown. Including,
well, plain hedonic ones, which are not negligible btw. We’re talking way more than a dust speck in
1.000.000 people’s eyes, here.
As for herd immunity, I also think the territory is different from the map. In two ways, at least, but
it could be a lot more:
1. Herd immunity is dependent on R. Or to put it differently, percentage of immune people is just
another factor along with many others that affect R. Plain old herd immunity (or R=1) might be 40-
60% in regular conditions, but people did change their habits quite a lot, and we may well end up
with a much lower effective herd immunity. How low?
2. Depends on population. If you’re an isolated village in the north, you’re effectively out of the
picture. If you’re elderly and paranoid and stay home, again you don’t really count. The more
exposed to the virus a certain segment is, the higher its immune count is likely to be – and that’s
exactly where the need to lower R is greatest. It’s a self-balancing mechanism that dampens the
epidemic in distinct populations.

29. proyas says:

May 21, 2020 at 1:34 pm ~new~
Which areas of the U.S. were so badly damaged by soil erosion and unsustainable farming methods
that they’re still barren today?

o SamChevre says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:31 pm ~new~
There are sections of West Tennessee like this–they aren’t precisely barren, but they are
unfarmable and covered in random fast-growing junk like kudzu (imported for the purpose.) Some
of the worst sections were bought by the government in the 1930s and are now Natchez Trace
State Park.
 Dack says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:23 am ~new~
The US has been steadily retiring marginal farmland from agriculture since the 1960s. Thus the
definition of “unfarmable” expands.

o Uribe says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:36 pm ~new~
In Caro’s opus 1 on Lyndon Johnson it mentions that Johnson County, named after his forefathers,
west of Austin, had a thin layer of topsoil, and what seemed fertile land to the settlers turned into
badland after a generation or two.
When did sustainable farming methods come along and how long were parts of the US farmed on a
large scale before they appeared?

 SamChevre says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:48 am ~new~
“Sustainable farming methods” is a bit of a confusing term–different farming methods are
sustainable in different places, and are unsustainable elsewhere for different reasons.
A partial list:
1) Nitrogen depletion. When you read that tobacco and cotton were hard on the soil/used up the
soil, so the planters continually cleared new ground-that’s nitrogen depletion. Several factors
contribute: it’s much worse in hotter climates, so things that worked in Europe didn’t in the US;
rotating crops with legumes in the rotation helps, since legumes can fix nitrogen. But primarily, this
one was solved not by more sustainable farming methods, but by the Haber-Bosch process.
2) Water erosion. This is affected by slope, by soil type, and by farming methods. It’s worse once
plowing becomes common (the steel moldboard plow, developed by John Deere in 1837, had a
major impact). The real answer is “don’t farm the hills”, so reduced subsisistence-level farming
really makes a major difference. Modern no-till farming also helps–that’s a development of the last
50 years or so.
3) Wind erosion. This is a problem in dry climates with fine soil, and is still fairly important.
o Ouroborobot says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:02 am ~new~
There’s an interesting micro case of this near where I live known as the Desert of Maine. It’s
something of a minor tourist attraction.

o bullseye says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:24 am ~new~

Providence Canyon in Georgia was created by runoff from farms.
link
 proyas says:
May 23, 2020 at 10:12 am ~new~
Has anyone suggested filling the Canyon in to repair the damage?

30. ana53294 says:

May 21, 2020 at 12:11 pm ~new~
How much would having a parent with criminal history affect your chances of getting a job in the
US? What if it’s a political crime, like being an active member of the Black Panther party? As long
as you don’t support the same radical ideas, that is. Would you be able to get a top job in the
military? the civil service? law enforcement? the judiciary?
I was recently browsing the Internet, and realized that in Russia, apparently, having a criminal
parent means you have no chance at a government job, basically. It would disqualify you for the
police, Interior, prosecutors, etc. You also need to serve, if you’re male, but that’s another thing.
In Spain, AFAIUI, it doesn’t affect you at all. Not for politics, not for civil service.
If your parents’ crimes are political, it could reinforce your credentials, even. If you continue in the
same criminally-inclined political movement, you’re gold. But if you decide to renounce terrorism
and join a more moderate party, they’ll eat it up. Maybe because Spaniards are Catholics, there’s
nothing they like more than the repentant politicians (and they also give preferential treatment to
repentant terrorists). The Basque Country is full of turncoats who changed party from the fringe
Basque nationalists to Spanish ones, and nobody seems to remind them of their past.
o anon-e-moose says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:37 pm ~new~
Very negligible, unless your parent’s crime was noteworthy. And even then, as cited in your
example, those crimes may lend legitimacy. For example, the US had the “Weather Underground”
movement that engaged in leftist political violence in the ’70s. The leaders of of that movement
have gone on to hold respectable academic positions, while one (at least) is still in jail for murder.
Notably, the son of the imprisoned member of WU was recently elected district attorney in San
Francisco.
May 21, 2020 at 12:39 pm ~new~

Pretty much the only areas where it might have an issue are jobs where a security clearance is
required. You can be denied a security clearance for, among other reasons:
a) involvement in, support of, training to commit, or advocacy of any act of
sabotage, espionage, treason, terrorism, or sedition against the United States of
America;
(b) association or sympathy with persons who are attempting to commit, or who
are committing, any of the above acts;
(c) association or sympathy with persons or organizations that advocate, threaten,
or use force or violence, or use any other illegal or unconstitutional means, in an
effort to:
(1) overthrow or influence the government of the United States or any state or local
government;
(2) prevent Federal, state, or local government personnel from performing their
official duties;
(3) gain retribution for perceived wrongs caused by the Federal, state, or local
government;
(4) prevent others from exercising their rights under the Constitution or laws of the
United States or of any state.
In effect, this means either certain government positions in federal law enforcement and
intelligence, the state department, military (some Special Forces, some Intel especially SIGINT,
etc), and government and private-sector jobs that involve working with classified material
(technical work on our reconnaissance satellites or signals intelligence systems, nuclear weapons,
stealth aircraft, etc etc).
But whether that’s a deal-breaker would depend on SECRET versus TOP SECRET clearance, the
details of the individual circumstances, and the opinion of the people doing the investigation.
 ana53294 says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:27 pm ~new~
But does having a parent count as association or sympathy?
Would such things as your parents being divorced and you not being in regular contact with the
one with a criminal past count? If you publicly and visibly denounce your parent’s criminal past,
could you still be prevented from having a security clearance?

 Randy M says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:45 pm ~new~
But does having a parent count as association or sympathy?
That should be the assumption. Depending on how by-the-book the relevant hiring authorities are,
and how unique the position is, it might be overlooked. But most people are going to have some
connection to their parents, and if they realize the parent makes them look bad, they’re likely to lie
and claim to be estranged if the position is in the balance.
This is similar to a sub-plot in the Count of Monte Cristo, where the judge’s father’s imperial
sympathies make him look bad, so he has him murdered.

 sfoil says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:30 pm ~new~
It doesn’t automatically count as having such an association or sympathy, but it creates a
presumption of it, which has to be disproved. Trofim gave a pretty good rundown.
I would be pretty surprised if Spain does not have some comparable system in place. It may not
check for the same things or work the same way as the American one, and associated community
is probably smaller sand lower profile than the American one, but it would be odd, and unwise, for
the Spanish government not to check for suspicious family connections before entrusting an
individual with state secrets — which is not the same thing as running for office or being socially or
legally “rehabiliated”.
 ana53294 says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:38 am ~new~
Spain’s upper echelons are full of people with dubious backgrounds. The whole of Spain is full of
people who have people who committed many political crimes in the past.
If you start excluding the person with the father who was a rebel involved in a shootout with the
police during the dictatorship, but don’t exclude the person whose father illegally tortured citizens,
that can raise a lot of stink.
Spain is still a country with deep wounds from the Civil War. The things that happened during the
dictatorships have been amnestied, and you can’t mention them, mostly. So, at least for political
crimes before 1977, no, they won’t check for those.
I guess they do run background checks for the very top rungs. But they don’t for the base level;
you can be an ordinary prosecutor, policeman, judge, etc., with a criminal in your family. In the
US, it seems you can, also. In Russia, you can’t.

Hide ↑
 bean says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:20 am ~new~
You vastly underestimate the number of people who have security clearances. To a first
approximation, it’s anyone who does technical work for the DoD. Because anything that touches
intelligence data has to be classified, and lots of things have a little tiny bit that is intelligence-
related. So you can spend 95% of your time on the unclassified side, but if you have to touch that
bit, then it’s time for a clearance, and go to the classified space to do that thing.
I can’t speak to how they treat parents with criminal records (at least in the areas of relevance,
and not just a random assault charge 20 years ago or something) in the investigations. I suspect
it’s a matter of you declaring it, and you’ll probably get interviewed about it.
 Matt M says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:24 am ~new~
Even “technical work” is probably too restrictive. I was an enlisted Yeoman, basically a glorified
secretary, and they put me in for a secret clearance “just in case” I ever needed to handle
classified documents.
In 9 years I think I handled like, two, and they were both from the 1940s, massively out of date,
and were in the process of becoming declassified.

 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:28 am ~new~
We had a phone on our ship’s bridge that technically could be used to pass classified information.
That meant that our bridge was now a “restricted space” and everyone who had unimpeded access
to it needed a secret clearance. That included 19 year old lookouts that we barely trusted to mop
without supervision.
Hide ↑
 bean says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:19 am ~new~
@Matt M
Good point, although I do wonder what percentage of Yeoman would actually need a clearance
over 9 years. I’m not sure there’s a good way around the “just in case” rules, which I’ve seen in
action elsewhere. (The lab is not normally full of classified information, but can be if we’re running
certain tests. This means that everyone on the doors needs a clearance, and because of
bureaucratic rules, it has to be a full clearance rather than an interim. Anyone else needs an
escort. This is great fun for the 20% of the group with a full clearance when we’re hiring quickly.)
@Aftagley
I suspect it was more than that, at least in practice if not on paper. A ship’s bridge is going to have
a lot of information that an observant person could easily put to bad use if they were passing it off
to someone nefarious. So anyone who is going to be hanging around there probably should be
checked. It’s basically the same reason that the White House mess staff get Yankee White
clearances. It’s not that they need to know TS stuff, it’s just that they’re extremely likely to
overhear it.
Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:34 am ~new~
Nope, I was the command security officer. The bridge was a secured space because it had one
piece of classified equipment on it. I’m sure you know this already, but there’s less information
available on a bridge than you’d think. All that stuff happens down in Combat.
Not saying the information up there wasn’t useful, it’s just not enough to trigger it being classified.
Hide ↑
o Erusian says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:17 pm ~new~
Officially, not at all. There might be some investigation if you might have been involved.
Unofficially, you partly inherit your parents’ reputation (at least a little) which could cause issues.
But it’s not a hard and fast rule barrier by any means. Likewise, you might run into some
discrimination if your parent is a famous politician amongst people of the other party, but that’s not
exactly what you’re asking about either.


May 21, 2020 at 9:36 am ~new~
What is modern Catholicism’s take on Jesus healing people by banishing demons out of them?
Were they literal demons, and if so do they exist and plague people today? Can it all be logically
interpreted as Jesus getting rid of a mental disease?

o Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:52 am ~new~

What is modern Catholicism’s take on Jesus healing people by banishing demons
out of them? Were they literal demons, and if so do they exist and plague people
today?
Yeah. You’re not obliged to believe any particular casting out of demons today, just as you’re not
obliged to believe any particular reporting of a miracle (and you’re sometimes warned it’s probably
false), but these things can very well still happen today. I don’t see, anyway, what is more logical
about Jesus casting out mental illness, given he was not a psychiatrist.
Incidentally, in the past five years there has been a huge resurgence in requests for exorcisms. The
Vatican has been training a lot of new exorcists, and news and stories about them have gotten
more common. See e.g. this Atlantic piece which made the rounds a few years ago. I’m not sure
why.
 FLWAB says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:38 am ~new~
I don’t see, anyway, what is more logical about Jesus casting out mental illness,
given he was not a psychiatrist.
Well he also cured many physical ailments without being a doctor. You could argue that the demon
possessed were not actually demon possessed but did have some physical disorder of the brain
that was cured miraculously. I mean, I wouldn’t argue it (if I believe in miracles, and I believe in
the gospel accounts of those miracles, why draw the line at demons?) but you could. Maybe Jesus
cured their serotonin receptors or whathaveyou.

 Fahundo says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:56 am ~new~
if I believe in miracles, and I believe in the gospel accounts of those miracles, why
draw the line at demons?
Physical and mental illnesses are known to exist. Believing that Jesus could heal the sick requires
belief in a mundane malady and a supernatural cure. Believing that he could exorcise demons
requires you to believe in a supernatural malady and a supernatural cure.
It’s not clear to me that this is necessarily where the line between reasonable and ridiculous
belongs, but it is clear to me that an account that purports to be real and requires me to
simultaneously believe in two supernatural events is asking more of me than something that only
requires me to believe one.

 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:34 am ~new~
I get it. But at the same time, I don’t really?
For instance, lets say there was a parallel universe that existed in two dimensions, and some two
dimensional intelligent being started telling others that three dimensional intelligent beings exist.
He says “There are many types of higher dimensional being of varying intelligence that go by
different names: humans, and dogs, and snakes, for instance.” Wouldn’t it be a little silly if the
reply was “Whoa whoa whoa, I can maybe believe in one higher dimensional being, but believing in
two or three is just ridiculous!”
So if you’re willing to entertain that the supernatural at all, why would it ask significantly more of
you to contemplate the existence of two supernatural beings rather than one?
Hide ↑
 Fahundo says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:42 am ~new~
Imagine there are a bunch of three-dimensional beings. At some point they consider the existence
of a four-dimensional being, and they decide to call the thing a demon. And they maybe also
consider the existence of a being who can perform various miracles, including healing the sick. This
guy could be another example of a 4-dimensional being, or he could be five or six-dimensional or
something. How can anyone even tell?

Hide ↑
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:52 am ~new~
Imagine there are a bunch of three dimensional beings. Some of them believe their are four-
dimensional beings, and they have a long tradition of believing in them and outlining their nature.
And they have a very old book which has an account of a four-dimensional being taking on a three-
dimensional form. And in this account at various times he uses his four-dimensional power to heal
people, and to control nature, and to transform matter. And sometimes he uses his power to affect
other 4-dimensional beings called demons. Why would you, at this point, say “Hold the phone! I’m
willing to entertain that the account might have been accurate in describing a four-dimensional
being taking three-dimensional form and healing the sick with his four-dimensional power, but the
same account and tradition holding that other four-dimensional creatures exist and affect us is
much harder to swallow!”

Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 22, 2020 at 10:55 am ~new~
This, but the whole hypothetical is also a metaphor for the class structure of Victorian England.
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:03 am ~new~
Man, having four-dimensional powers would be so cool. You could go poking around in someone’s
innards without even having to open them up!

Hide ↑
 Fahundo says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:11 am ~new~
How are you determining that all the beings described are 4-dimensional?
Hide ↑
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:22 am ~new~
How are you determining that all the beings described are 4-dimensional?
Because the tradition and the book both say so. That’s my point: if you believe both of those things
enough to believe (or entertain) the idea of one, why not the other? Where exactly is the stumbling
point from “I can believe in a supernatural healing, but not in supernatural beings” given that the
source for the supernatural healing claims also claim that supernatural beings exist?
Hide ↑
 Fahundo says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:32 am ~new~
I dunno man, someone can be wrong about one thing and right about another thing pretty easily.
If I make two predictions, we can evaluate each on its own merits rather than assuming I’m either
right about both or wrong about both.

Hide ↑
 Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:13 pm ~new~
If one believes Jesus was just this guy who used the power of placebo and exaggerations of his
biographers to become noteworthy, or some other similar explanation for the rise of Christianity,
then of course Demons are pretty implausible.
If you believe Jesus was actually divine or in some other way supernatural, then you’ve opened the
door to extra-material forces and you’re 99% of the way to accepting the possibility of others,
especially when he claims such himself.

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 Fahundo says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:27 pm ~new~
If you believe Jesus was actually divine or in some other way supernatural, then
you’ve opened the door to extra-material forces and you’re 99% of the way to
accepting the possibility of others, especially when he claims such himself.
I don’t think this is necessarily true and it is in fact the very thing that I am disputing.
Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 1:17 pm ~new~
I’d argue that postulating the existence of demons and Hell, particularly in combination with these
entities having the ability to influence human behavior, creates fundamental issues of theodicy,
which some people might not want to deal with.
Note: not a Christian.

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 Randy M says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:30 pm ~new~
I’d argue that postulating the existence of demons and Hell, particularly in
combination with these entities having the ability to influence human behavior,
creates fundamental issues of theodicy, which some people might not want to deal
with.
Sure, but so does the existence of a supposedly inspired account which does attribute some agency
to such forces, or at least returns to the metaphor often enough for the confusion to be
understandable.
Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 2:33 pm ~new~
You could also argue that the demon possessed weren’t demon possessed because God would not
have given any demon permission to possess a person (‘So the LORD says to Satan, “Behold, all
that he has is in your power; only upon himself do not put forth your hand.”‘).
That what Jesus actually did is bring the light of god to those who, as you say had an ailment, or
who were themselves away from god. That this light of God cured them.
(I write all of this as an atheist.)

o broblawsky says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:01 am ~new~
It was pretty common in Classical-era Middle Eastern countries to attribute any kind of disease to
be a potential result of demonic influence. Jesus’ exorcisms don’t just include people who we would
consider victims of mental illness, but also the mute, the blind, and epileptics.
Ritual purity was considered to be a form of protection from demons, which some believe to be a
reason why the Levirate dietary laws (modern kosher rules) prohibit pork, shellfish, and many
forms of wild game: all of these would’ve been a potential risk vector for parasites and other
diseases, especially in a desert culture without access to refrigeration.
Edit: Also, all of the demons associated with the astrological decans in the Testament of Solomon
cause various physical illnesses – e.g. migraine, tonsilitis, etc.

o Deiseach says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:36 am ~new~
Were they literal demons, and if so do they exist and plague people today? Can it all be logically
interpreted as Jesus getting rid of a mental disease?
Yes.
To be a bit more helpful, here’s a statement by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on Exorcism.
As a bit of historical trivia, the office of exorcist used to be one of the minor orders, along with
acolyte, lector and porter.

o Zephalinda says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:27 pm ~new~

Were they literal demons, and if so do they exist and plague people today? Can it all
be logically interpreted as Jesus getting rid of a mental disease?
Unless you’re a hardcore Cartesian dualist, I’m not sure how this is a meaningful distinction? At
least in my layperson’s understanding, the Fall/ the existence of evil also disorders the material
makeup of the universe and of the human body, so it’s reasonable that in some cases there would
be overlap between spiritual/metaphysical and physical disease processes.
Serious question: do we understand enough either about what mental illness is or what demonic
possession is to be able to mean anything when we say that a phenomenon is “just a mental
disease” and “not a literal demon”? What, exactly, would be the defining criteria for one or the
other category? How could the question be empirically determined?

 mcpalenik says:
May 22, 2020 at 4:50 am ~new~
At a minimum, I would say that a demon would have to be a second intelligent entity that exists
independently of the host.
Speaking of which, it seems rather strange for Jesus to speak to a mental illness as if its a person
and then cast it into a pig.

 Joseph Greenwood says:

May 22, 2020 at 8:36 am ~new~
A whole herd of pigs, in fact.


May 22, 2020 at 8:07 am ~new~
Maybe I’m not up on my philosophy or theology, but I think there are two possibilities.
1. When Jesus cured a man’s lame hand, he fixed all the ligaments and muscles and tendons and
restored it to full health. When Jesus cured a mental illness, he fixed all the brain chemistry. The
apostles could understand the first but not the second, so they interpreted it as Jesus removing a
demon.
2. Jesus could cure physical ailments with little trouble. But some were possessed or tormented by
an antagonist intelligence.
Why I’m wondering, besides being able to determine which of those two universes I inhabit purely
for knowledge’s sake, is that it seems that medical treatments would be little use against an
antagonist intelligence. I guess even some physical ailments could potentially be caused by
demons. These people will not respond well to whatever mundane tools we can bring.
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:39 am ~new~
it seems that medical treatments would be little use against an antagonist
intelligence.
Just for fun, lets imagine ways that it could:
1. Perhaps demons manipulate peoples emotions by suppressing or antagonizing brain chemicals?
We know some people have low dopamine or whatever and that medication can help, so maybe the
demon is the cause of the low dopamine. And maybe the demon gets pissed that he’s going to all
this effort only to have the humans figure out a work around.
2. Maybe the placebo effect is spiritual in nature, and that by treating a mental illness the patient
begins to believe they will get better, and that belief somehow frustrates the efforts of the demon.
3. Maybe being possessed by a demon really sucks, but if you take enough of the right meds you
don’t notice it so much, in the same way that taking enough morphine means you won’t notice
your broken leg.


May 21, 2020 at 8:35 am ~new~
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1263246859054641152
Sweden’s seropositive rate (people who’ve had coronavirus) is only 5%, not ~30% like some
thought a few weeks ago.
This means they are still at the very start of their quest for herd immunity, as opposed to more
than halfway there, like many (including me) thought.
I can’t read Swedish but here’s the primary source.
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhetsarkiv/2020/maj/forsta-resultaten-
fran-pagaende-undersokning-av-antikroppar-for-covid-19-virus/
According to Google Translate of the abstract the samples were collected “in the spring of 2020.”
The specific dates matter a lot.

May 21, 2020 at 12:01 pm ~new~
I think the claim of approaching herd immunity I saw was specifically for Stockholm, or the
Stockholm region, not Sweden as a whole.

o LesHapablap says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:18 pm ~new~
I was going to link this Lancet article as a rebuttal, which claims that 20-25% of Stockholm has
antibodies:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7/fulltext#%20
The source of that 20-25% though is ‘personal correspondence’ with some guy. And the supporting
evidence below that is a seroprevalance study done on hospital workers that showed 20%. Pretty
lame.
The primary source you linked has 7.3% for Stockholm in ‘early april’ which would translate to
maybe 13% today since PCR testing indicates that around 2-3% have it at a given time.
So you’re right, this might mean that herd immunity is impractical. But, Sweden’s infections and
daily deaths peaked a month ago and have been decreasing since. So herd immunity is impractical
but only because the infection spreads so slowly with voluntary social distancing that your hospitals
will never be overwhelmed and you’ll probably get a vaccine before you even get a chance at herd
immunity.
This means that ‘flatten the curve is a deadly delusion’ guy (and Neil Ferguson) was wrong:
flattening the curve is totally practical and probably the best strategy. I think a lot of the
assumptions around here about strategy were based on that guy being right (mine were).
o Chalid says:
May 22, 2020 at 4:53 am ~new~
Sweden population: 10M
Seropositive rate: 5% -> 500k infections as of a few weeks ago (exact dates matter a lot here)
IFR is ~1% so that would predict 5k deaths; google says a bit under 4k.
So that’s a broadly consistent story (depending on the dates, reporting issues about death
classification, the average age of infection and the like). 30% would be very surprising.
33. Conrad Honcho says:

May 21, 2020 at 7:26 am ~new~
2020 Battle for the White House Chess Set Parody Commercial. From Auralnauts, the people who
did the Jedi Party saga. I chortled heartily.

o Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:26 am ~new~

2020 Battle for the White House Chess Set Parody Commercial
My God, man, I’ve seen light novels with shorter titles than this.
o Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:40 am ~new~
The funniest part was when I realised it was a parody advert of an actual product that you will be
able to buy.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:57 am ~new~
My guess is that this gets a lot funnier if you’ve actually seen the regular ad a few times (as I have,
but I suspect most SSC readers have not).

May 21, 2020 at 9:00 am ~new~
There has to be a term for that, right? Something that isn’t funny if you don’t realize it’s a parody?
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:16 am ~new~
“The Weird Al Effect”?

 gbdub says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:42 am ~new~
More like the “Scary Movie 3 Effect”.
Weird Al parody songs often don’t really reference the songs they spoof. I mean, they are parodies,
but the humor doesn’t strictly depend on being all that familiar with the source material.
Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:45 am ~new~
And, as all true Weird Al fans recognize, his best work is predominately his songs that aren’t
parodies at all!
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 FLWAB says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:47 am ~new~
And, as all true Weird Al fans recognize, his best work is predominately his songs
that aren’t parodies at all!
In Aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaal-buquerque!
Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:19 am ~new~
Why yes, that is the exact song I was thinking of, thanks!
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 Hoopdawg says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:48 pm ~new~
One of the main sources of Weird Al’s humor is taking entire phrases from the original lyrics and
putting them in a new context. Some songs do depend on it pretty much entirely. (Headline News!)
And his original compositions do the same to other artists’ music. (And while the feeling of “ohh, I
know what he’s doing” cannot properly be described as humor, it is a large part of their appeal.)
Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 8:08 am ~new~
The one Weird Al song where he most makes fun of the original is “(This Song’s Just) Six Words
Long,” which “Smells Like Teen Spirit” being in second place.

Hide ↑
o Business Analyst says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:10 am ~new~
That’s really funny. I think the original ad is pretty unintentionally funny too though (pols riding
elephants and donkeys, Biden likely to be on the board twice, the justices, the really nice set
shown in comparison etc).

34. baconbits9 says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:19 am ~new~
Following up on a post a made ~10 days ago on CPI:
Recap: I think there is a larger than generally acknowledged chance that we get a positive or even
high CPI reading in the next month or two after going through the individual breakdown of price
shifts.
Update: I am increasing my estimate of the odds for higher CPI readings in the near future
because
1. Oil prices continued their rebound. Gasoline prices fell 20.6% in April, but google results are
giving me ~8.5% rise since April 30th, and the RBOB index is up >50% since April 30th. Natural
gas prices were up in early May from the end of April but have dipped to below end of April prices.
2. Air travel has slowly picked up and price increases are expected in the near future while price
declines seem to have slowed or completely stopped.
3. Food showed a 1.5% increases in April but grocery store food (+2.6%) was much higher than
restaurant food (+0.1%). Recent stories of restaurants adding covid surcharges to bills make it
plausible that we see higher restaurant prices with continuing increases in grocery store prices.
4. As I expected falling home inventory is more than offsetting falling home purchases. I don’t
know if this will actually cause a push higher in rental rates and OER but it seems unlikely that we
will see the housing component of CPI fall in the near term unless lodging continues to crash.
Evictions and foreclosures are dropping to all time lows which is keeping supply depressed and
‘demand’ elevated relatively speaking.
There is a lot still missing from this picture and a surprise drop in any category could prove this
hypothesis wildly incorrect (as well as a large number of patterns that could emerge in the last
week of May). However there is enough here for me to place a levered bet on a higher than
expected CPI reading when the May data comes out due mainly to constricted supply and month to
month prices coming off lows.

o Christophe Biocca says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:02 am ~new~
It certainly looks like steps have been taken to increase inflation. About a 15% increase in M2 over
the span of February to May. Bigger than any prior jumps in the FRED dataset.
 Cliff says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:01 pm ~new~
More like to prevent deflation. Look at NGDP expectations. They have dropped. It would be better if
inflation actually did rise during recessions, which would keep NGDP (wages) stable.

May 21, 2020 at 3:11 am ~new~
Those meddling fools the aliens with spaceships the size of small moons just won’t stop. Now
they’ve taken all our paper. That includes both unused sheets of paper and paper that has already
been used for writing or printing, whether left loose or bound into books. They left us all the pulp
and paper plants, and their feedstocks. They also left all the parchment and vellum documents,
and some really modern paper-like substances that are basically sheets of plastic. But all the
paper-paper is gone.
How screwed are we?

o Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:13 am ~new~
Heavy short-term disruption but information with a longer half-life is more likely to have got
digitised or microfiched or something.

May 21, 2020 at 4:38 am ~new~
I guess the problem has two aspects. On the one hand we use paper transactionally, for forms and
receipts and stuff. A lot of that is purely digital today, but not all of it. On the other hand we use
paper archivally, for storing information long-term. Again, a lot of that has been converted to other
media or digitized, but not all of it.
On the archival side, what are the most important documents that only exist in paper form?
 baconbits9 says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:27 am ~new~
Are birth and death records digitized?

 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:44 am ~new~
For the most important individual documents, possibly stuff that’s too secret to even put on an air-
gapped computer?
But I expect much more disruption to come from a vast number of certificates and written
contracts being lost. Also old people, who have accumulated a lot of paper gilts and share
certificates and wills etc.
And I expect people acting in bad faith to take advantage of the fact that a bunch of things are now
not in writing. And a load of value to be spent on lawyers litigating over written contracts that no
longer exist.
May 21, 2020 at 4:22 am ~new~
Not very. Google Books has us covered:

Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the
world,[12][13] and stated that it intended to scan all of them.[12] As of October
2019, Google celebrated 15 years of Google Books and provided the number of
scanned books as more than 40 million titles.[14]
Pretty much everything after 2010 should be ready to publish as ebook. So between that, Google
Books and Gutemberg, I think most things would be covered.
It might actually be a step forward, with immediate switch to ebooks and presumably drastic
decreases in their price. You’ll probably get a chinese kindle clone with about the price of a normal
book. Just did a quick search on aliexpress, and currently they’re around $50.
May 21, 2020 at 5:22 am ~new~

Those meddling fools the aliens with spaceships the size of small moons just won’t
stop.
These guys are way too much trouble. From now on, the answer is always going to be to invest in
more small, one-man fighters.

 Doctor Mist says:

May 23, 2020 at 3:05 pm ~new~
Those meddling fools the aliens with spaceships the size of small moons have just taken all our
small, one-man fighters.

o Ninety-Three says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:47 am ~new~
Nevermind books, what about money? Estimates place the amount of hard cash in the world in the
trillions of dollars (the figure includes coins, but I’ll assume it’s dominated by bills). Australia
switched to plastic bills in the 90s and Canada in 2001, but the US dollar, the Euro, and most of
the other currencies are still printed on paper: the aliens just pulled off the largest bank heist
possible. I’d need an economist to explain exactly what would happen, but it’d be really bad.
May 21, 2020 at 7:25 am ~new~
Do US bills count as paper? They are 75% cotten and 25% linen.
May 21, 2020 at 7:49 am ~new~
I suppose that depends on the aliens’ opinion of linguistic descriptivism, because people will
definitely call them paper, and not just in the casual “paper money” sense but explicit sentences
like “A polymer note costs 19 cents to produce, compared to 9 cents for a typical cotton-paper
note.”
 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:29 pm ~new~
Are books and printer paper usually 100% cellulose from wood products or do they usually have
some amount of cotton and/or linen cellulose as well?

o Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:55 am ~new~
I’m going to be sad losing all my books—I paid a lot of money for these, and I am attached to
some of them!—but what I’m really going to miss are all the paper notes, drawings, and the like
that I’ve never digitized. Damn aliens.
That raises the question, too: are there any works of art we’ll lose? Da Vinci’s notebooks–type
things.
o Matt says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:42 am ~new~
My Garbage Pail Kids Card Collection!
Seriously, though. I will miss my books, but my primary regret is that they didn’t do this 2 months
ago, before I helped my mother-in-law move out of the house she’s lived in for 40 years and into
an apartment. So much paper to sort/trash/save/shred etc.
Based on what is gone now, did the aliens steal some original masterworks of art?
o Nancy Lebovitz says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:47 am ~new~
Even the toilet paper?
I think we’re pretty screwed, but also, this is personal. I have a large collection of books. A lot of
them aren’t digitized. This is war.

36. Nancy Lebovitz says:

May 20, 2020 at 11:09 pm ~new~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/05/08/hot-humid-extremes-unsurvivable-global-
warming/
Assuming some very highly populated areas are going to become intolerably hot and humid, what
are the best feasible solutions?

The best solution would probably to just let people move away from the hottest areas, but I’m not
expecting that to be politically possible.

May 20, 2020 at 11:41 pm ~new~
Why not? That is unlikely to require international migration, and migration within a country is
usually unrestricted.
 Well... says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:39 am ~new~
How normal is it for countries to have the kind of range of biomes we have in the US? For example
in countries like Panama or Ecuador, are there really some parts that are hot and humid and other
parts that aren’t — and are likely to still not be even assuming the scenario in the OP comes true?
 Buttle says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:49 am ~new~
There is a huge range of climate in Ecuador, from coastal jungle to chilly Andean highlands. Not so
much in Panama. The most difficult cases I can think of are the small countries on the Persian gulf,
eg Dubai, which are extremely hot and humid now. On the other hand, they were difficult to live in
for those not born to the climate until affordable air conditioning, so how much would change?
 SamChevre says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:45 am ~new~
Even in Panama, it gets cold enough to frost at high elevations.

May 20, 2020 at 11:48 pm ~new~
Offtopic: I find myself with a recurring reaction to paywalls. I click the link, find the paywall, think
of buying, and realize the article is trying to sell me something in itself. It’s (in a vast majority of
cases) more the interest of the article/author/newspaper that I read it, than in mine. So I don’t
pay, close the window, and feel like I won twice. It’s offtopic because this particular case is
borderline – usually it’s much worse.
Comparing this with non-paywalled articles, where I click on a link from facebook to some fluff
article and go through an advertisement-filled page that seems to be written on purpose to drag
me over as many display ads as possible.

Not sure where I’m going with this, other than I refuse to pay to be indoctrinated. Last subscription
I had was for the Economist, which I stopped mostly because a disagreement with the small
printed version (I’ve been paying for it for two years and apparently there’s a postman somewhere
that was enjoying it in my stead). So I don’t mind paying per se. I’ll probably get back to printed
Economist once I settle into one city. And I’m tempted by Foreign Affairs. But other than that, I
think the ratio of agenda-information is a bit high to pay for.

o Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:00 am ~new~

Assuming some very highly populated areas are going to become intolerably hot
and humid
Does this kind of thing hold true in a world with nigh-on-omnipresent AC? My gut assumption is
just that people in these cities would just stop going outside from May-October.
 Nancy Lebovitz says:

May 21, 2020 at 8:39 am ~new~
People who are living on under $2/day presumably don’t have AC. And what about farming?
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:44 am ~new~
Also heat pumps require a lot of energy and the refrigerants used are incredibly powerful
greenhouse gasses. Which is how we got into this problem in the first place.

May 21, 2020 at 8:45 am ~new~
I’ve wondered about going underground. High initial cost, but much less ongoing cost than AC.
Hide ↑
 Buttle says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:52 am ~new~
@Nancy Lebovitz, underground seems to work in Coober Pedy
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/unearthing-coober-pedy-australias-hidden-city-
180958162/
On the other hand, people managed to live in the area for thousands of years before the digging
started.
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:56 am ~new~
@WrathOfGnon on Twitter writes constantly about sustainable ways to cool interiors. See here for
a recent example, but there are many better ones written earlier.
Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:04 am ~new~
I’d really like to see a form of urbanism that understands the city as a whole as its own
microclimate. That zones by building height to funnel the wind and uses lakes as thermal reservoirs
and trees as humidifers.

Hide ↑
 10240 says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:52 pm ~new~
Also heat pumps require a lot of energy
We may save more energy by less heating in the winter in cold areas than we lose by more AC in
the summer.
Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:19 pm ~new~
Heating’s more efficient than cooling. (you get to use the work you put in, as well as the heat)
Hide ↑
 tg56 says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:15 pm ~new~
Heating isn’t more efficient then cooling. Almost all extent installed heating isn’t using heat pumps
but rather directly burning something or electric resistance heating. Cooling is going to use a lot
less energy then that.
Even heat pump based heating has to contend with a typically much bigger difference in desired
vs. outside temperature (very few places are going to be cooling more then say 10 deg C averaged
over 24 hours while there are many places that heat 20+ deg C avg over 24 hours), though you do
get to keep the wasted energy that’s only a unit factor (good heat pumps are already ~4 times
more heat moved then energy expended, dependent on many factors).

Cooling also tends to align really well with solar power relative to heating.
Hide ↑
 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:42 pm ~new~
The energy involved in maintaining a temperature gradient is approximately proportional to the
size of the temperature gradient, though whether it’s a heat pump or some other source is also
relevant. But heating is usually more energy than cooling because in temperate climates, the
winter temperature is usually quite a bit farther from comfortable room temperature than the
summer temperature is. Here in Texas, the extremes are almost equal – in Fahrenheit, it’s rare to
have to move the temperature by more than 30 degrees in either direction, though we usually
spend more time below 40 F at night in the winter than we do above 100 F in the summer (and we
certainly spend more time below 30 in the winter than above 110 in the summer – I don’t think it’s
ever actually reached 110, while we’ve even gotten down to 20 F a couple times in the past five
years).
Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 8:10 am ~new~
As a whole, the US spends a lot more (in both energy and dollars) heating than it does cooling.
Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:49 am ~new~
Ah, good point. I was focusing in on my particular country.
Outside of the first world, I expect to see significant pole-ward migration.


May 21, 2020 at 9:32 am ~new~
The number of people living on under $2/day is declining dramatically, no?
How does Nigeria in 2040 compare to US 1960?

May 21, 2020 at 12:24 pm ~new~
The claim is about effects near the end of the century. Over the past forty years, the number of
people living in extreme poverty, currently defined (I think) as under $1.90/day, fell from over
forty percent of the world population to under twenty percent. If the trend is linear, it will be down
to zero in another forty. If it is exponential, down to about five percent by the end of the century.
According to a different source for what appears to be the same information (the source linked to is
paywalled), they are talking mostly about China and India, so large countries with a considerable
climate range.
The story doesn’t make it clear what the carbon emission assumptions are. A lot of such stories are
based on RCP8.5, originally introduced as a possible but improbably high level of emissions.
37. Uribe says:

May 20, 2020 at 10:07 pm ~new~
On the theme of whether we are more partisan now than in previous decades…. I think the
difference is qualitative. I’m thinking about popular music as an example. In the late 60s through
early 80s American music became more culturally integrated in various ways. Whether rock, r&b or
country, they all became hippies. This is more obvious in retrospect than it was at the time. Willie
Nelson and Neil Young don’t seem that far apart culturally, yet I remember in the 80s how Willie
Nelson fans were considered rednecks by typical Neil Young fans. There was a huge
cultural/political divide between the two, seemingly, in a red state blue state sense. Merle Haggard
wrote songs from the “conservative” point of view, but he himself was another drug addict hippie,
and Gen X fans of him are more likely to be on tie left than the right. (Because eclectic musical
tastes correlate with openness.)
In ’69 Miles Davis made hippie music. Sly Stone was a hippie. Black and white audiences, perhaps
superficially, were out to accept each other more. Rock bands were openly stealing from the blues,
which drew white fans toward older black music.

So in white American culture circa 1980, there’s was a hard line drawn between what was
conservative vs. liberal (Country vs. Rock). Even though musically the difference between Waylon
Jennings and Bob Seger wasn’t so vast.
Johnny Cash performed Bob Dylan songs.
Today’s Country Music seems unambiguously conservative. Not just in terms of lyrical content but
in the aesthetics of the sound and look. It sounds and looks like an advertisement for the
Republican Party.
Now there’s less popular country music, called alt- country, which is as left wing as pop country is
right wing.
I’m drinking gin and rambling. The main. difference I want to highlight is how conservative
(Republican) pop country music is now compared to the hey days of Waylon Jennings and Willie
Nelson.
May 20, 2020 at 10:22 pm ~new~

The main. difference I want to highlight is how conservative (Republican) pop
country music is now compared to the hey days of Waylon Jennings and Willie
Nelson.
Hrm. Didn’t Hollywood go through a Hillbilly or “Dixploitation” phase, like Blaxploitation films or
’90s black-targeted TV but for poor country-music whites? Think The Dukes of Hazzard with its
Waylon Jennings theme song in the early ’80s or cheap movies like Hillbillies in a Haunted House
(1967), where some poor Southerners trying to get rich in country music stumble into John
Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr. and Basil Rathbone (!) trying to pull off a Scooby-Doo scam.
o ltowel says:
May 20, 2020 at 10:31 pm ~new~
What do you think about Florida Georgia Line or Sam Hunt or other “Bro Country” artists which are
pretty unambiguously stealing concepts from rap music and redefining mainstream country?
 Uribe says:
May 20, 2020 at 11:17 pm ~new~
I’m not familiar with them. Would you say they have less of a Republican vibe than other
mainstream country?
 ltowel says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:06 am ~new~
I’d be interested if you listened to the songs “Cruise” or “Cruise Remix”, “Body Like a Backroad” or
“House Party” before reading the rest of this post – they were all big country hits in the past few
years (although I am only aware of them because they were the songs that crossed over into pop
charts)
Generally it seems to me like the sound is pretty obviously hip-hop influenced – using a lot of 808
drums/other sampled sounds and referencing rap songs. I was interested to hear what you thought
about them – I think they mix white, country, what is traditionally republican appearance with
openly stealing from black music. What this ends up being is music to be played at a college frat
tailgate.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:55 am ~new~
If anything, the country-rap subgenre can be more explicitly Republican than mainstream country.
 Paul Zrimsek says:

May 21, 2020 at 9:09 am ~new~
I’ve never heard country rap. Do they say “yo-all” instead of just “yo”?
Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:12 am ~new~
Ack, just realized I linked the wrong video above. It was intended to go to an example of very
explicitly Republican country rap. And past edit window…
Correct link is here.

Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:17 am ~new~
Correct link is here.
ugh
Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 9:22 am ~new~
It’s still going to the same rather non-political rap.

Hide ↑
o Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:16 am ~new~
I think modern country has a lot of different subgenres, but at the highest level, it feels to me like
there are two main ones – one of which is basically pop with country themes, and the other that
relies heavily on rock or rap influences. At the risk of getting CW here, I might even call it “country
for women” and “country for men.”
Like, my fiance and I both listen to things that could be described as “modern country” but she
listens to stuff like this whereas I listen to stuff like this and there’s really not a ton of crossover
between what we like, aside from the fact that if we watch the Country Music Awards, some of both
of our favorites will be in attendance.

 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:28 am ~new~
she listens to stuff like this
First time hearing that song, and I’m legitimately confused how that qualifies as country. I get that
he has that not-quite-southern country music accent that everyone in the genre affects, but it
sounds poppy, has a pop beat, doesn’t have much in the way of traditional instrumentals and has
that cliche pop message of “girl you’re beautiful and don’t even know it.”
Focusing on the video, the singer is a traditional pop-esque pretty boy and the video even has
background dancers. I don’t like trying to define what genres can and can’t be, but why is that
country?
 Jake R says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:31 am ~new~
It’s got a steel guitar. Near as I can tell this is the dividing line for pop country.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:51 am ~new~
Well not all of his songs are that poppy. This is one of his more country-sounding songs.
And FWIW, his father was a reasonably famous country musician, and having been dragged along
to one of his concerts, I can personally attest he’s capable of playing a pretty decent guitar.
But there’s a lot of stuff nearly exactly like this that is called “country” and there has been for some
time. They’re often referred to as “country ballads” and nearly every mainstream country artist
since 1980 has had a couple on their albums.

 Tarpitz says:
May 22, 2020 at 1:15 am ~new~
Honestly, I think those songs are about equally country: one is country flavoured pop, and the
other is country flavoured rock, or possibly Southern rock, that wouldn’t feel out of place on a
Lynyrd Skynyrd album.

 Andrew Hunter says:

May 21, 2020 at 8:33 am ~new~
Apropos of nothing but the vfx in the Rhett video are quite good. Quite pointless–I’m not sure that
film trick has any actual artistic meaning–but really well done and a cool effect.

May 23, 2020 at 6:20 pm ~new~
I agree. Got tired of the song in pretty short order but the visuals kept me watching for a minute or
two.
o By-Ends says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:22 pm ~new~
Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were both members of the “outlaw country” movement. OK, the
fact that Willie and Waylon were extremely popular by 1980 supports your point. But I don’t know
if they should be taken as representative of country music in general at the time, any more than
“alt-country” represents country music today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_country
Why not mention Kenny Rogers, who sold far more records than either of them? I’m not sure what
his politics were back then but recently he was one of the first celebrities to support Donald Trump
as a candidate.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:26 pm ~new~
Indeed. Even after attaining immense popularity, those guys were still seen as part of a unique
subgenre that presented itself as an alternative to the mainstream country establishment.

 Nornagest says:
June 1, 2020 at 10:24 am ~new~
In a sense, but it’s roughly the same as how folk-influenced rock and the British Invasion
positioned themselves as alternatives to old-school Elvis-flavored rock and roll in the early Sixties,
but were rock and roll by the late Sixties. The transition happened a bit later for outlaw country,
but by the early to mid-70s it was mainstream in the country world.

 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:48 pm ~new~
I was gonna say – if the examples of old country musicians are members of the Highwaymen, then
you might as well take the example of new country musicians to be the Highwomen. They’ve
definitely got a red-state cultural milieu, but it’s self-consciously feminist, gay-friendly, and
multicultural.
 Uribe says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:05 pm ~new~
But Kenny Rogers was a psychedelic rocker in the 60s.He wrote “What Condition my Condition Was
in” the song that plays in the trippy Big Lebowski dream sequence when Jeff Bridges goes down the
lane like a bowling ball. He became country later.

38. hash872 says:

May 20, 2020 at 6:29 pm ~new~
Fun ways to change the US political system for the better (inspired by a couple of poly sci books
I’ve read recently). Only the first one is an Actually Serious Idea, so don’t give me too hard of a
time- just floating these out there for fun:
1. The One I’m Kinda Serious About. Seeing as US states can allocate their electors to the Electoral
College however they like as far as I can tell (Nebraska & Maine already have their own funky
system): the other 48 states start to allocate proportionally, vs. winner take all. (This argument
assumes basic familiarity with the US electoral system, I don’t feel like explaining it from scratch).
I.e. right now Missouri gets 10 electors, and they’re on a winner take all basis- candidate A wins
Missouri by 50.5% of the vote, he gets all 10. In this system, candidate A would get 5-6 electoral
votes, and his opponent the remaining ones. (There would undoubtedly have to be rounding up
rules).
Argument why: with most states as winner take all now, vast vast swathes of Americans are
literally disenfranchised- their votes are (literally) not counted. We’d still preserve the existing
Electoral College system, but now Everyone’s Vote Counts, whether Republicans in California or
Democrats in I dunno Utah. Seems like this would preserve the social compact a bit, without the
radicalism of the Popular Vote system Democrats are pushing now. No Constitutional changes
required.
I am half serious about-
2. The US (stealing a pretty good idea from China, I think?) forms councils or boards for specific
long-term policy planning around key parts of the economy (I think we already have this for
national security stuff). So we’d have a Tech Board, a Finance Board, a Higher Education Board,
maybe a Manufacturing Board, and so on. Members would be appointed and serve terms like
Federal Reserve members, and they’d be picked for expertise- academics, ex-CEOs, etc. Perhaps
we’d have strict anti-lobbying rules (they’re not allowed to join their industry after their term is up)
to prevent corruption.
This could help solve democracy’s most famous problem- inability to do long-term planning.
Subject matter experts could be free to take the long view, to advance the interests of the US
within their field without having to run for election every x number of years. Maybe their one
‘power’ could be that they can introduce 1 bill per year into the House, which of course is free to
vote it down, but gives them a bit more heft than mere advisors. Just a thought.
I understanding this will literally never happen, but-
3. Establish a minimum size to be a US ‘state’, and if your population is below that, you’re legally a
territory a la Puerto Rico, Guam, etc. I think we’ve all heard the complaint ‘Wyoming gets as many
Senators as California’ (the left never says that about Hawaii or Vermont, which are not *that*
much bigger). Shooting from the hip I think 1 million should be the bare minimum size, though
really 1.5 would be better (this would disenfranchise 10 states). The absurd political power waged
by tiny states is a bit much, and there’s nothing legally new about the ‘territory’ designation.
Everyone knows that even the smallest state gets 2 Senators and so on- but who’s to say what a
‘state’ is? ‘Territory’ is a concept that already exists, has for hundreds of years, and there’s no real
reason why Wyoming is a ‘state’ but Puerto Rico is a ‘territory’.
While this will essentially never happen, one thing that could make it slightly more palatable is that
US citizens who are residents of a territory don’t pay federal income tax. You could let current
small states vote on this in a referendum- lose political power in exchange for no federal income
tax. With anti-tax feeling in the US high, it might be a closer bet than you’d think (I think the
Treasury could afford to lose Wyoming’s tax receipts).
Edit to include: Yes, disenfranchising 5-10 states against their will is of course politically
impossible. But if you just passed a bill that said ‘well if you’d like to reduce your taxes, you can
pass this via referendum….’. If Wyoming voluntarily disenfranchises itself- who’s to argue?
o cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:34 pm ~new~

with most states as winner take all now, vast vast swathes of Americans are
literally disenfranchised- their votes are (literally) not counted
if your 3 friends want to go to lunch at mcdonalds and you don’t bother to argue for going to
burger king, you’re not being disenfranchised, you’re just losing the vote.
This could help solve democracy’s most famous problem- inability to do long-term
planning. Subject matter experts could be free to take the long view, to advance the
interests of the US within their field without having to run for election every x
number of years.
ah, unaccountable power. What’s not to love? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great work if you
can get it, but we won’t all get it, will we?

May 20, 2020 at 7:49 pm ~new~
if your 3 friends want to go to lunch at mcdonalds and you don’t bother to argue for
going to burger king, you’re not being disenfranchised, you’re just losing the vote.
This has absolutely nothing to do with hash872’s argument. What you’re describing is a simple
popular vote, i.e. what we would have in the US if we abolished the electoral college entirely.

May 20, 2020 at 7:54 pm ~new~
Hash is saying my vote as a Republican doesn’t count in Illinois because Illinois always goes
Democratic. This is wrong. I am just outvoted.
If my 3 friends always vote to go to McDonald’s, I am not being disenfranchised when we always
go to McDonald’s. I am just outvoted.

 hash872 says:
May 20, 2020 at 8:20 pm ~new~
Voting in the US federal system, with the electors in the middle between the voters & the
candidates, can’t be reduced to the McDonald’s analogy, sorry. The sum of all the losing voters in
all the winner-take-all states is absolutely enormous and, expressed as a proportional number of
electors, could be enough to swing an election. If we’d had proportional elector representation for
the past 200+ years, several presidential elections would’ve gone differently, including the most
recent one.
The number of disenfranchised Republicans in California alone is probably larger than several US
states
Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 8:28 pm ~new~
It’s counted (and outvoted) in Illinois. It’s not counted in the national total that actually determines
the outcome of the election. If it were, you could combine your minority Republican vote with
Californian Republican’s minority votes so they actually had an effect proportional to the number of
voters.
We’re talking about a situation where, nationally, the minority “outvoted” side sometimes wins, so
the McDonald’s scenario is clearly not analogous.

Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 4:27 am ~new~
“This system seems unfair” is quite a stretch from “people are actually disenfranchised.” Votes are
cast and counted according to the rules set-up under the Constitution and which Illinois agreed to
when it joined the union.
Disenfranchised would be if Illinois State Police sat outside the polling station and wouldn’t let me
vote unless I signed a loyalty oath to vote for Joe Biden.
Also, if I have a group of 10 friends, and 4 want to go to McDonald’s, it’s not obvious to me why we
should all go to McDonald’s just because they got 4 and Burger King/Wendy’s both got 3. However,
if that’s the rule system we set up more than 2 centuries ago, I could go with it. However, if you’re
trying to toss out a rule that we all agreed on more than 2 centuries ago while arguing for blatant
partisan advantage, I’m going to be pretty damn suspicious.

Hide ↑
 hash872 says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:59 am ~new~
I’m not sure if you caught the original comment, but the Constitution allows states to allocate
electors as they see fit, and Nebraska and Maine already use a non-winner take all system. No
radical change is taking place here, and it’s not partisan as the EC does not favor one party or
another over a long enough time horizon (fun fact, John Kerry came quite close to winning the EC
& losing the popular vote in 2004). I’m not even going to address the McDonald’s analogy.
I’m afraid that even discussing the EC has activated everyone’s Preset Partisan Views, so people
read half the comment and then run DefaultPartisanView script. My aim was a good faith attempt
to have everyone’s vote in every state to be counted, not to favor one party or another
Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:13 am ~new~
@hash872
I’m afraid that even discussing the EC has activated everyone’s Preset Partisan
Views, so people read half the comment and then run DefaultPartisanView script.
My aim was a good faith attempt to have everyone’s vote in every state to be
counted, not to favor one party or another
But that’s the thing, by casting the debate as “the EC means literally not counting people’s votes”
when it doesn’t actually do that, you’ve made the argument more partisan, not less, and makes it
feel like you’re not arguing in good faith. I don’t think that was your intent, and I do think you are
arguing in good faith, but the current system does count everyone’s vote. 50 state elections vs. 1
national election might or might not be bad policy, but it’s not disenfranchising anyone.
Hide ↑
 hash872 says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:27 am ~new~
@cassander
Hmm, OK, let me think about how to rephrase it. And again, as of last year around a quarter of
California voters are Republicans.
State residents’ votes for president are only counted now at the state level, for the purpose of
allocating electors to one side or another. They’re effectively not counted (in 48 states) at the
federal level. To tack right a bit- the 1 in 4 California Republicans and almost 4 in 10 Illinois
Republicans do not have an *effective* vote for President. We can still have 50 state elections
without winner-take-all. (Imagine you were designing a new Electoral College from scratch. What
would be the argument *for* winner take all electors?)

Democracies are supposed to function by reaching a consensus- not that we reach the optimal
outcome, but the one that the majority of voters can be kinda satisfied with. Giving voters effective
votes at the federal level for the most important office is a mild, non-dramatic and but pro-
democracy step in that direction. It’s also non-partisan. It can help reduce polarization (a bit) by
preventing the US from deteriorating into Balkanized provinces that are 100% red or 100% blue,
with zero in-between. Some of consensus kumbaya stuff is a bit symbolic and wooey, but I think
emotional pro-unity symbolism stuff helps at the margins.
Deteriorating into a failed state Is Bad, and the US should take minor non-partisan steps to make
everyone feel included and that their vote counts, even if it’s a bit handwavey. California
Republicans & Texas Democrats intuitively understand that their vote doesn’t ‘count’, even if you
have technical or pedantic arguments that it does. Tens of millions of people feeling that way =
bad
Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:56 am ~new~
@hash872 says:
State residents’ votes for president are only counted now at the state level, for the
purpose of allocating electors to one side or another. They’re effectively not counted
(in 48 states) at the federal level.
No votes are counted at the federal level. the US does not have a federal election for president, it
has 50 state elections.

(Imagine you were designing a new Electoral College from scratch. What would be
the argument *for* winner take all electors?)
State government more accountable than the federal, so I want to vest as much political identity at
the state level as possible. I want one senator per state who serves at the pleasure of the state’s
governor. I want the presidential eligibility limited to former governors and cabinet officers. Hell,
I’d even be fine with the governors electing a president college of cardinals style.
Fundamentally, I don’t think the current EC setup matters that much. If you abolished it you’d
replace one quirky set of election outcomes with a different set that was equally quirky, just in
different ways. For example, one of the benefits of the EC is making it harder to cheat by running
up vote totals. doing so only matters in places where the statewide vote is close, and those are the
places where there’s likely to be the most scrutiny.

Democracies are supposed to function by reaching a consensus- not that we reach
the optimal outcome, but the one that the majority of voters can be kinda satisfied
with. Giving voters effective votes at the federal level for the most important office is
a mild, non-dramatic and but pro-democracy step in that direction.
I don’t think that the EC has a meaningful impact on the perceived legitimacy of american
elections.
It can help reduce polarization (a bit) by preventing the US from deteriorating into
Balkanized provinces that are 100% red or 100% blue, with zero in-between.
a national popular vote will have zero effect on that, even in theory. How could it? To take a
ridiculously extreme example, imagine a California ballot measure to exile all the republicans.
Under the EC, that is a bad idea for partisan democrats because it will move those republicans to a
different state where they might tip the balance, and even if they don’t it will reduce CA’s EC count.
Under the NPV, though, it’s a great idea that makes California more democratic.
California Republicans & Texas Democrats intuitively understand that their vote
doesn’t ‘count’, even if you have technical or pedantic arguments that it does. Tens
of millions of people feeling that way = bad
this is your best argument, but I don’t think it holds up. there’s an way to test it though! graph the
voter participation rate against the partisan slide. I suspect there’s not a strong correlation, and if
people are voting at the same level in texas as iowa, I think we can safely say that people don’t
feel that way. Of course, there are a huge number of confounding factors, but it’s a good first step.
Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 9:59 am ~new~
Selecting the EC as a major improvement to America’s democracy is a partisan position to take,
particularly when the form of attack is to totally delegitimatize the EC and run alternate histories.
Also, if we are opening up the can of worms to change the Presidential election system, why not
change the rules further? If “none of the above” has a plurality, INCLUDING NON-VOTERS, no
legitimate government can be formed and the election must be re-ran. How about a veto, since
you mention consensus? If a quarter of the population votes “HELL NO!” on you, you automatically
are ruled out of becoming President, even if you get 75% of the remaining vote.
Why not alter the powers of the office, specifically with regard to majority or minority vote shares?
Presidents without a majority vote share are limited in the number of Justices they are permitted to
appoint and their confirmations must pass with super-majority, since they lack mandate.
Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 12:48 pm ~new~
What would be the argument *for* winner take all electors?
The one argument I can think of is that it reduces the opportunity for electoral fraud.
Electoral fraud is easiest if one party has solid control over the state government. With winner take
all, there is no payoff to fraud in such a state in the presidential vote. With a proportional system,
if you actually have 60% of the vote it’s worth pushing the count to 70% to get a few more
electoral votes for your side.

Hide ↑
May 22, 2020 at 8:15 am ~new~
+1 to David Friedman. Cheaters in Texas or California could turn up 5% more votes in a bunch of
reliably red/blue districts, and just claim turnout was unusually good this time.
While I have criticized vote-by-mail for allowing some kinds of fraud (vote intimidation or vote-
selling), it can resist this kind of fraud. You have the physical ballots wrapped in an envelope and
could, in theory, verify the legitimacy of the voter before you count their vote. (But this requires a
secretary-of-state that wants to detect that kind of potential fraud, and if we assume they are
trying to cheat, they’ll come up with excuses not to bother.)

Hide ↑
 cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 8:02 pm ~new~
A Definite Beta Guy got it exactly.

 fibio says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:40 am ~new~
if your 3 friends want to go to lunch at mcdonalds
I feel like this is the set up to a two wolves and a lamb joke.
Four students want to get lunch. One wants to go to MacDonalds, one wants to go to Burger King,
one wants a cheeseburger, one is just after some deep fried chicken, two of them can’t stand
Sprite, one is late on his term paper, three of them are drunk, one is hung over, none of them
have showered this week and only one of them can drive. He goes to Denny’s.
o drunkfish says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:51 pm ~new~

states start to allocate proportionally
I agree this would be better for the US as a whole, but there’s no incentive for individual states to
do it. If you figure states are controlled by their majority party, then the group controlling the state
would have to voluntarily give up votes for their party, for essentially no benefit.
I think the national popular vote interstate compact is a much better approach to this general idea,
because it solves the coordination problem with a compact: You commit to follow the rules
conditioned on the fact that other states follow too.

 Jitters says:
May 20, 2020 at 7:28 pm ~new~
Couldn’t we do this with a compact too?
As I can see it right now, red states aren’t interested in joining the NPVIC and swing states would
be giving up their own power by doing so. Just the blue states isn’t enough to get to 270.
A Proportional Representation Compact could conceivably get both red and blue states to agree.
 mitv150 says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:35 am ~new~
Oddly, given the context of this discussion, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact requires
the actual disenfranchisement of each participant state’s voters.
It makes their vote within their particular voting system subject to the say-so of outside legal
entities.
May 20, 2020 at 6:53 pm ~new~
A notion I’ve seen. I have no idea what the effects would be, but it’s not obviously wrong.
Congress no longer meets in DC. All the official business is done remotely.
May 21, 2020 at 2:12 am ~new~
I suspect that would change very little. As I understand it, the official meetings of congress are a
very minor part of the work of congressmen. The actual work of congress is figuring out what
legislation to write. That’s a very complicated matter that requires extensive consultation and
negotiation with other congressmen and other interested parties. That sort of interpersonal
behavior really truly benefits from direct contact, meaning those who are willing to show up in
person wherever there is a critical mass of other decision-makers have a real advantage over those
who just dial in remotely.
If the US did allow remote participation in the work of congress, I expect everyone who expected
to have any real influence to continue to work in Washington. Doing anything else would
advertising (at best) semi-pro status.

May 20, 2020 at 7:55 pm ~new~

planning.
The issue isn’t ability, it’s incentive.
On the private market, long term planning depends on secure property rights — in order to bear
costs now for benefits well into the future I have to be reasonable sure that I am the one who will
get those benefits. On the political market, actors don’t have secure property rights. A politician
who does politically costly things today in order to get benefits a decade or two later knows that he
is unlikely to still be in office when the benefits become visible.
He could still do it if the voters had a long time horizon and so rewarded him well before the
benefits appeared. But knowing whether future benefits are real or make believe requires a good
deal of effort, and voters are rationally ignorant. So politicians claim long term policies but act in
terms of benefits at the next election, or possibly the one after that.
 hash872 says:
May 20, 2020 at 8:25 pm ~new~
The boards/councils could plan & make recommendations, both public and private, and hopefully
have the President, Congress, and the national security state’s ear. Plus my tentatively proposed
‘they can introduce 1 bill a year in the House’ rule, which would be more for publicity and
influence- ‘the Tech board says x policy is good so now some politicians are supporting it’, etc. I’m
not overstating how effective this would be, just that it’d be a step in the general right direction.
(My priors are pro-elites and anti-populism).
I basically agree with what you’re saying, but the unelected Federal Reserve- made of up of sober
subject matter experts- looks to me to be one of the most functional parts of the US government
right now. I’m looking for a quasi-democratic way to incorporate more expertise into our system
o ana53294 says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:38 am ~new~
In the previous discussion of changing the electoral college allocation, I learnt it was basically a
problem of the commons.
No single state has an incentive to do it. Sure, if Republican’s votes in California counted for
something, Alabama could agree to also proportionally assign votes. But can Alabama trust
California to do it? Since this deal would result in more Republican than Democrat EC votes, would
California agree to this?
The thing is, this is a position that is argued by one side while they keep winning the popular vote.
The time when this will get tested is when assigning electoral votes proportionally will result in your
political opponent.
I assert that California will never, in a million years, allow the winning electoral college vote go to
Trump, even if the signed an agreement on a meaningless compact that’s absolutely unenforcable.
So why would other states give their votes to their political opponents?
 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:52 pm ~new~
> I assert that California will never, in a million years, allow the winning electoral college vote go
to Trump, even if the signed an agreement on a meaningless compact that’s absolutely
unenforcable.
I’m not exactly sure how this would work. If the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact goes
into effect, then everyone says all year that their electoral votes will go to the winner of the
popular vote nationwide. Say that at the election, some Republican wins the popular vote
nationwide. How is California going to stop their electoral votes from going to that candidate? Will
the legislature call a special emergency lame-duck session in between the election and the meeting
of the electoral college to overturn their accession to the NPVIC? This isn’t like an individual signing
a contract promising to do something, where the impetus for actually doing the thing still comes at
the end from a single mind deciding to do it, but rather needs a massive organization to move
quickly to change its mind.


May 22, 2020 at 8:17 am ~new~
then everyone says all year that their electoral votes will go to the winner of the popular vote
nationwide
That’s nice.
Then, the day after Election Day, a Federal Judge decides “no, screw you, and screw the carefully
negotiated plan that you got all relevant parties to agree ahead of tine was fair to all parties. I
decide now that this is disenfranchising Billy Bob. Toss it out.”

o Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:37 am ~new~
Additional possible change: Change voting system for individual directly-elected offices. Eg.
Representatives are now elected via instant-runoff elections or something. I believe this can be
done on a per-State basis without requiring changes to the Constitution or Federal law.
 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:53 pm ~new~
California already works with the jungle primary that Louisiana used to (that is, everyone runs in a
single primary, and the top two finishers go on to a “runoff” at the general election) and Maine has
started using instant-runoff. So yes, this can be done on a per-state basis.

o Jaskologist says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:16 am ~new~

number of years.
This already exists in the form of the US Bureaucracy. It’s why the CDC was so famously effective
in its anti-COVID efforts.

o Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:23 am ~new~

2. The US (stealing a pretty good idea from China, I think?) forms councils or
boards for specific long-term policy planning around key parts of the economy (I
think we already have this for national security stuff). So we’d have a Tech Board, a
Finance Board, a Higher Education Board, maybe a Manufacturing Board, and so
on. Members would be appointed and serve terms like Federal Reserve members,
and they’d be picked for expertise- academics, ex-CEOs, etc. Perhaps we’d have
strict anti-lobbying rules (they’re not allowed to join their industry after their term
is up) to prevent corruption.
number of years. Maybe their one ‘power’ could be that they can introduce 1 bill per
year into the House, which of course is free to vote it down, but gives them a bit
more heft than mere advisors. Just a thought.
I don’t really have an opinion on the approach, but I would point out we’ve had an industrial policy
before, which it sounds to me is what you really want. American Affairs has been harping on this
point since its inception, e.g. here.

o Two McMillion says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:25 am ~new~
As far as “Changes that would help and could actually happen”, one possibility is electing Senators
by approval voting. Approval voting tends to elect middle of the road, agreeable candidates, which
is what you need for the Senate to work well. Both Republicans and Democrats would like this plan
because it would increase their party’s influence in electing Senators in places where they currently
have little influence.
Increasing the size of the House to 1000 members would improve local representation (an
important issue to conservatives) and reduce malapportionment (an important issue to democrats).
Having everybody do their primary elections on the same day would help everyone except Iowa
and New Hampshire.

o FLWAB says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:06 am ~new~

The absurd political power waged by tiny states is a bit much
Are you kidding me?
Have you ever lived in a tiny state? I have. I’ve lived in several. And while a mathmatical
breakdown might say that my vote counts more than a vote in California, it certainly doesn’t feel
that way. When you only have 1 representative in the House, it certainly doesn’t feel like you have
power. In fact, it feels quite the opposite: it feels like the federal government can do whatever it
wants to your state, and there isn’t much you can do about it. It feels like nobody cares about your
vote: no presidential candidates ever stop and campaign, no political commentators ever wonder
which way your state will turn. Nobody cares about what Wyoming wants.
And this is a bigger deal than it seems because many of these tiny states have huge amounts of
their land owned by the federal government. Do you know how long Alaskans have wanted to drill
in the ANWR? It would have really helped the state, and they could have done it without wrecking
the environment. But no can do, that’s federal land and the big states, the ones thousands of miles
away with no skin in the game, have decided it’s too risky. Or maybe you want to build a road from
your small town to the closest town with a hospital. Surely we can handle that at a local level? But
no, it goes through federal land and the Secretary of the Interior who has never even set foot in
your state, much less your town, has decided the road might be too dangerous to birds. Birds she
will never see, and whose existence will not effect her one way or another.
Look, I get it. Mathmatically an Alaskan’s vote is “worth more” than a New Yorkers. But when
people go around saying things like “tiny states have absurd power, lets take that power away” it
reads the same as the biggest, strongest, and richest bully on the playground taking the youngest
and smallest kid’s lunch money. Wyoming has nothing. It doesn’t decide elections. Nobody cares
about Wyoming’s so called absurd power when it comes to actual federal elections. But apparently
even that small, tiny, measly scrap of political power is more than small states deserve.
It gets my dander up, it does.

 Randy M says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:26 am ~new~
Now that you describe it, it seems a bit of a slight of hand.
Yes, a single North Dakotan vote is more weighty than a single Californian, in terms of EC. But
single voters are laughably irrelevant on a national scale anyways. What matters is the size of your
coalition. If you share enough commonalities with the typical voter in your state, you are going to
have an advantage.
 Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:27 am ~new~
I’m not sure it’s even true in aggregate. Take a look at this page, which has estimated population
per electoral vote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population
If you sort by that column, you’ll see that the state with the worst ratio is Texas. Then Florida, then
California. The states with the best ratio meanwhile are Wyoming, Vermont, DC, Alaska, North
Dakota, Rhode Island; three red, three blue. Small states are advantaged, but it doesn’t follow that
Republicans are advantaged.

It feels like nobody cares about your vote: no presidential candidates ever stop and
campaign, no political commentators ever wonder which way your state will turn.
Nobody cares about what Wyoming wants.
You’ve touched tangentially, actually, on one of the advantages of the EC. Presidential candidates
campaign in the places where they believe they can affect the most votes. This has been true
under the EC, and it would be true under the NPVIC. But the dynamic would change. Under the EC,
candidates at least have reason to appeal to relatively more rural states and regions; there’s not a
New York City in every state. But by bypassing it, they have no reason to anymore: those votes
are just too expensive to try to swing to their side. So the race becomes focused even more on
cities and suburbs with relatively large populations of swing voters. Because of the nature of
campaigning, you’re effectively locking huge swathes of the population, and the country, out of the
race.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:41 am ~new~
I also suspect that a national popular vote would further exacerbate the perceived (I’m still
uncertain whether this is actually true) notion that candidates are better served “getting out the
vote” (by appealing to the extreme fringes of their own party) than by trying to win-over
independents or undecideds.
In a national popular vote world, Hillary Clinton is probably best served spending pretty much all of
her time in New York and California, trying to drive turnout among those places that
overwhelmingly support her. Not only would she still not go to Wisconsin, she wouldn’t go to
Virginia or Florida or Pennsylvania either…

 Jon S says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:35 pm ~new~
Nobody campaigns in winner-take-all states that aren’t competitive. They do campaign a lot in the
few small states that are competitive. NH has 4 electoral votes, but presidential candidates
campaign a lot there (even in the general election). Nobody campaigns in CA (though they do
fundraise there). All else equal, rational candidates should campaign more in the small states
relative to those states’ populations.

 Controls Freak says:

May 22, 2020 at 7:41 am ~new~
Look, I get it. Mathmatically an Alaskan’s vote is “worth more” than a New Yorkers.
According to what metric? I can think of a bunch of them. I can probably guess the metric you’re
using, but I can guess others that don’t rank things the same. For example, 538’s “voter power
index” does give the same pairwise Alaska v. NY ranking, but it gives many others that are quite
different from your metric. And I’m pretty sure if our metric is, “Is worth more for determining New
York’s electors,” an Alaskan’s vote is decidedly worth less.
There are a whole lot of metrics you could use here; you can’t just appeal to “math”; you need to
argue why any one particular metric should be privileged over all the other possible metrics.
 JPNunez says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:49 am ~new~
When you only have 1 representative in the House, it certainly doesn’t feel like you
have power.
You still get two senators in the senate, tho.
So it’s both the EC and the Senate that gets you overrepresented and the House gets you less
represented, but even just on the house, probably still more represented than voters of many more
populous states.
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:58 am ~new~
Like I said, I know that mathmatically a state like Alaska has more representation per person. But
on an absolute level, big states still have way more power. So wanting to take away representation
from small states is still analogous to the richest, biggest, strongest kids on the playground
deciding to take the smaller kids lunch money.
Or to put it another way: Alaska decided in 1975 to rename Mt. McKinley to Denali, and changed all
state resources to match that name. They also requested that the federal government recognize
the name change as well. Even with “overrepresentation” in the Senate and House it took forty
years before the federal government recognized the name change, all because a single senator
from Ohio kept blocking it. And the name only got changed because Obama himself went to Alaska
for some global warming photo-ops and as a presidential gift signed an EO officially changing the
name.
Now remember that 60% of Alaska is federal land, and you might realize that if changing the name
of a mountain took 40 years, doing anything of substance (like mining or logging) is an even bigger
boondoggle. And you wold argue that even the small amount of power Alaska has is too much?
o keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:06 pm ~new~
Doing the electoral college proportionally raises some really weird issues for smallish states. There
are a few natural ways to do the cutoffs for proportional elections. If you have 3 electors to select,
then you could either say that a candidate gets 0 electors with 0-25% of the vote, 1 with 25-50%,
2 with 50-75%, and 3 with 75-100%; or you could say that a candidate gets 0 electors with 0-
16.66% of the vote, 1 with 16.66-50%, 2 with 50-83.333%, and 3 with 83.333-100%. (The latter
is what you get if you multiply the fraction of the vote by 3 and round to the nearest integer, while
the former divides into equal bands.) I think out of the currently existing 3 vote states, Alaska,
Wyoming, Montana, and both Dakotas would be perpetually 2-1 for Republicans, DC would be
perpetually 0-3, and Vermont might be a swing between 1-2 and 0-3 under the first system. Out of
the states with 4 electoral votes, I think Idaho would be perpetually 3-1, New Hampshire would be
perpetually 2-2, and I think Rhode Island and Hawaii would be perpetually 1-3 (though perhaps
Rhode Island would be a swing from 2-2 to 1-3).
Meanwhile, California, Texas, New York, and Florida would always have several swing votes.
So you wouldn’t be able to get votes everywhere. You’d still have swing states and perpetually
fixed states, but the swing states would be the largest ones. So you’d get the worst of the
accusations each side lodges at the other – a distinction between swing and fixed states that the
popular vote supporters hate, and a greater emphasis on the large states that the electoral vote
supporters hate.
39. FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:48 pm ~new~
New Trump executive order commands federal agencies to cut or waive regulations on business in
order to help the economy recover from Coronavirus.

Agencies should address this economic emergency by rescinding, modifying,
waiving, or providing exemptions from regulations and other requirements that
may inhibit economic recovery, consistent with applicable law and with protection
of the public health and safety, with national and homeland security, and with
budgetary priorities and operational feasibility.
Notably it also requires that all federal agencies should “bear the burden of proving an alleged
violation of law; the subject of enforcement should not bear the burden of proving compliance.”
Which I think is a big deal: as far as I understand it, if the EPA slaps you with a fine you generally
have to prove that the fine was unwarranted. This EO shifts that burden of proof.
I have heard some commentators saying that this EO is unique in American history because it is
the only time that a President has reacted to a state of emergency by giving up power instead of
grabbing more. Can anyone think of a counterexample?

o sharper13 says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:48 am ~new~
So you’re saying Trump isn’t a fascist dictator who wants to control everything just like Hitler?
More seriously, this does seem like a positive twist on the “never let a crisis go to waste” theory of
government. Unfortunately, it follows a wee bit of what might be considered excessive spending, of
which the jury is still out on how temporary or permanent that spending is going to end up being,
sucking resources toward government re-allocation.

 Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:39 am ~new~
What one President can do with a phone and a pen another can do with the same.
Really improving things would require a change in Federal law. I’d like to see the EEOC eliminated,
for example.
May 22, 2020 at 2:55 pm ~new~

by giving up power instead of grabbing more
Federal agencies are created by Congress, and ultimately Congress has both oversight of them and
the ability to modify their regulations (the President runs them). So is this the president giving up
power, or favoring the balance of power toward the presidency versus congress?
 FLWAB says:
May 22, 2020 at 4:06 pm ~new~
The agencies are created by Congress, but they give more power to the Executive Branch. While
Congress could force an agency to modify their regulations by passing a bill, the President can
force them to add or change regulations with a memo. Agencies like the EPA are given a mandate
by Congress, but they generally determine how that mandate will be carried out which gives them
significant power. That power ultimately belongs to the President, which is why he can order all
agencies to stop enforcing bothersome regulations with a stroke of his pen and without Congress’s
input.
40. TimG says:

May 20, 2020 at 4:42 pm ~new~
I’m looking for science book recommendations. I want to say “popular science” — because I’m not
looking for text books or those that expect significant expertise in the subject — but I am fairly
scientifically literate so a lot of “popular science” books I find too basic.
In terms of subjects, I’m open to anything — but I think I gravitate toward life sciences. Lately I’ve
been really interested in what we’ve learned about the world through our recent ability to
(genetically) sequence everything. I would also say that I prefer books that spend more time on
the science and less on the history of the scientists that discovered it (this may just be a way to
pad a subject to book-length.)
The most recent book I read was Some Assembly Required. I loved the subject matter. But the
science didn’t go very deep. I didn’t learn a whole lot — other than the history of the science
around genetics. As I said above, I find the history part way less interesting.
So if you’ve read something recently that you really recommend, I’d love to hear it!
o Bobobob says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:07 pm ~new~
The Vital Question, about the role of mitochondria in the evolution of life, has previously been
name-checked here. It’s an excellent book.
Also recommended:
Richard Dawkins, The Concestor’s Tale
Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Christian de Duve, Vital Dust
There’s also Lynn Margulis’ Five Kingdoms, which is kind of a cross between a popular science book
and a textbook.
I know there are more, they will come to me eventually.

 Lambert says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:08 pm ~new~
+1 for Dawkins’ biology books.

 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:34 pm ~new~
Right up my alley! I’ve read the Vital Question a couple years ago. Really enjoyed it.
I had read The Selfish Gene many years ago and found it mind-altering. Then I got turned off from
Dawkins after he got on his atheism kick (this coming from an atheist.). Maybe I’ll give him
another try.
I’d read some Dennett long ago. Is Darwin’s Dangerous Idea more science or more philosophy. I
feel lame saying it, by philosophy bores me.
Thanks for the suggestions!

 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:08 pm ~new~
The Ancestor’s Tale is a great book – probably the best he wrote since The Selfish Gene.
o Wrong Species says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:45 pm ~new~
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich. An introduction to recent advances in
population genetics by one of the most prominent scientists in the field. It functions like a history
of different peoples.
 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:35 pm ~new~
I did read that, thank you! I guess I might have to wait a bit to see another crop of genetics books
come out 😉
 Peffern says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:52 pm ~new~
Oops, I accidentally reported this comment.

o Tatterdemalion says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:02 pm ~new~
Mathematics – the new Golden Age by Keith Devlin is an excellent pop maths book.
 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:36 pm ~new~
Hadn’t heard of that. Adding it to my list.
Just curious: how much of the book is Math and how much is History of Math?
May 22, 2020 at 10:35 am ~new~
It’s a long while since I read it, but from what I recall it’s almost all talking about ideas, not people,
with some of those ideas presented in chronological succession so you can see how the steps a
problem was solved in.

o Dragor says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:07 pm ~new~
You have probably already been recommended Superforecasting, The Righteous Mind, Thinking
Fast and Slow, The Secret of Our Success et cetera.
Good books you maybe haven’t been recommended: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, The Dictator’s
Handbook, and Make it Stick.

 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:38 pm ~new~
I almost picked up Superforecasting some time back. For some reason I got the impression is was
more “popular” than “science.” What was your experience?

 Dragor says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:09 pm ~new~
It’s good science, and it’s quite respected in its field, but it makes you want to pick up a hobby you
probably don’t have the time to learn sooooooo if you’re inclined to scrupulosity induced insecurity,
I guess it could be harmful. If you actually are in the mood for developing a new characteristic, it’s
great. In either case, it gives some useful lenses to view the world.
o Raghu Parthasarathy says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:22 pm ~new~
For more-advanced-than-usual popular science books related to life sciences, I strongly
recommend everything by Steven Vogel — essentially biomechanics, about how the machinery of
living things work. Fascinating and charmingly written. “Life in Moving Fluids” is a classic; I
particularly like “Life’s Devices.”
Somewhat similar: “On Size and Life” by Thomas McMahon & John Tyler Bonner.
Philip Ball and Nick Lane are other authors I’d recommend.
Though it’s at the usual technical level of popular science books, “The Gene: An Intimate History”
by Siddhartha Mukherjee is excellent (especially the first two-thirds).
At the risk of being self-serving, I’ll note that I’m writing a popular science book that will cover,
among other things, the DNA sequencing revolution. It’s described here, and there’s a link to a
Google Form near the bottom of the post if you’d like an email when it’s complete.
 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:40 pm ~new~
Oh, wow. I hadn’t heard of Steven Vogel. Looks like my kind of writer. I’m about to give The Life of
a Leaf a try!
BTW, your book looks like the kind of thing I’d really enjoy. How far away is the publishing date?
 Raghu Parthasarathy says:

May 21, 2020 at 9:21 pm ~new~
Thanks! I think the publication date is some time in 2021, though this is to be determined. I’m
under contract to finish writing late this summer, and there is typically a few months of review. I’m
not actually sure what determines the timeline after that.

 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:10 pm ~new~
I was going to recommend Bright Earth by Philip Ball – it’s about the history of paint pigment,
which sounds weird and niche, but is a book I’ve kept referring back to in many conversations over
the past decade! It also helped me understand so much more about the history of art, and how
some movements were driven by the invention of new pigments (like the differences between
Raphael and Caravaggio, and the colors of the impressionists).

 zzzzort says:
May 22, 2020 at 11:07 am ~new~
Holy crap, I hadn’t read your user name. I didn’t realize you were writing a book; super excited to
read it!
o zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:02 am ~new~
Shroedinger’s ‘What is life’ is surprisingly readable, if more philosophical than biological.
I’ve heard good things about Yong’s ‘I contain multitudes’, but I haven’t read it yet.
And lastly, I really liked ‘Life as a matter of fat’, but it’s very close to my own research interests
probably too much of a text book. I had to mention it though.

 TimG says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:43 pm ~new~
I feel bad that I didn’t know about What is Life. I generally shy away from philosophy. But I think
the author sells that one. Added to the list!
I Contain Multitudes is going to the top of the list 😉
Thanks!
o Eugene Dawn says:

May 23, 2020 at 6:11 pm ~new~
I recently read an old book, Life Ascending, by Nick Lane, a biochemist who talks about the
biochemical basis for some major evolutionary innovations in life’s history. He has some newer,
and presumably more up to date books that I haven’t read, but I really enjoyed it.
I am not qualified to judge how accurately he presented the material, but it was pretty science-y
41. Elena Yudovina says:

May 20, 2020 at 4:07 pm ~new~
Recently a number of people who are generally in favor of aggressive anti-covid measures have
spoken out about how stay-at-home orders may not be / have been worth it. There are a few
flavors of this that I’ve seen, but the version I’m interested in goes something like “everyone
responsible was already staying at home before orders, everyone irresponsible is ignoring them
anyway, why are we adding insult to injury”. (Stylized, but I don’t think strawmanned out of
recognition.)
Both me and my husband have math-on-the-computer type jobs (data scientist and 3D computer
vision). Before the stay-at-home guidance, both our groups’ managers had been adamant that we
Cannot Work Effectively From Home because of the need for a lot of interaction between group
members. (Both groups are now working from home unless it’s absolutely necessary to come into
the office, both expect to continue the pattern for the foreseeable future, and in both cases it
seems to be tolerably effective, although it’s probably too soon to tell if it’ll stay effective long-
term.) There was maybe a week or two when working from home was “allowed if you’re not
comfortable coming into the office”, but the official position at our offices didn’t switch to “you
should not be in the office” until our state declared a stay-at-home order.
So, my question: what does it take to get a manager who is gung-ho about face-to-face interaction
to accept that, yes, we need to work from home whenever possible — that working from home
should be the new norm, and coming into the office should be the exception? Does having a “stay-
at-home order” help shift the cultural balance there, or is a “public health guideline” enough? (I’m
not sure we had a gap between those, other than a generic impending feeling of doom for
guidance.) I’m especially interested from anyone in a managerial position here who might have
first-hand insight into how these things work.

o cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:31 pm ~new~
I’m a manager who believes in face to face interaction.
What it took for me was the CEO telling us that the official policy was that anyone who wanted to
work from home was allowed to do so on monday, and then on friday that everyone was working
from home indefinitely and the cleaning crews wouldn’t be coming to the office. Had it not been for
the second order, I’d have kept going into work a few days a week, and insisting that my team do
so on occasion. I’d have done this because I’ve got deadlines to meet, and I know they work better
when they’re in the same place.

May 20, 2020 at 5:11 pm ~new~
This took several steps in the company I worked for.
Sometimes in late February or early march the board send a mail: “A global pandemic would be
really bad for our industry. To do our part in slowing the spread we stop using air planes for any
company related travel activities, and ask the employees to do the same privatly.”
Next day came a mail: “Everyone who was in Italy in the last 14 days is here by ordered to work
from home for at least two weeks, and we ask you to self-isolate in that time.”
Some days later: “Everyone who was in the following countries is here by ordered to work from
home for the next two weeks: Italy, Spain, Southern France, Austria.”
another day later: “The stay at home order is extended to people who went to Northrhine-
Westphalia.”
Wednesday the next week: “As an exercies for an posible lockdown, we ask all personal who’s
presence is not absolutly necessary to stay home on friyday.”
Wednesday evening the lockdown order by the goverment came, and so the “exercise” got
extended indefenetly.
And yes I agree, I’m a lot less productive from home. And my team has decided to take one office
day a week by ourselfs. But on the other hand our management feared that in a situation like this,
our customers, wouldn’t need us anyway, because they are closed as well. That’s the reason for
the early measures.

 Kaitian says:
May 20, 2020 at 10:32 pm ~new~
Are you in Germany? I only ask because it’s fun to imagine someone in California specifically calling
out Northrhine Westphalia as a dangerous place.

May 21, 2020 at 3:34 am ~new~
Yes, I am.
Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 8:25 pm ~new~
I know they work better when they’re in the same place.
I mean, this was my management’s position as of 3 months ago. After seeing their employees work
from home and still act like adults and do their jobs, we’ll almost certainly have looser work from
home restriction moving forward. I guess YMMV.

 Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:46 am ~new~
How much of this is because:
1) Indefinite work-from-home means setting up an effective solution? Eg. I took my monitors and
docking station home from work when normally I’d just use my laptop.
2) When working from the office is the norm, “work from home” is a way of not-quite taking a
vacation day while not having to actually burn a PTO day?

May 21, 2020 at 9:26 pm ~new~
I think (1) matters a lot, but it’s as much from the corporate side (providing basic tools to enable
distance working) than the home side. I will say that one of the first things I did (months ago,
unrelated to COVID) when I know I would be teleworking was set myself up with a KVM switch so
that I could use my home PC set-up for working. Trying to code (or really do anything that requires
a lot of focus and multiple applications) off a laptop is a HUGE pain, in my experience.
But this is a one-time thing and doesn’t cost much (<$100 for me).
(2) wasn't a large concern, I think. We have a pretty high-trust work environment, and folks are
treated as adults. And I've always thought that it's just as easy to fart around in the office as it is
at home.
The bigger issue (my guess) was the expectation that daily face-to-face interaction was critical for
things like collaboration and espirit de corp. Regular video meetings between teams and chat tools
have largely (IMO) put this to rest.* Or at least established that folks can be just as effective from
home.
I don’t think we’ll move to a model where most folks are working from home in the future, but I do
think it’ll be more common on both ad hoc and scheduled bases moving forward.
Part of me wonders how generational this is. I grew up with things like AIM from middle school
onwards. I’ve had online friends that I didn’t meet in person for years. Voice chat, text chat, etc.
are all native to me. Instead of “walk down the hall and knock on the door”, you just send
someone a gchat or equivalent. I just don’t get the notion that physical proximity is necessary for
building relationships with people. (Which isn’t to say it can’t be useful…)

Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:46 pm ~new~
Setup matters, but that’s one reason I like working from home. If you sit in an open office, you do
most of your work anywhere except your desk, and because of that you do it on a laptop, without
external monitors.
Add cheap employers, who mandate a maximum of one external monitor per person, and that not
very large – or tiny desks, to the same effect – and the home setup I created for my own
convenience, with a KVM and two large monitors, looks really really good.
OTOH, my brother-in-law started the lockdown by discovering that while his IT department had
claimed they’d done as ordered and created an effective work from home environment for days
when the office was closed due to bad weather (blizzard-prone location), when the lockdown forced
them to test their setup, he discovered that the software he’d been told to install on his laptop
didn’t actually work with what they had on their servers.
Of course this was made more exciting by my sister (his wife) coming down with what in retrospect
was a bad cold, right at the same time.
He’s successfully working from home now, but from a very rocky start.
Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:50 pm ~new~
@matthewravery
Part of me wonders how generational this is. I grew up with things like AIM from
middle school onwards. I’ve had online friends that I didn’t meet in person for
years.
I’m 62, so a bit of a counter-example – but OTOH I’ve been in tech for most of those years, and
first worked from home briefly (without net connectivity) in 1985, so maybe not much of a
counter-example.
The next(?) year we got onto Usenet, and could exchange messages with academics in Israel with
only a 24-hour turnaround. We started collaborating up a storm ;-()
And I’m not a manager, having successfully dodged that bullet except for a very brief period in the
early 80s.
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May 22, 2020 at 11:19 am ~new~
Part of me wonders how generational this is. I grew up with things like AIM from
middle school onwards. I’ve had online friends that I didn’t meet in person for
years.
You don’t specify your generation. I was born in 1945 and I had and have online friends I didn’t
meet in person for years, or still haven’t met.

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 DisconcertedLoganberry says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:50 am ~new~
Upper management in our area have said that they’re pleased the productivity measures they use
haven’t fallen in the almost 3 months we’ve been working from home, however they’ve highlighted
a few things they’re concerned about.
– People might be working longer hours without tracking them. Part of this is willingness from not
having a commute, but part of this might be not being able to go out at all.
– Almost no one is taking PTO. They’re expecting it to cause issues when people are able to go
places and all want to take PTO at once. They’ve warned that they’re likely to actually use the
clause in our contracts saying they can deny requests to use PTO which hitherto has been pretty
unheard of (for engineers at least) to the point where almost none of us know how to use the
official system to get time off approved. Anyone near the accrual limit is being asked to take time
off now.
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:40 am ~new~
People might be working longer hours without tracking them. Part of this is
willingness from not having a commute, but part of this might be not being able to
go out at all.
I am probably working at least 1-2 hours extra each day because of these factors, as well as kind
of a reinforcing bias. If everyone else is still working at 5, that means I might get new
taskers/emails at 5, which means I’m going to be working until 6.

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 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:27 am ~new~
First, temporary work from home for people used to the office is different from full time work from
home being the norm.
Second, it’s not just individual productivity, it’s the benefits of being in a shared space and
interacting with people there. We have another team that does similar work to mine that is
scattered around the world and all remote. I see the connections that fly on the rare occasions you
them in the same room and how much gets done that wouldn’t be otherwise, because A has a
problem/solution that B doesn’t know about and wouldn’t think to ask about.
We definitely will have loser work from home rules going forward, but I’m not a fan.
May 21, 2020 at 9:34 pm ~new~
IDK what kind of work you do, but one thing that’s been an obvious productivity booster to me is
greater control of when I switch contexts of my work. In the office, I’m subject to the whims of
everyone walking by my office. If they want to chat, they knock. It may be important, it may not
be important, but regardless, I’ve got to take my head up out of my keyboard and have an
interaction. This can be a major pain and slow my work substantially.
Having someone talk to me in person makes it more likely that I’ll address whatever their concern
is immediately rather than wait until I’m at a natural stopping point. This add cognitive load and
decreases productivity.
The extent to which this occurs probably depends a lot on the type of work environment and type
of work you’re doing, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

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 AG says:
May 22, 2020 at 9:41 am ~new~
In contrast, the person who talked to you that got their concern addressed immediately had their
productivity increased.
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May 20, 2020 at 7:51 pm ~new~
Couple things:
1. I may be a manager, but that means I have to play politics with other managers. Some
managers are not allowed to have their people work from home and become quite jealous.
2. If you miss a deliverable or otherwise become difficult to work with for any reason, many of
which may be no fault of your own, it is very easy for other managers to point at your lack of office
presence as the key driver. It is an easy scapegoat, and many managers like easy scapegoats, just
like anyone else.
3. Other managers and other teams have preferred methods of working, and many of them want
face-to-face contact. I still have people that call me, even knowing that I need to share a screen
with them (Which requires Zoom, which our company pays for us to use). But 90% of their
communication IS calling, so they don’t want to adjust their 10%.
4. A lot of comradery is built up with in-person interactions. This is important social capital. It is as
important as anything else you do. The company cannot function without social capital. Most
people don’t function well as a team if they all dislike or distrust each other.
5. Some things are just easier to discuss face-to-face. Actually it’s a lot easier to explain math stuff
face-to-face, at least to non-numbers people. I can see when people’s eyes are glazing over, I can
see when they are getting frustrated, I can see when they “get it.” I cannot do this as easily over
the phone and I definitely cannot do it over email. You can be the smartest person in the room and
it does not matter if no one understands you.
6. I don’t want you to just understand what you do, I need you to understand what other people do
and how you fit into a team. A very smart person got a bit sassy with me today because I blocked
a whole bunch of new products: the new products were coming in at such a high cost that a
flagship company capital investment was about to have its margin slashed quite significantly.
Apparently I violated some sort of sacred protocol because certain costs were supposed to be
questioned earlier (long before I ever saw them). Yeah, that guy doesn’t “get it,” I am the Veto
Point, and I get to exercise Veto above any other established procedure or process because I am
the Veto Point that makes sure we don’t roll a cost that bankrupts us.
That being said, there’s a lot more support for WFH now. I don’t know what the New Normal will
be. I am hoping 2-3 days WFH becomes standard. That will open up a LOT more jobs for me. I
cannot take jobs in downtown Chicago because the daily commute is between 2.5 and 3 hours:
that’s not as bad if I only have to make it twice a week.

May 20, 2020 at 8:01 pm ~new~
I cannot do this as easily over the phone and I definitely cannot do it over email.
Why can’t you do it with Skype or one of its competitors?

May 20, 2020 at 8:17 pm ~new~
For most, limited screen space. I typically have to show numbers to multiple people and multiple
people do not display on a screen very well while I am also screen-sharing. And I work on a big
screen TV.
Also, most people do not want to use the webcam. It feels invasive. They don’t engage as well with
a screen as they do a person anyways.

o DinoNerd says:
May 20, 2020 at 10:11 pm ~new~

what does it take to get a manager who is gung-ho about face-to-face interaction to
accept that, yes, we need to work from home whenever possible
Damned if I know. Before the covid-19 epidemic, my management had drunk the open office
Koolaid – the best possible setting for effective software engineering is a crowded room with glass
walls (providing both total lack of visual privacy and lots of echoes).
Or they’d drunk the save-money-by-packing-engineers-into-sardine-cans, but-tell-them-it’s-to-
improve-productivity-and-they’ll-feel-good-about-it Koolaid, like my immediately previous
employer. (That employer was caught saying one thing to managers and something else to
engineers; I choose to believe what they told the managers.)
Realistically, I do better when I’m not isolated, and when I can get help fast – less well when I
can’t think straight for the noise – but unless you are a manager, your chance of getting a
workspace where you can hear yourself think is negligible. (Managers often have large, empty
private offices they visit once or twice a day between meetings ;-()
Forced to chose between sitting in a 1960s typing pool layout, and having next to no contact with
coworkers, guess which I pick? I’m loving the increased use of Slack and video meetings brought
on by the lockdown.
May 21, 2020 at 5:34 am ~new~
It’s hard to imagine that there’s any savings available from economizing on office space at the cost
of decreasing your software engineers’ productivity.

 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:51 am ~new~
Makes you wonder what area of office space costs as much as each employee’s salary.
May 21, 2020 at 6:04 am ~new~
It’s odd that the question of how much space and privacy white-collar workers need to be
productive is even up for debate. There are a lot of white-collar workers, they do valuable work,
and many of them work for large, sophisticated organizations that can afford to spend some money
on research. You’d think this would be one of the most carefully studied issues in all of
management literature.
Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 6:14 am ~new~
You have to give up a lot of office space to just squeeze in one more employee.
Our staff makes around $70k. Plus the fringes, and using Google’s estimate of $40/sq ft, an
employee’s annual wage is equivalent to about 2400 sq ft. That’s a big suburban house.
A better comparison is that a 6×6 cubicle costs you $1400, and 10×10 office costs you $4800. And
it’s actually worse than that, because you can shove cubicles right on top of each other, which you
can’t with offices, and offices probably require more support work with walls, electricity, hvac, etc.
An extra few thousand per employee isn’t anything to sneeze at. If you asked an employee “would
you rather increase your cubicle size from 6×6 to 10×10 or get an extra 5% in your 401k,” most
people are probably going to take the 401k option.
However, for managers and above, probably an attractive perk worth considering.
Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 1:43 pm ~new~
It’s odd that the question of how much space and privacy white-collar workers need
to be productive is even up for debate. There are a lot of white-collar workers, they
do valuable work, and many of them work for large, sophisticated organizations
that can afford to spend some money on research. You’d think this would be one of
the most carefully studied issues in all of management literature.
My suspicion is that the amount of space per employee you need before you stop seeing
measurable changes in productivity is less than the amount you need before your employees stop
complaining that lack of space is effecting their productivity.
C.F. teaching/learning styles, where a lot of people insist that they learn better if taught in a
particular way, but my understanding is that the evidence suggests that this is not actually the
case.
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 LesHapablap says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:31 pm ~new~
Most employees would prefer better working conditions (friendlier, better gear or offices) to a
higher salary, and it is a common mistake to think otherwise. So if you invest $4k per worker
getting them an office, some if not all counts as compensation that will keep them working for you.
And if you get more productivity that’s even better.

Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 10:14 am ~new~
Ehhhh.
I don’t think that’s accurate, but I guess it varies by industry. I don’t work FAANG. I’ve worked
corporate accounting and I’ve worked plant accounting. The kinds of people stuck in ever-shrinking
cubicles are making $50k-$80k/year. Putting them in a bigger cubicle is a big chunk of their
compensation. Putting them in an office is mind-boggling.
Just imagine going to an interview and being told that your salary is gonna by $5k lower…..BUT,
your cubicle is 10×10 instead of 6×6! Isn’t that a sweet deal?
Also, there’s wayyyyyyy better things to spend money if you want to retain workers. Parties, gifts,
etc. This company and our my last company had full coffee bars, with baristas, fresh fruit and
snacks, and beer taps in the employee cafeteria. Hell, if you’re throwing around thousands, you
might as well send all of your employees to Disney World at a subsidized rate or something. You
can probably get a discounted rate if you’re sending out everyone.
Should also add that major companies are NOT afraid of spending more money if they think it will
attract them talent. A lot of companies are shifting corporate HQs to much higher-priced urban
offices in part to attract employees who want to work in the city.
And, finally….again, disclaimer, not a FAANG employee: Most staff analysts can work just fine in a
freaking open office. It’s annoying as hell, but successful staff will continue to perform well,
because successful staff have talents that usually exceed staff responsibilities. These people are
identified and promoted. Regular staff are going to make a crap ton of errors even if you give them
an office because they are error-prone. They also are only going to work productively 4-5 hours a
day anyways.
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 Deiseach says:
May 23, 2020 at 7:05 am ~new~
Also, there’s wayyyyyyy better things to spend money if you want to retain
workers. Parties, gifts, etc. This company and our my last company had full coffee
bars, with baristas, fresh fruit and snacks, and beer taps in the employee cafeteria.
Hell, if you’re throwing around thousands, you might as well send all of your
employees to Disney World at a subsidized rate or something. You can probably get
a discounted rate if you’re sending out everyone.
Oh yeah, because when I get my next electricity bill I can pay it in barter with the free fruit from
the office canteen 🙂
Stuff like this only works at a certain level of remuneration when you’re not concerned with how
much of your pay packet is going on living expenses, and I rather imagine any employees who
make too free use of the beer taps while at work will find themselves becoming ex-employees.
If it’s a choice between “slightly more money”, “same money but can work in a reasonable space”
or “same money, noisy crowded space but hey we’ll give you all the free coffee you can drink”, free
coffee is going to be way down on my list of priorities when job-seeking.

Hide ↑

May 23, 2020 at 7:26 am ~new~
The actual trade-off for the people we are trying to recruit is:
A. 5% less pay to commute an hour every single day into the suburbs so work with the cast of the
Office, but, hey, your cubicle is 10×10!
B. Straight pay, take public transit 20 minutes to work in a city location with lots of restaurants and
bars around you, lots of fun young people to work with…and you have to work in an open office,
but we have free beer.

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 DinoNerd says:
May 23, 2020 at 12:13 pm ~new~
@A Definite Beta Guy
Good point. If the people you want to attract are young singles who like living in crowded urban
areas and can afford to, they won’t want to commute to the suburbs where rents are cheaper and
parking is free, and you can give everyone more space.
We see that a lot in the Bay Area. Some companies place themselves in San Francisco. Older
potential employees probably live in the suburbs, and are faced with a horrific commute, expensive
parking, and a tiny workspace. My bridge partner had to take such a job recently, and he’s
absolutely loving the covid-19 lockdown, because working from home gives him 2 free hours every
workday, as well as free parking and less expensive lunches – on top of not sitting in a sardine can.
Most suburban-resident employees select themselves out of the applicant pool for such positions,
unless they have no equivalent opportunities in better locations. Given age-related correlations,
you can load your staff with youngsters without a hint of age discrimination.
Other companies have two sites, one in the city and one in the south bay, and allow employees to
pick their work location.
Still others (Apple, Google) have their main buildings in suburbia, and run plush wifi and table
equipped commuter busses down from the city, on which many employees accomplish a fair
amount of work.
And still others base themselves in the suburbs, and their applicant pool selects for older, stodgier,
and more likely to have children.

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 Thomas Jorgensen says:

May 21, 2020 at 7:52 am ~new~
Given a choice between productivity and even just the mere appearance of control – not actual
control, just the illusion of it – a heck of a lot of managers pick b. This is a known bug in human
wetware.
 DinoNerd says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:07 am ~new~
Well, my previous employer was more of a sales company than an engineering company, in spite of
what they sold being highly technical. So the senior executive team understood (and identified
with) sales and salespeople, but didn’t really understand engineers.
Perhaps more importantly, the facilities budget would not be impacted by lost engineering
productivity unless/until the company got itself into serious financial trouble; that would probably
take long enough that the senior facilities decision makers would already have new employers.
Finally, “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”. If the whole industry is doing it, your productivity is
no worse than that of your competitors. And you (management) get the pleasure of
micromanaging your peons, and having obviously better working conditions to emphasize your
status.
May 21, 2020 at 8:46 am ~new~
+1
I think a whole lot of big decisions are made for cargo-cult/following the herd reasons, with rational
justifications being spun up after the fact. Open offices seem likely to be one of those, but the
world is full of them. Fads are extra-visible in management and education, but I think they’re
everywhere.
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 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:58 am ~new~
Nobody will ever convince me that the reason every corporation has open offices now is anything
other than “Because Google did it and Google is pretty cool so if we do it too people will think we’re
cool like Google is”

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 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:01 am ~new~
@Matt M
You also get more workers per square foot, so it saves money.
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 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:02 am ~new~
Right but I think that’s a tangential point. As in, I think even if it somehow cost more money,
everyone would be doing it anyway, just to copy the cool kids.

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 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:12 am ~new~
@matt M
I think both points are essential. If google had announced that their internal studies proved
everyone should have an office and built that instead of open offices, you wouldn’t get as many
copycats because everyone would look at their facilities budget and say “this is going to cost us a
fortune, I’d rather spend the money on other things. Google can keep their fancy offices and free
sandwiches.” But when google does something that also saves money, then you have two good
reasons to pitch it. It’s the confluence of trendy and cheap that leads to mass imitation, not just
trendy.
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 cassander says:
May 21, 2020 at 2:03 pm ~new~
the savings from less office space are highly visible. the loss in efficiency is a lot harder to detect.
o mtl1882 says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:40 am ~new~
I do think the orders make a pretty big difference in the sense that a decent chunk of companies
would expect their employees to come in after it was lifted. Some might allow exceptions, but
that’s likely to be held against the people using them and become a problem.
ADBG below explains some of the dynamics that would drive this—regardless of whether it is
working ok enough and supported by the employees, some places will absolutely not be okay with
extending work at home if they don’t have to. Or there will be enough fighting over it to cause
issues. I don’t think guidelines do much. There are definitely companies committed to allowing
WHF long term no matter what, but I’m guessing they’re a real minority and concentrated in
specific industries. I imagine most companies will allow flexibility for some employees to work from
home, but not others.
Of course, if the stay at home orders last long enough, enough bosses and even workers may
decide they’ve had enough that they get the orders rescinded. Especially when we get better data
on risks and time frame.
I think it is true that behavior patterns are not mainly driven by the orders themselves at this
point, but by personal preference. Workplaces have people of different preferences, and also
incentives, which is the problem. If the boss prefers workers come in, then they don’t have much
of a choice without an order. I do believe some businesses will suffer without the employees
coming in and if it persists, the employee may be out of a job altogether, so I wouldn’t be too quick
to assume leaving the the orders in place is clearly the best way to protect the interest of all
workers. It may be more reasonable to let them make the choice whether to resign and look for a
job that will let them work from home, or take the risk of going in to avoid losing their job.
Also, plenty of young people would go into work if called back by bosses—some are quite
concerned about this, but many more are probably worried about job security and getting out of
the house, especially if they live alone. I think the lockdown is all that keeps them at home. Bottom
line is that it absolutely makes a difference to have lockdowns, but I’m not sure how long it
remains workable. Of course, when they are lifted, I can see a frenzy of lawsuits or just media
controversies over this issue of employees being pressured to come in. Also over respecting social
distancing in the office–some people are going to be way more into that than others. It certainly
makes a difference as to the spread of the virus, but I don’t think trying to contain it in this manner
is worthwhile.
 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:16 pm ~new~
> a decent chunk of companies would expect their employees to come in after it was lifted.
It depends a lot on their work location. If they’re in a skyscraper building downtown where
everyone needs to file through a single series of elevators to get to the office, then they probably
will continue work-from-home until a vaccine or herd immunity is achieved, regardless of the
orders.
 mtl1882 says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:36 am ~new~
While that would make logical sense and will probably make some small difference, I think most
bosses at big firms, of the type most commonly found in skyscrapers, won’t think much of the
elevator risk. Most of those places aren’t going to be amenable to WFH unless legally required.
Relative risk just isn’t the determining factor. I would bet many employees would be willing, but
would expect some pushback. Apparently the elevators aren’t necessarily that risky compared to
simple office interaction. Close talking is the problem, and those firms aren’t going to be able to
avoid it. Any office will struggle to avoid it, I think. For most people, it’s too hard to resist close
talking when you’re in a familiar place with people you know well.
May 21, 2020 at 5:56 am ~new~

So, my question: what does it take to get a manager who is gung-ho about face-to-
face interaction to accept that, yes, we need to work from home whenever possible
— that working from home should be the new norm, and coming into the office
should be the exception?
Are you willing to accept the possibility that the “gung-ho” manager will never ever accept this
because they are not wrong? Or, what does it take to convince the work-from-home absolutist to
accept that, yes, we need to be working in the office whenever possible, that working from home
should be a rare exception?
The real test, the one that will convince just about everyone, is when the firms that follow one
strategy start collapsing into bankruptcy and ruin because they are outcompeted by the firms that
follow the other. Or because the one strategy is so badly flawed that it will fail even with no
competition. But sorting out winning from losing strategies is one thing markets are unambiguously
good at.
Until they sort it out, don’t expect everyone to start agreeing with you just because the state
issued an “order” or a “guideline” that says to do things the way you prefer. If it’s an order, they’ll
probably go along with it because they A: have to and B: can at least hope their competitors will be
under the same order. But to convince them your way is better, you’ll have to show them that your
way is better. And it’s going to be hard to do that without allowing the competition to take place.
 DinoNerd says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:21 am ~new~
Or, what does it take to convince the work-from-home absolutist to accept that, yes,
we need to be working in the office whenever possible, that working from home
should be a rare exception?
Evidence. Real data comparing different working conditions along with measures of results.
I’m not a WFH absolutist. I am an enough-space-and-enough-quiet absolutist, and there is
research showing the effects on software developer productivity, at least in the narrower sense of
code quantity and quality.
FWIW, the decision makers at my previous company were confronted with this evidence. They
insisted it didn’t matter and we needed to do the same experiment all over again. They eventually
ended up with staff who cared least about the 3 linked issues: lying, agressively ignoring research,
and degrading their engineers’ working conditions. (Yay SF Bay area – there are always software
engineering jobs available; voting with one’s feet is workable.)
I actually don’t believe I’m doing my best work here from home – but better work than I’d be doing
in the panopticon at the main office. (Normally, I spend 1-2 days a week there, and the rest of my
time at a small, under-populated peripheral building where I can generally hear myself think.)

May 22, 2020 at 1:07 pm ~new~
@DinoNerd: you are obviously correct that engineering work is better done in a locked room by
yourself. Your job, at most companies, is not engineering work: it’s to maximize your social capital,
and thereby the amount of money they pay you. Doing good engineering work is one way to
achieve that. Other ways are more effective, such as “making sure your boss remembers you exist”
or “being in the room where decisions happen.” People don’t have emotional object permanence; if
you’re far away, you simply will not matter to them compared to the people they see everyday.
Similarly, you’ll have no real voice in how things get done, which means you’ll get no credit for it
either.
In a less sociopathic framing, other activities that don’t work remotely that are still of high value:
* Brainstorming together
* Training new people
* Building social rapport with your coworkers…

 DinoNerd says:
May 22, 2020 at 4:58 pm ~new~
To the extent that management succumbs to the tendency to reward people for their social skills,
and nothing much else, they will wind up with staff who are good at social skills, and nothing much
else.
If they farther succumb to the tendency to reward people who use their social skills in [soft]
sociopathic ways (office politics), without either occassionally cracking down on those who overdo
it, or frequently also rewarding other things, they will wind up with a company culture consisting
primarily of vicious political fights. Such a company will only prosper while they have a cash cow
left over from better days, or if they can make money by similar interpersonal activities.
I’ve seen those companies, and interviewed some of those they eventually lay off. I’m always a bit
concerned that they might bring their company culture with them into a new environment.
Hide ↑

May 22, 2020 at 7:58 pm ~new~
Again, not FAANG, but I don’t see how you don’t reward social skills, which inevitably results in
rewarding political skill to some level. Organizations are full of people and you need to know how to
work with people effectively in order to actually be effective. At the very least, you need
communication skills, because other people cannot help you if they cannot understand you, even if
all parties are well-intentioned.
I’ll give an example: 2/3 of our supervisors are out on first shift. The employees are taking
advantage in predictable ways: showing up late, long lunches, punching out late, blah blah blah.
Finance (IE ADBG) still audits that shit.
The way you communicate this is something like: “Hey Production Manager. We typically see X
number of Y issue in a day. Since your supervisors are out, we see 20X. This requires all of your
supervisors to audit and fix punch cards, and will reflect in the month-end report to the Factory
Manager if it does not improve. How can we recommunicate our time policy to all shifts while
complying with social distancing?”

It says:
1. People are time stealing like crazy
2. It’s quickly getting out of control, and as word spreads, EVERYONE is going to do it.
3. This creates MORE work for you team, because they still have to fix it.
4. If you don’t fix it, I’m escalating it. ***
5. This is fixable by simply telling your employees that we are not stupid and we know when you
are stealing time. Do that, write up a few people, and this whollllleeeeee problem goes away.
What a direct report of mine did was send a long-winded email with attached spreadsheets, talking
about findings and blah blah I couldn’t even read it. This direct report used to work in audit, and is
used to everyone reading her emails in exacting detail, because you don’t ignore an auditor.
But she’s not an auditor anymore. If she communicates poorly, people delete her emails. And
that’s on her, not the people deleting her emails.
***A lot of people think “come on, it’s not that big a deal,” but we are assigned Go Finds/Go Gets
that are only a few percent of the total budget. An aggravation like this on a systemic basis can
easily increase our conversion budget by .5%, which is enough to materially damage overall
performance metrics. In low margin industries, it can be fatal, and certainly very damaging. We
struggle A LOT just to find projects worth, like, .05% of our conversion, and we generally tack a
little things together with a few major projects to hit our metrics.
COVID is already aggravating our numbers, so any additional spend is just another kick to the
nuts.
Hide ↑

May 23, 2020 at 2:21 pm ~new~
Dino, I didn’t say they only reward social skills, I said that you have to have them. More generally,
you have to be in their society, and the guy locked in a room 500 miles away isn’t.
You may not believe in office politics but they believe in you. Saying that companies that get taken
over by politics fail is true but not really relevant; you have to make the ones you do have work.
Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 23, 2020 at 3:58 pm ~new~
@Andrew Hunter
Dino, I didn’t say they only reward social skills, I said that you have to have them.
More generally, you have to be in their society, and the guy locked in a room 500
miles away isn’t.
While I was very cranky this morning, I will say in my own defense that I thought I had earlier
made clear that the problem I had was with the tendency for some people to over-reward social
skills at the expense of everything else – as well as also implying that that when that happens,
they often also overreward specifically those social skills that are most harmful to the community,
company, or other organization.

To the extent that management succumbs to the tendency to reward people for their
social skills, and nothing much else, they will wind up with staff who are good at
social skills, and nothing much else.
When I have to, I consciously manipulate people into having positive feelings about me. The more I
have to do this (consciously), the worse feelings I tend to have about them, but it’s pretty much a
matter of self defence. Often I can take on the social role of “that braniac geek without whom this
place would cease to function”, “absent-minded professor,” or “trusted advisor to up-and-coming
manager” – and I seek out those roles, and organizations which make them available, as they
allow me to focus primarily on what I’m good at and enjoy.
For the record, I’ve met two or three people in management who had, IMO, really good social
skills, as I’d use the term if it it didn’t already have another meaning. Also one management-bound
engineer of the same type. These people could work with – and get good work from – just about
anyone, rather than having either a “one-size-fits-all” motivation/communication skill, or a belief
that their staff were programmable robots who would simply do whatever they were ordered to –
including correctly guessing that part that was ambiguous, unstated, or not intended to be obeyed.
And that’s in more than 40 years in the workforce.

Hide ↑
 SamChevre says:
May 23, 2020 at 4:58 pm ~new~
Seconding DinoNerd about the genuine importance and rarity of “good social skills” in the
“manages many different people and relationships effectively” sense. I’ve been in the professional
workforce for 20 years; I’ve worked for exactly one person who was genuinely good at getting the
best possible work from the team.

Hide ↑

May 23, 2020 at 7:06 pm ~new~
Sam: Agree. Actually great people skills are rare, and management is a difficult and valuable skill.
All I’m claiming is that with any of these people–the good managers or the bad, and the same for
IC coworkers–you need to be in their presence. A lot. We’re just not wired to treat that random
guy on VC the same way.

Hide ↑
 DinoNerd says:
May 24, 2020 at 11:32 am ~new~
@Andrew Hunter
We’re just not wired to treat that random guy on VC the same way.
You’re not. A lot of autistic people are. Some of us don’t even need video chat – we’ll treat the
random guy on email or Slack the same way, or the only difference will be whether we’ve
encountered them before, and, if so, what the encounter was like.
Hide ↑
 Elena Yudovina says:

May 21, 2020 at 11:30 am ~new~
Are you willing to accept the possibility that the “gung-ho” manager will never ever
accept this because they are not wrong?
It sounds like I wasn’t clear about the intent of the question. I actually prefer working in the office,
and am definitely less effective right now for not being able to do that. (I started a new job the day
my state closed down.) I might even, on balance, prefer an open floor plan over the academic
everyone-has-an-office system, although both have advantages and drawbacks.
What I was trying to understand, though, was whether the stay-at-home orders were useful for
advancing the goal of “everyone stays at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus”, and it
sounds like the answer is a resounding “yes” — more people are working from home because
there’s an order to do so, than would be if it were just guidance.

 keaswaran says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:18 pm ~new~
I think there are two separate questions here. Now that the orders have been issued and everyone
has started it for a few weeks, are the orders necessary in order to keep businesses in work-from-
home mode until the existence of a vaccine? Will this example be enough to keep allowing work-
from-home after a vaccine? My guess is that the answer to the first is yes and the second is no. If
anything, once we have a vaccine, many companies will be much stricter about working in the
office, after seeing the muddle we’ve done during this period.
42. LadyJane says:

May 20, 2020 at 3:01 pm ~new~
Hot take of the day: Socialism killed the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Contrary to popular belief, Bernie Sanders is not an actual socialist, at least not by any internally
consistent definition of socialism. In terms of actual policy, he’s a European-style welfare capitalist.
His ideas are standard practice in the Scandinavian countries, and only slightly further to the left
than what you’d see in France or Germany or even in the US during the FDR/LBJ era. Virtually all
political scientists and economists agree that he’s not a socialist. (See: here, here, here, here,
here, and here.) For that matter, most actual socialists likewise agree that he’s not a socialist.
And as a political scientist, I’m sure Bernie himself knows he’s not a real socialist. His use of the
term is more of a rhetorical tactic than anything else. Back in the 80s, Reaganite propaganda
dismissed virtually all forms of welfare and progressive taxation as “socialism,” and Bernie was
basically saying “if that makes me a socialist in your eyes, then so be it.” (Yes, Bernie supported
actual socialist policies like nationalization of industries back in the 60s and 70s, when he was a
young activist, but to act like he still espouses those policies is disingenuous. Even his former
acquaintances have admitted that he’s renounced actual socialism.)
Back in 2016, this wasn’t too big a deal. Bernie was the only notable person in American calling
himself a socialist, so he could use it to mean whatever he wanted it to mean, at least as far as the
general public was concerned. I was mildly annoyed by the fact that he labeled himself a socialist,
but that’s mostly just because I’m a cranky political scientist and I can be a stickler for proper
terminology. His policies were still a bit too far to the economic left for my tastes, but I still
supported him in the Democratic primary, because 1.) I really do believe we need much better
social services in this country, even if I disagreed with him on the particulars, 2.) I’m a civil
libertarian and he had the best record on foreign policy and civil liberties, by a long shot, and 3.) it
was refreshing to have someone who was generally anti-establishment, but also wasn’t a total
crackpot and had actual political experience. Also, to a lesser extent, 4.) Hillary was a uniquely bad
candidate and I couldn’t bring myself to support her.
But at some point between then and now, something happened. A genuine, bona fide socialist
movement sprung up in the US as a result of Bernie’s campaign. Groups like the Democratic
Socialists of America, which had previously been relegated to the furthest fringes of American
political discourse, suddenly found themselves back in the spotlight. Membership in the DSA and
similar organizations surged. Socialist publications like Jacobin, which had formerly been known
only to far-leftists and political wonks, started popping up on the Facebook feeds of everyday
Americans. Polls showed that between 30% to 40% of millennials had favorable views of socialism,
and a full 70% of millennials said they would vote for a socialist candidate.
Granted, many of these “socialists” weren’t any further left than Bernie. (I recently got into a
debate with a self-proclaimed “socialist” and found out halfway into the discussion that he actually
supports Keynesian economics rather than any kind of actual socialist economic structure.) But
there was still a significant and far-too-vocal minority of them who were actual far-leftists: They
talked about nationalizing major corporations and industries, abolishing rent and profit altogether
or sometimes even abolishing money altogether, and other extremist policies that were far to the
left of anything that you’d see in Europe or anywhere else outside of Communist Party
dictatorships. And a small but vocal minority of those people were radical leftists – typically either
anarchists or Marxist-Leninists – who frequently endorsed violent revolution, talked about
executing billionaires and CEOs and politicians and cops, fantasized about sending centrist liberals
off to concentration camps, idolized and defended Communist dictators like Stalin and Mao, and
flew the Soviet/Chinese flag everywhere.

Bernie himself didn’t support any of this madness. But it became associated with his campaign
nonetheless, both because his 2016 campaign was responsible for sparking the millennial socialist
movement in the first place, and because he continued to call himself a socialist even when there
were actual socialists in the news using the term to mean something entirely different. The average
Rust Belt labor leftist might’ve been happy to support a “socialist” when socialism simply meant
“opposed to the Reagan-Clinton neoliberal consensus that he blamed for ruining his life.” But if that
Rust Belt laborer goes online and sees “socialism” being used to describe the DSA/Jacobin types, or
Marxist-Leninists defending Stalin and Mao, or red-black anarchists making jokes about sending
everyone they disagree with to the guillotine, he’s going to think “oh shit, Bernie means actual
USSR-style socialism, fuck that!” Especially when 2020 offered alternatives like Elizabeth Warren (a
European-style progressive welfare capitalist who admits to being a progressive welfare capitalist)
and Andrew Yang (whose idea of “human capitalism” – with a Universal Basic Income and less
economic regulations than the current system – matches my own views a lot more closely than
Bernie’s).
What’s worse is that Bernie would occasionally throw a bone to those people. Perhaps it was driven
by a need to distinguish himself from other progressive candidates like Warren and anti-
establishment candidates like Yang, but in any case, it was a huge strategic mistake. The worst
example was when he defended Fidel Castro, on the basis that “he did a lot to improve Cuba’s
literacy rate,” just a few weeks before the Florida election. Florida has plenty of Cuban residents
who experienced the draconian brutality of the Castro regime firsthand, or had parents who did,
not to mention all of the residents who knew those Cubans and were sympathetic to them. The
Castro comment also turned off a lot of Bernie’s civil libertarian supporters, as well as plenty of
social justice progressives who were appalled by his defense of a homophobic dictator responsible
for sending LGBT people to forced labor camps. It even turned off some of the far-left anarchists
who remembered how Castro violently purged their ilk in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution.
If Bernie had done more to distinguish himself as a social democrat rather than a socialist, and to
distance himself from the actual socialists on the far-left, would he have won? Maybe not, there
were a lot of other factors involved and he had a lot stacked against them. But I do think he
would’ve had a much better chance, and likely performed a lot better than he did, especially in
places like South Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin.

o LadyJane says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:02 pm ~new~
I read an article a few months back that sums up the entire problem perfectly: There was a Social
Democrat politician from Sweden who endorsed Sanders, and attended a Bernie rally during a trip
to the United States. The Swedish politician had more or less the same views on policy as Bernie
himself, so he assumed that he’d fit in. Instead, he was shocked and horrified to find that most
people at the rally were extreme far-leftists talking about how capitalism as a whole needs to be
abolished, and how billionaires and stockholders and landlords shouldn’t exist at all. According to
him, you would never see people like that in Sweden outside of fringe Marxist or anarchist groups –
certainly not at a mainstream political rally for one of the country’s most popular politicians!
 TimG says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:48 pm ~new~
…how capitalism as a whole needs to be abolished, and how billionaires and
stockholders and landlords shouldn’t exist at all.
My memory may be off, but I think I remember Bernie saying:
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
Rent controls should be nationwide.
Employees should be guaranteed (some) ownership of the companies they work for.
Certainly not quite as extreme as what you are saying. But definitely in the ballpark.
 gbdub says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:39 am ~new~
Yeah. Personally I’m less sure that Bernie has given up on true socialism in his heart of hearts so
much as he’s bowed to the reality of American politics and moderated his stated policy goals to be
more palatable. But maybe it doesn’t matter.
Either way, I think his rhetoric has remained “true socialist friendly” even as his policies are
comparatively moderate.
I recall in 2016 he ran one radio ad in my area, and it was basically all about how bankers are evil
and deserve to go to jail. Red meat for socialists.
 nkurz says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:40 pm ~new~
@LadyJane:
> I read an article a few months back…
Probably this was Johan Hassel? Here’s one of the articles about his impressions:
Johan Hassel, the international secretary for Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats,
visited Iowa before the caucuses, and he wasn’t impressed with America’s standard
bearer for democratic socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “We were at a Sanders
event, and it was like being at a Left Party meeting,” he told Sweden’s Svenska
Dagbladet newspaper, according to one translation. “It was a mixture of very
young people and old Marxists, who think they were right all along. There were no
ordinary people there, simply.”
https://theweek.com/speedreads/896948/democratic-socialist-bernie-sanders-far-left-swedens-
ruling-social-democrats-official-says.
o cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:12 pm ~new~
Sanders’ spending plans called for the federal government to spend almost 40% of GDP. That’s on
top of 15% of GDP being spent by the states and around 8% spent as tax expenditures. that’s a
figure well above any european government, and more philosophically, if the government dictating
2/3s of economic activity isn’t socialism, what is?

o Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:38 pm ~new~

Contrary to popular belief, Bernie Sanders is not an actual socialist, at least not by
any internally consistent definition of socialism. In terms of actual policy, he’s a
European-style welfare capitalist. His ideas are standard practice in the
Scandinavian countries, and only slightly further to the left than what you’d see in
France or Germany or even in the US during the FDR/LBJ era. Virtually all
political scientists agree that he’s not a socialist.
This simply isn’t true. I generally find people who say that Sanders’ proposals would be normal in
Scandinavia or Europe are woefully underinformed about the actual economic policies of those
countries. Sanders is not a “normal” European leftist in a relatively right wing country. He’s a far
left populist, part of a general rise we’ve seen in the western world of populism and relatively
extreme ideologies. Indeed, his fortunes are quite typical in this regard: the far left wave in Europe
receded as he lost his second chance at becoming President.
To take one example, his plan to make companies set aside part ownership for workers is novel.
What Europe has is a system of collective bargaining and governance monitoring in which workers
have a healthy reservation of automatic seats. They are not owners of the company. Likewise, his
health plan was far more extreme than things like the NHS. His wealth tax is also very uncommon:
only Norway has one among Scandinavia, it’s much lower than the one he proposed, and the
government in power has pledged to abolish it.
You mention how a European socialist found Bernie supports to the far left: but this is true of his
policies as well.
Otherwise, I broadly agree. Sanders was either more radical and moderating to win or he was
moderate version of far left populism from the start. Either way, he was not as far left as left goes.
And these elements are still broadly unpopular and going to remain despite a lot of socialist posing
on the left. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a shocking swerve from outright
revolutionary rhetoric into some mundane small expansion of the welfare state. Talking about
killing all the billionaires swerving into an argument about expanding Obamacare.
But I do think he would’ve had a much better chance, and likely performed a lot
better than he did, especially in places like South Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin.
I can tell you that at least in Florida Sanders had two problems: Democratic minorities tend to be
extremely unified as a group and Biden was better able to court them. This also appears to have
been a huge issue in the Carolinas. Secondly, those who were more independent minded were
unusually likely to have experience with actual Social Democrats in Latin America or Europe. Since
they left, they tend to be fairly pro-capitalist even where they otherwise agree with Democrats on
things like the treatment of immigrants or welfare. There’s a joke that no one really likes Biden but
I’ve met a lot of left-leaning Latinos and African Americans who appear to genuinely like him. And
a fair number of trade-unionists. I suspect the real people he doesn’t excite is the highly mobilized
very left activist wing of the party, which is not the Democratic Party’s main voter base.
 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:51 pm ~new~
I can tell you that at least in Florida Sanders had two problems: Democratic
minorities tend to be extremely unified as a group and Biden was better able to
court them.
One more: Bernie’s comments about Cuba were also going to cause him trouble.
 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:04 pm ~new~
The comparison of campaign promises to enacted european policies is somewhat suspect though;
everything gets compromised. Even comparing campaign promises with europe is hard because,
since the US doesn’t have a parliamentary democracy, political promises are viewed even less
literally. I don’t think Sanders’ politics would be outside the norm of portugal’s socialist party,
spain’s podemos, or corbyn’s labor party.

 Erusian says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:22 pm ~new~
Just to be clear, your argument is that Sanders is advocating policies to the left of what far leftists
in Europe advocate but that we should ignore that because the practical result will be to the right
of where Europe’s policies have gotten?

 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 2:07 pm ~new~
Given that those policies are more within the realm of the legislature than the executive, that’s not
unreasonable.
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 21, 2020 at 2:28 pm ~new~
It’s not an unreasonable prediction but’s a poor positive argument for why to vote for Sanders. It’s
also an argument that seems motivated. After all, you could (and people did) make the same
argument for Trump.

Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:08 pm ~new~
Yes, that’s more or less what’s happened with Trump.
What’s he done beyond ‘generic republican’ stuff apart from some restrictions on immigration?
Hide ↑
 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 3:18 pm ~new~
It’s not an argument to vote for Sanders (not least because he’s not running for anything at the
moment), just an observation. If political platforms were the same as enacted law the world would
be a very different place, and probably much more ideologically extreme. Also the deficit would
have been eliminated every 4 years. And there would be a border wall, which mexico paid for. And
the UK would have been out of the EU for years.

Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 3:29 pm ~new~
@zzzzort:
If political platforms were the same as enacted law the world would be a very
different place, and probably much more ideologically extreme. Also the deficit
would have been eliminated every 4 years. And there would be a border wall, which
mexico paid for.
Would have been entertaining to watch the world not violate the law of non-contradiction when
federal elections in Mexico brought to power a Party with “open border with the USA” and “a
Constitutional amendment against paying for walls” in their platform.

Hide ↑
o m.alex.matt says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:37 pm ~new~

Contrary to popular belief, Bernie Sanders is not an actual socialist, at least not by
any internally consistent definition of socialism. In terms of actual policy, he’s a
European-style welfare capitalist. His ideas are standard practice in the
Scandinavian countries, and only slightly further to the left than what you’d see in
France or Germany or even in the US during the FDR/LBJ era. Virtually all
political scientists and economists agree that he’s not a socialist. (See: here, here,
here, here, here, and here.) For that matter, most actual socialists likewise agree
that he’s not a socialist.
Bernie’s platform included policies aimed at handing control over all publicly traded corporations
and all businesses with revenue over $100,000,000 to their workers. He was a god damned
socialist.
Saying ‘he just wants what Europe has’ is some mixture of ignorance and gas-lighting.
 Lambert says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:06 pm ~new~
*some mixture of ignorance and lying.
Yes, this is the hill I will die on.

 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:25 am ~new~
This is neither true nor civil; please post more responsibly.

 Jake R says:
May 21, 2020 at 11:46 am ~new~
I’m not a fan of Sanders but now that he’s out of the race I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I
was curious though to what extent these claims were accurate.
Newsweek article
Some relevant quotes:

Under the proposal, all publicly traded companies, corporations with $100 million
in annual revenue or with a $100 million balance sheet would be required to
provide 2 percent or more of company stock to workers each year, until 20 percent
of the company is employee-owned.
Another major component of the Corporate Accountability and Democracy Plan
would see workers at the same large corporations elect 45 percent of board seats.
Under certain conditions, employees could take full ownership over their
companies, with a guarantee of “a right of first refusal,” should a company go up
for sale, propose to close or if a factory is moved overseas.
Now 20% of a company’s shares isn’t “control” in the absolute sense. But it seems to me that
between 20% of the shares and 45% of the board plus government loans to bridge the gap,
absolute control isn’t far away. I don’t know enough about corporate governance to say exactly
how close this is. Regardless these policy proposals are much more extreme than what I would
have guessed before looking into this.

 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:15 pm ~new~
I think the best comparison for the board seats is german codetermination, where worker control is
1/3 of seats for 500+ employees, and 50% for 2000+ employees (with ceo required to be a
shareholder appointee in a way I don’t understand).

Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 12:35 pm ~new~
Saying ‘he just wants what Europe has’ is some mixture of ignorance and gas-
lighting.
I would say it is close to true in the sense that if you take all of his proposals they have some
European analog or close enough to it, what he doesn’t have is many (any?) single countries that
do all of them. Its ala carte socialism.

o sharper13 says:
May 21, 2020 at 2:02 am ~new~
Apparently it wasn’t that difficult to find more radical left-wingers inside the Bernie campaign staff,
either. So while he may have moderated some of his opinions for the public over his recent
campaigns, his campaign itself also tended to attract and tolerate at least some of the Russian-
communist-style socialists as well.
For a point of comparison, imagine that someone published videos of similar Trump campaign
staffers who wore swastika tattoos, declared their support for Hitler, and for the “final solution” to
the Jews. How would that be received on the left-wing and what would they conclude it meant
about Trump, despite his more moderate views in public?

o Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:47 am ~new~

Bernie himself didn’t support any of this madness. But it became associated with his
campaign nonetheless, both because his 2016 campaign was responsible for
sparking the millennial socialist movement in the first place, and because he
continued to call himself a socialist even when there were actual socialists in the
news using the term to mean something entirely different.
I disagree, at least mostly. Bernie was sending surrogates out to appear on Chapo Trap House,
Bernie-employed staffers were trolling “centrists” on twitter, and he was pretty unambiguous about
his desire for a revolution (although, yeah, he probably didn’t explicitly want a violent one).
His campaign set itself up to be the grease trap of the far left, the face that he ended up with
undesirables wasn’t an accident, it was a feature. His thought process would be that he could be
controversial enough to activate enough of the youth that he could squeak by in the primary and
then count on unified opposition to Trump in the general.

43. Brendan Richardson says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:45 pm ~new~
I am currently annoyed at delivery drivers who have forgotten how to ring a doorbell. Does this
make me a “coot” or a “curmudgeon?”

o Matt M says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:52 pm ~new~
I think this is part of the push for “no contact” deliveries due to COVID-hysteria. I’m not sure if the
companies have specifically given drivers guidance about this, but I get deliveries pretty often and
literally never had this happen before COVID, and now it happens like half the time.
 yodelyak says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:23 pm ~new~
Speaking as a someone who finds driving for e.g. grubhub to be kinda a fun way to explore my
neighborhood while getting paid for it, this is correct. I don’t ring the door bell (or touch the door
with my hand!) if someone requests contactless delivery. I still touched the bag holding their food,
several times, between picking it up to put it in my insulated bag, and then taking it back out of
that bag after arriving, and carrying it to set on their porch. But yeah, I don’t touch the door or
doorbell. Then I text or call to say the food is arrived, and wait for a confirm text or to see the door
opened and the food taken (usually from 30′ away or more, often already back inside my car). It’s
just doing the best I can. If someone doesn’t answer or show up after a minute, and where their
phone is going direct to voicemail, I have once gotten back out of my car and knocked the door
with my elbow. I suppose my next step after that might include ringing a doorbell if one is present,
but would quickly mean texting driver support to indicate the person ordering the food isn’t
answering and decide what to do next.

May 20, 2020 at 8:10 pm ~new~
We, on the receiving side, take it one step further. Anything non-perishable sits in a wooden box
on our porch for three days before we take it in. Perishables are brought in and washed with soapy
water.
And I would certainly prefer that the delivery person not touch the door handle.
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:35 am ~new~
Personally, we have a ring doorbell that sends us an alert when someone is at the door, so
“ringing” the doorbell is basically unnecessary and obsolete at this point. It’s also possible drivers
can see/notice that and realize they don’t have to actually ring. It’s a decent investment if you get
a lot of deliveries or other traffic at your door.

o neciampater says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:04 pm ~new~
After very few interactions with mothers with napping babies, it can swear you off ever ringing a
doorbell ever again…

 yodelyak says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:26 pm ~new~
Working on one political campaign, we once dreamed of having a standard letter in the office. If
you got a parent with a napping newborn, and they told you off, we’d mail them the letter. The
letter is an apology, a note about the candidate’s belief that elections can bring us together as a
community, and a little printed sign they could post on their door, saying “Please do not knock or
ring bell, infant may be sleeping. Instead, please text or call ____.” Would not be surprised if other
political campaigns have actually made that dream a reality, but definitely this is one of the worst
fears of door-to-door campaigners.

 JonathanD says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:49 am ~new~
When we had napping babies, we had one of those doorknob signs telling people the baby was
napping. We used it and it worked. Don’t know why this isn’t more of a thing.
 Scoop says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:58 am ~new~
That is a brilliant idea that I should have employed when my kids were still napping.
Hide ↑
 JonathanD says:
May 21, 2020 at 12:28 pm ~new~
@Scoop
The idea was my wife’s, of course. 🙂

Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 4:41 pm ~new~
I must be blessed. My child sleeps through the smoke alarm, the neighbor running his lawnmower,
and dropping cast iron skillets on the floor.

May 20, 2020 at 3:49 pm ~new~
The default delivery setting for a lot of online services is now “Contact-less Delivery” or some
variant, where it specifically says they’ll leave it at your door and text you when the food arrives,
at least for the services I sometimes use. There was a notice about how this new hotness is the
greatest thing and ensures both convenience and safety for all parties in this time of COVID-19,
etc, etc.
I’ve noticed that in practice a lot of drivers still meet people at their doors, at least around here, so
make of that what you will.

May 20, 2020 at 4:43 pm ~new~
Makes you normal, IMO. Maybe you could at least knock, or shout loud, or anything besides leave
my dinner on the stoop and never tell me it is there?

o Cheese says:
May 24, 2020 at 6:25 pm ~new~
Very common thing here pre-COVID. Actually less common I think post given everyone is now
doing delivery and there’s kind of an established ‘ring the doorbell clause’
Most delivery drivers are contractors paid via delivery numbers where I live. Waiting for someone
to answer the door, sign for, potentially chat or even complain to them is time wasted on not
getting paid. It’s annoying but what can you do. Complain, but there’s multiple layers between who
you can complain to and who is actually responsible.

44. Nick says:

May 20, 2020 at 2:40 pm ~new~
@Evan Þ recently asked for a distributism thread, and there were many requests last thread to
discuss socialism. Well, I said I didn’t want to be the one to make the thread, and distributism isn’t
even socialist, but it still seems like an opportunity best not wasted. So here’s my brief 101.
Distributism was conceived by GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in the early 20th century. It was
first developed in their writings on economics and politics such as The Servile State and The
Outline of Sanity, inspired by papal encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and Quadrigesimo Anno.
The key goal of distributism is wide distribution of capital. The reason for this is to avoid the
concentration of power and wealth which tends to occur in both socialist and capitalist economies—
in the former, concentration in the hands of the state, and in the latter, in the hands of relatively
few capitalists. In a socialist economy, the state tend to subsume everything, starting with
ownership of capital, while in a capitalist economy monopolies form and expand. The point of
distributism is to avoid these twin evils by maintaining a wide distribution of capital.
This could mean a wide distribution of land, which was practical when most people farmed, but less
practical today. This could mean a wide distribution of small businesses. This could even mean
collective ownership of capital which is not easily divided, such as all the workers and managers in
a factory owning shares. It certainly does not mean the government expropriating land or factories
or something to give to other people, though the name, and some of the rhetoric, frustratingly
gives that impression. Belloc’s practical suggestion to prevent Big Business (TM) was progressive
taxation.
Distributism has been adapted many times since then. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, the founders
of the Catholic Worker movement, identified as distributists, though they tended toward anarchism,
while Chesterton and Belloc did not. Some Americans have taken distributism in a more explicitly
agrarian and anti-industrial direction, though it needn’t go that way; think Wendell Berry. Still
others have paired it with guilds and even corporatism—the organization of society into distinct and
overlapping bodies such as labor unions, religious orders, or sodalities and governance according to
their representation. I think the last is more of a European thing, since it has no real history in the
United States.
In all cases distributism has been strongly influenced by its Catholic roots, particularly the social
teaching of the popes starting with Rerum Novarum. There were definitely fellow travelers outside
Catholicism, though—Anglicans, Protestants on the continent and in America, Orthodox. (I suppose
there are atheist distributists, but I’ve never met one.*) Anyway, one tends to see as a result an
emphasis on the continuity of this philosophy with socially conservative views on the family. One
also sees particular emphasis on subsidiarity—governance at the lowest competent level of
authority, favoring the family over the city, the city over the state, etc. (It is for this reason that
distributists have found natural allies on the American right among those who want to devolve
federal power or to protect liberties of families and communities in area like education.) One sees it
finally in solidarity, the principle of our common humanity. It is most easily and properly seen in a
subsidiary way: the sort of free mutual help naturally given to family and friends, which is often
expressed in many overlapping societies such as a family, parish, fraternity, and workplace. To be
embedded in these is to be able to give and receive support at a level that is completely local yet
very robust and reliable, but it needn’t end there. The brotherhood of man, after all, is universal—
you share a human dignity with everybody on Earth.
Okay, so that’s a very quick introduction to distributist thought. I’m happy to answer questions, but
remember I am not an expert!
*There is a chapter of James Scott’s Two Cheers for Anarchism, actually, which might contradict
that. In “Two Cheers for the Petty Bourgeouisie,” Scott defends the “petty” bourgeoisie—let’s call
them smallholders—who are frequently maligned by Marxists. This despite often being poor, and
despite being plausibly the majority of people today, and the very great majority of Homo sapiens
ever. As well, smallholders are frequently the one targeted by states in the ways discussed in
Seeing Like a State, because a business of one is a lot harder to track and measure and tax than a
megacorp. Where smallholders are recognized by the state, deigning to be tracked and measured
and taxed, they are conferred status and rights thereby. Scott traces that back to a pre-eighteenth
century distinction between the formally unfree, such as slaves and serfs, and the formally free
smallholder.
The desire to own one’s own plot of land or one’s own shop, meanwhile, is widespread. Scott
speculates,
the tremendous desire one can find [for smallholding] owes a great deal not only to
the real margin of independent action, autonomy, and security it confers but also to
the dignity, standing, and honor associated with small property in the eyes of the
state and of one’s neighbors.
He finds people clinging to the smallest scrap of land, even when the calculus would recommend
going to town and renting a bit of land. And he finds meanwhile even the reddest of red
revolutionaries dreaming of owning a plot of their own land. There’s a lot more to the chapter,
including the valuable non-economic functions of the smallholder, with references to Jane Jacobs
and Jefferson, but as this post and indeed this sentence is running long, I want to close by quoting
the end of his chapter:

A society dominated by smallholders and shopkeepers comes closer to equality and
to popular ownership of the means of production than any economic system yet
devised.
o FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:46 pm ~new~

This could mean a wide distribution of land, which was practical when most people
farmed, but less practical today. This could mean a wide distribution of small
businesses. This could even mean collective ownership of capital which is not easily
divided, such as all the workers and managers in a factory owning shares. It
certainly does not mean the government expropriating land or factories or
something to give to other people, though the name, and some of the rhetoric,
frustratingly gives that impression.
How can the former be accomplished without the latter? That’s my big obstacle whenever I try to
understand distributism. Is it just meant to describe how we might prefer society to be? What are
it’s policy prescriptions? If I own all the land, how can it be divided without taking it from me?
 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:00 pm ~new~
Come on, I give a practical suggestion one sentence later:

Belloc’s practical suggestion to prevent Big Business (TM) was progressive
taxation.
Chesterton and Belloc had others, but many of them were for the England of their time. For
instance, they revived the political slogan Three Acres and a Cow, urging local authorities to
purchase available land and rent it a few acres at a time at really reasonable prices. No need for
eminent domain when there is land to buy!
We can discuss what policy prescriptions might work better today, but you’ll need to give me
something more specific. Just to throw out a few ideas, occupational licensing tends to make it
harder to enter a field like cutting hair (cutting hair, for God’s sake!); remove or reduce regulations
like this and you will see more barbers. NIMBYism in cities is a disaster; for small shops to exist the
small business owner has to, ya know, be able to live there. Distributists have always been big on
antitrust legislation, too.

 Randy M says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:08 pm ~new~
In the other thread, Lambert mentioned:

What about those of use who want a mixed economy but a completely different set
of markets to be private/public vs the status quo?
With your recommendations to cut regulations on occupations while being in favor of anti-trust,
they do seem to be a distinct mix of preferences for intervention that don’t map neatly to currently
discussed ideologies.
 FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:16 pm ~new~
Come on, I give a practical suggestion one sentence later:
Belloc’s practical suggestion to prevent Big Business (TM) was progressive
taxation.
I don’t see how that solves the problem?
It sounds to me like you’re saying that we should heavily tax the rich, and then use that money to
buy capital for people who don’t own capital. Presumably then, if I did own all the land (practically)
around a village a distributist would suggest taxing me heavily, which means I will need to sell
some of my land to meet the tax burden (otherwise, what’s the point?) which the village can then
buy with the money it took from me. This is just expropriating land from me with extra steps.
We can discuss what policy prescriptions might work better today, but you’ll need
to give me something more specific.
I’ll try to lay this out more clearly: Chesterton was mad that certain capitalists and aristocrats
owned most of the capital. So lets say I’m one of those people, I own the majority of land around a
pleasant English village. Not just the land, but also most of the factories. Let’s dial it up: I also own
most of the homes. I am the exact kind of person distributism doesn’t want to exist. Now: what
policies would change that situation without expropriating my property to give to other people?
 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:31 pm ~new~
Now: what policies would change that situation without expropriating my property
to give to other people?
As you’ve framed it, this is a question without an answer: obviously nobody has a clever scheme
for distributing your land without distributing your land. There is still a difference between taxing
your land and selling land to poor people, and some jumped-up bureaucrat or elected official taking
your land on tenuous eminent domain grounds and giving it to his friends, which is the usual
nightmare scenario we are accused of wanting to perpetrate.

Hide ↑
 FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:47 pm ~new~
@Nick
With all due respect, that sounds like when you said that distributionism “certainly does not mean
the government expropriating land or factories or something to give to other people” you really
meant that it does mean exactly that, but done the right way.
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:05 pm ~new~
@FLWAB
If you don’t want to sell it to the government, sell it to someone else, or find another way to pay.
You could for instance sell it directly to whomever you like, like your brother, Count BAWLF. And
while I suggested them in tandem, it’s not as though these policies need to come bundled
together; either can occur in one place without the other, and even together you can’t read off the
intent “let’s confiscate Lord FLWAB’s beautiful country estate!” from their both being on the books.
Taxation, anyway, often has the effect of redistributing in general; I don’t see how your issue
doesn’t apply to any tax with redistributive effects.

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 citizencokane says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:07 pm ~new~
This Distributism stuff just sounds like what the “narodniks” and “Socialist Revolutionary Party”
(not to be confused with the RSDLP or Bolsheviks) wanted…minus the use of assassinations and
insurrections to get there. It also kind of sounds like anarcho-syndicalism, without the anarcho-
part.
Whatever you call it, yeah, I don’t see how it wouldn’t tread on some existing capitalists interests
in a big way.
Note that at the dawn of European colonization something like a Distributist society would have
been very much possible in the Americas without major upheaval (aside from pushing out the
Native Americans). That’s really the one chance that human society had for every family to own
their own farm or workshop, or their own equal share of a larger enterprise. Why didn’t it happen?
Conquistadors and plantation owners didn’t like it. They preferred to have a captive labor force that
would be forced to work for them rather than run off to settle their own land on the frontier. In
other words, in the one historical circumstance where a propertyless proletariat did not necessarily
have to exist, and where instead humanity could have lived a more “Distributist” existence without
upheaval to get there, the wealthy created a captive proletariat by artificial means…via
encomiendas, slavery, indentures, and the exhaustion of the open frontier…either via natural
population of it, or via legal efforts to restrict free land settlement, as with E.G. Wakefield’s plan for
“Systematic Colonization.” This is the topic of Chapter 33 in Vol 1 of Marx’s “Capital.”
British colonial administrator E.G. Wakefield: “In ancient civilised countries the labourer, though
free, is by a law of Nature dependent on capitalists; in colonies this dependence must be created
by artificial means.”
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 FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:17 pm ~new~
@Nick
Taxation, anyway, often has the effect of redistributing in general; I don’t see how
your issue doesn’t apply to any tax with redistributive effects.
Personally I think a tax that has the purpose of redistributing wealth is probably immoral. I think
the only legitimate reason for a progressive tax is that the state needs money and rich people are
theoretically hurt less by higher tax rates than poor people so given the fact that we need to have
a tax at all, we should try to minimize the pain the tax causes.
But that’s just me personally, and I’m not here to argue that point. I just wanted to understand
distributionism because every time I have tried to learn more about it I run into people saying
“Distributism says that capital should be distributed more evenly” while also saying “Distributism is
not about taking capital and giving it to others.” These two seemingly paradoxical ideas led me to
the conclusion that I don’t really understand distributism at all. Now I’m starting to think that
maybe the apparent paradox is only caused because many distributists don’t want to be compared
to communists and so they are not candid about what they plan on doing. If you want to take
capital from those who have it with the purpose of redistributing it, please be candid about it! If
not, please help me understand what it is I’m missing about distributism.

Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 8:19 pm ~new~
Now: what policies would change that situation without expropriating my property
to give to other people?
I’m not a distributist, although I’m a GKC fan and have some sympathies with the movement. But
one answer might be that the situation being described is a result of existing government
interventions, and abolishing those interventions would eventually change it.
For a real example, one reason why rental housing in London is so expensive is the existence of a
green belt, a sizable area around London where construction is greatly restricted. Abolish that and
house prices fall, yard sizes increase, and it becomes more practical for the worker to own his own
house. Multiply that example by fifty or a hundred, and you might have changes all of which
consist of reducing government interference with individual freedom but whose ultimate effect is a
less uneven distribution of capital ownership.
Think about distributism as a description of what the end state should look like, leaving open
differing views of how to get there.

Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 9:32 pm ~new~
@DavidFriedman:
Think about distributism as a description of what the end state should look like,
leaving open differing views of how to get there.
This is the key part, I think. People hear the name “distributism” and ask “Distributed by whom?”
REdistributism could already be the name for the ideology of the modern state, which is capitalist
but far bigger than any state that existed in 1914.*
So let’s jump in time to November 1917. The world has been shaken and people see two options
for the future: a command economy and the status quo. But wait! What if we take a third option?
What if the state allows people to own private property but taxes them much more, especially the
rich, and redistributes the tax revenue to other people?
If you’re part of the government, the command economy option sounds awfully tempting: it means
the group you’re part of gets unlimited power. Except by 1978 and definitively by 1991, it was
obvious this was inefficient and states running a command economy would always be weaker than
those that remained capitalist. Even though a state with nuclear weapons is invincible against
invasion due to Mutually Assured Destruction, the USSR still lost a quasi-war with the United States
and ceased to exist.
Now, given that empirical evidence, what do you do if you’re a government official? Going back to
the way things were before the Great War and Russian Revolution would vastly shrink the power of
the group you belong to. So you take that third option of redistributing a significant percentage of
the wealth generated in the market to clients.
GKC’s distributism was a dream of changing things so there wouldn’t be poor clients (or poor
losers, under the 1914 status quo). There ain’t no incentive structure for that.
*This is the sort of thing that led to my childhood confusion watching programs about WWI on The
History Channel. They’d say things like “Russia lost because it was still an autocracy” and I’d think
that meant it was a small government where the Czar ruled by himself, while modernization
includes a large army of elected officials and bureaucrats.

Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:10 am ~new~
@DavidFriedman
The commons round here are really nice and it’d be tragic if they got covered with suburbia.
Though maybe if I had a time machine I’d have told them to go the ‘green wedge’ route.
Hide ↑
 Nick says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:13 am ~new~
@FLWAB
Well, first, you missed two of the points I made: 1), a property tax isn’t expropriation, because you
can simply pay it anyway, or sell or give the land to whomever you like; 2), you’re treating two
different policies like they’re one package.

But I also really erred in my last post by not clarifying immediately that Belloc was talking about a
tax on the sale of land, not a property tax. I’m sorry about that. You can read his essay suggesting
it here; this policy would make it harder to accumulate land over time, but would not break up
anybody’s estate.
Distributists have besides that differed on property taxes, so don’t take from my suggesting that a
property tax isn’t expropriation that I speak for everyone. You can find for instance David Cooney
arguing here they are unjust, at least as done in the US—he outright calls them feudal.
Hide ↑
 Ketil says:
May 21, 2020 at 7:43 am ~new~
Personally I think a tax that has the purpose of redistributing wealth is probably
immoral. I think the only legitimate reason for a progressive tax is that the state
needs money
Isn’t this a distinction without a difference? The reason the state needs money is to provide
services to the people – services that typically benefit the poor as much as the rich. So it is still
redistributing wealth, even if the actual redistribution is in kind, not cash.

Hide ↑
 FLWAB says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:13 am ~new~
@Ketil
It’s kind of a principle of double effect type thing. If we need to maintain an army, or pay for meat
packing plant inspectors, or other things meant for the common good that we vote to happen then
we’re going to need money. If we decide the best way to get that money is a progressive income
tax, well, that seems reasonable. But if you put a progressive income tax in place not because you
need the money but because you deliberately want to take money from rich people, then that
seems immoral to me. It’s kind of like making a tax that only is on black people because you think
there are too many rich black people. The purpose of a tax should be to fund a program that voters
want, and as such are a necessary evil to accomplish that task. If the whole point of the tax is to
hurt some people then it’s no longer a necessary evil, just an evil.
Hide ↑
 Randy M says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:19 am ~new~
It’s always rankled me that the state of California collects its income taxes through a “board of
equalization”.
Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 3:19 pm ~new~
Just to throw out a few ideas, occupational licensing tends to make it harder to
enter a field like cutting hair (cutting hair, for God’s sake!); remove or reduce
regulations like this and you will see more barbers.
I think this is true, but I also think the consequences would be the opposite of distributist:
significantly more barbers competing to give the same number of, or only slightly more, haircuts
would mean lower prices, and if – as I suspect – the average haircutter is poorer than the average
citizen, that will mean less transfer of wealth from rich to poor. There may be an opposite effect if
people who teach haircutting are richer, but I wouldn’t bet on it being as large.
If your goal is wider distribution of capital, I’d suggest exactly the opposite – more artificial
inflation of salaries for low-skilled jobs, not less. But I’d rather do that through minimum wages
than through barriers to entry.

 Lambert says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:32 pm ~new~
You’re assuming the supply of hairdressers is fixed.
What the regulation is doing is making the number of hairdressers smaller.
This forces people who want to cut hair to do something else (which is worse).
This makes poor people worse off.

Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 3:59 pm ~new~
It makes poor people without hairdressing licenses somewhat worse off, in that they don’t have the
ability to work low-paying hairdressing jobs. It makes poor people with hairdressing licenses
somewhat better off, in that their pay as hairdressers is artificially elevated from low to medium-
low. And it makes everyone else somewhat worse off, in that their hair care costs more than it
otherwise would (but probably not noticeable to the rich).
So, opening up occupational licensing requirements transfers wealth from a subset of the working
class to the poor and the middle class?

Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 5:17 pm ~new~
So, opening up occupational licensing requirements transfers wealth from a subset
of the working class to the poor and the middle class?
That’s looks like a reformulation of what I believe, yes, although in my mental venn diagram “the
working class”, “the poor” and “the middle class” are all overlapping circles, so I’d phrase it as “It
transfers money to everyone else from a significantly-less-than-averagely-rich group”. And I
suspect the net effect of that will be anti-distributist, especially if the poorest people are probably
disproportionately unlikely to spend money on haircuts (they many not be, but again, that strikes
me as a plausible guess).
Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 5:21 pm ~new~
You’re assuming the supply of hairdressers is fixed.
What the regulation is doing is making the number of hairdressers smaller.
This forces people who want to cut hair to do something else (which is worse).
This makes poor people worse off.
No, I’m assuming that demand for hairdressers is… not quite fixed, because if haircuts get cheaper
then a few more people who couldn’t previously afford them will want haircuts, but close enough to
fixed that if the price of a haircut falls then the number of extra haircuts will not increase by
enough to prevent the total amount of money spent on haircuts falling.
And I’m also assuming that, while some of the money spent on haircuts is being transferred
upwards or sideways, more of it is being transferred downwards, because the average haircutter is
poorer than the average haircuttee.
Removing licensing restrictions may have other good effects – presumably cutting hair creates
value, and so the few extra haircuts will create more value – but in terms of distribution of capital I
think the effect will be to concentrate it more, not less.

Hide ↑
 Lambert says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:25 am ~new~
> the average haircutter
The set of haircutters is different depending on whether regulation exists.You can’t compare then
like that.
The set of people who would become haircutters, sans regulation, is divided into two groups:
People who still cut hair and are made better off, and those who don’t and become worse off.
There’s reason to believe the negative impact to the second group outweighs the positive to the
first.
Hide ↑
o FrankistGeorgist says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:33 pm ~new~
Thoughts on Henry George’s response to Rerum Novarum? A truly shocking twist where the man
who thought free trade and land value tax would solve everything suggests free trade and land
value tax would solve everything.
Not the last example of Georgist-Distributist dialogue. It seems.
I’m fairly certain Hilarious Bellicose had a plan involving taxing the sale of land TO landowners, to
make your first Ever piece of land cheap and your second expensive, growing towards prohibitively
expensive. Land Value Tax forcing land speculators to divest themselves of idle land seems more
efficacious to me, but of course I defer to Henry George only on Spiritual matters and get my
economics from Jacob Frank.

 Nick says:
May 23, 2020 at 2:28 pm ~new~
I first heard about George and Georgism from the distributists, years ago, though I can’t find the
piece now; The Distributist Review has crippled their main website with the latest makeover,
removing all the old comments and, bizarrely, all the paragraph breaks. Whatever. But doing a
little research, it seems that:
1) a lot of distributists and Georgists agree the two are compatible, indeed complementary; and
2) wow, Henry George is cool, and criminally underrated today.
I’m probably going to have to read Progress and Poverty and Protection or Free Trade now.
May 20, 2020 at 4:02 pm ~new~
A more thorough opposition to concentrated power would include only wanting small religious
organizations, but somehow distributiivism didn’t go there.

 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:08 pm ~new~
That’s because Catholicism is true.

 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:15 pm ~new~
More seriously: the modern Church, especially in the councils, Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II,
have had the effect of centralizing things, both the governance of the diocese and the larger
Church, sometimes to everyone’s detriment. I don’t have the time to go into this, since I’m about
to run a campaign, but a world where priests weren’t plucked from their parish every six years or
all the focus in the world weren’t constantly on the pope would arguably be a good thing. See e.g.
Bronwen McShea here.


May 20, 2020 at 5:27 pm ~new~
You’re overestimating my knowledge of Catholicism. From my point of view, Catholicism has
always been centralized, what with having a Pope and a hierarchy.

 SamChevre says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:36 am ~new~
Quick overview from a non-expert: Catholicism has always been more centralized than most other
religious bodies, but in practice it used to have a huge amount of built-in checks and balances.
Bishops used to be appointed by the Pope and some local civil or ecclesial body–exactly how that
worked was very contested, but in practice the Pope’s discretion was fairly limited. (I can’t find the
source quickly, but of the ~700 bishops at the First Vatican Council (1869) over 400 were
appointments not in the sole jurisdiction of the Pope.) The Holy Roman Emperor still had the right
to veto potential popes until Pius X (who owed his election to the exercise of that veto) banned the
exercise of that veto in 1904. Parish priests typically required the consent of some body
representing the parish to be appointed pastor (this was never the case in the US), and once
appointed as pastor could not be removed by the bishop (this remained the case until the 1983
revision to Canon Law.)

Hide ↑
 Scoop says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:21 am ~new~
The Holy Roman Emperor still had the right to veto potential popes until Pius X
(who owed his election to the exercise of that veto) banned the exercise of that veto
in 1904.
How could the Holy Roman Emperor be vetoing popes into the late 18th century when the Holy
Roman Empire was dissolved by Napoleon a century earlier?

Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:27 am ~new~
It looks like the Austro-Hungarian Emperor claimed the right after the dissolution of the Holy
Roman Emperor. The veto was asserted by Franz Joseph.

Hide ↑
 Deiseach says:
May 21, 2020 at 4:55 am ~new~
a world where priests weren’t plucked from their parish every six years
On the other hand, there are certainly examples of parish priests creating and running their own
little fiefdoms and the bishop can go to heck if he wants to try reining them in, both on the very
conservative and very liberal side of things.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to move priests around as curates so they’ll get experience
of a decent range of parishes before handing them the keys to one, and as above for breaking up
any little cults of personality. And it’s no harm for parishioners either to get jolted out of the
comfortable familiar rut of “we always do things this way” and badgering the priest into ‘what the
richest/most influential families in the parish want done’.
I think the vocations shortage is rattling things a very great deal, as well. A lot of elderly retired
priests are being called back into service and a lot of priests are having to cover several parishes,
and this is happening in Protestant denominations in Ireland as well.


May 21, 2020 at 8:17 am ~new~
I’ve read a while ago that the priest shortage is a self-amplifying problem.
Most people find it difficult to be natural around (Catholic?) priests, so priests need the company of
other priests. Fewer priests means more loneliness, which leads to even fewer priests.
Hide ↑
o Oldio says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:38 pm ~new~
It’s important to note that certain other economic theories from around the same time- solidarism
and certain variants of corporatism, for example- have strong similarities and can be thought of as
part of the same family. Distributism has the advantage for American audiences of having originally
been written in English, but attempting to understand it outside the context of these same theories
is missing things.
o Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:22 am ~new~
How do we handle the following circumstances:

1) I have my equitable share of distributed capital (somehow, not important). I decide to sell that
share and spend the proceeds on hookers and blackjack. I now have much less capital than the
person I sold my original share to. What should happen? Should I be re-issued more capital? If so,
what prohibits me from doing the same thing over again? Alternatively, should shares in capital be
forbidden from being sold? If so, can I trade them? Either way, I see problems. I could end up
stuck with a chunk of capital I may have no interest in: I’d rather have ownership in a tech
company than a plot of land to farm, though others would prefer the opposite. Alternatively, you
allow trade but not sale which likely results in people gaining wealth without the price signals to be
able to readily quantify it.
2) Someone has children. At which point, and through which mechanism do they get their share of
capital? Upon birth? Upon adulthood/highschool diploma?

 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 7:30 am ~new~
1) I have my equitable share of distributed capital (somehow, not important). I
decide to sell that share and spend the proceeds on hookers and blackjack. I now
have much less capital than the person I sold my original share to. What should
happen? Should I be re-issued more capital? If so, what prohibits me from doing the
same thing over again? Alternatively, should shares in capital be forbidden from
being sold? If so, can I trade them? Either way, I see problems. I could end up stuck
with a chunk of capital I may have no interest in: I’d rather have ownership in a
tech company than a plot of land to farm, though others would prefer the opposite.
Alternatively, you allow trade but not sale which likely results in people gaining
wealth without the price signals to be able to readily quantify it.
For the most part, I’d say if you mismanage things and lose your capital, too bad for you.
There ought to be ways to get out from the bottom, but I agree it can’t be too easy. It’s a hard
problem. Chesterton for instance wanted farmland that could be cheaply rented; in those cases you
don’t have capital to lose, but it’s an imperfect or at-best-temporary solution because you don’t
own it in the first place.

2) Someone has children. At which point, and through which mechanism do they get
their share of capital? Upon birth? Upon adulthood/highschool diploma?
Well, the eldest child might inherit the family farm, or the family shop, or whatever. A second son
might become a priest or join a monastery or go into the military; likewise a daughter. I suppose
people today won’t like that answer, but it was common enough historically.
A lot of families in America already put away a bunch of money for each kid, namely, for college.
It’s an investment, since the point is typically to have a kid who can hold down a job at the end of
it. We can imagine Mom and Dad instead putting money away so Junior can buy a plot of land or
open a store of his own, or he could buy into a cooperatively owned business. In general I don’t
love the idea of the government handing out capital directly.


May 22, 2020 at 8:26 am ~new~
For the most part, I’d say if you mismanage things and lose your capital, too bad
for you.
As would I. But I expect that too many of the people who would push for this sort of redistribution,
would assume that if someone has wound up capital-free it is probably because they were robbed
or defrauded by the greedy capitalists. Who we can recognize by the fact that they have more than
the usual amount of capital. Then we’d get the push for re-redistribution to rectify this injustice…
 Nick says:
May 22, 2020 at 8:39 am ~new~
Belloc wrote an account of the dissolution of the monasteries in which he argued that a vast
amount of land in England was owned by the monasteries and used as common land by the people,
but Henry took it and distributed it to loyal nobles, and it wound up gated and turned into estates.
So yes, if you follow Belloc, the people were robbed, though not by greedy capitalists, and it had
been generations ago, and they had weaker titles than ownership to the land in the first place.
Belloc at least in his “The Differential Tax” piece believed the greater fear was not the government
doing more actually redistribution, but the government allocating nominally redistributive tax
income to its own purposes. Setting aside the precise reason, I’ll agree fear of a slippery slope in
this area is not unreasonable, at least if we compare taxes in the US with taxes in parts of Europe,
or even other parts of the US….
Hide ↑
45. Aapje says:

May 20, 2020 at 2:12 pm ~new~
Dutch fixed expressions get subsidized, which is why there are so many (not really)
‘De boog kan niet altijd gespannen zijn’ = The bow can’t always be drawn
People need time to relax.
‘Een boom opzetten’ = Setting up a tree
Talking a lot. May have come from a trick-based card game, where the winner of each trick would
be tallied with short marks, in a way that resulted in something looking like a tree, if you had
enough marks. Presumably, players talked a lot during the game.
‘Boontje komt om zijn loontje’ = Little bean will get his pay
Someone got their just deserts. This comes from a 1662 Dutch fable where a small bean, straw
and burning piece of coal go on a journey and come across a water-filled ditch. The straw lies down
so the others can cross, which the bean does. However, as the coal crosses, the straw catches fire
and burns up, causing the burning coal to fall into the water and be extinguished. The bean then
laughs so hard at their misfortune, that he rips his belly open. Fortunely, he finds a tailor who can
sew him up, resulting in the characteristic black seam on certain beans. So this is not just a
morality lesson, but also an origin story of Batman beans.
This story was slightly adapted and published by the Grimm brothers in their first collection of
fables from 1812, which is probably how any modern person knows the story (the meta-fable here
is how being original counts for less than being good at marketing and/or distribution).
‘Oude koeien uit de sloot halen’ = Get old cows out of the ditch
Raking up the past or let bygones be bygones (depending on how it’s used).
‘Een bord voor je kop hebben’ = Having a plate/board in front of your head
Doing what you want without concern for the impact on others. Unclear origins, first known use in
the 17th century.

o Bobobob says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:14 pm ~new~
I’m curious, what do you mean by “fixed” expressions? Are there unfixed expressions? (serious
question)
 Aapje says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:33 pm ~new~
It’s an expression where the combination of words means something more specific or different than
just the words themselves.
For example, “blood is thicker than water” would normally not be interpreted as a factual
statement about the properties of blood and water. However, if you were to say “molasses is
thicker than water,” it would be interpreted as a factual statement about material properties, even
though these sentences are grammatically the same. The difference is that in the English language,
there is an agreement that the former combination of words has a meaning different from the
literal.
 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:49 pm ~new~
I think fixed expression means the same here as idiom.

 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:59 pm ~new~
Yes, there are. Fixed expression (or nonfunctional expressions) are specific turns of phrases that
have effectively turned into words by ossifying such that it uses language in a way it wouldn’t
otherwise be used. For example, when I say, “A cat has nine lives,” or “Seize the day,” I am using
functional language. I could construct those sayings out of normal language rules. I use words like
“seize” to mean “go out and do something” and I say “the day” normally.
In contrast, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee” is much less functional. It’s a
preserved phrase from an earlier version of the language. We don’t use thee or toll very often and
the grammatical construction is a little different. A pithier example, “For the love of God.” We still
use if this phrase but only this phrase. We no longer say (as people did in the Middle Ages) “for the
love of me,” or “for the love of your mother.” Even the general grammatical rule is rarely used.
When was the last time you heard someone construct a sentence using “for” to mean “because of”?
It’s not unheard of but it’s rare and often in relatively rote phrases.
46. Aapje says:

May 20, 2020 at 2:10 pm ~new~
The Dutch Ministry of Financy reported their own tax agency (the Dutch equivalent to the IRS) to
the police for ‘knevelarij’ and discrimination (etnic profiling). ‘Knevelarij’ doesn’t have a good
English translation. It’s abuse of power by a civil servant by demanding or accepting money that
isn’t owed. This is not the same as corruption, since it doesn’t have to benefit the civil servant
personally.
The Dutch government has been seesawing between making it easier to get various benefits and
clamping down on fraud. In this case, the benefit was childcare subsidies. The tax agency was so
determined to go after fraud that they resorted to terrorizing owners of childcare facilities as well
as parents that used these facilities, to disrupt suspected fraud networks. However, the evidence
was often minimal, where the bureaucrats seemed to suffer from tunnel vision. Minor
administrative mistakes were seen as strong evidence for fraud. The parents that got
investigated/punished were selected if they matched two or more risk categories, where one of
those was often their ethnic background.
When citizens filed a complaint against punitive decisions, civil servants broke the law by
misclassifying these complaints as requests for information, so they didn’t have to process them,
which they were obliged to, according to the law. A civil servant whistleblower who complained all
over the tax agency, got the following answer from a government lawyer: “We will start following
the law again in the future.” Another damning statement by a spokesperson was that the tax
agency “continuously strives” to follow the law.
In court cases, exculpatory evidence was systematically withheld from the court. A civil servant
that did put exculpatory evidence in the dossiers was targeted for dismissal, although the exposure
of the scandal saved him.

Initially, the government did what it always does: protect itself. However, there were so many
sympathetic victims and so much evidence of law-breaking behavior, that too many politicians
didn’t want to accept the reputation loss. Still, it is unprecedented for charged to be filed against
civil servants that follow or make illegal policy.

o 205guy says:
May 24, 2020 at 1:30 pm ~new~
Since I see no other reply, let me just say I found this bit of news interesting and worth reading.
Thanks for taking the time to write it up. I wish there were a news service that summarized the top
10 news stories like this from every state and country, say maybe refreshing one per day, it would
be so much better than the regular news. I would call it slow news.
47. citizencokane says:
May 20, 2020 at 1:54 pm ~new~
I kept hearing about this “Obamagate” thing on the news without ever getting a clear idea of what
it was about. Even googling it brought up about 3 pages of links that mockingly dismissed it out of
hand without giving me much of an indication of what they were dismissing. And of course,
Trump’s vague comments have been no help either.
Finally I found this Fox News article that gives me the best chance of steelmanning the Obamagate
allegations and figuring out whether they have any merit to them.
The first thing I noticed is that this article uses words like “improper” and “abuse” and “astounding”
but never the word “criminal.” So this is already walking-back the claim that Trump made in the
recent press briefing where he said that this was the “crime of the century.” The Fox News article
seems to be arguing that these were actions that ought to be illegal, but which happened to be
within the letter of the current law, even if they were not prudent or within the spirit of the laws.
Perhaps this partially explains why even William Barr has expressed doubt that this “scandal” will
result in any criminal indictments being filed.
Some of the actions that were improper according to the Fox News article are old allegations
having to do with the argument that the FISA warrants that legally allowed spying on members of
Trump’s campaign did not have sufficient corroborated non-partisan evidence behind them, and
thus should not have been granted. Like I said, this is an old allegation, and even if it were true, I
don’t see how this would amount to criminal wrongdoing; instead, it would call into question the
judgment of the judge who approved the FISA warrants on such a basis, but nobody would dispute
that that judge had the legal right to approve the FISA warrants on whatever basis in the world
that struck that judge’s fancy. Short of impeaching the judge, them’s the cards you are dealt in our
current system of “checks and balances.”

So anyways, let’s get to the new allegations that Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian
diplomat Sergey Kislyak were “unmasked,” and that this was “improper.” By “unmasked,” here’s
what they mean: the NSA had already been surveying Sergey Kislyak. Thus, whenever Kislyak
communicated with someone, the NSA would naturally end up recording not just Kislyak’s end of
the conversation, but also the other person on the call/visit. If that other person happens to be an
American citizen, by law that person’s identity must be “redacted” (i.e. temporarily erased or
obscured) by default when shown to people outside of those NSA working with the primary
documents/recordings. However, by law certain individuals with sufficient security clearance (such
as the President, Vice-President, etc.) may request to have that information un-redacted or
“unmasked.”
Throughout the years there have been varying levels of statutory guidance as to the conditions
that must be fulfilled for the NSA to “unmask” this information. According to the Fox News article,
these conditions were relaxed by the Obama administration (presumably via executive orders,
although the article doesn’t specify; or it might have been legislation passed during the Obama
Administration…I don’t know). Fair enough, that’s a concern that any civil libertarian can get on
board with.
The article also talks about how this “unmasking” procedure often encounters isolated demands for
rigor depending on who is asking and who is the target. No surprise there for anyone who is cynical
about how politics works. Still, strictly-speaking, I don’t see that such a concern would amount to a
criminal matter. If an administration is using powers plainly (if unwisely) delegated to it by
Congress, albeit in a partisan manner, to me that either calls for further legislation to make the
conditions for applying those powers more specific so as to forestall that abuse (i.e. Congress
should explicitly rein in those powers and specify more clearly when they can be used), and/or
impeachment proceedings.
In any case, partially thanks to the more relaxed standards for unmasking the identities of
Americans encountered in foreign spying, Obama, Biden, and others in the Obama Administration
were able to learn that Michael Flynn was on the other end of these calls, and some of the things
they heard apparently sounded problematic enough to warrant further investigation of Flynn, albeit
still “by the book” (i.e. no extraordinary measures to be taken, such as presumably trying to
entrap Flynn in perjury in a targeted manner), according to Susan Rice.
Apparently these problematic conversations were to the effect of Flynn reassuring Kislyak, “Don’t
have the Russian government retaliate just yet against the latest Obama Administration’s sanctions
on Russia. Trump aims to have friendlier relations with Russia [for whatever reason—we don’t have
to speculate here whether those reasons are primarily in Trump’s perception of Trump’s interests
or Trump’s perception of America’s national interest], so once he gets into office [Trump was
already president-elect by this point], we can undo the sanctions and patch things up between our
countries.” Apparently the Obama Administration found this troublesome because, let’s face it, the
impact of their sanctions were thus being undermined.

Now here’s where I become very bewildered and frustrated with our current media environment
because the prime point of contention seems to me whether it is lawful for Flynn to have such
conversations with foreign diplomats when he is still only part of a President-Elect’s administration.
This should be a simple question to resolve. The Fox News article says that this is done “all the
time,” which may be true. However, it may still be illegal, and the only reason it isn’t investigated
and prosecuted in other instances is that there aren’t such starkly different agendas being pursued
by an outgoing administration and an incoming administration.
If such communications are unlawful, then it seems to me that the subsequent FBI interviews with
Flynn were “material” to a potential crime and thus not entrapment, and any lies should be
prosecuted. If such communications were not unlawful, then I could see the reasoning behind
dismissing the charges, even after Flynn admitted to lying and pled guilty to lying. Flynn should not
have been interviewed in the first place, and the only reason to do so would have been to entrap
him. (Of course, if such communications were lawful, then Flynn should have simply told the truth
with nothing to fear instead of lying like a dummy about a conversation he had to have known was
recorded by some security agency somewhere.)
All the media stories get caught up in the horse-race angle of all of this, about whether this will be
bad for Trump’s campaign, or how crazy Trump supporters are, or how partisan Obama’s
administration was…but they can’t address a simple question that happens to be the primary bone
of contention in the whole saga. (Perhaps because they want the confusion and clamor on social
media to continue so that they get more clicks).
So, can anyone walk me through all of this?
Edit: AAAAND, I just found this very helpful primer on the Logan Act from Lawfare blog which
suggests that Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak could have very likely been criminal in nature…in
which case, why isn’t Flynn being prosecuted for breaking the Logan Act, rather than merely
perjury?
o FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:22 pm ~new~

why isn’t Flynn being prosecuted for breaking the Logan Act, rather than merely
perjury?
Flynn was not prosecuted for perjury. He was never placed under oath to tell the truth, and thus
could not have perjured himself. He was prosecuted for lying to the FBI which is a separate crime
from perjury.
My understanding of the case is that the FBI had planned on closing the case against Flynn without
charges before the notorious interview occured. Agent Peter Strzok (infamous for the highly
partisan anti-Trump messages he sent to his adulterous lover, Lisa Page) discovered that the case
had not been closed in a timely fashion folowing FBI procedures and ordered agents to keep the
case open. It was only afterwards that they interviewed Flynn, which is why many see it as a
fishing operation put into place by a partison FBI agent. This view is helped by the fact that in one
of Strzok’s messages to Page he wrote that the fact the case had not been closed when it should
have been was “serendipitous good” and that “our utter incompetence actually helps us.” He also
sent page the defintion of the Logan Act and commented that it “does not involve incoming
administrations.” Which, again, makes you wonder why he ordered agents to keep the case open.
There are also allegations that are being investigated that Joe Biden himself called for Flynn to be
unmasked, despite the fact that Biden has denied that he had any involvement with the Flynn
investigation.
It has also come out that Obama and Biden definitely knew about the investigation, something that
had not been shown conclusively before.
Not to say any of this is criminal, but it is scandalous. The investigation may have been technically
legal, but the argument is that the legal reason for investigating was a fig leaf to cover the real
purpose of spying on the Trump campaign and leaking embarrassing information to the press.
o Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:23 pm ~new~

Edit: AAAAND, I just found this very helpful primer on the Logan Act from Lawfare
blog which suggests that Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak could have very likely
been criminal in nature…in which case, why isn’t Flynn being prosecuted for
breaking the Logan Act, rather than merely perjury?
The Logan Act has been invoked exactly once, back when slavery was legal iirc, and the charge
was ultimately dropped. It has never, not once, been used to prosecute anyone. Further, it’s a
dubious case to make since it basically relies on saying that Flynn was not empowered by the
President to talk to the Russians… because he was empowered by Trump, the President Elect, to do
so. That doesn’t seem like a real standard, or at least not one that’s been enforced. If it was,
virtually every president would be guilty of such violations in the period leading up to them
assuming office.
And Flynn wasn’t charged with perjury, he was charged with lying to the FBI. The issue is that
“lying to the FBI” is a very complicated case to prove and can be almost impossible to prosecute if
there was no underlying crime. And Flynn’s confession never led to other proven charges so there
wasn’t one legally. Note that it is not enough that you think there’s a crime: if you’re wrong and
you’ve just charged someone with lying over a crime that doesn’t exist the case gets very hard to
prove. This leaves the Logan Act, which has almost no precedent for use.
Documents have emerged from the FBI that they were looking to prosecute Flynn because he was
someone they didn’t like or trust and they repeatedly changed the crime to get him. They also
specifically designed the necessary disclaimers to try and get him to pay as little attention as
possible. This all looks like targeting, targeting Obama seems to have been aware of. Worse, it
looks like political targeting because it was of a political opponent of Obama’s and someone Obama
specifically had a great deal of antipathy for. Ultimately they drummed up a charge (lying to the
FBI) and he confessed only after they threatened him with drumming up similar charges against his
family. Further, those documents point to some pretty clear fudging on Rice, Biden, Obama, and a
few other people’s parts to gloss over things that make them look less innocent.
Obamagate looks like the Obama administration leaned on the FBI to investigate Obama’s political
opponents using all those delightful things the Federal government technically can do but which
offends common decency. That’s the scandal, such as it is. Or at least that’s the Republican
narrative. The Democrats seem to just be pretending there’s nothing there, which worked out for
them pretty well with previous incidents of supposed political targeting so we’ll see.
But yeah, basically the question comes down to whether or not you believe using perfect legal
methods to target your political opponents is a cause for concern. And then whether or not you
believe the Democrats saying the Republicans just happened to get targeted disproportionately
under a Democratic administration because Republicans really are that suspicious or whether you
believe the Republican narrative it was partisan abuse. In this sense it’s a replay of the IRS
scandal.
This all comes down to a sort of original sin in Trump’s election. There can be no serious debate at
this point that US intelligence at the behest of the Obama White House were spying on Trump’s
campaign, though they denied it at the time. The question is whether you believe the Democrat’s
new story that this investigation was all normal and proper or the Republicans who have been
screeching abuse of power for three years.

May 20, 2020 at 3:44 pm ~new~
Large parts of our judicial branch operate on an adversarial principle. In other words, instead of
both sides striving to find some non-partisan truth in a case, the prosecution and defense both
attempt to get away with as much as the judge or the other side will allow, and then the dust
settles where it may.
I don’t know the founders of the Constitution intended the executive branch to function in this way,
but it seems like that’s the way things are headed, for better or worse. In other words, we may
start to take it as a given that the executive branch will attempt to get away with exactly as much
as the other two branches allow it to get away with (including using executive powers to tarnish
political opponents), and it is up to Congress to explicitly narrow the scope of the executive
branch’s powers to forestall this, and it is up to the judicial branch to punish this. I have little doubt
that this is the system we will have whether Biden or Trump get elected.
 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:48 pm ~new~
I agree and I don’t fully buy the Republican case, definitely not as a non-partisan disinterested
type thing. Of course, this does make turnabout fair play.

o Another Throw says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:27 pm ~new~

why isn’t Flynn being prosecuted for breaking the Logan Act
Because the Logan Act is as dead as it is possible for a law to be without being about how to pay
your dowry in ducks.
Also, he isn’t being prosecuted for perjury. He is being prosecuted under section 1001, which
covers misstatements to federal officials, mumble mumble, material, mumble.
The only moral of this story is never even talk to a federal official. If you tell them the time is
12:00 when it is actually 12:01 they can charge you under section 1001 and bankrupt you into
pleading guilty. Never ever ever talk to federal officials.

May 20, 2020 at 3:36 pm ~new~
I’m not a big fan of just everyone tacitly agreeing not to enforce a law that’s on the books. Because
everyone assumes that the tacit agreement exists…until it suddenly doesn’t (because politics and
context changes, such as in this case)…and some poor schmuck who was operating under the
consensus that existed 5 minutes ago, like Flynn, gets ripped to shreds.
If we think the Logan Act needs to be narrowed or eliminated, let’s have Congress do that! The
Republicans had two years in charge of both wings of Congress from 2017 to 2019. You’d think
they would have seen Flynn, a member of a Republican administration, going down due to this
arguably outdated law and would have seen some reason to clarify the issue legislatively, no? It
baffles me.
Besides, after reading the Lawfare blog post on the Logan Act, the motivation behind the law
doesn’t actually seem particularly archaic. Although it hasn’t led to a conviction yet, there are a
surprising number of examples of border-cases that have come up in U.S. history that might have
made sense to prosecute, such as President-Elect Nixon trying to make sure negotiations with
North Vietnam remained stalled until he came into office so he could claim credit. Whether the
Logan Act itself is an ideal fit for our modern times, most of Congress would probably prefer that it
exist, or some law like it.
Likewise, I hold the same view towards immigration. I think we should drastically increase the
immigration quotas, but also drastically step-up enforcement of the quotas and conditions on
immigration. But that would mean having Congress take responsibility for our immigration policies
out in the open, and not being able to have their cake (immigration to please libertarians and
business owners and certain leftists) and eat it too (have laws on the books heavily restricting
immigration so it seems like they are being tough on immigration to please cultural conservatives).
 mtl1882 says:
May 20, 2020 at 10:11 pm ~new~
I’m not a big fan of just everyone tacitly agreeing not to enforce a law that’s on the
books. Because everyone assumes that the tacit agreement exists…until it suddenly
doesn’t (because politics and context changes, such as in this case)…and some poor
schmuck who was operating under the consensus that existed 5 minutes ago, like
Flynn, gets ripped to shreds.
Very much agree with this.
If we think the Logan Act needs to be narrowed or eliminated, let’s have Congress
do that! The Republicans had two years in charge of both wings of Congress from
2017 to 2019. You’d think they would have seen Flynn, a member of a Republican
administration, going down due to this arguably outdated law and would have seen
some reason to clarify the issue legislatively, no? It baffles me
While it seems like Congress is just disinterested because they see strategic value in having the
Logan Act on the books, as you said, it is worth pointing out that establishment Republicans may
not feel much concern for Flynn. Trump is already sort of an outsider, and Flynn has been a proud
Democrat his whole life. Not sure if that has changed, but I believe he was still one when he gave
the RNC Convention speech! He’s clearly not a fan of some recent establishment Democrats, but he
doesn’t seem to actually identify very much with Republicans, and they’ve known him a long time
as a Democrat. He identifies with Trump because they share certain traits that make them
anomalous in either party.
Related to these traits, Flynn occasionally tweets really bizarre and inappropriate things that are
hard to explain. Having held the positions he’s held, he must be fairly functional and trustworthy in
the patriotic sense. Either he just has moments of impulsive weirdness, or it is strategic
provocation. I do think he is somewhat odd and erratic in a way that can’t be easily brushed aside,
but I think a lot of people in Washington are disingenuously using this to portray him as sinister or
reckless. They know him well enough to know that’s just how he is. But he probably rubbed enough
people the wrong way that few feel compelled to defend him, especially when he’s affiliated with
two parties at once.

Although it hasn’t led to a conviction yet, there are a surprising number of examples
of border-cases that have come up in U.S. history that might have made sense to
prosecute, such as President-Elect Nixon trying to make sure negotiations with
North Vietnam remained stalled until he came into office so he could claim credit.
I think prosecuting this stuff would be a disaster. A lot of it doesn’t even bother me, because it
seems inevitable on some level for presidents to be influenced by these things. I’m sure there are
some egregious cases, but even then, going after a president or president-elect and basically
undoing the election does a lot of damage to a country. And such incidents are much more likely to
be attempts to improve the U.S. position (as well as the new president’s), not undermine it.
Candidates tend to think if they can just get in there, they’ll develop a rapport and fix it (Trump
and Kim Jong Un). This may be wishful thinking, but it is reasonable to decide to develop a
relationship, and I don’t think the country’s best interest or position should be solely and
indefinitely defined by the Washington establishment’s consensus. And Flynn wasn’t by any means
over his head, jumping in where he had no information. He was super familiar with U.S. foreign
policy issues and strategies, and had well known opinions that diverged from the Obama
administration’s as to what best served U.S. interests.
Letting Vietnam go on unnecessarily, if there’s fighting going on, does bother me, but we’d have to
get into questions like whether or not Nixon wanted them delayed mostly because he wanted to be
involved in those negotiations, which would be entirely understandable and appropriate. It would
be a good idea for the new president to have the best possible understanding of what exactly was
discussed and agreed upon, and to have a say in the negotiations. This would naturally be coupled
with getting credit, and I have no doubt that would occur to him, but it would be easy to spin it as
all about the credit.
Not sure of the exact circumstances, but it is very easy to spin allegations about normal, even
desirable, actions by president-elects or incumbents. Too complicated to separate these things out,
and too easily weaponized. We should assume the person elected by the people isn’t trying to
undermine the government. Maybe that assumption will be wrong, but then we have bigger
problems.
May 20, 2020 at 11:52 pm ~new~
Another example of a putative Logan Act violation.

Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:35 am ~new~
Another example of a putative Logan Act violation.
Thanks. That seems like a non-issue to me. Spin.
A friend of Kennedy’s chatted with this guy (possibly if I knew more about his background and why
Kennedy reached out to him specifically I’d feel a bit differently, but I’m assuming he wasn’t some
monster, and they may just have had mutual friends/cronies who knew of their desire to exercise
political influence in each other’s countries and thought they’d be compatible.)
My version of the conversation: “Hey, Senator Kennedy is looking to build some relationships with
Russian politicians, and asked me to talk with you. He’d like to work on ending some of the
tensions between us and getting to know the situation better. If you’re interested, which I’ve heard
you are, he’s willing to give you some tips on how to present yourself to Americans and argue in a
way persuasive to them–he knows how the Washington crowd thinks, and can tell you about
Reagan. He can also talk to you about making some American TV appearances and how to handle
that. He thinks it will go a long way to improve relations. He’s great with all the TV and PR stuff—
there’s a good chance he’ll get a presidential nomination within the next few years, as a Democrat.
Russian relations are going to be a big issue coming up in the next election, so he wants to really
understand how things stand and how he might handle them. Should I have him call you?”
There is no quid pro quo—it’s totally unclear what would have been asked for, and it certainly
couldn’t be binding. It could be as simple as wanting to show he had Russian expertise when
squaring off against Reagan. Nothing he’s offering to help with is likely to compromise anyone,
unless the plan is to advise him to say the totally wrong thing to Reagan and ruin negotiations to
spite Reagan. The article is very heavy-handed—making it look like honest journalism! Like he’s
never heard of PR, if it was even unduly flattering. I doubt he was going to advise him to do things
that truly endangered the country, like give classified information, and I don’t think that
undermining Reagan automatically counts, if he did anything like that. He was offering to open a
few doors — none of this seems out of the ordinary to me.
No doubt the subtext is, “Kennedy might be very powerful in the future, and it would be good to
get on his good side and state your case. And maybe you’ll come be able to give us a little help in a
year or five.” You can spin it into something terrible, as the article did. But it would be foolish to
make these things Logan Acts–this stuff is so common. There are situations in which it could be
clearly harmful to the U.S., but there are probably other ways to handle that, and most of these
things do not pose clear harm for the benefit of a foreign enemy in any real sense. You’re allowed
to give tips and chat with foreign politicians as a U.S. Senator. You’re allowed to campaign and
criticize your rival and do stunts related to that. All normal, even unobjectionable.
The issue would be if he gave classified info relating to the negotiations out or something. From
what we have here, it’s honestly not very clear that he was fishing for help targeting Reagan. The
writer insinuates it. Maybe if I knew more about the guy it would be clear how he could damage
Reagan and that inference would be more reasonable. This would probably read to most people as
mildly sleazy, but I don’t see how one can characterize it as rising even to the level of scandal, and
I can’t bring myself to find it even sleazy. (Again, if the guy was really bad, or was promoting bad
things with Kennedy’s help, it would be different.)

Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 5:46 am ~new~
Also, how about John Kerry talking to the Iranians about the nuclear deal? Pretty sure he was not
doing that in support of Trump’s position on that deal. And that’s one where we’re not talking
about the incoming administration making plans a little too early, but the previous administration
undermining the current one.
Yes, the problem with the Logan Act is that everybody’s breaking it all the time. This is a sign it’s a
bad law. I’m fine with repealing it, but the whole “prosecute it everyone, it’s the law” idea is that I
have 0 faith that everyone will be prosecuted. It will almost certainly wind up with selective
prosecution, where we nail Flynn but let Kerry skate or vice-versa. Selective enforcement is the
worst possible outcome, so I prefer no enforcement.

Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 6:41 am ~new~
One important thing about the Logan Act, which the Lawfare blog post makes clear, is that any
reasonable interpretation of it does not prohibit public statements or criticism of current U.S. policy
or one-way public communication. So, Nixon is entirely free to publicly announce that he will be a
better negotiator with North Vietnam *wink* *wink*. It would have been perfectly legal for Michael
Flynn to publicly announce that Trump’s campaign intended to revisit or even revoke some anti-
Russia sanctions in the interest of cultivating friendlier strategic ties between the U.S. and Russia
(this was already common knowledge, and in fact was part of the appeal of Trump’s platform to
some people including my parents in particular—the thought that Trump would be much less likely
to get the U.S. into WW3 with Russia over Syria, Ukraine, and other issues). What’s NOT allowed
under the Logan Act is an unauthorized individual having two-way communication with a foreign
diplomat in a way that attempts to undermine some foreign policy objective of the current U.S.
administration. To me, it seems like a logical extension of the fact that the Constitution doesn’t let
individual states conduct diplomacy with foreign powers, so why would it allow individuals the same
powers?
Hide ↑

May 21, 2020 at 7:18 am ~new~
To me, it seems like a logical extension of the fact that the Constitution doesn’t let
individual states conduct diplomacy with foreign powers, so why would it allow
individuals the same powers?
Because states have political authority and individuals don’t?
Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 9:48 am ~new~
Certain individuals have immense authority. Top-ranking generals, senators, billionaires, etc. Some
arguably have more authority, resources, things of value that they could offer, etc. than individual
states do. The U.S. govt. is understandably not too upset if someone like Dennis Rodman goes to
North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-Un on a quixotic quest to bring “peace and love” between the
two countries…but if a top-ranking general were to do the same secretly with a promise that his
military forces would be told to stand-down in the event of a conflict with North Korea, if North
Korea did X, Y, and Z…

Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:51 am ~new~
But a general doesn’t actually have authority to stand-down his force in the event that his
superiors (assuming the very top general, this would mean the President or his cabinet) are
ordering him to engage the enemy.
A general who promises North Korean leadership that his forces will stand down is acting very
much outside of his authority…

Hide ↑
 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:01 am ~new~
But a general doesn’t actually have authority to stand-down his force in the event
that his superiors (assuming the very top general, this would mean the President or
his cabinet) are ordering him to engage the enemy.
Authority =/= ability here. That hypothetical general who’s made the secret compact with North
Korea can and almost certainly would be able to deteriorate our defenses in case of an invasion.
I mean, let’s say the general knows that the attach will happen on Saturday. He orders extra drills
far into the night Tuesday through Thursday then surprises the troops on Friday with liberal
weekend leave. He even eases travel restrictions for the weekend. Almost everyone, expect the
poor schmucks on duty, will be gone over the weekend and those that remain are likely still tired
from a hard week’s work. North Korea attacks on Friday and overruns the base with ease.
Sure, that example is likely overly simplistic, and I’m sure there are controls to prevent things from
getting this bad, but it still relies on the idea that everyone, especially everyone in positions of
authority, are acting with a unified set of interests. Our general here has acted entirely within the
limits of his authority, yet still managed to implement policy change.

Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 1:30 pm ~new~
The issue would be if he gave classified info relating to the negotiations out or
something.
The Logan Act:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the
United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence
or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with
intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any
officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United
States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title
or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to
any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he
may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
Nothing said about a quid pro quo or classified information. Kennedy was indirectly carrying on a
correspondence with a foreign government in relation to disputes and controversies with the U.S.,
specifically nuclear disarmament, more generally U.S. Soviet relations.

Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 21, 2020 at 2:41 pm ~new~
@DavidFriedman Thank you – I should have pulled up the full text and looked at the original
wording. That can be read to cover an extremely broad range of conduct! I can see how it was at
least plausibly appropriate in its time, but to enforce it now, or in the 80s, would be silly. The
wording basically prohibits any American from talking to anyone connected with another
government about about foreign policy, even to encourage that they cooperate fully with the U.S.
It’s not clear that what Kennedy was doing threatened any interest of the U.S.–the memo is vague.
The Logan Act appears to prohibit even encouraging or assisting someone connected with the
Soviet government to make peace with the U.S. government on terms favorable to the U.S. I
thought it only prohibited things that would undermine the U.S. position, which is why I was saying
releasing classified information would be different.
I also think the modern understanding of “influence” usually goes too far, with merely verbally
suggesting something being seen as unpardonable interference–there is almost an assumption that

most people do whatever they are told, even powerful people, so that a suggestion is equivalent to
making something reality.

Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 22, 2020 at 12:15 am ~new~
@citizencokane
To me, it seems like a logical extension of the fact that the Constitution doesn’t let
individual states conduct diplomacy with foreign powers, so why would it allow
individuals the same powers?
I don’t think this is what the Logan Act was getting at—yes, states lack the authority to make
agreements, as do most people. There would be little need to criminalize this–any negotiations
would be non-binding. I think they’re talking about people who indirectly influence negotiations,
probably for their own benefit, probably through things like bribery or intimidation. (As opposed to
exerting influence one-way, like the public statements of Nixon, as you point out—this is the
modern sense in which we tend to use it, where words are automatically assumed to have an
effect.)
I doubt even the Logan Act was intended to prevent people from building friendships with people
connected with foreign governments and discussing foreign affairs—that stuff would be valuable to
a new nation at that time, when so much was done through international relationship networks and
mail distributed via consular networks. It’s just not well-worded, and I suspect some connotations
have changed. ETA: After reading about it on Wikipedia, it looks like it wasn’t intended to do much
more than to express the anger of some humiliated politicians. The guy involved didn’t seem to
actually play much of a role in the decision, and he wasn’t doing anything bad, nor did he pose as
having authority. Maybe it was intended as a warning. But I’m sure tons of Americans kept hanging
out with the great Talleyrand and talking to him about American affairs, and they never bothered
to use it. It seems they wanted it as a backup for if any citizen tried to urge opposition to the U.S.
government’s foreign affairs. The 1803 Kentucky case, which didn’t go forward, is pretty ridiculous,
because it was a newspaper article, not sent to any official. But, like the later Mexico one, it
involved a citizen expressing the opinion that another government should not do what the U.S.
government wanted.
Today, we allow virtually everyone to engage in non-binding diplomatic efforts, or to talk to foreign
governments about opposing the U.S. on things. As long as you aren’t getting into treason,
terrorism, espionage, violating security clearance rules, or releasing classified information, you’re
generally good. Quite a lot of lobbying, consulting for and palling around with foreign governments
goes on by ex-government and military people, which appears to be uncontroversial until there is
an occasional need for a political scapegoat.

Hide ↑
 Another Throw says:

May 21, 2020 at 4:49 pm ~new~
I’m not a big fan of just everyone tacitly agreeing not to enforce a law that’s on the
books. Because everyone assumes that the tacit agreement exists…until it suddenly
doesn’t (because politics and context changes, such as in this case)…and some poor
schmuck who was operating under the consensus that existed 5 minutes ago, like
Flynn, gets ripped to shreds.
The problem that we are trying to solve is to prevent arbitrary and unjust enforcement. The
solution that seems to work the best is to promulgate a law code while prohibiting ex post facto
laws and bills of attainder. But developing and maintaining a law code is freaking hard. If tens of
thousands of the best programmers in the world working around the clock can’t maintain a measly
few hundred thousands lines of code without crippling bugs cropping up periodically, what hope do
538 senile old codgers working on the problem quarter time without any particular domain
expertise have at maintaining millions of lines of code without crippling bugs cropping up
occasionally? Especially when those 538 senile old codgers really fucking love the idea of arbitrary
enforcement against the people they don’t like?

At its core, the entire enterprise of statutory law is fundamentally flawed. Irreconcilable with the
physical world, even. Any theory of government that relies, explicitly or otherwise, on the premise
that we can just make the code bug free is going to fail. Any even half-way functioning society
requires a way to deal with the fact that the code is going to have unpatched bugs hanging around
for centuries.
We’ll take the quintessential absurdity as instructive for this failure. Every few years, some jackass
asserts their ancient right to trial by combat. The problem is that by any reading of the relevant
law over the last thousand or so years, it is definitely still a thing! The only proper response to this
is to say “ARE YOU INSANE! THAT ISN’T HOW THINGS WORK ANYMORE!” Resurrecting the long
abandoned practice of letting litigants wack at each other with broadswords because some jackass
is pissed that his neighbor’s dog shits in his yard is exactly the arbitrary and unjust outcome that
the law is intended to prevent. Because there was no way of knowing, despite being promulgated
in the relevant law for centuries, that it would be resurrected now. Moreover, this particular
absurdity keeps cropping up every few years but the 538 senile codgers are not particularly
interested in fixing it. It should be the most uncontroversial law ever passed, but it isn’t going to
happen.
I will grant you that historically common law jurisdictions have generally avoided invoking
desuetude explicitly, preferring instead maddening circumlocution around the issue.


May 22, 2020 at 8:16 am ~new~
do that!
This is more of a Supreme Court thing. What’s amazing to me is that nowhere in this comment
thread (or the Lawfare article) are the words “First Amendment”. The Logan Act almost certainly
violates the First Amendment. Facially, not just as-applied (having basically never been applied).
Profs Hemel and Posner do their best to invent the word “secret” in the text of the Logan Act, but
it’s not there.
What this boils down to is a question of whether investigators can use a law that is almost certainly
unconstitutional, not to actually bring charges against a person (which could then be a vehicle by
which the Judiciary could actually state that said law is unconstitutional), but instead as a vehicle
for other investigation. Think back to cases like when the government asserted that they could ban
books. But instead of actually bringing any cases anywhere close to that effect, they simply used
that as a justification for investigations of authors and journalists. And if they didn’t find anything
else during those investigations, instead of bringing the case which they based their investigation
on, they always just dropped the investigation. (And in the cases where they found something else,
they just dropped the original book-related charge and charged the other thing.)
Doing this would allow them to constantly engage in investigations that are antithetical to our
Constitutional and democratic principles, yet which could not possibly be reviewed by any court and
declared as such. The courts may even still manage to avoid opining on this issue in this particular
case. I almost want to extend the principle of “capable of repetition, yet evading review” to appeals
on this issue, just so we can finally get some guidance from SCOTUS on whether they think any
construction of the Logan Act is at all plausible. (It may come out the other way; I kind of doubt it;
I understand the frustration and need for them to say something.)

most of Congress would probably prefer that it exist, or some law like it.
Then let them pass that version. Look, I argue (even in this thread) about surveillance law, where
some folks think that various iterations are unconstitutional. I can also point to how subsequent
Congresses have explicitly authorized various tweaks to the programs… in public votes. There, I
see a strong argument for, “Congress actually thinks that at least this tweaked version is
Constitutional and good.” If you can get Congress to pass a modified, modern day Logan Act
(maybe even with the word “secret” in there somewhere), then this argument would be
significantly stronger. Without any sort of affirmative action taking place, it’s just sort of irrelevant
musing.

May 23, 2020 at 7:04 pm ~new~
do that!
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want
them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts
you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule
innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on
criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares
so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without
breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for
anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or
objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you
cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you
understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
May 20, 2020 at 2:28 pm ~new~

instead, it would call into question the judgment of the judge who approved the
FISA warrants on such a basis, but nobody would dispute that that judge had the
legal right to approve the FISA warrants on whatever basis in the world that struck
that judge’s fancy.
If he approved the warrants on the basis of false information — if, for example, the FBI agents
submitting the application were required to provide all relevant evidence and deliberately omitted
evidence that would lead to the application being rejected — the judge had the legal right to
approve but the FBI agents were guilty of perjury.

May 20, 2020 at 3:29 pm ~new~
Thank you for that clarification. In that case, this strong possibility of perjury by FBI agents seems
like kind of a big deal that someone at the justice department should follow up on, no?

May 20, 2020 at 4:03 pm ~new~
this strong possibility of perjury by FBI agents seems like kind of a big deal that
someone at the justice department should follow up on, no?
Should such a thing happen, do you think this will be reported in the mainstream media as “DOJ
goes after rogue FBI bad actors” or as “Trump’s attack dogs target faithful civil servants for just
doing their jobs?”

May 20, 2020 at 5:00 pm ~new~
Good point. It would be interesting if Trump were to get re-elected and felt emboldened to have
the justice dept. go after this case. Boy would that ignite charges of “tyranny!”
Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 8:35 pm ~new~
I’m a retired law professor but not a lawyer. Perhaps someone here can tell us whether my
assumption that an application for a warrant is made under oath and includes, explicitly or
implicitly, the claim that the application contains all relevant information, is correct.
 mtl1882 says:
May 20, 2020 at 10:59 pm ~new~
It was weirdly hard to find information on this. It seems that there are designated people
authorized to sign off on FISAs, which some publications refer to as “under oath” but most do not.
I believe they actually certify that the factual info inside is true and correct in accordance with a
specific regulation, which I haven’t looked up. It doesn’t look like there’s a “under pains and
penalty of perjury” explicitly included.
However, the FBI admitted after a recent review that the applications were generally shoddy…
suspiciously shoddy in some cases. It would probably be possible to make a case for intentional
omission, even if hard to prove, if what they signed off on was a stronger certification. But
basically, the person just checks to see that there is supporting documents to back up the included
facts (which didn’t always happen, but probably mostly due to laziness). He or she does not certify
the file is complete or that the whole file has been examined for omissions. Many don’t check to
see if older applications cited are actually backed up by the required documentation, so it is easy
for secondary information to go unchecked. I think the FBI’s own report advised perhaps requiring
a more extensive certification.
In summary, it seems unlikely that they swear under pains and penalties of perjury—they probably
at best can violate a statute. And it seems like the people signing these files often don’t put them
together, so the intentional violation wouldn’t necessarily lie with them. If they were attorneys
filing affidavits or briefs, final responsibility would lie with them, but I don’t think that’s the case.
Probably intentionally.
Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 5:30 am ~new~
I doubt the “unusually shabby” part. If they do this stuff in extremely high-profile politically
sensitive cases, what do you imagine they do when the target is some nobody with no connections
or power?
Hide ↑
o zzzzort says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:45 pm ~new~
Separate but related question: I have heard the claim that the obama administration (or Obama
personally) are at fault for selectively unmasking Flynn. But I thought the whole point of masking is
that the identity of the person masked is… masked. Obviously someone is doing the redacting and
is aware of their identity, but presumably this person is not a political appointee. Is the claim that
the obama administration pressured all security agencies to dig up dirt in general, and the
unmasking is what resulted? Or that they knew Flynn’s identity before it was unmasked?
 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:47 pm ~new~
The Republican claim is that the Obama administration unmasked Flynn (normal), with some desire
to find Flynn specifically (borderline illegal). Then someone in the administration leaked it (very
illegal) for partisan reasons (no more or less illegal but a bigger norms violation).
 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:12 am ~new~
I guess “leaking intelligence obtained after unmasking” doesn’t have the same ring to it. And the
public has never really gotten behind prosecution of leakers, so I guess a smart political move.
And, this is 80% trolling, but if the leak was authorized by Obama (as contended by the Trump
camp), what would that still be illegal? In the same vein as Trump sharing classified Israeli
intelligence with the Russians always being clearly legal.

 Erusian says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:26 pm ~new~
And, this is 80% trolling, but if the leak was authorized by Obama (as contended by
the Trump camp), what would that still be illegal? In the same vein as Trump
sharing classified Israeli intelligence with the Russians always being clearly legal.
Yes, because the masking process is not meant to protect intelligence secrets but the rights of an
American citizen. Classification flows from the President, so he can change classification at will.
Rights flow from the Constitution and override the President.

Hide ↑
 mtl1882 says:
May 20, 2020 at 9:22 pm ~new~
But I thought the whole point of masking is that the identity of the person masked
is… masked.
This is a question that seems to be mostly ignored. The National Review recently called this out.
“To summarize, the list provided by Grenell indicates no unmasking of Flynn between December 28
(the day before the call) and January 5, even though news of Flynn’s identification was already
circulating on January 3 (when McCabe briefed McCord about it)….It is more likely, then, that the
Flynn–Kislyak call was captured by intelligence operations that are not governed by FISA.” He
suspects the CIA, which is not governed by FISA, ended up with it and passed it on, as the
intelligence community was watching Flynn.
I’m pretty sure the driving force here is that the Obama administration had bad blood with Flynn,
didn’t want him appointed by Trump (I believe more due to reasons of personal pride than concern
about the effects of sanctions or any other specific political issue), and was keeping an eye out for
dirt to use against him in one way or another. What they found happened to coincide with their
need to cover the FISA abuse with regard to recent political snooping–I would generally
characterize this (the FISA stuff) as neither criminal nor surprising, but sleazy and asking for a
spiral into bigger problems and scandals. An unhealthy culture that undermined trust in the
political process and the authorities, probably driven more by technology and post-9/11 privileges
than the party or president in power.
There are ways this could be prosecuted, but I doubt it will happen and it probably shouldn’t, as
the NR explains. There are ways you could respond to it like Flynn’s conduct: prosecuting him for
lying to the FBI or violating the Logan Act. Based on what we know, I consider doing that (and
having done that, in the latter case) to Flynn highly inappropriate and corrosive to the justice
system. The standard should be “material fact,” if he even lied. Retaliation with similar methods
should not be encouraged, and probably won’t limit the behavior, although there is a point where
counter-examples have to be made to get the message across. Tough issue. But not worthwhile
right now, probably. I’d prefer the media just acknowledge the lack of credibility and dishonorable
behavior of those involved. Personally, I’m mainly annoyed by the playing dumb, egregiously and
badly so, demonstrated by Obama, Rice, and Biden. Maybe Obama and Rice know something about
Flynn that we don’t, but come on. Rice with her absurd remarks about being shocked by an utterly
benign remark by Flynn–almost literally, “I’m not worried about Russia. It’s a shadow of its former
self. I’m more concerned about the threat posed by China.” Obama, a lawyer, with his Logan act
and “perjury charges” and concern for the rule of law. It’s not criminal or a new low or anything,
but it’s not to their credit. Same with the FBI using Flynn’s son as leverage.
I think it’s important to understand that a lot of this was “intramural bullshit,” to use a phrase one
Matt Taibbi did for something else. The driving forces were small personal or factional issues. Some
people in the NSA naturally indulge their curiosity and snoop on others, and everyone lets it pass,
because it is a statute that was never take seriously and the tech makes it so easy. In 2015, their
snooping turns to the prominent political figures, and most of the people lean toward Clinton. Some
have speculated that in the spring of 2015, the loophole that allowed NSA people to search the FBI
database got located and plugged. Disappointed at lost access, just as things are getting
interesting, some higher level snoopers use some shoddy FISAs to justify access—July 2015 is
where the Flynn investigation begins, allegedly based on fears of his Russia interactions. I
personally doubt they were concerned Flynn was an agent. They all knew Flynn and his eccentric
ways well, but he’d recently been going out of his way to provoke the ire of the Obama
administration—on his side, I think this was less personal animosity than strategic political warfare,
something Flynn apparently enjoys. I think he was really aggravated by Obama’s foreign policy
choices (conflict over which led to his removal) and public rationalizations of them, and wished to
spotlight his opposition to them and get back into the game with the Trump administration. I think
the enthusiastic “betrayal” made Obama and those around him furious—most of the really sketchy
behavior by him and his circle is Flynn-related much more than Trump or Russia related. I think
Flynn is more than willing to be disliked and perhaps misjudged how ticked off they were and what
that might result in—presumably part of the reason he’s held the positions he has is because he
was known as someone not to mess around with, but also not someone who engages in treason.
This would explain his apparent lack of suspicion when talked to by the FBI, if what they say is
true.
The surprise Trump win means questions might be asked, especially given the partisan bent of the
snooping, and some awkward attempts to paper this over occur, then spiral out of control when
they become part of the political narratives surrounding Trump’s polarizing presidency, mainly
Russiagate. This wasn’t originally a grand scheme like “let’s get the election in the bag for Hillary,”
or “better start looking into Trump to take him out,” or related to some ideological or policy goal. It
was shady but much less interesting stuff that “escaped” and became part of bigger strategies or
“bureaucratically tenable” justifications.
An interview from October briefly touches on this.
The interviewer mentions how no one seems interested in the unmasking stuff. He says that stuff is
routine, but he was surprised that Powers claimed it wasn’t her–that this was bored lower-ranking
staff members doing stuff in her name. Not sure if that is just an excuse but it is plausible, and
could be plausible for the Biden request and others. But he concludes, “Yet that has became
normative reality, right?”
Codevilla, who worked in intelligence and helped draft the FISA legislation, responds that of course
a lot of this sort of thing is done by lower-ranking staff in the boss’s name. He doesn’t seem to find
that scandalous, or any of it really, but thinks the situation is ridiculous–that it’s that easy and
clearly not what we want going on. Too much power.
The interviewer asks later:

Do you have the sense that a[n]…attempt to manufacture reality was at
play in what at this point are the still-unknown interactions between the CIA, the
FBI, and the Obama White House with regard to the surveillance of Donald
Trump’s associates, and the attempt to suggest some vast Putin-Trump conspiracy
to game American elections, and whatnot?
(Note how he separates the surveillance and the Russia stuff–they were separate things that
eventually blurred together.) The response was “I don’t think that it went that far. Or I should
say, I don’t think the people involved thought about it that deeply.” The interviewer
agreed. Codevilla continued:

I think what you had was a small pooling of resources to tweak the
news cycle with regard to the hacking of the Democratic National
Committee, which then turned into something very major [after the election] . . . It
was, like Watergate, a minor attempt to gain marginal advantage. Which
then, unintended by the people involved at the time, became something very big,
which escaped everyone’s control . . . Who did what when to whom? Where are the
quids and where are the quos? What’s going on here? . . . What is not clear is just
how much of the reality will come into the public’s consciousness.
He was asked whose fault this was, and given his background, knows how one could hit back. What
he suggests is basically the equivalent of lying to the FBI. These kinds of charges basically function
to pressure the associates of the powerful, who are hard to get directly, to become witnesses for
the state.
The fault here is not of Democrats on the left. The fault here is of Donald Trump and
his friends who have refused to enforce the most basic laws here. The most obvious
one is Section 798, (18 U.S. Code), the simple comment statute. Now anybody in the
intelligence business knows that this is the live wire of security law. It is a strict
liability statute. It states that any revelation, regardless of circumstance or intent,
any revelation period, of anything having to do with U.S. communications
intelligence is punishable by the 10 and 10. Ten years in the slammer, and $10,000
fine. Per count.
Now the folks who went to The Washington Post and The New York Times in
November and December of 2016 and peddled this story of the intelligence
community’s conclusion that Trump and the Trump campaign had colluded with
Russia, these people ipso facto violated §798.
Considering these matters are highly classified, and that the number of the people
involved is necessarily very small, identifying them is child’s play. But no effort to
do that has been made.
Interviewer:
But doesn’t that failure in turn point to what is, to some extent, the root of this entire
drama, which is that Donald Trump seems unfamiliar with and temperamentally at
odds with the executive function that he has now assumed?
(We all know how well it would go over if Trump decided to play this game and threaten to
prosecute media sources.)

That’s certainly true. But you have to go beyond Donald Trump, to Republican
power holders in general. These people far more than Donald Trump would be
inclined to forbear for the sake of comity with the ruling class. And what kind of
comity are we talking about? We’re talking about social comity. Because if you
follow the law in this case, you end up putting former directors of CIA, FBI etcetera
behind bars. They, and a whole bunch of their subordinates. Maybe a dozen people
here would end up behind bars.
The interview ended with both agreeing that some people are evidently above the law
(presumably, establishment elites regardless of party, and those working in intelligence agencies).
May 21, 2020 at 7:06 am ~new~
Very interesting! Thanks!

 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 9:54 am ~new~
To answer my own question, (but admittedly with new info). This seems to confirm part of the NR
story, though it seems it was the FBI not the CIA.

 Aftagley says:
May 21, 2020 at 10:12 am ~new~
But… the FBI has no duty to mask, correct? NSA is focused on foreign intelligence, which is why
they mask US persons, but FBI is law enforcement and focused on CI. Their job is to go after us
persons, so they wouldn’t have masked the intercept.


May 23, 2020 at 11:27 am ~new~
FBI has both domestic law enforcement and counterintelligence missions. The CI mission sort of
has one foot in domestic law and one foot in foreign intelligence. This results in some tricky rules.
On top of that, a lot depends on what the underlying legal authority is. A lot of controversy has
focused on Section 702, including a recent controversy about the associated
targeting/querying/minimization procedures (which include masking). You can find the legal results
of the controversy here, including relevant rules for FBI.
EDIT: I want to emphasize that we don’t yet know what legal authority was used to collect the
conversation. The WaPo article says it was FBI, not NSA (which does cull some options). We know
that Flynn wasn’t in the US at the time, and Kislyak probably wasn’t, either. This might open up
some options. It’s reasonable that they got the call via Traditional FISA, 702, or something else. I
believe Traditional FISA has similar masking requirements as 702, but there are exceptions for if
“their identity is needed to understand the foreign intelligence value,” which I think is what WaPo’s
source is gesturing toward.

Hide ↑
o WoollyAI says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:11 pm ~new~

So, can anyone walk me through all of this?
No.
That’s about 20% snide but 80% serious. Your interpretation of the Flynn investigation, and
Obamagate in general, depends on your interpretation of a lot of other facts. Trying to avoid too
much CW:
It’s unclear what Flynn actually said to the FBI, as far as I can tell there’s no recording of their
conversation and the report was modified by other actors later on.
It’s unclear who tried to unmask Flynn and whether that was illegal or even improper.
It’s unclear what happens in legally rare/weird situations like a prosecution being withdrawn after a
guilty plea or a prosecution under the Logan Act.
It’s unclear whether the original investigation or the current dismissal were politically motivated,
and if so by who and how much.
It’s irresponsible to try to draw clear conclusions when we have a guilty plea under duress, with
conflicting evidence on whether a crime was committed in at least two meanings of the phrase, and
a legally unprecedented act with unknown political influence from the two most politically powerful
men alive. You’re confused and I sympathize, I’m confused. Massive parts of this whole thing still
make no sense and it’s almost four years old. But there’s just not enough information out there;
you or I might be 80% confident in every element, but 80%^4 is pretty bad odds. We don’t know,
almost four years after the fact it’s unlikely we’ll ever really know, that sucks, but it’s the way it is.
Everyone else is just pretending.
CW
-Removed to avoid the banhammer during politics season.
/CW
o mtl1882 says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:41 pm ~new~
While I don’t agree with every point made in this National Review article, I think it provides a good
characterization of some of the issues involved. The fact that the lines aren’t exactly clear, and how
we acknowledge and respond to that, is key.

48. Reasoner says:

May 20, 2020 at 1:51 pm ~new~
I’ve lately been annoyed by hyperbolic doom-and-gloom headlines like this recent one from The
Atlantic: We Are Living in a Failed State. I agree America has problems and the recent trend is
downwards, but reversion to the mean seems plausible. I think national psychology is important,
and a mentality of “We can fix this ” seems way better for, you know, fixing things than a mentality
of “We are fucked”. And once your national mentality shifts to “every person for themselves”, I
suspect it’s an uphill battle to shift it back.
So just to get some historical perspective on how bad things are right now, I’d be interested to
hear what people think actual historical low points are. The first thing that’s coming to mind is
WWI, for being incredibly dumb and incredibly destructive, way beyond the stupidity and
destructiveness of anything that’s happened in my lifetime.

o Bobobob says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:00 pm ~new~
The Atlantic is suicide reading. It’s like watching a magazine slash its wrists in real time, as shrill
on the extreme left as [no specific title comes to mind, perhaps someone can supply] is on the
right.
I know it doesn’t measure up to WW1, but the late 1970’s were particularly awful, the tanking
economy perfectly matching the downbeat mood. And the music was terrible, too.
 FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:29 pm ~new~
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed. I used to read The Atlantic every day, but over the last
few years it has slowly replaced most of it’s interesting long-reads with daily screeds against Trump
and dystopian thinkpieces. Today for instance: “Trump is Brazenly Interfering With the 2020
Election”, “Trump’s Favorite TV Network is Post-parody”, “Crises Are No time for Political Unity”,
and “Trump is Now Doing to Himself What He’s Done to the Country”. It’s not the only content, but
every day there’s a new batch.

 Reasoner says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:28 pm ~new~
Hm, I actually saw the anti-Trump stuff from The Atlantic as relatively level-headed in a way that I
thought might actually be persuasive to Trumpers. I mean, I found some of it persuasive in a way
that I don’t typically find anti-Trump writings.
BTW, note that George Packer, who wrote the article with the headline that annoyed me, also
wrote this piece skeptical of critical race theory applied to classrooms last October:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/when-the-culture-war-comes-for-the-
kids/596668/
Looks like they haven’t fired Caitlin Flanagan yet, btw

 GearRatio says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:42 pm ~new~
I’m kinda-sorta friends with a former atlantic editor who quit his (arguably great) job there
because they were not-so-slowly getting rid of all dissenting viewpoints – comments and reader
feedback were castrated or removed entirely, conservative voices who quit or were fired weren’t
replaced, etc.
I think the farthest-right person there is Friedersdorf, who is only significantly conservative on free
speech as far as I can tell. If your environment is that uniform in viewpoint, it’s pretty easy for a
group of people to work itself into a froth.
A good example of this is that one time they were performatively hiring someone from the right to
write for them. He was fired(or just not hired after all, it was quick) for suggesting that abortion,
being murder in his view, should be made illegal and subject to the same penalties as murder.
If you have significant voices on both sides of that issue on staff or just know more-than-a-few
republicans, this doesn’t probably strike you as such a settled issue in the American mind that you
should immediately fire the guy, but they don’t; he was fired and Conor wrote a freedom-of-speech
protest letter that criticized the Atlantic only in saying that he disagreed with the firing and that
they weren’t particularly generous. They proceeded to not hire another conservative to replace
him.
So yeah. I’m actually really mad about this because 10-15 years ago, The Atlantic was pretty good
in my opinion; I used to read it a lot. I tried to continue reading it for years after that, and I’ve
fallen out of the habit only because there’s just not a lot of value there – I can get straight-blue
takes on things anywhere, whereas the legit both-sides-to-at-least-some-extent discussion they
used to have was pretty unique to them in their format. I’m expecting them not to last much
longer in any form, which at this point doesn’t matter to me much one way or the other.

May 20, 2020 at 3:55 pm ~new~
I’m actually really mad about this because 10-15 years ago, The Atlantic was pretty
good in my opinion;
Agreed. I used to read the Atlantic cover-to-cover, even though I disagreed with a lot of what they
wrote, but I thought it was insightful and charitable. Now it’s just Orange Man Bad.
 Ouroborobot says:
May 20, 2020 at 4:10 pm ~new~
The Kevin Williamson debacle was actually what drove me to pull the ejection handle on my
readership. Williamson is one of the voices on the right I look forward to reading, and the way he
was treated was the last straw for me. I used to respect The Atlantic, but now it’s just another
Salon.
 Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:47 am ~new~
> conservative on free speech
What is this supposed to mean? To my ears it implies wanting to bring back laws against
blasphemy. Which would be entertaining, at least.

 GearRatio says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:33 am ~new~
conservative on free speech
What is this supposed to mean? To my ears it implies wanting to bring back laws
against blasphemy. Which would be entertaining, at least.
He tracks the better conservative arguments on free speech – he thinks cancel culture is generally
bad, that internet dragging is generally bad, and that it’s generally bad to use social pressure to
coerce third parties into denying speakers venue. Basically a more-discussion-is-better stance.
Of course there’s plenty on the left who believe these things too. But over time period when he’s
been doing this, when you found someone who was OK with cancelling someone over a tweet or
shouting down a college campus speaker more likely to be left than right, which is plain by who
was actually kept from speaking.
It might be that this “more discussion is good, stop shouting people down and using isolated
statements to destroy them with internet mobs” stance is as common on the left as the right, in
which case my stance is more like “The Atlantic doesn’t have any significant conservative voices,
including Conor”.
Hide ↑
May 21, 2020 at 8:39 am ~new~
Friedersdorf is basically a moderate libertarian, as far as I can tell. So he’s in favor of free speech
(both as a matter of law and of norms), opposed to the war on drugs and police impunity, against
most of our dumb wars, opposed to most occupational licensing, against NIMBY laws, etc.
Hide ↑
 Reasoner says:
May 22, 2020 at 6:34 pm ~new~
quit his (arguably great) job there because they were not-so-slowly getting rid of all
dissenting viewpoints
Sounds to me like your sorta-friend may be part of the problem.
 dndnrsn says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:58 pm ~new~
How is the Atlantic “extreme left”? It’s a pretty solidly left-of-centre publication (liberal in the
American sense). I doubt many who write for the Atlantic want to get rid of capitalism or whatever,
and I doubt that actual leftists would employ David Frum.

Mainstream American left-of-centre types are really incensed about Trump, those who think they
are leftists/radicals but who fit neatly into mainstream politics/academia are really incensed about
Trump… actual leftists seem less so?

 Randy M says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:03 pm ~new~
Is there a proper term for a zealous moderate?
Somewhat reciprocally, it doesn’t seem to me that Trump is extremely conservative. He’s just right
of center and a boor.

 Nick says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:10 pm ~new~
Yeah, I’m always annoyed by claims that Trump is “far right.” He is nothing like an actual Red Tribe
person, even politicians who previously signaled Red Tribe pretty well like Bush the Younger. He
has some major policy breaks with establishment Republicans, but in ways that aren’t especially
rightwing. For God’s sake, his big economic policy change has been tariffs. It’s just lazy thinking.
Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 3:58 pm ~new~
Yes, Trump is 1992 Bill Clinton except he doesn’t like Free Trade. Also, supports gay marriage. This
is not the Hitler you’re looking for.

Hide ↑
 dndnrsn says:
May 20, 2020 at 7:43 pm ~new~
Some of the most vociferously anti-Trump people are well-off, educated, centre left (vote
Democrat in the US, flip-flop between Liberal and NDP up here, etc) people. This is where you’ll
find people who are really invested in the idea that Trump is some kind of foreign imposition on the
US. To a radical leftist, however, there’s not much difference between someone with a nice stock
portfolio who votes D and someone with a nice stock portfolio who votes R. all of the words I could
use to describe this group have a political cast: “liberal” has been used as a pejorative by both the
centre-right and leftists, for example. This is the sort of group I think of as the Atlantic’s target
audience: just about any Bush-era Republican can be redeemed in their eyes if they write an article
about how awful Trump is, regardless of, say, said Bush-era Republican’s role in foreign policy
screwups which helped get Trump elected. The cruel generalization of this group is that they know
which wines go with which cheeses and think it’s outrageous someone with that much money and,
now, power, probably doesn’t.
The second group could be cruelly generalized as crowding into the university chancellor’s office
demanding jobs for themselves. I think of them as “pseudo-leftists” or “pseudo-radicals”; they’ll
talk about the horrors of capitalism and so on, but they are never entirely clear on what capitalism
is or when/how it came about, class interests usually aren’t top on their list of priorities, and when
you look at what they actually want, it’s something that fits in fairly neatly with the left-of-centre
program. Their most radical stance is anti-free speech, but most people aren’t really that attached
to free speech in general.

Hide ↑
 Deiseach says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:07 am ~new~
The cruel generalization of this group is that they know which wines go with which cheeses and
think it’s outrageous someone with that much money and, now, power, probably doesn’t.
When I remember some of the snotty media pieces about Trump liking his steak well-done and
eating it with ketchup (WHICH I DO MYSELF), one opinon piece laughing about how “well we (you
and me, dear readers!) all know he’s not the type of person we’d invite to a meal in a nice
restaurant”, I think your read of the situation is more correct than we’d like it to be.
(If they ever wanted to know ‘why people vote/support/excuse Trump? why???’ things like “well
you are not the type of person we’d ask out to a nice restaurant, you boor” towards ordinary
people who might like ketchup or well-done steak is part of it, especially when you’re also trying to
present yourselves as ‘just ordinary people’ too and anguish over your support and empathy for
the undocumented, minorities and the likes: it’s pretty plain you are not going to be inviting Pablo
who just came in over the border to work in the fields to a meal in a nice restaurant, either).
Hide ↑
 Jaskologist says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:12 am ~new~
The cruel generalization of this group is that they know which wines go with which
cheeses and think it’s outrageous someone with that much money and, now, power,
probably doesn’t.
This is one of your best zingers yet.
Hide ↑
 dndnrsn says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:30 am ~new~
@Deiseach, Jaskologist
The steelmanned version is that Trump offends because his boorishness and disregard for
established norms do actual damage to American political culture. Toothpaste can’t be put back in
the tube, so just as Obama built on bad precedents Bush set in warring against terror, future
politicians will behave more like Trump, and some of them will not be as self-defeating in their
attempts to exert control as Trump seems to be.

Hide ↑
 Fahundo says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:37 am ~new~
towards ordinary people who might like ketchup or well-done steak is part of it
Speaking as someone who comes from a family full of people who eat their steak well done:
This is not a trait of ordinary people.

Hide ↑
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:55 am ~new~
future politicians will behave more like Trump
I think this is already happening. Not that opposing party politicians didn’t insult each other before,
but Nancy Pelosi going straight “Trump is fat and he smells bad” in recent weeks seems to be a
pretty dramatic ratchet downwards, which I can only assume is an attempt to beat Trump at his
own game…
Hide ↑
May 20, 2020 at 8:47 pm ~new~
I don’t read the Atlantic, so am going only on this thread.
Surely it’s possible to be narrow and intolerant while holding moderate views. Suppose the
question is how much the federal government should spend. Someone moderately left on that
issue could publish a magazine which claimed that government expenditure should be increased by
ten percent, that anyone who wanted five percent or less was obviously an economically illiterate
right wing extremist while the commies who wanted twenty percent were not worth listening to.
You could have a magazine much farther to the left which mostly argued for a twenty to forty
percent increase, but also published an occasional article suggesting that there were serious
arguments for fifty and another arguing that the real problem was how the money was spent, and
the right solution was to fix that while keeping the level of expenditure where it was.
I occasionally see things from the Huffington Post, and it feels a little like this. I am not sure
whether they publish centrist or conservative articles, but they seem to be somewhat more careful
about not overstating the case for their position than most.
 Deiseach says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:37 pm ~new~
And the music was terrible, too.
You disrespect the decade of ABBA (which seems to be the international language of love, even if
the Chinese government “the commercial wing of the Ministry of Culture” rewrote the lyrics*, I am
telling you they got it spot-on with the fashion choices), Mud, Bobby Goldsboro, and other timeless
classics? 😀
*For those of you deprived of living through that glorious Golden Age, the original lyrics are
“Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” where a female protagonist laments her lonely life
and hopes for a lover to come help lift her up; the revised lyrics here are about “The Annoying
Autumn Wind” which has blown away the male protagonist’s fickle girlfriend whom he hopes will
return to him. They kept the original bangin’ choon though, including the zippy keyboards at the
end 🙂
 Matt M says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:33 am ~new~
Perhaps related to the concerns expressed here…

The Atlantic is laying off about 20% of its staff — 68 people across divisions — per a
memo from David Bradley, after collapse of events business.
May 20, 2020 at 2:11 pm ~new~
I agree with a wider claim that there’s a strong habit of pessimism on the left. I don’t know how or
when it happened.
 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:27 pm ~new~
It’s really weird. Aren’t the leftists supposed to be the ones who believe they can fundamentally
transform the nature of society to make it better? And aren’t conservatives supposed to be the
ones who believe in eternal human nature and the inability to solve of certain problems?
It’s really weird, “Yeah, life sucks. I mean, we’re going to radically transform everything and make
it better but god damn I hate everything.” vs, “Oh yes, war, death, poverty, hunger, these are all a
part of life that we can’t do anything about. We just have to live with it. Tea and cookies?”
It doesn’t appear to have been a thing through at least the 1960s… but then again, I wasn’t there.
 FLWAB says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:33 pm ~new~
Aren’t the leftists supposed to be the ones who believe they can fundamentally
transform the nature of society to make it better? And aren’t conservatives
supposed to be the ones who believe in eternal human nature and the inability to
solve of certain problems?
Leftists think they are living in an apartment in Manhattan, and are furious that there is DIRT
EVERYWHERE! WE LIVE IN A HOUSE PEOPLE! HOW DID ALL THIS DIRT GET IN HERE? HOW HAVE
WE FAILED TO CLEAN UP THIS MESS!
Conservatives think we are living in a hovel in a swamp, and are frustrated that the leftists are
trying to keep the floor clean when when there are HOLES FORMING IN ROOF, AND THE DRAINAGE
DITCHES ARE FILLING WITH STICKS, AND SOMEBODY NEEDS TO REPAIR THE FENCE OR THE
ALLIGATORS WILL GET IN! STOP FREAKING OUT OVER THE MUD ON THE FLOOR ALREADY!
Difference in expectations make a world of difference in your outlook.


May 20, 2020 at 4:07 pm ~new~
Conservatives think we are living in a hovel in a swamp,
Doesn’t match modern politics, but you have me thinking of the philosophy expressed in Man of La
Mancha:
Aldonza: The house [orig. “world”] is a dung heap, and we are maggots that crawl on it!
Don Quixote: My lady knows better in her heart…

Hide ↑

May 20, 2020 at 4:50 pm ~new~
The American left includes millions of people and has been around for well over a century, so no
simple description will be adequate.
I *think* something happened to shift from a left with well-defined goals (better conditions of
labor, equal rights) where success was possible to a left where no change could be good enough
(environmentalism, Social Justice) and it was good form to despair of the human race.
 cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:24 pm ~new~
“workers of the world unite” isn’t exactly a cohesive policy goal. I don’t think that the old left was
any more satisfiable than the modern, it just had different targets.
Hide ↑
 Deiseach says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:51 pm ~new~
Aren’t the leftists supposed to be the ones who believe they can fundamentally transform the
nature of society to make it better?
If you are going to fundamentally transform the nature of society, rather than make some running
repairs or minor adjustments, then by the very nature of the condition you have to think that “this
is the worst ever, it is inhuman, everything is bad and hurts” rather than “oh well worse things
happen at sea, a fresh coat of paint and cleaning out the guttering will see us right”.
 AG says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:48 pm ~new~
Perhaps growing up with superstimulus has warped people’s perceptions on what is an acceptable
rate of change.
 GearRatio says:
May 20, 2020 at 3:21 pm ~new~
I think it’s natural to an extent, and I get it. Remember how hard the left was winning during
Obama? ACA, gay marriage, the daily show, all of that. And even at that time it naturally seemed
that things weren’t perfect – ACA got altered, there was still a lot to do on LGBT acceptance, ect.
So there was this great-for-them world where it was still easy to think of it as fundamentally
imperfect in a lot of ways, still pretty bad, and still needing a lot of work.
And then they started losing pretty hard. Trump is president. Wokeness is much less profitable and
liked than before. Progress on LGBT stuff slowed down a lot, people being much less on board with
trans than they were with gay. The authority of the media, generally an ally, is much lessened. The
authority of soft science, generally an ally, is also much lessened.
And some things that were bad or bad to them never got fixed – school shootings, private gun
ownership, etc.
I think it makes sense that it seems catastrophic to some in that sense – if you were really very
happy within the Obama years, this must seem hellish.

 cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:28 pm ~new~
>Wokeness is much less profitable and liked than before.
Is it?
Progress on LGBT stuff slowed down a lot, people being much less on board with
trans than they were with gay
this is to define not conquering new territory as losing. that seems like a stretch.
The authority of the media, generally an ally, is much lessened. The authority of soft
science, generally an ally, is also much lessened.
It doesn’t seem that way to me.
I think it makes sense that it seems catastrophic to some in that sense – if you were
really very happy within the Obama years, this must seem hellish.
The left loves to imagine both that they are a tiny light barely holding back the dark tide of
reaction, and also that they are on the inevitable side of history. A neat trick to be both.
 Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:54 am ~new~
> Is it?
I mean – I got rid of my Amazon Prime membership over the whole thing, so that’s, like $119/year
lost to wokeness.
Hide ↑
 Tenacious D says:
May 21, 2020 at 8:23 am ~new~
Can we adapt an idea from Turchin and ascribe it to elite overproduction? If not in society at large,
at least among the target readership of The Atlantic. There are far more PhDs being minted than
there are tenure track professorship openings, for example; I assume there is similar competition
for high-status positions in media, politics, etc.

o Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 2:38 pm ~new~
There’s this narrative of the Great Depression that we had boom times for a decade and then a
sudden huge crash that led to a decade of depression. This makes for a great narrative but it
simply isn’t true. 1914-1948 were a time of incredible death, destruction, and economic instability
throughout. The Roaring Twenties saw new technology and a birth of culture (the “roaring” part)
but it also saw a hugely unstable economy and gigantic disasters like the Spanish flu or various
civil wars. From 1918-1929 there was a recession bigger than 2008 roughly every two years,
including the first and second worst depressions in US history. And the third by some measures.
There was the American Civil War and the disturbances around it which lasted from roughly 1850
to 1880. We had armed militias running around and a fair amount of political assassinations, not to
mention a civil war.
And of course we had the Revolution before that. And before the Revolution, there was the period
from 1640-1690. In terms of percentage of people and wealth destroyed, that time period is still
the worst in American history.
I agree we’re not exactly at a high point right now. But if you were to ask me to trade this for living
during the early 20th century, or the mid 19th, or the late 18th or 17th…. even setting aside the
fact I like plumbing and the internet, no.

May 20, 2020 at 3:59 pm ~new~
Looking at number of recessions can be misleading. The US had three recessions in the fifties.
There were zero last decade. Which one had the better economy?
 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 5:36 pm ~new~
The other statistics aren’t better. And these aren’t mild depressions like the 1950s: each one was
at least as bad as 2008 and it has the number one, number two, and arguably number three spot
for the entirety of US history. This is a large part of why people thought capitalism and liberal
democracy was going to fall to Fascism/Communism, so it was alarming even at the time.

May 20, 2020 at 6:23 pm ~new~
The 1920 one was bad and obviously so was the Great Depression. What’s number three?
Hide ↑
 Erusian says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:35 pm ~new~
The 1923 recession, which is very arguable. It’s number three in some ways but in sum total it
probably is less significant than (eg) 1882 or 1907. (And the 1918 recession is probably very high
up as well.) At any rate, both dwarf anything in the postwar era. You also have 1926, which was
only slightly worse than 2008 and so relatively mild by the standards of the decade.
Hide ↑
 Garrett says:
May 21, 2020 at 5:55 am ~new~
> Which one had the better economy?
The last one. Because in the 50s I couldn’t buy a smartphone at *any* price.
 zzzzort says:
May 20, 2020 at 8:07 pm ~new~
I agree that all of those times were more dire than the current political situation. But, they were all
accompanied by a very large rewriting of the social contract: the new deal in the 30’s, the
constitutional amendments of the 1860’s, and the constitution in the 1780’s (not sure about the
1690’s). I wouldn’t use the term failed state to describe the preceding periods (except the articles
of confederation in the most literal sense), but I think the form of the state was untenable during
those times. Are there any periods more dysfunctional than the present that didn’t lead to a bid
change in the role of the state?

 Erusian says:
May 21, 2020 at 1:32 pm ~new~
(not sure about the 1690’s)
Well, to pick one example, slavery as a legal institution actually dates to the 1660s (so right in the
middle of 1640-1690). I think that gives it claim to saying it had a long term effect on the
American social contract.

Are there any periods more dysfunctional than the present that didn’t lead to a bid
change in the role of the state?
Well, that depends on how broadly you define change. Of course, the classic example is the early
19th century when there was a huge push to rewrite the Constitution. You could also argue the late
20th century liberal attempts, from the 70s to 80s, basically fizzled and they flew the white flag
and shifted right. It’s also debatable how much some of them really changed the role of state in
society in a day to day sense.
But what really complicates this is that society is always changing and it’s difficult to say when is
more or less. Like, the big expansion of the state in the Progressive Era happened in a fairly stable
time as far as generalized political crises went. (Built on some evil foundations, but stable.)
 zzzzort says:
May 21, 2020 at 6:32 pm ~new~
I would have said the 60’s got more social change than the unrest that engendered it, though
maybe more concentrated to the south. But I was more interested in the converse; has there ever
been a time that shitty where the rules didn’t get changed?
Hide ↑
o BBA says:
May 20, 2020 at 6:45 pm ~new~
The 2020s look particularly bad for the news media and academia. Both are facing extinction-level
events: in the media, advertising revenue has plummeted and nobody is going to pay to subscribe
to rumors they can read on Facebook for free. Meanwhile universities, well, we’ve discussed in
great detail what’s wrong with them, but now the foreign students paying full freight are gone
(possibly for good) which could be enough to trigger a death spiral.
So most writers are facing terrible conditions on the ground. Add to that how many of them were
hard-core Warren supporters and now they’re stuck defending creepy old Joe Biden for the next
few months, and yeah I can see how their future is looking pretty bleak. I mean, uh, not 1930s
levels of bleak, but down there.

 cassander says:
May 20, 2020 at 7:04 pm ~new~
I mean, we are looking at 1930s levels of GDP decline and unemployment. And yet somehow the
stock market is within 10% of record highs.

 m.alex.matt says:
May 20, 2020 at 7:29 pm ~new~
The stock market makes predictions about the future revenues of the companies that make it up.
The stock market is doing well now because it is happy about the measures taken by the
government and the Fed to counter-act the pandemic and expects things to be better over the next
several years.
May 20, 2020 at 7:31 pm ~new~
WWI is probably a global historical low, but I’m not sure necessarily for the US. We got in rather
late and didn’t suffer even the social displacement of the Brits, let alone the French, Germans, or
Russians.
Our low points have got to be the Civil War and 1933-1942. The country is getting hammered and
there’s serious doubt as to whether we are going to pull out of it. You can throw in 1777-1778 as
well.

May 20, 2020 at 12:28 pm ~new~
Hey, Sam. I have a question for you about Plain society.
How much scope for ambition is there among the Plain? If a Plain man or woman really wants to
make a mark on the world, what can he or she respectably aspire to?
o SamChevre says:
May 20, 2020 at 12:55 pm ~new~
Impact on which world? I’ll give examples from three categories:
Just straightforward business success – probably not anything world-changing, but a substantial
business would be a reasonable and fairly common aspiration. (Think business values in the single-
digit millions.) It’s in the news because it failed, but Trickling Springs Dairy would be an example.
Impact on the non-Plain world, though, would more often be sought explicitly as a missionary. For
an close-to-Plain (non-Plain Russian Mennonite) example, look at Scott Martens story of his
grandfather. I’ve linked the whole series–the specific post “To Congo” is about the mission work.
But the most common sort of major impact is within the church – that’s the central thing. The
leader (“bishop”) of the congregation I grew up in ahd moved to the middle of nowhere Tennessee
in his early 20’s, with his new wife and three other young families. They built a church and farms–
including building the roads–and there are several thousand people who have spent time in the
churches that grew from that.

50.

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23 Jun 2020 09:44:14 UTC

Slate Star Codex

P OS TED O N M AY 20 , 2020 BY A READ ER

generators. But anything that can power even a neighborhood is gone.

How screwed are we?

@John Schilling, this comment didn’t age well.

to prefer nuclear proliferation to treaties which prevent it.

May 23, 2020 at 6:51 pm ~new~

states building more of them.

hostility by one of the big nuclear states or something.

May 24, 2020 at 2:30 am ~new~

can return in body bags.

o Radu Floricica says:

May 24, 2020 at 5:42 am ~new~

have no opinion either way.

May 24, 2020 at 9:13 am ~new~

the dictionary under “not saying much.”

someone else can see from a long distance?

May 23, 2020 at 5:19 pm ~new~

not actually necessary.

o Le Maistre Chat says:

May 23, 2020 at 5:43 pm ~new~

Pray to Jesus for a Christian moth Kaiju to defend you?

anti-ship missiles will fuck them right up.

answer to giant robots!)

 Le Maistre Chat says:

 John Schilling says:

what that does.

and a beard shows up to drive them away?

Be friends with them:

would probably do quite well.

May 23, 2020 at 7:23 pm ~new~

the hill about.

And if only our military were taught such things as contingency…

figure out how to tap this power source as well?

o Radu Floricica says:

May 24, 2020 at 6:00 am ~new~

grinders or oxyacetylene torches to hold.

A random one from the archives: Setting the default

preferences shouldn’t automatically be dismissed in a relationship. If my GF wanted my to never

week during vacations or whatever.

between my partner wanting me to do a “normal” thing (like doing an elaborate proposal) or

much-discomfort-does-this-cause-me vs. how-much-happines-does she-get and figure out if it is

jealous to let you near kink clubs.)

o A Definite Beta Guy says:

May 23, 2020 at 2:07 pm ~new~

to shame her back into Normal People Behavior.

cold. She doesn’t want to be dirty, she wants you to be dirty.

of an important thing in relationships?

the time, and pretty much everyone agrees on this.

value and can need things, it gets more complex.

control over them. Sub in this common real-world form of this:

wants outside friends and feels like a prisoner.

is – don’t you love Bob enough to compromise?”.

To have this conversation honestly, you must consider these things:

1. Is this an ask, or a demand?

ultimatum, it’s a different thing.

2. What does the utility balance look like?

the humans in the equation.

away was much less.

4. Does this damage the other person?

worse about themselves. It decreases their ability to work in most situations.

inappropriately focus on the needs of the other.

May 23, 2020 at 2:31 pm ~new~