• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • the size/capability of violence

    That’s, uh, not a small difference. Even if you’re saying that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, neither the terrorist nor the freedom fighter are comparable to a large, powerful country.

    Edit: One more interesting difference is that because a country has a much greater capability to wage war, it also has much more to lose in war: it can lose that very capability. A small group of irregular fighters does not depend much on infrastructure, but a country has population centers, factories, military bases, the seat of government, etc. which are all vulnerable in a way that a hidden cave or tunnel isn’t. We’re seeing the effects of this distinction between Iran and its proxies play out right now.










  • I can’t listen to an hour-long podcast right now, but I want to clarify that by “mistake” I mean a war of choice that that USA started but did not win. I think this is a definition that does not require subjective judgements of intent or justification, because if future defeat had been common knowledge then the public and the government as a whole would not have chosen to go to war. (There may have been those who wanted war for their own reasons which did not depend on victory, but their ability to steer the country towards war depended on convincing others that the war could be won.)


  • A shared commitment to American supremacy.

    They say that like it’s a bad thing. Obviously American voters would be fools to oppose it, but even for the third world the alternative to Pax Americana has never been local self-determination and economic success. In the past, it was dominance by the Soviet Union. Now there is no other country able to exert power on a global scale (although China is working hard to get there) but still plenty of tyrants capable of dominating their region of the globe. The USA does not always act to prevent that. When it does, it usually acts in its own self-interest. It has made serious mistakes. (Thanks for that, Cheney.) The alternative is worse.






  • I don’t have anything to suggest on Lemmy. There’s so little activity that I participate in every community where I see an interesting post, except for those communities which are specifically for people with some particular set of beliefs which I don’t share.

    If you’re looking beyond Lemmy, there are are the comment sections of the SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen blog and the blogs it links to as well as some associated forums and subreddits. You’ll find plenty of liberal libertarians and the comments tend to be polite and high-effort, but keep in mind that a dedication to free speech means that people with opinions that can’t be discussed elsewhere participate too. It’s a bit much for me sometimes.


  • I acknowledge that almost all people (including me) couldn’t survive on their own. Even those that could survive (let’s say that their bunkers have robust long-term life-support systems) still couldn’t live completely alone for many years without going crazy.

    I don’t reject relationships with other people, but I think they should be between independent individuals who associate with each other only because they both want to. (Violating this principle is sometimes necessary but always undesirable.) You appear to think otherwise, and I suppose that’s a fundamental value difference that can’t be resolved through debate. I do want to point out that if I were in charge, my rules wouldn’t prevent you from voluntarily living life your way. I suspect that your rules wouldn’t leave me the analogous option.

    Edit: I suppose that I do feel like I have some obligations to my family members despite being related to them through no choice of my own. Is that how collectivists feel (to a lesser extent) about everyone else?


  • The preppers are different because they want to be left completely alone. They don’t see any acceptable role for government in their lives. I don’t think they’re being realistic. Freedom isn’t free, as the saying goes.

    The techno-libertarians are much more engaged with society and do see a role for government, even if that role is small and (at least according to some of them) bizarre by conventional standards. I’m not going to deny that the bunker-building types are involved in the movement. I often don’t agree with the weirder people involved, but I like that techno-libertarians are willing to hear people out and judge their ideas rationally rather than shunning them for being weird.

    (I think I might have a bunker built if I was rich enough. The expected utility of it is higher than that of, say, a second yacht. Human guards are a dead end. Probably the best thing that can be done if civilization totally collapses and you manage to get inside is blowing up the entrance so that anyone who wants to get to you has to move a thousand tons of rock first. You probably won’t ever get to leave, but it’s better than what would happen if you did.)




  • It was probably just full of garbage (which is also “limp” and attracts flies) and the idea of some cop having to cut it open and go through it because you called it in is sort of funny.

    With that said, I have wondered about similar things. One time I saw a guy I thought might be dead but I waited a few minutes, he moved a little, and I figured he was probably just very drunk so I left. Another time I did go tell an NYC cop that there was a guy lying on the ground in the middle of a busy street, and the cop didn’t seem to care. Maybe I should have called 911 instead but I didn’t want to be officially associated with the situation.