They have never been willing to stop engaging in terrorism, or attempting to destabilize the other governments around there. They have never been willing to make peace in the Middle East with their various rivals. They most certainly haven't been willing to stop abusing their own people and allow civil rights or actual voting for government.
With that as the basis, it's hard to see how we don't end up at odds.
It would be nice if we were more polite and used speech that was less inflammatory, especially in the context of wanting to go after Al-Qaida which they weren't opposed to.
That doesn't change that the state of Iran is run by theocratic despots that are determined to engage in serious terrorism, destabilize the other ME govs, and so on. Our core interests are at odds.
Which would have a stronger deterrent effect, a large fine or making the CEO and corporate board do hard time?
I think "presumption of innocence" would prevent them from doing hard time.
What is going on is 5+ levels of management below them. Drawing a line between "them setting corporate policy X" and "someone in this single local bank in Mexico commits a crime" is going to be hard.
That's especially true if we give the corporation the right to be silent which we'll have to in this context. What will happen in practice is they'll find ways to shield themselves from even knowing about this behavior.
The police equiv would be trying to hold the President of the US legally accountable for the misbehavior of some grunt agent because he's misusing "drug money can be seizure" laws.
The President knows, or should know, that seizure is misused due to bad incentives. Drawing a line from him to "this specific crime was taken" is going to be a problem.
Best case is the Russian empire falls apart and something better can come from it's ashes. Even if that doesn't happen, the amount of economic damage that Russia is doing to itself will keep it busy for decades.
We have exactly the same problem here that we do when that University was "enabling" their rapist sports doctor by looking the other way.
The problem is not "one specific person is doing something bad", it's more that the institution as a whole is doing something bad because of bad incentives.
One of the implications is if we just blame one person and move on, we'll have the same problem all over again the moment we move on.
That's why we should NOT just arrest that doctor and the Mexican branch's employees. We need to fine the organization enough that senior management understands that they've failed. If we don't, then they'll throw someone under the bus and repeat the cycle.
The "more serious" crime is that of a company not hiring enough compliance officers and needing to pay something like 50x the profit they made by ignoring their legal duties.
That link's title "immigration lawyer helped too many people" doesn't match the body which has her being suspended because of the amazing number of immigrants that she's hurt.
To repeat myself, what Trump learned from his previous term was he should only be appointing people who are personally loyal to him.
He learned this by attempting to overturn the election and failing because member of the GOP were more local to the process than they were to him.
The problem of course is "it's not the crime it's the coverup". If a corrupt Pence had overturned the election and then Trump had stayed in power (various other people need to fold but whatever), Trump would then be forced to destroy various other aspects of democracy.
If he wins, the least damaging way for the country to go forward is to drop the 4+ trials/charges he's subject to until after he's out of office.
Yes, we have plenty of good language for talking about Donald Trump. The words racist, authoritarian, corrupt, venal, sexist, anti-Semitic, fascist, criminal, degenerate, profoundly stupid...
And all of these were used against every previous candidate and will be used again against every future one. The problem with dialing it up to 11 every time is you have nowhere further to go when you mean it, because you'd claim that you meant it every time.
How do you explain this outcome, other than the existence of two systems of justice?
The level of complexity and distribution of responsibility makes it very hard to convict individuals (although your link shows that they are charging individuals so there is that).
Importantly we're not "tolerating" this corporate crime. They did 600m in business (their profit will be a fraction of that) and will pay $3 Billion in fines.
This sort of "failure to do their jobs" is going to happen if we allow the existence of large corporate entities but the benefit we get from that is massive so we punish the corporation as a whole.
We don't allow this sort of thing at a purely individual level to avoid the rich having a pass. In theory we could fine a shoplifter 1000x the value of what he stole but that instantly takes us to debtors prisons when they can't pay.
In most cultures, reforming the religion so it conforms to modern ideals and the modern economic needs results in increased prosperity. Increased prosperity means the church gets more money.
Chip: the actual truth is a very large minority of Americans are losing their sh!t over the prospect.
Sure. Just like what happened with the Polish, the Germans, the Mexicans, the Asians, and so on.
We go through this with every group, and we always find American culture is aggressively assimilative. We're the Borg, we should be using/abusing that ability a lot more than we do.
He was indeed killed on the front line, even by soldiers who thought he was a normal combatant.
However if he were in a meeting it still wouldn't count. Hamas and Israel are at war. Sinwar was fair game just like every other member of Hamas is fair game.
Sure. An Israeli "peace" leader would be doing the same things he is doing now after 10-7. No Israeli leader from any side would agree to a serious RoR.
That doesn't change that Bibi was funding Hamas in order to prevent any movement towards peace.
There isn’t a political entity in Israel that can lay out a plausible vision of a one or two state solution.
One pops up every now and then. They give formal offers every decade or so. If there were a partner for peace then we'd see a lot more momentum for them to take power.
If we count the various American plans then the last one was the "Trump" peace plan... shot down because of a lack of RoR.
Having said that, I fully agree that the current Israeli leadership has no (and has never had any) willingness for the Palestinians to have a state, and yes, it's because their fanatic fringe wants all the land.
Far as I can tell, modern liberals mostly think personal success is random and has nothing to do with personal choices or culture.
It is remarkably hard to improve conditions when we're not allowed to point out that personal/cultural choices have a massive impact on expected personal outcomes.
This is why we keep focusing on racism rather than marriage rates.
The Conservative focus on personal choices has the massive advantage that it's something I can control and the affects are massive, although not total.
Chris: Why aren’t scholarships and institutional support for poor white kids from Eastern Kentucky controversial?
Affirmative action isn't pointed at the "poor". Obama's kids qualified.
If we pointed these programs purely at the poor then a lot of issues would drop out. They wouldn't be racist (and unconstitutional) because poor Whites would qualify. There would be less push back because we wouldn't be calling poor Whites "racist" for thinking that Obama's kids don't need help.
Of course there would be huge push back from higher institutions because they'd no longer be able to make their numbers with the Black middle and upper classes.
The damage done by college mismatching isn't just student debt. It's also to blame for getting minority students to not get the harder (i.e. higher paid) degrees.
We're dumbing down what "successful at college X" means when we assume "all degrees are equal".
Turning potential Software Engineers into Women's Studies Majors should have easily predictable affects on inequality.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Ukraine and the Axis of Evil”
And what kind of deal would that have been?
They have never been willing to stop engaging in terrorism, or attempting to destabilize the other governments around there. They have never been willing to make peace in the Middle East with their various rivals. They most certainly haven't been willing to stop abusing their own people and allow civil rights or actual voting for government.
With that as the basis, it's hard to see how we don't end up at odds.
It would be nice if we were more polite and used speech that was less inflammatory, especially in the context of wanting to go after Al-Qaida which they weren't opposed to.
That doesn't change that the state of Iran is run by theocratic despots that are determined to engage in serious terrorism, destabilize the other ME govs, and so on. Our core interests are at odds.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
Which would have a stronger deterrent effect, a large fine or making the CEO and corporate board do hard time?
I think "presumption of innocence" would prevent them from doing hard time.
What is going on is 5+ levels of management below them. Drawing a line between "them setting corporate policy X" and "someone in this single local bank in Mexico commits a crime" is going to be hard.
That's especially true if we give the corporation the right to be silent which we'll have to in this context. What will happen in practice is they'll find ways to shield themselves from even knowing about this behavior.
The police equiv would be trying to hold the President of the US legally accountable for the misbehavior of some grunt agent because he's misusing "drug money can be seizure" laws.
The President knows, or should know, that seizure is misused due to bad incentives. Drawing a line from him to "this specific crime was taken" is going to be a problem.
On “Ukraine and the Axis of Evil”
Best case is the Russian empire falls apart and something better can come from it's ashes. Even if that doesn't happen, the amount of economic damage that Russia is doing to itself will keep it busy for decades.
"
Iran has been training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for terror groups since 1979. They earned their spot on the "Axis of Evil".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorism
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
We have exactly the same problem here that we do when that University was "enabling" their rapist sports doctor by looking the other way.
The problem is not "one specific person is doing something bad", it's more that the institution as a whole is doing something bad because of bad incentives.
One of the implications is if we just blame one person and move on, we'll have the same problem all over again the moment we move on.
That's why we should NOT just arrest that doctor and the Mexican branch's employees. We need to fine the organization enough that senior management understands that they've failed. If we don't, then they'll throw someone under the bus and repeat the cycle.
"
The "more serious" crime is that of a company not hiring enough compliance officers and needing to pay something like 50x the profit they made by ignoring their legal duties.
That's not a great example for many reasons.
"
That link's title "immigration lawyer helped too many people" doesn't match the body which has her being suspended because of the amazing number of immigrants that she's hurt.
On “From The Atlantic: Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’”
Yes. This is one of the "dictator" traps.
"
To repeat myself, what Trump learned from his previous term was he should only be appointing people who are personally loyal to him.
He learned this by attempting to overturn the election and failing because member of the GOP were more local to the process than they were to him.
The problem of course is "it's not the crime it's the coverup". If a corrupt Pence had overturned the election and then Trump had stayed in power (various other people need to fold but whatever), Trump would then be forced to destroy various other aspects of democracy.
If he wins, the least damaging way for the country to go forward is to drop the 4+ trials/charges he's subject to until after he's out of office.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024”
Yes, we have plenty of good language for talking about Donald Trump. The words racist, authoritarian, corrupt, venal, sexist, anti-Semitic, fascist, criminal, degenerate, profoundly stupid...
And all of these were used against every previous candidate and will be used again against every future one. The problem with dialing it up to 11 every time is you have nowhere further to go when you mean it, because you'd claim that you meant it every time.
"
How do you explain this outcome, other than the existence of two systems of justice?
The level of complexity and distribution of responsibility makes it very hard to convict individuals (although your link shows that they are charging individuals so there is that).
Importantly we're not "tolerating" this corporate crime. They did 600m in business (their profit will be a fraction of that) and will pay $3 Billion in fines.
This sort of "failure to do their jobs" is going to happen if we allow the existence of large corporate entities but the benefit we get from that is massive so we punish the corporation as a whole.
We don't allow this sort of thing at a purely individual level to avoid the rich having a pass. In theory we could fine a shoplifter 1000x the value of what he stole but that instantly takes us to debtors prisons when they can't pay.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
One of our killer software apps is the concept of punishing freeloaders, i.e. "justice".
This makes cooperation at scale possible. It also makes certain aspects of civilization hard.
"
You lose me at "most cooperative species on the planet".
The eusocial species, like ants, have us beat by a long way.
On “Hamas, Anyar Sinwar, and The Grand Delusion”
Never forget oil.
In most cultures, reforming the religion so it conforms to modern ideals and the modern economic needs results in increased prosperity. Increased prosperity means the church gets more money.
"
Chip: the actual truth is a very large minority of Americans are losing their sh!t over the prospect.
Sure. Just like what happened with the Polish, the Germans, the Mexicans, the Asians, and so on.
We go through this with every group, and we always find American culture is aggressively assimilative. We're the Borg, we should be using/abusing that ability a lot more than we do.
"
The problem is less "these immigrants don't assimilate" and more "most countries aren't good at assimilation."
Historically most countries are ethnostates and their traditions and culture reflect that.
"
a virtual certainty that the entirety of the population has very personal reasons to hate Israel forever.
This is true. However it was also true before.
The only change is we, the West, understand this.
"
Sure. They're Religion 3.0, they and they alone have the TRUTH, a direct line to God-made-book. It's their source of strength and superiority.
And Israel is this massive F.U. to that idea.
"
He was indeed killed on the front line, even by soldiers who thought he was a normal combatant.
However if he were in a meeting it still wouldn't count. Hamas and Israel are at war. Sinwar was fair game just like every other member of Hamas is fair game.
"
Sure. An Israeli "peace" leader would be doing the same things he is doing now after 10-7. No Israeli leader from any side would agree to a serious RoR.
That doesn't change that Bibi was funding Hamas in order to prevent any movement towards peace.
"
There isn’t a political entity in Israel that can lay out a plausible vision of a one or two state solution.
One pops up every now and then. They give formal offers every decade or so. If there were a partner for peace then we'd see a lot more momentum for them to take power.
If we count the various American plans then the last one was the "Trump" peace plan... shot down because of a lack of RoR.
Having said that, I fully agree that the current Israeli leadership has no (and has never had any) willingness for the Palestinians to have a state, and yes, it's because their fanatic fringe wants all the land.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
Far as I can tell, modern liberals mostly think personal success is random and has nothing to do with personal choices or culture.
It is remarkably hard to improve conditions when we're not allowed to point out that personal/cultural choices have a massive impact on expected personal outcomes.
This is why we keep focusing on racism rather than marriage rates.
The Conservative focus on personal choices has the massive advantage that it's something I can control and the affects are massive, although not total.
"
Chris: Why aren’t scholarships and institutional support for poor white kids from Eastern Kentucky controversial?
Affirmative action isn't pointed at the "poor". Obama's kids qualified.
If we pointed these programs purely at the poor then a lot of issues would drop out. They wouldn't be racist (and unconstitutional) because poor Whites would qualify. There would be less push back because we wouldn't be calling poor Whites "racist" for thinking that Obama's kids don't need help.
Of course there would be huge push back from higher institutions because they'd no longer be able to make their numbers with the Black middle and upper classes.
"
When I give "bad culture/choices" examples I use my relatives.
I assume this behavior is no less dysfunctional when the person is black rather than white.
"
The damage done by college mismatching isn't just student debt. It's also to blame for getting minority students to not get the harder (i.e. higher paid) degrees.
We're dumbing down what "successful at college X" means when we assume "all degrees are equal".
Turning potential Software Engineers into Women's Studies Majors should have easily predictable affects on inequality.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.