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@Savant
The issue with audits is that democracies actually have standards they can fail. Kim Jong Un is accountable to no one, but his military is significantly weaker.
If we could pay what Kim Jong Un "pays" to get the military power he does have, we should have 20x the power we do now.
He's built operational nuclear weapons with what (on keynesian paper) would be the GDP of Montana.
There isn't much to work with in NK, but what little there is can be micromanaged. Similar to how the soviet space program and most of the other things they succeeded at worked.
They basically found a team of geniuses, motivated them on a case by case basis, and gave them whatever they asked for.
Absolutely unscalable, and that's why it was a hilarious juxtaposition to their general quality of life that they could be the first to put a man in orbit and yet they could not manage to provide mailmen working motorcycles (among a million other examples).
What we have in the west is what would be a very prosperous free market that is being enslaved to create a great wall of teats for the corrupt and useless.
By sheer force of statistics, some of them produce something useful... two years late and 500% over budget. Just in time to assure us that its obsolete and needs to be replaced with something better. It doesn't help to have audits if there is no consequence for failing them.
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@IlDiavolo
In other words: if they spend a trillion dollars that must just be how much it costs to have soldiers everywhere and the best weapons. If there weren't soldiers everywhere and the weapons were a little less advanced then it would be cheaper.Yes, it definetly would because the developement of the most advanced weaponry technology comes at a very high cost.
How do you know?
I mean, as far as I know the US have the most powerful weapons of the world, right?
Yes
I think there is more in the operational expenses.
In every category and at every level the difference between the base cost and what was paid cannot be accurately gauged.
You cannot separate logistics from government contracts and contractors. The base resources and every piece of equipment developed and manufactured.
So, I would get rid of the unnecessary expenditure which is the operational expenses
I would get rid of all unnecessary expenditure, but I'm saying it's 85% waste and 40% of that waste is subtle corruption.
There is no limit to how much of it can be wasteful so it's not like I (as a victim of the taxes) have any interest in discussing the relative priority of bases, R&D, or division count.
That would be like looking at a $1500 pastry and wondering if it might be cheaper to use pears instead of raspberries. There is something horribly wrong with the cost and the difference in cost of pears and raspberries ought to only be a $1.
In other words the people who will charge you $500 for three raspberries will have no problem charging $400 for a pear.
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@IlDiavolo
If you withdrew the soldiers from the middle east, just to mention one the many places there are US soldiers around the world, your expenses would drop significantly. That's why Trump is trying to bring peace instead of keeping conflicts unresolved and demand all Europe chip in more money for their military budget.
You're right in one sense, that more bases and more logistics ought to cost more money.
You're wrong in the more critical sense: The assumption that the expenditures of the US federal government are proportional to the achievement of the federal government.
In other words: if they spend a trillion dollars that must just be how much it costs to have soldiers everywhere and the best weapons. If there weren't soldiers everywhere and the weapons were a little less advanced then it would be cheaper.
That false premise here is that the federal government is fundamentally an honest organization where success is rewarded and failure is not. If the federal government is a money laundering scheme (and it is) then the troops everywhere and the advanced weapons are a by product. An excuse.
One excuse works as well as another. If they close a base in Europe, they can introduce a new project to blow people's brains out with X-ray beams on drones, it will only cost 500 billion and the end prototype will not work, nobody is to blame, same investors and corporations just get the next contract.
All governments struggle with this because it is inherent in taxation, but I assert that in all probability the US federal government is the most wasteful and most amoral of them all. Power corrupts, and the US hegemony after the fall of the soviet union has been unchecked except by the American voter; and we haven't been doing a very good job on average.
No one steals more, no one threatens more, no one infiltrates more, no one subverts more, no one lies more.
This problem won't be fixed by shuffling logistics around or firing a few park rangers, but I guess you have to start somewhere. Open the curtains and see who hides from the light.
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Theft is fundamentally wasteful, always has been.
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@Greyparrot
I've always wanted to be part of the oligarchy :)Yes, I see now MAGA is the oligarchy, and that is why he made the message public.
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, that's fair point, and the real question is whether Xi can maintain control for about the 5 years it will take to pull off the retooling. As I’ve said before, China surpassing foreign manufacturing wasn’t just economic, it was historical payback for the Opium Wars. They didn’t forget, and they didn’t forgive. Chinese always play the long game.
Oh they definitely want to enact some karma, I don't think it's anything unique to Chinese culture though. Just human nature.
Their "Belt and Road" initiate is straight out of East India Company manual.
As for the political stability of the Chinese government, hard to tell. When you suppress speech you might delay or prevent a popular movement but it also renders you blind to the level of discontent.
Something the redit mods and "main stream news" have learned the hard way recently.
If there is one thing communists,neofascists, and Chinese traditionalist all agree on it would be this: Don't bow to bullying from westerners (or anyone).
So I doubt there will be any blame on Xi so long as he can frame the suffering as an attempted extortion by foreigners. Never mind the fact that using overseas monetary corruption to build up their industrial base has been the obvious strategy of the CCP for forty years.
Kinda like constantly stealing honey and then saying the bees are bullying you when they finally start stinging.
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@TheGreatSunGod
50% in what units? Dollars?In dollars, China produces 100 billion worth of food (6.8% of GDP), but imports 140 billion worth of food.
Dollars don't keep people alive and healthy. Nutrients do.
If a man ate 1 steak and 1 cup of cream a year he would probably be better off than the average American or European who eats that much every month (or in some cases every week).
Rice will keep workers working for years with only minimal addition of other vitamin and protein sources.
They produce far more than rice.
The soy they buy is being used in "wasteful" processes like soy sauce fermentation.
Extreme example: A $150 truffle which can fit in the palm of your hand is not the same as $150 of potatoes which could feed a man for half a year (longer if sedentary).
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@TheGreatSunGod
50% in what units? Dollars? Calories? Shipping mass?
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@Greyparrot
China is calorie self-sufficient and so is the USA. That is a problem for places like Taiwan.
Don't confuse the equilibrium in a high trade environment with the limits of potential.
When you have a huge amount of factories, steel, fertilizer precursors, and energy, you have options like converting desert to farmland. So eventually (and I mean within 5 years) they could restore their current food quality of life as well as having enough to survive (on rice).
They've already started fighting the gobi desert.
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@Greyparrot
So the important thing isn’t just who makes the most, it’s who’s buying. People with the money make the rules, because if they stop shopping, the factories don’t win, they just get stuck with piles of stuff nobody needs.
That is only on the small scale.
On the large scale, the scale of nations (especially giant nations like China); you have the factories and if foreigners don't come more for you.
That's why after WW2 when every large manufacturing base in the world was bombed or exhausted except North America, North Americans had plenty of their own product.
I have said multiple times and on this site that this was always the CCP's ambition.
They're high on neo-marxism, which despite all of its conceptual flaws gets one thing exactly right: He who has the means of production has economic power.
You say "people with the money make the rules"
No, people with the guns make the rules and people with the means of production make the guns and everything else. Money is of no value if it doesn't represent something to trade.
If the USA won't trade on the petrodollar hegemony or its own land and intellectual property then there is nothing for it to sell. The US dollar is useless to China.
Think about it this way: If you think americans can buy american, i.e. america can be economically independent; then why can't China? It can. The transition just hurts at first just as it would for the USA.
The CCP is in a much better position to squelch discontent though. The only reason the CCP is upset is because they wanted to go from being the factory of the world to the master of the world and that means they want other countries to depend on them. First for cheap goods, but then for protection.
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Pre-deepfake audio clip or "tell all" book of lies?Former President Donald Trump once described late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a "terrific guy" who liked women "on the younger side."
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When the concepts are irrational, you can manipulate them with valid logic all day and still produce incoherent non-sense.
Definitions need to be precise, if there are variations they must not be equivocated upon, there can be no circular references, properties must be derived not asserted.
All of the words Marx uses fail one or more of those tests. It's incomprehensible, and whether Marx was an arrogant nutjob who thought it made sense or whether that was an intentional manipulation to call critics stupid doesn't matter.
We have someone on this site who can provide a good analogy.
Marx is to economics and political philosophy as ebuc is to physics and cosmology.
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@Double_R
Who could have predicted it would all be boiled down to a consensus on a handful of media sources that barely cite anything and which the large majority of the public do not trust? In fact one might say all the experts agree that the glorified bloggers are full of shit, but you know better!
How convenient for you.
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@TheGreatSunGod
You ain't lyinJesus too used magic which he called miracles.He also said anyone can do what he did as long as there is faith. Like, really, you cant be a Christian and not believe in magic.
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@Double_R
It's incredible how you know every expert, no matter the subject.But the leftists in power are not afraid that he is wrong. They are afraid cause they know he is right.lol ok bro. Every economist is wrong, the guy with a third grade vocabulary knows it all. Yeah, that's MAGA.
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@WyIted
Please address comments by me with logical, common sense critical thinking, that find you find invalid.I know what you consider logical so here is an irrefutable rebuttal🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🔥🔥🔥🔥🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺Many = ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️💀💀🟰 BAD
Nice, but where is the heterogeneous mixture of advanced physics and geometry terms jumbled in no particular order?
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Kulinski also spreads disinformation and so do his viewers:
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@Savant
That's more general than self-defense, it's the right to liberty.Self-defense is derived from from the right to liberty.
Yes
The aggressor directly violated your rights but didn't directly violate his.
The proposition that it is impossible to indirectly violate rights is destroyed by many ad absurdum.
Rights violation implies harm of some kind.
You can make that claim, but you may end up in semantics about harm; I have learned to avoid vague words in deeper debate for that reason.
The classic example is "has sex with someone in a coma", against their rights but undetectable harm if they don't know.
The guy wasn't harmed until you retaliated.
Which is irrelevant.
Your choice to retaliate affects whether the third party lives or dies and directly harms them.
Yes
If the aggressor turned and shot the person next to them, that would be violating their rights even further.
Yes
So there is still room to violate that person's right by throwing a javelin, which is what you are doing.
Correct
chain of last necessary causeRetaliation isn't necessary, though, it's a choice.
When an event is caused by more than one thing it can be an sum of causes (for quantitative causation) or a set of necessary causes.
I was not claiming the event was necessary, but that there are necessary causes for the event to occur.
Identifying the last necessary cause which a reasonable person could perceive to be the last necessary cause (and thus be able to predict the event) is the baseline algorithm for determining responsibility.
I am saying this algorithm is modified by acts of aggression such that when you attempt to violate someone's rights you take responsibility for events downstream from your aggression even though you are no longer making the choices.
Which events? Those defined by the razor; which is a precise and objective determination of the "human shield factor", the innocents you put in danger (even if only of loss of property) with your aggression.
You're not saying "X is similar to Y in this way so it must be similar in all ways" right?Again, self-defense is part of the right to liberty, so the same rules apply.
That does not follow at all.
Hence, empty field is basically the same as a field with an aggressor, from perspective of right to liberty. Again, you don't have an obligation to defend yourself, it's just allowed like anything else unless it harms a third party.
The difference between an open field and a field with an aggressor in it is that the field with the aggressor in it is a threat to your rights.
If there was a dangerous creature that wasn't sapient and therefore not a moral actor in the field it might be just as dangerous as a javelin throwing man, but it wouldn't be a threat to your rights.
When choosing relative risk to the moral actor, it would be a trolley problem situation; the resolution of which depends upon personally chosen values.
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@Savant
I am asserting a right to not be in a battlefield where collateral damage is a major risk.Why does the guy lose his right to be in the battlefield because the person next to him throws a javelin?
Nobody loses his rights except the aggressor.
You're violating that person's liberty by killing them because he wouldn't be dead without you taking action.
He wouldn't be dead if the aggressor didn't violate rights.
The way this works is you follow the chain of last necessary cause for each event until you find the aggressor, and he or she is the one who violated anyone's rights who were violated at any point in the chain.
Right to self-defense is basically "you have the right to do anything unless it harms anyone unless that person is an aggressor."
That's more general than self-defense, it's the right to liberty. I didn't use the word "harm" I said "violates rights". Harm is often violating rights, but people think they're entitled to feel harmed and that is not objective. i.e. dumping your life partner harms them, but they don't have a right to keep you against your will.
The other thing about rights is that it by definition excludes aggressors. Aggressors already violated rights and thus any 'rights' they may have are practical mechanisms to avoid injustice and rapidly end ongoing threats to the rights of anyone.
Adding an innocent person to that field has the same effect in each case of causing an NAP violation if you throw the javelin.
Why?
You're not saying "X is similar to Y in this way so it must be similar in all ways" right?
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So the executive branch is now operating on the code of the sith:
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@Savant
I think you're applying a different standard to this javelin case than you were before.
I am not. I am saying that it is the guy in the field throwing a javelin at you that has violated the liberty of a person right next to him should your counter-javelin hit the innocent.
I am asserting a right to not be in a battlefield where collateral damage is a major risk.
It is no different than asserting that there is a right to not be in wilderness so choked with toxic pollution that it represents a threat to your health or an the equivalent of a denial of area attack on your freedom of movement.
The only question I am answering here is: Who is at fault for the battlefield?
If somebody lights your house on fire and the fire department puts it out the arsonist is at fault not only for the fire damage but also for the water damage.
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@Greyparrot
That's why you solve for babies first. If you can drop bombs on babies you can drop bombs on anyone. If you can't drop bombs on babies then the bad guys have already won (because they will drop bombs on babies).
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@kingrichie
There are like five threads about this. Why pick the one which isn't?
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@Double_R
Don't comment on my comments if you don't want to discuss what my comment is discussing.
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@Savant
The opponent still loses their advantage, because you would somehow be able to get the car without harming the person.
If the person's rights weren't violated then there is no controversy.
Shooting the person is a needed to access the car
and after a lot of wasting time we've refined the razor so that this would be impossible.
When we compare the situation without the god-enforced to the one with the god-enforcer then we see that you are unable to gain an advantage.
From a purely tactical analysis you would prefer that there was no enforcer-god. That means that the action in question (murderous hijacking) would be your fault and not the fault of the enemy, even if the enemy is the bad guy.
just like collateral damage is inevitable with bombing the enemy location
but if the IDF could make children invincible, they would. They are advantaged by the innocent being out of harms way. Your hypothetical hijacker is not. He needs a car to steal, a person to murder, a rental agreement to break (which is a harm quantity not withstanding).
In either case it would be convenient for you if the other person didn't exist and had never rented your car or been near the terrorist base.
No, you introduced a spurious element; a resource that magically existed, free to be taken if innocent people could not be harmed (have their rights violated).
If you had a car, you wouldn't need to steal it. If it had been rented and the guy renting it never existed then it wouldn't be rented anymore.
You basically said "yea but what if I had a car, that's an advantage."
You were abusing the razor with asymmetric scenarios and I suspect you know it.
it's far too slight to actually impact what the definition of self-defense is.
I was just using "self-defense" as a stand in for "justified violence". That's the interesting concept and if "self-defense" means something else it's probably irrelevant.
Back when I wrote my ideal bill of rights I said "defense of rights", not "self defense".
"self defense" implies that if you saw someone getting raped you could not defend them because they aren't yourself. Nobodies moral system works that way and mine doesn't either.
The aggressors act like wild animals and its open season on them when they prove themselves philosophical savages. All moderation beyond that is at the convenience and safety of the civilized.
There is no right to single combat, which is what a literal interpretation of "self-defense" as a moral root would be.
As for this field non-sense, the general formulation is you have a right to do anything you want so long as it doesn't violate the liberty of others (other moral actors, the civilized). Since getting murdered is a violating of liberty, throwing a javelin at an empty field is morally distinct from throwing a javelin at a field containing an innocent person.
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@Savant
Then it's your car that you own and rented to them.
...
"Who loses the advantage if the (supposed) innocent party could not have their rights violated in any way because an omniscient omnipotent super-intelligence which is absolutely and eternally tasked with the sole goal of enforcing this rule by whatever means are most elegant and cunning prevents said violation of rights."
Double infinity + 1, I win.
"the good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect"
That's utilitarianism, root fallacy: the presumption that quantitative moral analysis is possible without providing any moral theory that would define such a quantity.
We may say colloquially "worse" or "better" but when you drill down we're talking about values within someone's chosen value system which are not necessarily universal, and very often are qualitative and not quantitative.
Without an objective formula to create a universal quantitative value system this is, in practice, subjectivism rebranded.
That has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I am categorically not saying that the enemy is so bad that stopping them is more good than hijacking and murdering is bad.
I notice that your link claims it is consequentialist, which it is, utilitarianism is by definition consequentialist, but it goes further by claiming consequences can be compared quantitatively and thus summed, and that the sum is what has moral implications.
I would say that as everyone has a duty to the moral principles of their own values, an army that values innocent life and liberty would have a duty to take risks and expend resources in order to cause less collateral damage.
Just like the severity of punishment, this is where fuzzy logic and vague value quantification has room to maneuver.
Notice how this is bounded by well defined borders. No diversion or mercy can be a duty that would require losing to the aggressor. You aren't obligated to firebomb Tokyo, but you are justified in doing it, not to save the lives of your own men or the lives in hypothetical future generations but because they attacked you.
If someone attacked you and stole a little pebble that has no use to the rest of the world but sentimental value to you, and if everyone else in the world lined up in front of your attacker to prevent your counterattack, they all forfeited their lives.
You can see from that extreme example how very non-utilitarian my asserted principle is.
A moral system where rights can be denied if enough people would rather die than see a right enjoyed is self-contradictory. That is not a right, it's a privilege contingent on the decision of others to side against you.
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@Savant
GOT YOU!If you mean to steal a rented car then the victim is the rental companyYou also shot them though to get the car.
No, you got neither them nor the car. They are both invincible and inaccessible to you as a combatant.
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@Savant
Who loses the advantage if the (supposed) innocent party and all their propertyOkay, then they're renting the car.
GOT YOU!
If you mean to steal a rented car then the victim is the rental company, and they all become invincible.
We can go back to being serious any time you want.
Similarly to Palestinians in hospitals using the hospital but not owning it.
Somebody built it, and I doubt it was Hamas.
It's really not that different, if that person never existed, you would have access to the car/be able to bomb the hospital without killing civilians.
It is different in the relevant way I have described. Israel doesn't need a hospital to beat Hamas, your guy needed a car to catch the enemy.
The reason for this difference is in the value systems that are implied. A combatant who did not value human rights would not be impeded by stealing or using human shields (holding hostage any human right).
Stealing is never justified, but collateral damage (killing human shields) is so long as you are not the original aggressor.
The razor lets you quickly identify which situation is occurring.
You are thinking of it like "Ok so something happens and now I can violate rights in order to win". All your examples of "something I need to win" have been theft.
I am saying that is wrong, it is never ok to violate rights; but under some circumstances some violations of rights must be seen as being committed by the more indirect party.
In other words "he left me no choice", not as an open ended excuse which depends on your subjective opinion; but based on the objective nature of the warfare.
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@Savant
"all else equal"It's a thought experiment and not that big a stretch. Let's say you would have bought the car if the other person hadn't.
There is no car.
The diagnostic is not an alternate history. Since you're getting all contract lawyer on me I'll will be more precise:
Who loses the advantage if the (supposed) innocent party and all their property was rendered invincible to all combatants and the person is unable to acknowledge that there is any conflict much less join it.
They cannot spy.
They cannot be traumatized.
They cannot be used as cover (the bullet goes right through, they are transparent to combatants)
They continue to do normal productive things and do all the trades they would otherwise have done.
They would have gone to critical jobs like nuclear reactor oversight (if that was their job).
Unless their job is in someway contributing to the war effort, in which case they no longer make any contribution. If the person was a general, it would be as if you had lost a general.
This occurs at the instant you or your enemy take an action that would violate the person's rights in any way.
If you gain advantage, then the violation of the innocent person's rights would be the aggressor's sin.
If they gain advantage, then the violation of the innocent person's rights would be your sin regardless of whether you are on the right side of the conflict.
Now that you've forced all of this silliness that should have been obvious from context; apply the diagnostic question to your hypothetical and determine the guilty party.
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@Double_R
You want a solution to what I actually complained about in this thread?Complaining about the right thins is a solution, or at least it would be if people were honest and rational.but they aren'tIf you have no solutions then your complaints are meaningless.
Here ya go: Stop lying about what you believe.
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@Savant
Apply the diagnostic. (Who loses the advantage if the (supposed) innocent party did not exist?)If the innocent party didn't exist, maybe I would have bought the car instead.
Aren't you cheeky?
"all else equal"
What's next, maybe Hitler wouldn't have been born?
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@Savant
Apply the diagnostic.Ok, let's say the aggressor stole my car. That's restraining me (in this hypothetical) to have to pursue them some other way.
because cars just grow on trees... "person or property", recompile and execute.Ok, let's say the aggressor stole my car. That's restraining me (in this hypothetical) to have to pursue them some other way.
Collateral damage also includes children in hospitals. Those aren't willing accomplices.
Killing willing accomplices isn't collateral, they are legitimate targets.
Collateral damage means harm to innocent parties either by personal injury or property damage.
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@Double_R
Complaining about the right thins is a solution, or at least it would be if people were honest and rational.
but they aren't, they lie to themselves as much as others. They keep doing the exact same thing and expect a different result. They are hypocrites and lack the ability to imagine the though processes of others.
More ground breaking discoveries I know.
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@Savant
If it is impossible to shoot an aggressor without embezzling money by the choice of the aggressor, it is.Okay, so then what if I steal a car to pursue my enemy? What if I shoot the car owner to steal their car? What if I shoot ten people to steal the car? Is all of that self-defense?
No it isn't, because it wasn't a choice of the aggressor to potentially gain advantage by your restraint.
If you kill ten people trying to pitstop the enemy, that is collateral damage; but violating people's rights to make yourself stronger so you have a better chance of victory (or any chance) is not something that can be blamed on the enemy. That is equivalent to stealing someone's kidney.
"I need to do something immoral to win" != "I am responsible for collateral damage"
A diagnostic question would be this: Who loses the advantage if the (supposed) innocent party did not exist?
If you gain advantage, then the violation of the innocent person's rights would be the aggressor's sin.
If they gain advantage, then the violation of the innocent person's rights would be your sin regardless of whether you are on the right side of the conflict.
If there was no one to steal a kidney from what happens? You die of kidney failure before you can win (I assume).
If there was no one to draft?
If there was no one to tax?
If there was no car to steal even if it takes murder?
You lose advantage without these victims you would drain to make yourself stronger because you aren't strong enough without that theft.
Contrast with:
If there were no innocent children in gaza?
If there were no babies in bombers?
If there were no other cars on the highway that might be involved in a pileup as you pursue your enemy?
If there was no embezzling armor to consider?
Without the (supposed) innocent in gaza, the IDF would be bolder, stronger, able to use far more effective weapons and risk far fewer of their soldiers all for a lower costs.
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@Savant
I can shoot an aggressor while embezzling money, but embezzling money isn't self-defense, just another thing I was doing at the same time.
If it is impossible to shoot an aggressor without embezzling money by the choice of the aggressor, it is.
Suppose they put on body armor that triggers a theft of bitcoin from innocent victims into your account every time it is penetrated.
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@Savant
The OP was a moral question. Judicial precedence has no relevance because no authority is reliable except reason.
it's that self-defense only implies the right to kill the person attacking you, not the right to attack anyone at all. So while there might be potential arguments to justify attacks killing noncombatants, I find it hard to buy that self-defense is one of them.
Collateral damage is not "anyone at all" it's people in the way or people who are part of production chain used by your enemies.
That implies there is a responsibility to not be a cog in the machine of an aggressive organization, and that seems to follow. If it's immoral to throw the first punch, it's also immoral to be part of a team that plans to throw the first punch.
Now it doesn't feel fair that babies in Nagasaki burned, obviously they are innocent; but that is choosing to look at it as punishment.
Suppose that knowing your enemy values the lives of babies, you take babies hostage and then demand something crazy such as half of your enemies committing suicide (morally the smallest demand is equivalent to the largest demand except in the calculation of proportionality of punishment).
1.) Your enemies refuse and you kill the babies, perhaps they're your own babies. Did the enemy kill the babies?
2.) Now suppose you put a baby in the back seat of every bomber, fighter, and warship? Who killed the babies in that case?
3.) Now you leave them at home, but that home is a base from which you are waging war, a base which must be occupied to end the threat. Who killed the babies in that case?
I assert that all three are the exact same moral situation. The aggressors not only take responsibility for their own potential deaths, but all those deaths of innocents which become necessary to stop them.
Those people in Gaza who are truly innocent, who would stop Hamas if they could, if they die by an Israeli bomb; that is not Israel's fault, its Hamas's fault for turning innocent people's neighborhood into a rocket artillery launching site.
Contrast to this:
Rarely is it applied to situations where people who don't pose a threat are harmed to protect oneself. For example, harvesting someone's kidneys without their consent to save yourself is not self-defense, presuming they have nothing to do with your own kidneys failing.
Presumably not only has the kidney owner not committed an act an aggression but nobody has committed an act of aggression that would predictably endanger the kidney owner.
That it is why it is not self-defense, and why it is not self-defense to steal to fund a just war, or to draft soldiers to fight a just war.
It is not "I have a right to take anything I need to win, or kill anyone if their death would help me win", it is "has the enemy chosen to attack in a way by which they would gain advantage if I could not cause collateral damage".
By definition when a government attacks, they have made everyone in their controlled territory targets and are thus responsible for their deaths.
Keep in mind when I say "attack" I mean the moral factor: initiation of aggressive force (or threat thereof, or breaking a promise). The moral high ground (if anyone has it) will stay with the same side regardless of collateral damage. The fault is the aggressors, not only for the deaths of their own soldiers and their own civilians, but also the deaths of the civilians of the other side who died as collateral.
For example if the French had decided to fight in Paris it could have been Stalingrad before Stalingrad. A million people would die, hundreds of thousands of them civilians, tens of thousands of them children.
but that would not be the fault of the French because they did not initiate the use of force. On the contrary when the nazis decided to fight bitterly in Berlin and from many other major cities, those deaths were their fault as were all the deaths in the whole war.
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@TheGreatSunGod
Assuming you are best korea (and I do) it didn't go well last time I tried to discuss agriculture with you. I believe you said you were going to hunt bugs for your chickens in a national park and this was going to free you of grocery stores better than planting some potatoes.
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@TheGreatSunGod
No competition, no checking if anything was produced. Just use it as an excuse to give money back to the people.I do support the idea of government contractors, as long as there is competition between them. Kinda like US military production.
They call it "stimulus checks" in other circumstances. Just do it without redistribution (otherwise freeloaders) and you've basically stolen congress's power of the purse.
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@Savant
It is the only non-transient cause.Sure, but it's pretty useful to measure short term price changes too.
Such measurement does not require concept subversion.
Also measuring price changes wouldn't necessarily tell you just the effects of the money supply
Untangling factors is and always has been a losing battle, but that does not justify concept subversion. It doesn't even make an argument for concept subversion.
There are many reasons a solid changes shape (deforms), thermal expansion is just one, but that does not mean we should call any deformation thermal expansion; that would serve only to cause confusion and error.
Public goods aren't always deadweight. It's good to have roads and schools.
It's good to have bread, but when the government steals to provide bread it will be 90% dead weight not only because they will steal from the wrong places but they will also waste most of the money because they face no consequences personal or political for such waste.
The experiment has been run, 60 million people died.
The experiment is being run for education and healthcare, we are getting back 10% value at most, it gets worse every year, and as if that wasn't bad enough the theft has shifted the supply demand curve so that all investment into education and healthcare can only go towards government money laundering. Even more dead weight.
What is the term for the increase in general prices due to an excess increase in money supply?Increase in general prices is inflation regardless of the cause.
That was not an answer.
Are you saying there is no longer a word specifically for "an increase in the amount of currency in circulation, resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and rise in prices"?
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@Savant
Uniformly rising prices is the effect, inflating money supply is the cause.It's one cause, not the only one.
Is this new term on the lips of every citizen when they shake their heads at the totals in stores? If the answer is "no" that would mean the subversion has succeeded because that IS the cause of that bottom number going up and up and up.The money supply is the main cause of inflation but not the only supply.
Even if there's some rare exception, we're talking about if they can contribute to price increases.
It is the only non-transient cause.
Define efficiency in this context.Lack of deadweight loss or negative changes in consumer behavior
Government spending is always dead weight.
Lack of deadweight loss = no dead weight = no government theft and spending
An impossible property for a tax to have.
Controlled, 2% inflation is fine, it's predictability that matters most.
It is justice and prosperity that matters most. Predictability is the obsession of central planners and day traders.
Why is 2% more predictable than 0%?
Decreased supply/taxes increase prices.
but not all of them at the same time over long periods.
Even if there's some rare exception, we're talking about if they can contribute to price increases.
If there is a scale large enough to walk around on, and I walk around it; I can increase local pressure, but I can't increase the scale total.
Inflation is adding more weight to the scale. Anything that can be charted on the supply demand curve is just moving weight around. Which can still screw people if their work is devalued compared to what they need/want; but fundamentally its a different phenomenon.
So the definition isn't misleading.
"all the prices are going up" is imprecise but not misleading. The only thing that makes "all the prices go up" is over-inflation of the money supply.
Contrast with post # where you said "An increase in prices"
Either you meant "a general increase in prices" which would be an imprecise definition of inflation (since that is only caused by excess increase in money supply), and your definition is compatible with pre-subversion websters, or you meant that when a fire takes out a orchard and the apple prices skyrocket locally that is also inflation in which case you're wrong and the definition is misleading.
Inflation is caused by national banks, but natural disasters can cause an increase in prices.
Then what is the new term for inflation?The new term for what you call inflation? An increase in the money supply. The term for prices going up? Inflation.
What is the term for the increase in general prices due to an excess increase in money supply?
The money supply is the main cause of inflation
Reading as "the money supply is the main cause of general increases in all prices"
What else can cause general (permanent) increase in all prices?
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@Savant
because CPI wasn't a redefinition of a "useful concept, one which if forgotten would leave people unable to understand critical dynamics of fiat currency systems".Again, the economic understanding of fiat currency hasn't been lost.
Despite the best efforts of subversive attempts, as my insistence on using the correct definition and the general public's awareness of the problem demonstrate.
Inflation was commonly measured as the rise in prices, so there was some utility in using a definition corresponding to what was being measured.
That's like saying pressure is often measured by the gravity force of a liquid metal, so there was some utility in using a definition corresponding to what was being measured.
Oh wait, they kinda do, mm of mercury.
Now what would happen if they were to start calling space a "low mercury environment", and then some sad product of the American education system said that we need to bring liquid mercury to the moon so we can breathe.
That is the OP, except it wasn't some accident, he was told this non-sense by people acting to subvert the definition of inflation.
If anything, this is less misleading, since the old definition could lead people to assume that something other than the price of goods was being measured.
IT WAS!
Just like the height of the mercury column was measuring something else: pressure.
Uniformly rising prices is the effect, inflating money supply is the cause. CPI is a proxy for inflation. Inflation is what theoretically needs to be known by the national banks to know whether to print more money. When you say just "inflation" that means the part of the increase in prices caused by inflation, which is in theory and on average: the only cause.
In their original theory (which they modified in order to accommodate establishment desire for more theft) inflation should be zero. A fiat currency with stable value, that would require some increase in money supply.
See how the concept of "money supply" is not identical to "inflation" nor is "increasing money supply" identical to "inflation"?
You can increase the money supply without causing inflation, when the increase is proportional to the actual increase in value*transactions per unit time.
but living standards are generally going up in the long term.
Yet dips are correlated with inflation.
From the instant the scheme of national fiat currency was invented it became a tool for shadow taxation and since then every government under any kind of stress self-inflicted or not has used it to hide and diffuse the amount they steal.
That stealing does reduce quality of life. Read vampire economy. The nazis were waging war on half the world, throwing vast resources into it, resources they stole; through inflation.
Those who would subvert the concepts of sound economics pretend as if these are alternative explanations, war OR printing money.
Putin did it, he started a war. <not mentioned> which then 'forced' the US government to print trillions to give to Ukraine by giving them weapons bought with those trillions of printed dollars very inefficiently compounding the theft </not mentioned>
Covid didn't make the prices go up, the shut down followed by the government trying to 'stimulate' the economy by stealing from everyone via printing money thereby causing inflation.
The lie is connecting shifts in the supply/demand equilibrium with inflation. Wars and diseases can certainly cause shifts in the supply/demand equilibrium; but wars are not inflation. Price changes are not inflation unless they are caused by printing money, and that HAS been what has been causing them when the government uses printing money to steal whatever the reason.
For example if Putin blew up a pipeline (actually it was "the good guys") that would explain a loss of supply for oil. Not for Spanish pears, for oil. That is neither a CPI increase nor inflation.
I claim countries die from hyperinflation. Which is a particular form of government theft.After a variant of a disease is named, there is no honest reason to change the name.Are tariffs not government theft too then? It's a direct tax on consumers that makes them have to pay more.
They are definitely taxes and thus theft, not directly on the consumer (almost none of which have the first clue about importing) though so I don't know why you would say that.
A particularly inefficient form of theft, too, because of how much deadweight loss it incurs.
Define efficiency in this context.
Taxation and direct destruction of the means of production can increase some prices, but in that case the price of labor goes down until a critical point after which the black market becomes the only means of survival and which prices mean nothing.Tariffs don't always make the price of labor go down.
They don't always make the price go up either. They can change behavior and thus shift the supply/demand curve drastically which means there are no absolute predictions, just a few absolute facts:
When the government ends up with more real wealth in their hands, and they threatened force to get it; they stole that wealth and they're almost certainly going to waste it either in stupendously poorly executed activities or straight up corruption (almost always a hybrid of the two).
This is, on the grand scale, the equivalent to coming into a prosperous town, making a big pile of their finest products: pies, pots, pottery, paintings, clothing; and then setting it on fire.
That reduces quality of life, and if it happens too often and the destruction is too great, the people become impoverished to the point of desperation. When a government uses inflation as the means of theft there is no escape, the destruction continues till the final crumb of bread, with people carrying around paper currency in wheelbarrows.
With tariffs, on-the books international trade simply ceases. In that way tariffs are less dangerous than inflation. Tariffs can at worst reduce you to total economic isolation. Inflation can go all the way back to the stone age if you actually have the guards to prevent people from switching to barter.
And even if they did, tariffs don't always force huge black markets. They don't tend to be this broad anyway.
That's because it's rare for an import to be a true staple, something people are willing to risk imprisonment for.
You put a tariff up inside your own economy (called sales tax), that will force a black market if it's bad enough. Or if there is truly a necessary import, such as an island that can't produce its own food; there will be a black market or there will be blood.
It would be misleading if we said inflation was the cost of goods but only measured the money supply.
Yes it would, it's the increase in the cost of goods CAUSED by the excess increase in the money supply.
Since what inflation is called and what is being measured are the same thing, it's not misleading.
?
What inflation is called? You mean inflation?
"Since inflation and what is being measured are the same thing, it's not misleading."
Well I would accept that with some caveats about time, in the short term CPIs can fluctuate, but ONLY inflation is a permanent increase in the general prices.
The problem is the equivocation of inflation with any increase in prices whatsoever, and by extension any cause for increase in prices; tariffs for example cannot be inflationary and cannot over a long period change the CPI if they were magically uniform (which they can't be).
In other words this is one of the rare instances where people's shallow understanding is actually exactly right, they are calling "all the prices are going up" "inflation" and that is exactly what it is even if they don't generally understand why. It's not open taxation, it's not war, it's not disease; it's money printing. That is the only explanation and it is the scientifically confirmed cause.
Terms used for different things have adjusted
Then what is the new term for inflation? We've established that it isn't "money supply" nor "increase in money supply".
Is this new term on the lips of every citizen when they shake their heads at the totals in stores? If the answer is "no" that would mean the subversion has succeeded because that IS the cause of that bottom number going up and up and up.
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@Savant
by that means attempt no redefinitionThe definition has already changed. Changing it back requires more hassle. You don't object to the term "CPI," so why object to the term inflation?
because CPI wasn't a redefinition of a "useful concept, one which if forgotten would leave people unable to understand critical dynamics of fiat currency systems".
If transgenders decided they were "gender-role-non-conforming" GRNC pronounced "granac" that would not be an attempt to erase the concept of "woman" and subvert thousands of years of cultural baggage, legal implications, and social privileges.
Economics has advanced since the 60s, in part due to having more data to work with.
That's why everything is getting better. <- sarcasm
And I don't think I claimed anyone was "dying of hyperinflation,"
I claim countries die from hyperinflation. Which is a particular form of government theft.
After a variant of a disease is named, there is no honest reason to change the name.
Tariffs and covid and wars can increase prices.
Taxation and direct destruction of the means of production can increase some prices, but in that case the price of labor goes down until a critical point after which the black market becomes the only means of survival and which prices mean nothing.
Except wars and tariffs and sickness have identifiable negative effects on the economy, even if they aren't the main source of price increases.
That is irrelevant because wars and tariffs are not targets for definition erasure.
Actually I take that back. Trump labeling "trade deficits" as "tariffs on America" is also an example of attempted definition subversion.
You're saying "buy hey the new concept [trade deficits] has some use" but it doesn't matter if the new definition is interesting, all that matters is that there was no good reason to use that word, only subversive reasons.
If anything, an increase in the money supply is the most tolerable cause for price increases since it's possible for wages to keep up and avoids deflation.
People recover from theft, wars and pandemics end too. This is irrelevant.
No matter the troubles, understanding requires categorization into concepts. Changing definitions under these circumstances is an attack on conceptual clarity. There is no excuse.
If they wanted to argue inflation was minor factor that nobody should be concerned about they are welcome to. To attempt to redefine inflation after the people's mind was made up is pure sophistry.
I have thought of another example: defining slavery as "apprenticeships" after reconstruction.
There was no purpose except to confuse people who had already decided that slavery was wrong/illegal.
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@Savant
one which if forgotten would leave people unable to understand critical dynamics of fiat currency systems.You can still use the term "money supply," which economists commonly do
You could use CPI, as they commonly do; and by that means attempt no redefinition.
And it's not like people understood fiat currency systems any better in 1960.
I think the average understanding was much better, due in large part to people describing themselves as "economists" being significantly more honest on average.
The original definitionNot always the more useful one.
In this case it is both.
"Nice" used to mean foolish, for example. "Bully" used to mean sweetheart. Now they mean other things, so it's more useful to use their new definitions.
and if I was in the midst of bully being redefined in order to accuse sweethearts of marital abuse, I would call it subversion.
Inflation is what has caused hurt so much hurt. When we see countries dying of hyperinflation it is never because of the other transient and insignificant factors that could affect CPI.
It hasn't been tariffs, or covid, or ukraine that moved the CPI of the western world this past decade.
Taxes cause prices of end products to rise but wages go down. The "GDP" remains the same in fiat, but buying power goes down permanently.
ONLY [money supply] inflation causes uniform permanent increase in prices. The "GDP" goes up in fiat, while buying power goes down temporarily.
The dirty charge of the word "inflation" is well earned.
Changing it now, after it has once again proven it's colors several more times is akin to redefining pedophile as "MAP" and "communist" as "progressive".
The sole purpose of such a redefinition is to decouple the objective evil with the already identified cause of the evil. To then allow for the illusion of novelty and the uncertainty of a novel dynamic.
What causes my prices to go so high? Who knows? Maybe it's Putin. Maybe it's too many trans kids committing suicide? Maybe it's the Easter bunny. Who can say?
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@Savant
it's probably the less common definition.
I don't think that war is lost yet, hence my insistence. If the sane people get closer to losing I guess I'll switch to "real inflation" to distinguish it from the redefinition. This will of course be called subversive by the subversives in the same way you're not allowed to call a woman a "real woman".
The pre-subversion definition is objectively two things:
1.) A useful definition of a useful concept, one which if forgotten would leave people unable to understand critical dynamics of fiat currency systems.
2.) The original definition
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@TheGreatSunGod
We can survive, but not without an explosive restoration of economic libertyTrump also promised lower taxes, less government spending and less regulations, so I think its going to work out.
He can't do that alone, not without going far more rouge than he has already; which I would welcome.
He would be the anti-FDR (who also went completely rouge, threatened the supreme court and likely did the same to congress to rubber stamp him effectively enacting the New Deal before it passed).
I wouldn't complain, it just seems too much to hope for.
I guess the way I would do it is this: I would take all the taxes that are mandated by congress; and then have all the various federal departments be a single cubicle with the director and a computer. All the departments do is pay citizens as government contractors.
There could be an algorithm that ensures every citizen is paid in proportion to the takes taken.
So they take 50k from me, and then one government department pays me 25k for homeland infrastructure, I'll clean up some litter and even donate to the county roads department. USAID pays me 5k for foreign relations, I tell my foreign cousins how great America is.
etc... etc...
They can call the whole maneuver the "people's budget veto".
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@Savant
Page 749 (748 in epub index)
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@Double_R
That's why we have a constitution. The will of the majority isn't enough to legalize that.
Well you could do it with a supreme court majority too.
They've decided twice that certain classes of homosapien sapiens organisms weren't entitled to due process protections.
a
Three times if you want to include "foreign terrorists" (how about that timing?)
Also you could do it with taxes.
Babies owe taxes, they never pay, the punishment is death, and then of course repaying the debt as a sacrificial meal.
Kinda like obamacare individual mandate.
"No no, you don't HAVE to sign up; it's just the only way to get the tax rebate."
I'd do guns but we don't have all day. Short and sweet:
Constitution - "Ad hoc armies are a right, weapons are a right"
Courts - unless those weapons or armies are in any way dangerous, until you go through an unlimited set of bureaucratic hoops and fees
Your part time sacred cow is dead and rotting. You don't believe in it anymore than you believe in democracy.
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@TheGreatSunGod
That is not nothing, and it is the perfect example to further make my point.lithium-ion batteries
US government decides carbon dioxide is going to make the ocean boil, introduces all sorts of taxes and regulations making it ever more impossible to use combustion (especially diesel), while making it advantegous to use an EV.
All in the context of not mining our own lithium but getting it from China.
Now EVs work, bad reasons aside.
ICEs work.
However if you cut off the battery imports, and you don't remove the shit you did to ruin ICE appeal and production; then you don't have any vehicles and you are very screwed.
That is a highly representative example of the whole situation.
We can survive, but not without an explosive restoration of economic liberty. One that will be politically very difficult to deliver. One I am not confident Trump is even aware is necessary.
I fear he thinks he's just done the hard part, and if that is the case; we are going to go into a chaotic depression and not recover. This will be used as proof Trump and "capitalism" (economic liberty) were wrong. "late stage capitalism", the USA will fully embrace socialism, and then it will end up like all the other American nations that have tried socialism (poor as fuck, possibly hyper inflated, dominated by a black market run by organized crime)
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