The invocation of "lobbyists" in this context is meaningless. People lobby for all kinds of things. Doesn't really matter once it becomes a law anyway.
If people could just say I don't agree with this law, it "makes no sense" and it's written by "lobbyists" and the government should not "be able to force" me to comply then we don't have a society anymore.
You had better come up with some better arguments otherwise it just seems like the typical sad case of the losing side suddenly griping about the referee's monopoly of force when it's no longer going their way...
The comment you replied to rightly pointed out one way of getting ahead of said monopoly of force is addressing problems with the status quo before the state takes an interest. It didn't happen, and now you will probably get some heavy handed intervention. But ignoring this basic point to ask why oh why suggests an ignorance of the very nature of the society that is and has been constantly regulating you.
If you only happened to notice now you should consider yourself a rather lucky specimen in the long line of human history, full of those remarking "this makes no sense" as they are nonetheless compelled to comply.
The fact that lobbyists push the law is in fact very meaningful. It means that a minority with power is trying to tip the scales in their favor against the otherwised unbiased will of the majority.
To extend your analogy, it's not one side complaining after a fair match, it's them complaining that refs have been paid off.
There is no such thing as an "unbiased will of the majority".
That sort of terminology might have flown back in the 18th century with Rousseau and the like speaking of a "general will" but in today's era of social science, it has about as much force as invoking divinity.
Everyone has bias. The idea of a general will is largely fiction and was discredited at the time.
Our system is based on coercion, costs and trade-offs and nothing more. That is human history. You may have some rights (perhaps a right to privacy, it is debatable) but this is really just the three core components dressed up in reverse. The freedom of speech for instance is simply to codify the idea that the state silencing you is intolerable. Intolerable is eventually meaningless unless it is backed up by costs and coercion against the state which they will seek to avoid.
When the state violates such "rights" flagrantly sometimes the people are called to manifest this aspect of "intolerable".
That's what a revolution is.
Failing that you need to convince people. And in so doing if you aim to find some "unbiased will of the majority" you are wasting your time.
You would be better off with a lobbyist. Surely such a person would not so readily engage in such fiction regarding how democracy actually works, and would thus be more effective in achieving your goals.
Lobbyists do not always mean minority. I'm sure it looks like that from the outside.
There are all kinds of laws that people don't like, me included. With every law there will be some winner/loser trade-off (for lack of better word). As OP said, that is society.
If the people here were so passionate about it, they would help come up with a better solution, not a "f* off" comment.
Apparently in the opening hours, perhaps the very first strikes... which may explain why the attack happened during the day instead of night as is often typical (night often furthers the US technological advantage).
I picture in my head the old ayatollah emerging from his bunker for a late breakfast only to be blown to smithereens...
Would also explain why the Iranian response seems so haphazard and ill-conceived... if reporting is to be believed the conflict essentially opened with their government's decapitation.
"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal".
This was during the Frost/Nixon interviews, years after he had already resigned. Even after all that, he still believed this and was willing to say it into a camera to the American people. It is apparent many of the people pushing the excesses going on today in government share a shameless adherence to this creed.
Nixon's issue wasn't a lack of support in the courts but in Congress[1]:
> On August 7, Nixon met in the Oval Office with Republican congressional leaders "to discuss the impeachment picture," and was told that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. They painted a gloomy picture for the president: he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House, and in the Senate, there were not only enough votes to convict him, but no more than 15 or so senators were willing to vote for acquittal. That night, knowing his presidency was effectively over, Nixon finalized his decision to resign.
The contrast with how compliant the majorities in Congress are today to the whims of the White House cannot be overstated. The past decade has pretty much completely eliminated any semblance of a Republican Party that stood for anything other than the whims of Trump. Everyone either got on board or was exiled from power; the third highest member of House leadership got driven from Congress for taking a stand on the events of January 6, whereas the senator who in a debate in 2016 alleged that Trump's small hands implied a similar proportion for one of his less-visible body parts faded into the background for the next eight years and was rewarded with a prominent position in the cabinet this time around.
Speaking of markets... Polymarket was trading yes on this happening at quite interesting odds, "yes" was trading at around 30¢ or better over the next few days just a few hours ago...
I was quite surprised to see it that low... and also to find it is inaccessible for trading if a US national. Just looking at the platform it seems predominantly US driven so I gather many people are willfully attempting to breach the ToS (and probably lie to the IRS) when using it...
Life is more than a paycheck. We should raise the bar a little IMO. Turning down money for good reasons is not something extreme we should only expect from saints.
Of course. Doesn't change the reality that this is why someone would accept a justification that a neutral would easily see as plainly dishonest. Anyway, this is why we need unions
Who still does business with open ai and why? They are usually 5th or sixth in the benchmarks bracketed below and above by models that cost less. This has been the case for quite some time. Glm is out for us government purposes I'd imagine, but if google agrees to the same terms I don't see why the us government would use open ai anyway. If google disagrees it would be rather confusing given the other invasions of privacy they have facilitated, but if they do then using open ai would make sense as all that would be left is grok...
Imo the more ethical thing is obstructionism. Twitter's takeover showed it's pretty easy to find True Believer sycophants to hire. Better to play the part while secretly finding ways to sabotage.
Congress is the problem, but not in the way most describe.
Congress has abdicated its powers because as an institution it is broken. Several inland states with total state wide populations less than that of major metro areas on the coasts have the same amount of senators as every other state has - two. This means voters in a lot of states are over represented. Meanwhile, they say land doesn't vote, but in the United States Senate the cities and localities with the most people that drive much of our growth and dynamism are severely underrepresented. The upper and most important chamber of the Congress is thus undemocratic. Given it's an institution deeply susceptible to minority gridlock that depends on wide margins to do anything, well now more often than not it simply does nothing. An imperial presidency thus frankly becomes the only way the country can actually get most things done.
This two senators for every state arrangement was a compromise agreed to when constitutional ratification was in doubt, when the USA was a weak, newborn country of about 3 million people confined to the Eastern seaboard at a time in our history where our most pressing concern was being recolonized by European powers. The British burned down the White House in 1812 imagine what more they could have accomplished if the constitutional compromises that strengthened the union had not been agreed to.
This compromise has outlived its usefulness. No American today fears a Spanish armada or British regulars bearing torches. These difficult compromises at the heart of America already led to one civil war.
The best we can do is create a broad political movement that entertains as many incriminations as possible (probably around corruption/Epstein, which must make pains to avoid any distinction between say a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump) so we can get past partisan bickering to get enough of mass movement to try to usher in a new age of constitutional amendment and reform.
If it doesn't happen this cycle of Obama Trump Biden Trump will continue until this country elects someone who makes Trump look like a saint. It can happen. Think of how Trump rehabilitated Bush. We already see the trend getting worse. And if it does, then the post WWII Germany style reset being mentioned here will then become inevitable.
How do you think this would play out? Changing the apportionment of the Senate, aside from being a political and legal nightmare, would also create monumental constitutional crisis.
First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.
I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:
1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.
2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.
3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.
4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.
The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.
Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.
What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.
I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.
We could add new states. For example, Washington DC has 702,000 people with zero Congressional representation, and they're currently occupied by Federal troops without any voting recourse. If they were made a state, they'd be bigger than Wyoming and Vermont. Puerto Rico is also a US territory with 3.2 million people and zero Congressional representation. As a state it would be larger than 20 existing states. This doesn't "fix" the problem but it does ensure that more U.S. citizens gain access to representation in Congress, while also shifting power to more densely-populated areas.
True. I'm not as familiar with the politics of DC, but my limited understanding of the PR statehood situation is that the GOP is unlikely to approve what would presumably be 2 new safe democratic seats in the senate.
If I remember correctly, the governor of PR would appoint the first 2 senators. A tactic could be to promise to appoint 1 republican senator as an enrichment to approve statehood. It's a real shit situation.
There are more Puerto Ricans living in NYC and Orlando than in PR. I'd like to visit before the little family I have left there leaves or dies out.
fwiw DC is essentially the same situation as PR in this regard. DC would essentially be a blue city-state (state) which is also why DC statehood resolutions always fail.
It's an open joke in DC if you ever visit there the official DC license plate has "end taxation without representation" on it.
You are right to point out the problems with getting it passed. I would just say we need to stretch our political imaginations. Let's also remember that when the Constitutional Convention was originally convened no one thought it was going to create a new constitution - it happened sort of by accident as circumstances changed. The original purpose was to make revisions to the Articles of Confederation.
I'll put it another way. We are far from the bottom here. This system can and I believe will inflict more dysfunction on us in the coming years. A constitutional crisis is not unthinkable anymore for a variety of reasons. A modern constitutional convention might be one of the few ways of getting ahead of it.
Perhaps in such a future situation then, small states can be convinced to amend compromises they may otherwise have never considered.
You could also just do away with bicameralism, which was proposed at the original convention. Also remember as originally written the population of the states did not directly elect their senators. Thus there is already amendment precedent (17th) for making major changes to the Senate.
I don’t think either of these things requires more than a vote of Congress and the President’s signature. DC might, because of its unique Constitutional status and the current partisan Court, but there’s no argument for PR. You would have to abolish the filibuster, but Congress can do that once per session by majority vote — it’s just a legislative rule and not a Constitutional mechanism.
I mean even if we accept the premise the problem is if you start to engage with this game then the next Congress can do it too.
Pretty soon you'll have "Middle Dakota". And on and on.
At a certain point the USA is going to have to address its structural issues - the founders foretold of this necessity. It's why the amendment process exists in the first place.
Getting rid of the filibuster is a good thing in general. The GOP-led states have already moved into mid-cycle gerrymanders and routine gerrymandering of the state legislatures to eliminate fair elections there: I'm sure eventually someone will have the idea of adding new GOP states. Adding two actual territories/districts that are full of actual unrepresented Americans happens to be a good idea on the merits, since those people are being screwed by the Federal government.
That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.
I've only listened to one interview with Dan Wang, but I understood him to be particularly talking about the politicians, not the country as a whole.
I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful politicians were previously lawyers. Which is not a good thing IMO.
"I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful politicians were previously lawyer"
I can't speak for china either, so I looked it up and indeed, Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering and his predecessor Hu Jintao worked as a hydraulic engineer before becoming a politician.
Well in germany we had Merkel as a doctorate in quantum chemistry (but she never worked as an engineer, but neither did
Xi Jinping).
I certainly would prefer politicians with some engineering background, unless they use their skills to manufacture a total state surveillance and control machine.
Yeah I'm pretty nervous about engineers in charge. Merkel is interesting because her dad was reverend in the East. My reading of her is more that she was smart and there were good options in physics/chemistry - but then she effectively went right into politics directly afterwards. For better or for worse she never had that 5-10 years of day-to-day work before politics.
She is the most hated EU politician in whole eastern part of EU, a symbol of EU failings and main reason there are many EU-sceptics across whole region.
A lot of current/recent crisis and utter dependence on russian gas and oil was her doing. She desperately tried to appease putin at all costs despite him mocking her from time to time, she pushed long term underfunding of German army despite war on Ukraine happening since 2014, closed down nuclear plants too fast so coal energy was needed immediately and so on.
Shame on her to be polite, not a good example if you want to show that engineering background (just studies in her case) can lead to better outcomes than lawyers.
The german army was never underfunded. It just enjoyed lots of luxories, like lots of management staff instead of combat troops and custom made special equipment (that often failed to deliver) instead of buying what the market offered.
Dan came off as very China biased and Tyler literally schooled him on a few occasions.
But despite that, there are grains of truth in what he said, we have lawyers turned politicians at the helm in the US, so we have a great democratic system but on the flip side hardly any engineers leading us to the predicament we are in now, where nothing ever gets built.
And that was true when we built things too. So what point are you making? If only FDR was an engineer then maybe we would have ramped up production and taken on the Axis across two oceans. But oops he was educated as a lawyer I guess we're doomed now. Like I just don't get it.
Sure Xi and some other senior leadership in China studied as an engineer. He also studied Marxism. As a part of a government delegation he studied agriculture, even bringing him to stay abroad in Iowa of all places. The world is too complicated for this type of analysis, sorry. I don't even think it is remotely the right data point to focus on or compare.
Dan Wang does the same spiel on every podcast and it is always terrible and seems predicated on credulous hosts who know little about the history of either country and certainly not enough about both who just use his lame analysis to engage in this current fad of Western self-pity. Instead of reform and asking hard questions let's just throw soft balls at Dan Wang's cheap analysis that anyone with a Wikipedia level education would know is absurd so we can keep propping up the same impoverished China v America tropes.
Why don't we demand better honestly we should be ashamed that one guy can just come up with such a dubious thesis suddenly appear everywhere and no credible debate or pushback once. The only thing Dan Wang convinces me of is the poverty of the modern intellectual environment.
Coincidentally, FDR's predecesor was an engineer and we know how that presidency went (not that it was entirely his fault, but he didn't make things better either)
These people are just trying to find an alternative narrative because the vast majority of the population have been rejecting neoliberalism for a good 30 years now. So they spin up the foreign enemy is better than us, so we need to deregulate more and not hold monopolies accountable.
If we broke up Google or Amazon, suddenly we're just as bad as China!
In the west greater education doesn't lead to people wanting to live in a factory compound in communal dorms with suicide nets where they can be woken up at midnight to start a shift on a whim. Doesn't lead to people wanting to eat all their meals in a cafeteria with the other people on their shift. The factories I visited even their children went to school in a school within the compound.
I worked at a dev company, and we got bought by an IT company. Much pain and friction, all around. Is that a reductive representative of the company differences? Yeah, but it's still a useful mental model that helps one understand the differences. And I think the lawyer vs engineer trope is useful. Yeah we have both. Both my companies had both IT and developera, but the stakes & priorities were different enough that that lense became extremely helpful.
Sure, but it's seemingly doing less and less. "Value Added by Industry: Manufacturing as a Percentage of GDP" has been going downwards for a long long time, here is the last twenty years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA
I don’t think you can take “percentage of GDP” as an indication that the US is doing less. It could be doing the same amount while the GDP grew tremendously in other areas, for example software.
This is roughly 2.9% a year over 20 years, so slightly ahead of inflation over the period.
To me this points to a story where manufacturing grew slightly but the other parts of the economy grew a lot more. Not exactly a bear case on manufacturing, but not a tremendously exciting one either.
When politicians talk about the decline in manufacturing what they mean is jobs. I work in American manufacturing and there are tons of amazing projects happening but the decline in jobs is real. Especially low skilled jobs, This trend will only continue and I doubt any politician, regardless of thier background, can change that. And I’m not sure it’s a bad thing as it means manufacturing productivity is increasing
The main reason it’s so political is the drop in number of jobs has been huge, and too fast for many to adjust. Automation has come fast.
“ Manufacturing employment declined from 17.3 million in January 2000 to a low of 11.5 million in December 2009, a drop of 33% over the decade. Compared to the peak of 19.5 million in 1979, manufacturing employment had declined approximately 41% by 2009.”
There's a long-term economic problem looming around the loss of jobs: which is that most people's ability to command a share of our economic output (i.e. earn money) is tied to their value as a labourer. If that labour is no longer needed by those who control capital and thus allocation of labour resources (which is increasingly the case across many segments of our economy), then we end up with an economy where people increasingly struggle to earn a decent living.
Of course there are areas where that labour would be useful: healthcase, teaching, childcare, elderly care all come to mind (and there are many other examples). But our economy is not set up to enable this. The problem isn't supply side (difficulty retraining people to do the jobs), it's demand side: the people who need these services often don't have the money to pay for them. So the jobs are badly paid.
And it's a downward spiral: as wealth becomes more concentrated, demand for labour drops because those controlling the wealth already have their needs met and often don't care about the needs of others.
If history is anyhing to go by, then this will eventually lead to war and/or revolution.
I've been thinking about this and I definitely agree.
On the last sentence, one significant difference between then and now will be the possibility of automated soldiers, which is terrifying to think about.
At the end of the day the reason people see manufacturing as special is because in a war it is a strategic resource. If this wasnt the case nobody would care about "manufacturing jobs" any more than the general economy. So if you use defence production as your metric... "U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Is Consistently Over Budget and Delayed Despite Billions Invested in Industry"
> Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.
Think of it as engineers vs non-engineers (lawyers/mba types/etc). We complain about that on here all the time (ex. boeing). It's where the priorities are: is it on making things better or making more money? In an ideal world, it would be both. Unfortunately here, it is not otherwise enshittification would not be a thing.
It feels like people accept this criticism when it props up their position - for an American (software) engineer, companies run by _American engineers_ vs companies run by American non-engineers is an obvious case of engineering is better (see criticism of Boeing); but when it's Chinese engineer vs American non-engineer, the "American" bit is more important.
It gets repeated because we actively incentivize repeating it.
It's a popular trope that confirms the audiences bias's and when you do that the monkey brain gets rewarded by seeing the number in the top right go up.
It's one of those just-so stories that sounds like a nice neat explanation. You can't put the complex reality into a neat single sentence so nonsense like this is always going to win.
Indeed. “Used to” is the key observation. In the wake of WW2, the U.S. had both dynamism and the ability and will to act collectively. This combination led to rising standards of living, the space program, Silicon Valley, the internet, etc.
The U.S. economy is still relatively dynamic, but the will to collective action has completely failed.
What point do you think you're making? That's not the question. You're just repeating the same obvious geopolitical comparison everyone regurgitates these days.
The question is about whether any of that can be meaningfully attributed to some lawyer vs engineer divide. Your question doesn't answer that in the slightest and thus I have no idea why you are asking it.
It's not about the specific degree the leaders hold. Thanks to Communism, China (and the Soviet Union before it) had a profound belief that society can be engineered, and that people and nature are both raw material that can be shaped to fit the needs of society.
The US, on the hand, is obsessed with individual rights, and any sort of collective action that threatens those rights is extensively litigated.
This is really what Wang's thesis boils down to, and which of course it's an oversimplification, there is a kernel of truth in there.
and the hidden implication is that there's a correct trade off to be made (because engineering is about trade offs).
So what happens to those people whose gotten the bad end of the deal? If china builds a damn, the villages downstream gets moved (with small compensation that is not commensurate with the value of the dam being made).
It's also why the high speed rail in california is costing so much in the US vs something similar in china.
That's better than a culture that sees every transaction solely in terms of corporate profit and doesn't consider the existence of trade offs at all.
The result is that far more people get far worse deals far more of the time. Healthcare, the jobs market, education, climate damage, grift in high places - it's all the same issue, and a lot of the problems are rooted in denial of reality on spurious "economic" grounds.
>Thanks to Communism, China (and the Soviet Union before it) had a profound belief that society can be engineered, and that people and nature are both raw material that can be shaped to fit the needs of society.
Look america's 1939+ expansion was subsided by the british empire trying to expand arms manufacture.
What america has been doing is subsiding engineering capacity in china. This was done because it created more profit for larger companies as they merged and eliminated costs. This higher profit drove a "roaring" economic expansion. But now china is capturing more of the value.
A solution is to use tax as a way to re-patriciate engineering capacity. This is kinda what trump is supposed to be doing, but carving out exceptions for friends, and using blunt instruments doesn't work all that well.
It's also rare to just "discover" an entire continent that is basically free for the taking since Europeans annihilated native populations through disease and technological superiority.
Much of what makes America unique is tied to this essentially once in a generation event that will never happen again on this planet, a contingent confluence of Earth's parallel geographic and biological evolution... it's fairly easy to rebel or become a superpower when other powers have to contend with peer conflicts right on their borders. A break with England was inevitable why take orders from people an ocean away in the age of sail?
It's worse than that; within a few generations our linguistic and biological systems will begin to diverge under conditions with little cross-pollination and different selective pressures. We will become aliens in the sci-fi sense very rapidly if we attempt to create a foundation-like diaspora of settlements.
I think the skepticism warrants more work than that. Darwin's finches are an entry-level concept to learn when learning about biochemistry and genetics. Separate planets would act to separate groups into distinct genetic populations which would then have different selection pressures put upon them. Even without selection pressure, genetic drift in both populations would result in differences compounding over time.
Humans aren't the endpoint of evolution. Something will come after us, and if we're spread out on a ton of planets, there would need to be explicit counteracting forces (genetic modification, tremendous volumes of interstellar human travel, etc.) to make sure whatever comes after us is uniform among our interstellar backyard.
No, most genetic drift that ends up being reflected in wildtype populations happens during those periods, because small errors taking up a sizable percentile of the allelic distribution is easier when there are less alleles.
When it comes to neutral mutations, we can literally see constant variance creation in plenty of non-coding areas of DNA over time.
Drift occurs at a fairly consistent rate that reflects the intrinsic error rate of the particular replication machinery that a given organism uses. You can measure the statistical error rate of different ribosomal complexes.
Different planets are going to have different selection pressures. They'll have different conflicts. Different crises. Different cultures. Different reproductive preferences. Imagining that these populations will converge on the same wildtype by sheer chance is lunacy.
He is also surely happy the Trump administration no longer sees fit to investigate or pursue anyone with connections to Epstein. Previously Lutnick had lied about the extent of their relationship, yet even after the recent relevations he can simply wave them off.
What a profitable time for the Lutnicks, who are of course already fabulously wealthy. Our system really does reward the best people.
It is hard to police guns when there is free travel between the US states, yet only individual states can be relied upon to pass any reform. A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes. States are often forced to recognize rights granted by other states because such an interstate jurisdictional question naturally bubbles up to the aforementioned dysfunctional federal system.
Similarly to how many (most?) guns used criminally in Mexico actually come from the United States.
Edit: I'm not surprised by the downvotes, but I am amused. These are objective facts. Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States. Americans love the boogeyman of dangerous Mexican cartels so much they never seem to ask themselves where these guns come from in the first place. Hint: look in the mirror.
The characterization of the federal government as "broken" (at least in this capacity) and "dysfunctional" is a normative judgment you're making based on your own subjective value preferences.
Some -- perhaps most -- Americans regard the federal constitution's ability to restrain states from enacting policies that transgress against generally accepted individual rights as desirable, and working as intended.
That wasn't the objective fact in question, and I think you know that. A humorous one to contest anyway, given it is well known most Americans take a dim view of federal politics, especially when their favored party is out of power. This is a country where national elections are routinely decided by roughly a percentage point.
Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States? That would be a question of fact, not characterization. And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states? Or are you going to invent some other strawman to attack in your defense of your "individual rights"?
> Are you willing to concede most guns used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States?
No -- nor am I willing to assert the opposite, because I have no knowledge of the topic. I will ask, though: why is the place of manufacturer of guns used by criminals is Mexico something worth worrying about?
> And that, if it is easy enough to smuggle guns from red states into Mexico to commit crimes, it stands to reason it is even easier for red states to do the same to blue states?
Well, yes, of course. But I assume that this will be the case regardless of any attempted policy at any level of government, because I do not believe suppressing the movement of firearms is an attainable goal at any scale in the first place.
> Well maybe you should endeavor to get some knowledge? Yet it seems like you are saying it's irrelevant because you are uninterested in suppressing the movement of firearms, because it's not an "attainable goal". So really, you aren't interested in investigating this fact. That's fine, that's your business.
Yes, all of that is correct.
> Regardless of your own personal interest, it is a fact, and one you could confirm and learn more about rather easily.
I could, but I could also spend my time learning about many other topics which would yield useful insights, develop skills, help me understand the world better in ways that actually matter, among many other things. Why would I then spend time studying something for which the outcome would be the same regardless?
> So, if the best you can come up with is a more dressed up version of the other reply's "idgaf" well again that is your business.
Well, no, it's not just that I don't give a fuck, but rather that I think the entire line of inquiry is a waste of time in itself, in that all it will do is provide a rationalization for one normative position or another, and offers little utility to anyone beyond that. Arguing over it is like arguing over how many peanuts are in a particular jar -- yes, there's an objectively correct answer, but the question itself is of no importance, and not worth bothering to answer.
> A broken federal government means guns are easily exported from red states with practically zero gun laws to blue states where they are used to commit crimes
So why are the crime rates in most of these "red states" you are referring to often so much lower?
> Any basic research will yield many studies (including from the American government) showing that the majority of guns used in crimes in Mexico are traced back to the States
I couldn't give less of a fuck if this were true "research" or not: this isn't my problem, nor is it a valid reason to restrict my rights.
Also, please: a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise can't build or buy a machine shop and enslave or hire some machinists? They can build submarines and drones, but just couldn't possibly operate without US firearms? What reality do you live in?
The 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2024 were: Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Maryland.
Not seeing this so much lower crime rate in red states here.
If people could just say I don't agree with this law, it "makes no sense" and it's written by "lobbyists" and the government should not "be able to force" me to comply then we don't have a society anymore.
You had better come up with some better arguments otherwise it just seems like the typical sad case of the losing side suddenly griping about the referee's monopoly of force when it's no longer going their way...
The comment you replied to rightly pointed out one way of getting ahead of said monopoly of force is addressing problems with the status quo before the state takes an interest. It didn't happen, and now you will probably get some heavy handed intervention. But ignoring this basic point to ask why oh why suggests an ignorance of the very nature of the society that is and has been constantly regulating you.
If you only happened to notice now you should consider yourself a rather lucky specimen in the long line of human history, full of those remarking "this makes no sense" as they are nonetheless compelled to comply.
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