sometimes it feels like we are ruled by toddlers with armies.

i stand on the side of this shit is stupid just stop it.

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@cshentrup @jwmason a big UBI plus nordic labor institutions, social welfare state, and taxation would go a long way towards making the world safe for price-rationing of most goods and services.

@cshentrup @jwmason you can't read minds or "actual utility" (an ill-formed idea), but your values can insist that desserts plus starvation is inferior to everybody gets a meal. who knows? maybe someone you've denied a dessert really savors sweets, and in terms of some hypothetical utility that'd be worth a starvation or two. nevertheless, i'm happy to let values about life's priority guide us rather than that hypothetical.

i agree that the best way to deal with all this is reduce inequality!

@cshentrup @jwmason This one's for you, though you'll hate it. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/10/19/price-rationing/index.html

[new draft post] Price rationing https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/10/19/price-rationing/index.html

can somebody please tell history just to stay the fuck in the past?

@bmaz perhaps everybody is overbroad. am i essentializing xeeters?

@cakeisnotalie i’m sure Palestinians don’t want their current leadership structure, neither in Gaza nor the West Bank. but that’s not evidence the Israelis have conspired to impose it. Egyptians would prefer a more democratic leadership structure. As would the Saudis. they still don’t have it, and Israel has little to do with it. i love your optimism — the solutions i support all involve effectively imposing some form of democracy in Palestinian territories. i sure hope that is doable.

@cakeisnotalie that is my point. there were elections only once, 17 years ago. the institution didn’t take as a regular thing, whomever you want to claim is responsible for that.

one way to characterize that other site is “the demonization place”.

it’s what everybody’s doing there.

one inconsistency among people with views, well, views like mine, is that we think we have learned you can’t export democracy at the point of a gun, but when we solutionize about Israel/Palestine we kind of assume we can. Israel should vouchsafe for Palestinians in Gaza a democratic state with sovereign control of its borders. but in 2006 elections in Gaza didn’t portend ongoing democracy. does Israel have the ability to encourage democracy and just cynically not, or do they just not have a way?

@stephenjbell lunar! oops.

is it dehumanizing to accuse people of dehumanizing?

@carlmalamud you had mine.

@misc when they become instruments, their function is something other than “idea” in the sense of working anything out.

i stand with the humans, and against the categories and affiliations that unnecessarily divide us against one another.

over at the bad place, just read a guy describe refugees as “colonizers”.

simple analytical categories applied to messy humans conceal more than they reveal, and become information-space weapons rather than sources of insight.

like other kinds of weapons, once they’re out there, you never control who gets to shoot and who gets killed.

love of money is so much better than love of land, because money can always be compensated, while two people (or "peoples") attached to the same piece of land, each insistent on exclusively controlling it, have nothing to do but murder.