Saturday, May 21, 2022

Crypto is not a dog... or doge... or is it?

As this goes online, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are in apparent price-freefall. This posting - prepared over a month ago - will not discuss the recent coin market meltdowns. Still, it seems a good moment to offer some light on one aspect.

First, I actually know a little about this topic. I've consulted with a number of companies, agencies, etc. about the blockchain era. More generally, about the conceptual underpinnings of "smart contracts" and the eerie, free-floating algorithms that were long-predicted by science fiction, but have become reality, as we speak. (Yes they are out there; some may be living right behind the screen you are looking at.)

One topic generating excitement - though the notion has been floating since the 1990s - is that of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAO, which are portrayed in many novels and utopian manifestos as a way for humans (and their helpers) to bypass sclerotic legacy nations and codger institutions with self-organizing action groups, using NFTs and Blockchain tokens to modernize and revitalize the concept of guilds -- global, quick, low-cost, boundaryless, open and inherently accountable. Bruce Sterling wrote about this notion in the last century (as in his novel, Heavy Weather) and other authors, like Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon), Karl Schroeder (Stealing Worlds), as well as Cory Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), Annalee Newitz (Autonomous), and many others roam this conceptual landscape with agility! 

To a large extent, versions of DAO thinking underlie moves by nations like Estonia (or "E-stonia") to modernize democracy and public services. Also spreading widely is the related notion of Citizen Assemblies

But today I want to focus now on just one aspect of this brave new world: whether DAOs can find a middle ground between autonomy and accountability, by self-policing to reduce bad behavior by predators, while retaining their better, freedom enhancing traits.  

== Can blockchain-based DAOs - especially coin communities - self-police? ==

This is an important topic! Because major legacy nations like China are already stomping hard, using as justification the way cryptocurrencies do empower the very worst of parasitic human criminals. That justification might be reduced or eliminated if DAOs or blockchain communities could find a positive-sum sweet spot, cauterizing predators while preserving their role as gritty irritants, creating pearls of creative freedom.

Although there is no way to "ban" crypto currencies in general, there is an approach to making them much more accountable to real life law.

Let's start with an ironic fact. Blockchain-based token systems are not totally secret!  


Yes, they use crypto to mask the identity of token (coin) holders.  But those holders only "own" their tokens by general consent of all members in a communal 'shared ledger' that maintains the list of coins and which public keys stand ready to be turned by each owner's encrypted keys. In that sense it is the opposite of 'secret,' since the ledger is out there in tens of thousands of copies on just as many distributed computers. Attempts to invade or distort or corrupt the ledger are detected and canceled en masse. (The ecologically damaging "coin mining" operations out there are partly about maintaining the ledger.)


All of this means that - to the delight of libertarians - it will be hard to legislate or regulate blockchain token systems. Hard, but not impossible. For example, the value of Bitcoin rises and falls depending on how many real world entities will accept it in payment. And as stated above, and some governments have been hammering on that, lately.

There is another way to modify any given blockchain token system, and that is for the owners themselves to deliberate and decide on a change to their shared economy... to change the ledger and its support software.  No one member/owner can do that. Any effort to do so would be detected by the ledger's built in immune system and canceled. 


Only dig it, all such ledger-blockchain systems are ruled by a weird kind of consensus democracy. While there is no institutional or built in provision for democratic decision making in the commons - (Satoshi himself may have back doors: a separate topic) - there is nothing to stop a majority of bitcoin holders from simply making their own, new version of the shared ledger and inserting all their coins into it, with new software that's tuned to less eagerly reward polluters and extortionist gangs. 


Oh, sure, a large minority would refuse. Their rump or legacy Bitcoin ledger (Rumpcoin?) would continue to operate... with value plummeted as commercial and government and individual entities refuse to accept it and as large numbers of computer systems refuse to host rump-coin ledger operations. Because at that point, the holdouts will include a lot of characters who are doing unsavory things in the real world.


There are vernaculars for this. Indeed it has been done, occasionally, in what are called soft and hard 'forks.' 


== A forking solution? ==


A “fork,” in programming terms, is an open-source code modification. Usually, the forked code is similar to the original, but with important modifications, and the two “prongs” comfortably co-exist. Sometimes a fork is used to test a process, but with cryptocurrencies, it is more often used to implement a fundamental change or to create a new asset with similar (but not equal) characteristics as the original.


With a soft fork, only one blockchain will remain valid as users adopt the update. Whereas with a hard fork, both the old and new blockchains exist side by side, which means that the software must be updated to work by the new rules. But the aim is to render the old code so obsolete and so widely spurned that it ceases to have any use to anyone.


As an example: Etherium did a fork when about $100 million worth of coins (that would now be worth tens of billions) was tied up in a badly written smart contract that a hacker was stealing. The community decided to kill that smart contract showing that immutable blockchains can change if 50% +1 decides to change it.


If you squint at this, it's really not so radical.  (Don't even ask about the blockchain "spork!"). It is just an operating system upgrade that can only occur by majority consent of the owner-members of the commune.  As pioneered at the famous University of Fork... or...


And so the stage is set to 'regulate' in ways that leave the potential benefits of blockchain - self-correction, smart contracts and the like - alone while letting system users deliberate and decide to revise, a trait that should be possible in any democratic or accountable system.


Now, is there a way to use a Grand Fork to change the insane approach to coin "mining" so that ledger maintenance can be achieved without encouraging planet-killing pollution and waste?


== And finally... ==


The concept that I called equiveillance or look-back accountability, in The Transparent Society - and Steve Mann called sousveillance - is labeled "inverse surveillance" by members of the Asimov Institute, in Holland. “How can we use AI as a Panopticon to promote beneficial actions for citizens by organizations?” A proof of concept was explored in a 2021 hackathon


Well well. These are harder concepts to relate than they might think, I know from experience! Yet they are fundamental to the very basis of our kind of civilization.

200 comments:

scidata said...

I want to read (or listen to) Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON (1999), sort of Bletchley Park meets Blockchain meets the Kriegsmarine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
Any book is a big time investment for me, any thumbs up/down (without spoilers)?

At the heart of Satoshi's creation were the verification codes. They were basically written in a cut-down FORTH (you just knew that was coming). Years ago, I had some guy in a forum grill me about that code. He would tease and taunt me with tidbits and challenges to get me to expound on FORTH and how it might be twisted to his opaque will. After a while, I got wise to this, in a similar scene to Paul Newman's TORN CURTAIN (1966). The 'some guy' played Newman's character and I was the naive German scientist. AFAIK, nothing ever came of it.

LeadDreamer said...

The "decisions" are by 50% + 1 of COINS - even more accurately, of MINERS. Due to the economics, the VAST MAJORITY of "miners" are held by a very few, very elite set of entities. There is no way, at all, that this represents any form of "distribution", nor "democracy", nor any form of control other than oligarchy.

DP said...

scidata - Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON is nothing short of brilliant. And if you want a massive time investment read his Baroque Cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle

DP said...

Ignore Bitcoin or any other kind of Crypto.

You should invest all of your money in sensible like tulips, the South Sea Company or maybe comic books.

All much safer and more lucrative than Bitcoin.

duncan cairncross said...

Re Musk and the population being too low

This is a subject that several people on this very forum have complained about

There have been mutterings about the "Demographic Crisis" in China, Japan and just about everywhere

When you worry about the "Demographic Crisis" you are worrying about the population FAILING to grow!!

Personally I think the "Demographic Crisis" is NOT a real problem as the additional pensioners are balanced by the smaller numbers of children

However that is a minority viewpoint

And its hypocritical to moan about Musk talking about population growth while also complaining about the Demographic Crisis - as they are both the same damn thing

And I agree 100% with DP - Bitcoin is just a modern Tulip

matthew said...

Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle are among my favorite books of all time. Very highly recommended. They are worth going slow at reading and savoring each idea or plot twist.

scidata said...

Thanks for the thumbs up on CRYPTONOMICON guys. Got the audiobook. BAROQUE CYCLE 2&3 are not currently available, but after looking at the Wikipedia page, wow. That looks really, really good. And all the Brin stuff too. Looking forward to long summer audio-walks.

Unknown said...

Re: Cryptonomicon -

I have long assumed that some of the complete digressions in the book were there so that encoded messages could be be emplaced. Not getting any confirmations online, though. I also read Baroque 1-2, which DOES have encoded messages that are plot-important as two characters are sending information to another using letters, and a third catches them at it.

I'd say that both are worth a read - particularly if you have, say, a prison sentence to fill, or have become the Keeper of the Eddystone Light. It's impressive that the weirdest characters in any of the books are the actual historical ones, - Newton, Leibniz, Turing, etc, even General MacArthur. Then again, it would be hard to invent weirder.

Not touching bitcoin, even with someone else's stick. Tailor-made for pumping and dumping.

Pappenheimer

David Brin said...

The most compact and accurate daily war briefings are at
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

Today's: "Russian forces intensified efforts to encircle and capture Severodonetsk on May 21 and will likely continue to do so in the coming days as efforts on other axes of advance, including Izyum, remain largely stalled. Russian troops in Luhansk Oblast will likely move to capitalize on recent gains made in the Rubizhne-Severodonetsk-Luhansk-Popasna arc to encircle and besiege Severodonetsk—the final Ukrainian strongpoint in Luhansk Oblast. Russian milbloggers are hypothesizing on the success of Russian tactics in the area and have dubbed it the Battle of Severodonetsk—emphasizing that this is the preliminary line of effort in the Donbas theatre."

I cannot predict what tactical maneuvers the Ukrainians - and NATO advisors - will concoct next, as RF officers have finally learned not to expose the flanks of long, vulnerable armored columns. (It only took them 3 months? Such quick learners.)

But one possibility is to have spent weeks digging, in and around Severodonetsk, turning it into another mariupol, only this time with plenty of food and supplies for a seige. Direct assault would slay more whole RF BTGs, effectively detroying the Russian Army. After getting mauled in the Kyiv suburbs, they aren't going to want urban warfare.

And so? What other otion than falling back on artillery pummeling, that worked in Mariupol. But in this case that might go very badly for RF, with Ukraine's own now-enhanced artillery just a few km away and likely now equipped with counterfire radars. And with it now very clear that there's one branch of RF forces who cannot expect mercy, if captured. Artillerymen.

But what do I know?

Mitchell Wyle said...

@scidata: Add David's _Existence_ near the top of your summer reading list.

Everyone in our large family is a Neal Stephenson fan; since Stephenson is local we sometimes get signed first edition hardbacks locally on opening day.

David's fiction withstands the test of time better than Stephenson's work because Stephenson writes thrillers in the very near future, while David's books are far enough out that they can always still happen. Both authors use great "hard science," so their writing is much better than figuring out the odd magic systems of most sci-fi. And, of course, David & Stephenson write great, fun stories with memorable characters and thought-provoking events.

The bitcoin zealots with whom I associate believe in the current as-is bitcoin blockchain, warts and all. They perceive bitcoin to be the new "gold," with a limited amount in existence; it is difficult to mine, very difficult to destroy, etc. bitcoin makes a good standard as a non-fiat currency. Bad people can buy a gun made of cocaine from other bad people without bitcoin.

Personally, I agree with James Mickens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI&t=20s

Der Oger said...

I am a strict opponent of cryptocurrencies, at least, as long as we don't fix the the energy problem.

Especially with War, Pestilence and Famine on the ride now, which threw us back decades.

And then there are cultural issues; I myself (and many others of my country) feel uneasy using money in electronic form, preferring hard, cold cash in the wallet.

Larry Hart said...

duncan cairncross:

And its hypocritical to moan about Musk talking about population growth while also complaining about the Demographic Crisis - as they are both the same damn thing


Maybe in cold economic terms they are. There's also the question of population overrunning the carrying capacity of the planet in terms of food/water/energy consumption and waste production. In that sense, population growth and the Demographic Crisis are different things, in fact opposite things.

Also, who here has been "complaining about" the Demographic Crisis? I mostly remember people saying that it will doom Russia and China, and that the US better embrace more immigration to avoid that same fate. More like "rooting for" than "complaining about".


And I agree 100% with DP - Bitcoin is just a modern Tulip.


Yes, exactly. I'm amazed at the number of times Crypto supporters mention how wonderful it is as a speculative investment. Which may be the case, but seems beside the point to me. Crypto never seems to work as a currency, despite that being the real libertarian selling point. You don't get a paycheck in Bitcoin or see milk and eggs priced in Bitcoin at the store. It's economic value depends on how many dollars (or Euros or whatever national currency) someone is willing to give you for it.

I'm not denying that it can work well as an investment vehicle, especially in the short term, but just pointing out that it works more like a stock or a poly-bagged mint condition issue of The Death of Superman then it does like a dollar bill.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin in the main post:

Crypto is not a dog... or doge...


Never mind "Where do you get your ideas?" Rather, "Where do you get your sense for puns?"

How many people these days even remember Krypto?

scidata said...

@Mitchell Wyle

Lucky you for the Stephenson locality. I just finished EXISTENCE. Brilliant, sweeping, fact-based (hard SF), almost scary, quite astonishing really. Dr. Brin deserves every award he's won and then some. Still, his most important novel (that I've read so far) is FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH and his most important essay is WHY JOHNNY CAN'T CODE (WJCC). I try not to gush too much as I've been severely trolled elsewhere as a sycophant, which I'm not*; I just see psychohistory, AI, unrealized hope of blockchain, and positive sum civilization in similar ways.

* My favourite authors are Stephen Leacock, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Jules Verne. And American politics/history is well beyond my Canadian sensibility. I tried to learn about the Civil War, but when I got to Chickamauga, I was too horrified to continue.

Mitchell Wyle said...

@scidata Jules Verne is fun of course; but I never liked Saint-Exupéry other than _Vol de nuit_. I think my favorite author in the French language is Voltaire, with _Zadig ou la destinee_ and _Candide_ as the two stand-out best. I don't read much French other than online newspapers and WhatsApp messages with friends. If you read German, I have many recommendations for you.

I agree David's social commentary essays and WJCC are fantastic. I disagree with David about adding regulation and a fork to bitcoin. It would turn the "pure" currency into another ShitCoin. Regarding bitcoin purity: If you don't personally, from hardware, transact whole bitcoin amounts, and instead use some other system of fractional coin, you are de-anonymizing yourself and trusting some external ShitCoin system. Some of my bitcoin purist friends are hopeful about the lightning network https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf as an attempt to accelerate the velocity of bitcoin currency transactions in fractional coin with a minimum of ShitCoin impurity. Others are skeptical. Personally, I have never transacted anything since 2011 when I bought a bitcoin for US$1.00 because office-mates at Microsoft Research were excited about the idea and started mining.

David Brin said...

scidata is too kind!

Yes, Chickamauga is depressing to read. But you really should see what happened soon after, when - at Missionary Ridge - Grant and Sherman were waffling, unsure their men could be trusted to carry through a harsh, uphill attack... and sergeants and corporals and privates came out of their trenches, completely on their own, without orders, and drove the slavers off the heights, beginning the long slog to Atlanta and the sea.

Grant & Sherman never doubted their men, again. Grant us such leaders now.

David Brin said...

Request. Someone come here with email addresses for the editors at Scientific American? They just ran an idiotic article extolling METI.

Unknown said...

I'm so old I remembered Krypto AND remembered that Supergirl had a superhorse. However, I did NOT remember the part where she dated Comet (the horse). Which, the internet assures me, was actually a thing.

Regarding the war in the Donbas, it's starting to look like what happened in the Iran/Iraq war, when the high-tech trench-breakers (tanks) break down or can't be used in force...default to 1917, artillery barrages and small-scale infantry assault. Both sides HAVE to be aware that any breakthrough force will be found on satellite scan (or drone recon) as soon as it begins to concentrate, drawing artillery fire, and neither side has established air superiority.

Putin's endgame is no longer seizing a profitable country to loot. This kind of warfare, with incremental contested gains, leaves only wreckage, death and deserted homes - the continuous moving front that devastated much of Europe at the end of WWII.

Pappenheimer

P.S. Any white supremacist fans of Putin should try to note that, just as Hitler did, he's killing predominantly white folks. There's your actual great replacement. Heck, Sir Richard F Burton expected that white people would replace native populations around the world - this was standard Social Darwinist thinking at the time, with war as the selection method - but then WWI and WWII happened.

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

I just finished EXISTENCE. Brilliant, sweeping, fact-based (hard SF), almost scary, quite astonishing really. Dr. Brin deserves every award he's won and then some.


What I found fascinating--and I read it when it came out in hardcover--was the idea it presented of a plausible method of expansion to the stars which didn't involve transporting entire ecosystems. One of those things that (at least) I hadn't thought of before, but seemed so obvious in retrospect.

As an action-adventure enthusiast, the vignettes in the dirigible and on the streets of Shanghai were among my favorite parts.

I won't spoil it for new readers any more than that.

David Brin said...

Re EXISTENCE, one prediction no one ever commented on... e-dentistry! Installation of control electronics into teethy, which are OBVIOUSLY where future scrollers, subvocal microphones and even keyboard-inputs will go.

Mitchell Wyle said...

Regarding e-dentistry: There was a Swedish TV commercial where three fat men are sitting naked in a Sauna. One received a phone call on his mobile phone that was in a tooth. The second received a text message speech-to-texted to his collar bone. The third started farting and said he was receiving a fax.

Unknown said...

Re: Missionary Ridge

Missionary Ridge could have been a colossal CF. I should note that the the "unordered charge" was a continuation of the successful, limited attack that cleared the base of ridge - the US forces had ALREADY come out of their trenches, but were left completely exposed to artillery on top of the ridge. It was either go further forwards or go back. It was also not duplicated for the rest of the war, and frontal assaults from both sides took murderous losses even when they carried their objectives.

Wiki: "This second advance was taken up by the commanders on the spot, but also by some of the soldiers who, on their own, sought shelter from the fire further up the slope. "

Memorably, General Sheridan is said to have finished his flask of whiskey, thrown it uphill, and led his men forwards. The Wiki further states that the Rebel rifle pits at the ridgetop were on the actual crest of the ridge, rather than on the "military crest", leaving blind spots - sheltered areas on the slopes that direct fire could not reach. This suggests that Confederate commander Braxton Bragg's legendary incompetence had spread into his staff choices, because that is stupidity beyond belief.

Pappenheimer

locumranch said...


Crypto is neither a dog or a doge: It's a dodge.

Unfortunately, it's a bad or ineffective dodge, because it's an attempt to avoid a now unavoidable economic Catch 22 called Market Failure.

I've been posting about this growing problem for years, especially in reference to US healthcare which (by no little coincidence) is the most densely regulated economic marketplace in history of the world.

What is Market Failure?

Market Failure is an economic situation wherein the market becomes unresponsive to (disconnected from) market feedback, individual incentives for rational economic behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group, and the distribution of goods and services becomes increasingly inefficient.

In the case of US healthcare, a stable pre-Covid demand resulted in both increasing prices and decreasing supply & production, while a sudden Covid-related increase in demand paradoxically resulted in further decreases in supply, production and even layoffs amongst healthcare providers.

The same is true now for fossil fuels, farm goods, meat & baby formula:

A stable demand has resulted in both higher retail prices and a dramatically diminished supply, all while wholesale (producer) meat & produce prices are at historic lows, despite a near doubling of the retail consumer price points.

We are in deep shit and increased government regulation cannot save us.


Best

David Brin said...

WTH just happened? locum started out with not-insane assertions, and sentence by sentence I actually skimmed and found less-than-normal to quibble over. Except that destruction of market forcesis THE core specialty of poor locum's masters in the oligarchy caste. Ans when they get their clutches on governhment, ensuring that is their one, only and sole and passionate command.

scidata said...

Another danger of DAOs is that of 'technological solutionism' (hammer and nail thinking). Even something as high-minded as Computational Thinking can run into the ditch if our perspective is too narrow. Bigger picture, Systems Thinking would be better. This is what intrigues me about WJCC - it's part of getting an education, not an entirely standalone skill. One (hugely powerful) tool in the polymathic toolbox. Specifically, imagine if Johnny could code in history/geography/English/civics class. Maybe even take on computational psychohistory when he grows up :)

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Except that destruction of market forcesis THE core specialty of poor locum's masters in the oligarchy caste.


Loc seems to exhibit a fallacy shared by many rank-and-file Republican voters. They actually complain about the same corruption and inequities and corporatism that we do. But then they perversely blame it on Biden or George Soros or a socialist agenda, and even more perversely think that electing Republicans is a solution to the problems rather than the main cause of the problems.

David Brin said...


I shouted this a year ago. And it is a danger to us all. Because now that every single moral stance their cult has taken is revealed as hypocrisy, they will go totally frantic. If we taunt them over this and so much else* there will be spasms. But we must.
* Like the pure fact that dems have a tenth as many child molesting perverts in their political caste as goppers do. Or that Dem administrations are ALWAYS more fiscally responsible, or better at holding Moscow accountable, or pushing for 'made in America,' or saving the planet and children... and even securing the borders. What dems are lousy at is pointing ANY of that out!

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/22/1100616952/southern-baptists-sex-abuse

Alfred Differ said...

matthew,

You are arguing that a Great Man is allowed to break rules that the rest of us must follow.

No. I'm really not. I assure you I can see his flaws.

I can also see flaws among the proponents of the crazy idea that there are no good billionaires.

You all will make an enemy of them all and that's going to go into the history books as one of the stupidest things the Progressives ever did. Right up there with bussing and prohibition.

Deuxglass said...

Cryptos have had over ten years to become actual money but they haven't and if they hadn't been able to do it by now then they probably won't. There is a fatal flaw somewhere but I don't know where.

scidata said...

Deuxglass: There is a fatal flaw somewhere

Neal Stephenson's work covers numismatics, currency, cybercurrency, the Enlightenment, and more. If anyone can figure this out, it's him (he). What the Lydians first wrought must be modernized and corrected. My hunch is that Adam Smith's "dead stock" is somewhere in the answer.

locumranch said...

Except that destruction of market forces is THE core specialty of poor locum's masters in the oligarchy caste.

This is a common progressive delusion, this belief that one can legislate morality within a 'free' market, the sad truth being that the Era of Trust-Busting ended almost a hundred years ago with (Republican) President Teddy Roosevelt, while the subsequent passage of increasingly complex 'progressive' government regulation constituted (and continues to constitute) a de facto barrier-to-entry which favours the ongoing creation of oligarchic monopolies, as in the case of healthcare(1), meat-packing(2), baby formula(3) and even university education(4).

Of course, one cannot expect the primary beneficiaries of certain monopolies to condemn those elite, task-specific, expert and well-educated monopolies to which they belong, can one?

(1) https://www.axios.com/2019/06/10/health-care-costs-monopolies-competition-hospitals

(2) https://agamerica.com/blog/meatpacking-monopoly-legislative-updates/

(3) https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/05/19/the-corporate-monopolies-behind-americas-baby-formula-crisis

(4) https://sites.google.com/site/theeconomicsofcollege/monopoly-on-superior-education

Finally, it's a given that the monopolist will condemn their competitors for the very moral hypocrisies that they themselves commit.

This truth is self-evident, so it follows that those who rant about the 'child molesting' perversions and 'homosexual tendencies' of their competitors are most likely trying to protect their In-Group's monopoly on these very behaviours, as evidenced by their rejection of the very politically-correct language standards which they foist on others.

And I, for one, would never stoop so low as to utilize such despicable hate-filled & homophobic rhetoric against our unfairly marginalized **Minor Attracted** and stunningly brave LGBT+ communities, lest I be targeted for destruction by the very outraged & progressively woke mob to which I swear allegiance.

O when, o when, will left-leaning humanity learn that they cannot simultaneously celebrate AND condemn the very moral failings that they share with the right-leaning other.

The answer is 'never'.



Best

David Brin said...

Whoa, loco-locum is back. Hey liar-hypocrite! Your cult is supposedly about competition. Yet it NEVER mentions the c-word nowadays because even lickspittle butt lickers know that their side is the oligarchy denounced by Adam Smith and the American Founders.

Blah blah blah. The crux.

- Yours is the party of cheating

- of delusional oligarchy

- of hatred of their sole rivals, every single fact using (nerd) profession

- of sexual predation and perversion ... and BET ESCROWED WAGER STAKES on that or any other part of it. You won't because you know yours is a cult of evil and treason.

DP said...

scidata, the best way to learn about the ACW is Ken Burn's famous documentary series.

Then if you have time, read Shelby Foote's 3 volume "The Civil War: A Narrative".

DP said...

Historian Shelby Foot was also the most famous person interviewed by Burns.

Here is Foote's assessment of union vicotry and why the South never had a chance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Iw-j217yk

"The Union fought the war with one hand behind its back."

GMT -5 8032 said...

It's hard to find any reasonable investments these days. Interest rates are woefully low, well under the inflation rate. The stock market is no place for amateurs (my cousins have the investment genes; sadly, my branch of the family does not). I've been stuck listening to an advisor and picking out the least risky funds to put my IRA into.

I don't trust crypto and I will not put any money into it.

David Brin said...

DP I well recall Shelby Foote on that show. Problem is that the far weaker/crazy/evil side was unified by psychotic delusion. And they were damn good fighters.

If Lee hadn't made the mistake of Gettysburg, and fools succeeded in dumping Grant, then Lincoln might have lost in 1864 and a 'peace' negotiated with utter evil.

We are seeing the same dynamic today. The Treason Party has won the US popular vote just twice since 1990, yet steals vast power through both constitutional and unlawful cheats...

... and the Union side fights with many hands tied, as I point out in Polemical Judo, by David Brin: http://www.davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html

Alfred Differ said...

Deuxglass,

There is a fatal flaw somewhere but I don't know where.

Try writing a contract denominated in bitcoin and examine how one translates them. Bonds (debt and promises) can be written, but how does one escrow the funds except by assigning ownership to an agent that has to be trusted?

Etherium is an attempt to deal with this void, but it has challenges of its own. Some are large enough to keep small-valued contracts off the chain.

What we are learning from all this is the value brought to markets BY the issuing agent of the currency. It's hard to describe the transaction value of monetary policies, but we can see evidence for it in how people move in and out of forex positions.



GMT-5 8032,

Unless you have a lot of time to do the research (you probably don't based on what you've said here), you are safer sticking with broad index funds that charge next to nothing for oversight because to balance their fund algorithmically.

Yah. Returns suck right now. The market cycles and will return to other phases soon enough. An index fund keyed to the S&P returns around 9-10%/year average. Not bad if you can get one that doesn't charge you much to park your money there.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

... and the Union side fights with many hands tied


The media should be on the Union side because the Union side is the one respecting journalistic principles. Their incessant bothsiderism is akin to selling the commies the rope with which they'll hang you.

Consistent with his pseudonym, the "Rude Pundit" might be a bit coarse for this group, but in his own way he makes that point:

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2022/05/americas-mass-hysteria-can-we-please.html

...
But I realized that one of the things we don't talk about enough in the United States is just how many crazy motherfuckers are in power. We treat crazy motherfuckers the same way we treat sane politicians when, truly, we have to call crazy motherfuckers "crazy motherfuckers."
...
Look, we're used to stupid. We're used to corrupt. We're used to manipulative. We're used to that shit. But widespread crazy is scarier than all of that. Widespread crazy will lead to more violence. Widespread crazy will lead to condemnation of those who refuse to give in to the crazy. Widespread crazy is a goddamned virus that is only happy if it spreads.

And what I figured out is that too many of our leaders and media figures are not holding people accountable for crazy. Crazy is not merely problematic. It's not just another side of an issue. It's fucking crazy. This country is going fucking crazy, driven there by Fox "news" and online bullshitters who get off on making people crazy and crazy people themselves, who now have a megaphone that can be just as big as anyone trying to tell people that reality is reality.
...

Larry Hart said...

We may soon be Hungary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/opinion/trump-desantis-viktor-orban.html

...
Mr. Orban’s party controls everything that matters in Hungary, so he controls the law. Like Mr. Orban, Mr. DeSantis is also a clever lawyer — and for now, his party controls the offices of secretary of state, attorney general and both chambers of the state legislature in Florida.

If Mr. Trump is succeeded by a more disciplined party leader who can control all three branches and lock in partisan advantage by law, then payback could become the currency of the realm.

Does political payback have limits? Elections can replace the bullies, as Mr. Trump has now seen. Mr. DeSantis faces the discipline of a balanced state budget.

But these controls assume that constitutional government still works. The opposition in Hungary faces enormous obstacles (like a mostly one-sided media environment and rigged rules) to winning through elections. Mr. Orban has captured and dismantled all of the checks on his power. Will the Republican Party succeed in doing the same here? While elections still have consequences, voters will need to say no.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/opinion/orban-hungary-cpac-republicans.html

...
What’s striking about this display of longing and affection for Orban’s regime — beyond the obvious spectacle of people who are ostensibly American nationalists working in concert with a foreign autocrat — is how it underscores a defining trait of conservative populists, if not conservative populism itself. For all the talk of “America First,” there is a deep disdain among members of this group for both Americans and the American political tradition.

This disdain is evident in how they talk about their political opponents. They routinely place entire groups of citizens outside of the political community. Carlson, for example, said on a recent episode of his show that pro-choice Democrats are “totalitarians” who hope to destroy religious belief in the United States.

As president, Trump routinely held out his opposition as a threat to the very integrity of the United States. “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” he said in a speech on July 4, 2020. The culprits? “Angry mobs” and “radicals” he identified with “liberal Democrats.” Less high-profile but still telling was the assertion from a writer at the Claremont Institute, an influential pro-Trump think tank in Southern California, that “most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.”
...


(emphasis mine)

scidata said...

Ken Burns' "Baseball" was great, and I'll watch "Franklin" if local TV shows it. However, I've sworn off all ACW stuff for a bit as it gives me hives.
"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares." - Carl Sagan, CONTACT

Re: Crazy
I have a simple rule of thumb. Objectivity by default, subjectivity only when exploring the outermost edges. One's House (in the old biblical sense - home, family, friends, neighbours) has to be a pillar of objective fact to avoid inheriting the wind. Especially for kids, who cannot flourish in a madhouse. The good news is that people who escape the madhouse rarely revert back (GQP pols are an anomaly), so humanity as a whole gradually tends towards sanity.

Larry Hart said...

I figured Krugman would bring this up...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/opinion/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-social-media.html

...
We’ve seen this movie before. Back in 2010 much of the Wall Street elite, rather than feeling grateful for having been bailed out, was consumed with “Obama rage.” Financial wheeler-dealers were furious at not, in their view, receiving the respect they deserved after, um, crashing the world economy.

Unfortunately, plutocratic pettiness matters. Money can’t buy admiration, but it can buy political power; it’s disheartening that some of this power will be deployed on behalf of a Republican Party that is descending ever deeper into authoritarianism.
...
The right turn by some technology billionaires is also, may I say, very stupid.

It’s true that oligarchs can get very rich under autocrats like Orban or Vladimir Putin, whom much of the U.S. right deeply admired until he began losing his war in Ukraine.

But these days Russia’s oligarchs are, by many accounts, terrified. For even vast wealth offers little security against the erratic behavior and vindictiveness of leaders unconstrained by the rule of law.
...

Larry Hart said...

Finally, someone besides me remembers this!

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/May24.html#item-4

...If it's gasoline prices, everyone in the country will be reminded on a daily basis of the deal Trump made with OPEC to cut production a couple of years ago.

Paradoctor said...

Deuxglass:
The inherent problem with crypto is that you have to be smart to understand it, but the whole point of money is to be simple.

Larry Hart said...

Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show:


The real border crisis in this country is at the separation of church and state.

Jon S. said...

I'm in communication with a couple of historians with a concentration on the Civil War. Quickest way to give either one apoplexy is to mention Shelby Foote. He's, ah, apparently not held in high regard amongst historians of the era. (Remember, Ken Burns isn't a historian, he's a producer of television documentaries.)

reason said...

Alfred Differ : I can also see flaws among the proponents of the crazy idea that there are no good billionaires.

I don't who is saying this, but in my view it is the wrong way of looking at. I don't think somebody being a billionaire or not says anything about their PERSONAL character. By my view is "nobody should be a billionaire" - which is something completely different. It is the nature of one individual concentrating so much unaccountable power that is the problem. Whether the individual him/herself is a good person or not is irrelevant to the question.

Deuxglass said...

Alfred Differ

“What we are learning from all this is the value brought to markets BY the issuing agent of the currency.”

That is the essence of modern currency. The reputation of the issuer determines the long-term value of its currency and to get that reputation depends on how well you manage your economy and how well you can protect it from outside dangers. If you have been able to do that for a couple of centuries then people have confidence in holding your money. Very few countries fit the bill. Cryptos being new have no reputation and not being backed by a reputable country, indeed by any backers at all, makes them not really fit for much except speculation.

Deuxglass said...

Paradoctor

"The inherent problem with crypto is that you have to be smart to understand it, but the whole point of money is to be simple."

If you have to be smart to understand it but the whole point of money is it to be simple then by that definition crytos are not money and are therefore either pure speculative instruments like tulips and/or a niche product suitable only for narrow usages.

Paradoctor said...

How about an NFT of a tulip?

David Brin said...

"..If it's gasoline prices, everyone in the country will be reminded on a daily basis of the deal Trump made with OPEC to cut production a couple of years ago.'

No they won't be. Reminded. Democrats are too stupid to use tactics that might actually work.

The ebook for the ENTIRE Uplift Storm trilogy now reduced - DRASTICALLY and stupendously(!) for just one day. The deal includes Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach. Some of my most-fun characters! Answers to maybe half of your questions from STARTIDE etc! And topically about refugees who make good.
What a deal.

https://www.amazon.com/Uplift-Storm-Trilogy-Brightness-Infinitys-ebook/dp/B091YFWFZK/

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

"..If it's gasoline prices, everyone in the country will be reminded on a daily basis of the deal Trump made with OPEC to cut production a couple of years ago.'

No they won't be. Reminded. Democrats are too stupid to use tactics that might actually work.


Sadly, you are probably right.

I was just surprised/impressed that anyone else even remembered Trump "saving the oil industry" by negotiating a deal to raise prices. I had thought I was the only one.

Deuxglass said...

Paradoctor said...
How about an NFT of a tulip?

The NFT would last as long as a tulip does, that is only a few days in 72 degree weather not leaving you much time to find a greater fool.

Tony Fisk said...

How many tulipennies are there to a photonic ecumber?

Larry Hart said...

Guns don't kill people. Republicans kill people.

monkey said...

Hi David, I saw your remarks about China elsewhere. Every word you said was dripping with chauvinism--- and, frankly, it reeked of racism. The deranged ravings of an unreconstructed cold warrior thug. I knew I'd heard your name before as some third-rate SF hack so I looked you up and found that you've actually posted frothing-at-the-mouth blog posts explicitly calling for American exceptionalism. What a sad, pathetic little man you are!

Larry Hart said...

Rubber, meet glue.

Just so that a-hole doesn't remain the bottom post, here's some more on Massacre Abbott.

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/May25.html#item-1

...
First of all, the President of the United States has no option but to do exactly what Biden did, and to give exactly the speech Biden gave. Carlson knows this, which means that, like his buddy Cruz, he's just using 19 dead children as a prop. In this case, the specific goal is to squeeze out another 0.1 ratings points. And that's before we talk about the galling hypocrisy of delivering a divisive and highly politicized editorial condemning Biden for being divisive and highly political. What a loathsome human being Carlson is. Actually, maybe "human being" is a little too generous.

And speaking of people whose humanity is dubious at best, that brings us to Republican response #4. As soon as we heard the news, and started planning this item out, we knew that "angry Democrats," "Republican thoughts and prayers," "Republicans warning Democrats," and "Republicans attacking Democrats" would be a part of the piece, and the only question was what the specific exemplars would be. And once we heard that the shooter was brown (specifically, Latino), we knew that response #4 was inevitable, though we weren't sure if the members of the GOP would be able to at least restrain themselves for a day or two. But, we need not have wondered in a world that has people like... Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ).

There's really no question, at this point, that Gosar is an out-and-out white supremacist. Other Republicans court that demographic, but Gosar's right at home within it. And that is apparently where he turns for "insight" whenever major news breaks, presumably because OAN, Newsmax and Breitbart aren't quite nutty enough. So it is that, after perusing white supremacist talk sites yesterday (like Stormfront, the Daily Stormer, etc.), he jumped on Twitter to share the "truth," announcing that the shooter had been identified as "a transsexual leftist illegal alien." We can't share the actual tweet because Gosar, or someone close to him, had the good sense to erase it. But on the Internet, tweets like that live forever, so you can click through that link if you want to see a screen capture. In any case, as you might imagine, none of the things that Gosar claimed are true.

The upshot is that, once again, there are no depths that leading Republicans won't plumb when it comes to a tragedy like this one. The one and only thing they won't do is commit to even the most moderate of

monkey said...

Hey I might be an a-hole but at least I'm not the one digging out the calipers and phrenology charts because I'm scared the Asiatic hordes are amassed at the gates.

Also why does every hardcore Clash Of Civilizations guy look like a thumb.

monkey said...

Also damn this Brin guy's Israel opinions are exactly what you'd expect lol. Always fun to play crypto-neocon bingo with pasty white liberal blogosphere thumb-men.

LeadDreamer said...

Hey @monkey - did that sound clever in your head? I bet that sounded REEEEAL clever in your head.

David Brin said...

Had he offered actual links to my specific posts he objected-to... and his own online counter postings dissecting my assertions, countered by his own, this aptly-named fellow might have elicited curiosity from me. Folks here know I do that - or at least formulate arguments - when challenged byu someone with cogency and the guts to stand in light.

Alas, this is just a drive-by masturbator. None of the things he attributes to me apply. Zzzzzz

---
Meanwhile... once again those calling for gun compromise fail to actually broach the "DMV approach to guns." Treating guns like cars. Raise it and they will fall back on one, visceral objection: "If guns are registered, the government will know where to come take them away."

It's called the Insurrectionary Recourse... and if you fail to grasp it, then you are NOT really trying to find a solution that will fly. It explains the reds' 'not one inch!' refusal to compromise... also why Black Americans have been arming-up, lately...
I explain it here and offer a plausible compromise that could work:

The Jefferson Rifle: hidden essence of the gun debate - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html

monkey said...

Just reading back through some of your old blog posts. Genuinely hilarious how much of a drooling American chauvinist you are. I especially like the one where you claimed that post-Revolution Cuba had the chance to experiment with socialism "in the most favorable of all conditions"(!!??). Favorable conditions!? You are completely detached from reality. Even most neocons wouldn't say this!

David Brin said...

Still an utter coward. But at least Aptly-Named offered an assertion that could be answered.

When your population lives in a tropical paradise where their gardens supply half of their food and shelter can be palm fronds over a lattice, yeah, conditions start out pretty favorable for a socialist experiment. Cuban socialism could have been relaxed and democratic, focusing on rules of employment and commerce... Try reading Aldous Huxley's ISLAND to see a description the Castros might have read and used as inspiration, if they weren't murdering tyrants.

But that's not what Aptly Named is masturbating about. Nor does he express: "did you mean...?" curiosity. Just a yammerer, I'm afrain. With a Google account.

You are welcome here, fellah. But give specific citations and be less boring, hm? Post once per day, though. Or get banned.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Meanwhile... once again those calling for gun compromise fail to actually broach the "DMV approach to guns." Treating guns like cars.


One who doesn't shy away from such arguments is Jim Wright (Stonekettle Station). He has understandably given up new posts for each new massacre and just posts links to old ones now. These tiny excepts can't possibly do the book length posts justice:

https://www.stonekettle.com/2018/05/bang-bang-crazy-part-14-cowardice-of.html

...
Tony might want to check the laws of his state.

You see, in many states failure to properly secure your vehicle does make you liable under the law – not to mention, being grounds for claim denial by your insurance company.

For example: In nearly every state it is illegal to leave a running car unattended, even on private property, even if the the door is locked, and in some states even if you use a remote starting system with anti-theft lockout capability.

If you leave your car unsecured, with the keys in the ignition, you can be held liable for its theft and subsequent use in a crime.

Likewise, if you loan your vehicle to somebody unauthorized to operate it, or who is impaired, or who is not covered under your insurance, then you are liable for whatever happens with that vehicle. You are most certainly liable if your kids take your car and kill somebody because you left the keys where they could get them. You’re responsible for both the kids and the car.

However, if you take reasonable steps to secure your vehicle and to keep it out of the hands of unauthorized users, then the law generally does not hold you accountable if someone steals your car.

This is no different whatsoever from what I suggested.
...



https://www.stonekettle.com/2015/06/bang-bang-sanity.html

...
Banning the future sales of assault weapons, certain types of ammo, and large capacity magazines won’t do a damned thing. That horse is out of the barn.

So what would?

Well, we make the NRA’s own rules federal law.
...

David Brin said...

I should add that the initial phase of the Cuban revolution... banishing US mafia gangs, shuttering the casinos and brothels, redistributing the stolen land and turning haciendas into schools was TOTALLY justified!

But those initial;, radical measures BECAME the 'favorable conditions.'
They were popular and would have got Fidel re-elected, if he weren't a murderous tyrant who killed anyone who stood up to dissent, or even disagree.

Go read ISLAND.

monkey said...

Whenever someone self-identifies politically as one of the "sensible adults in the room" it always seems like they're protesting too much or overcompensating in some way. It's a bit like Elon Musk reportedly whispering "I'm the alpha in this relationship" to his first wife while they were dancing at the wedding reception. If he was really "the alpha" he wouldn't need to say it!

locumranch said...


Monkey is a prime example of the proliferation of crazy, a proliferation enshrined into law by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which forbids discrimination on the basis of mental illness and endorsed by a liberal progressive contingent intent on the elimination of normality & the normalization of said crazy.

My advice to you is that you may as well get used to it because the acceptance of the marginalized aberrant minority is what you liberal progressives have fought for so hard over these many years.

Enjoy this Clown World of your own creation.


Best

Larry Hart said...

Pot meet kettle.

monkey said...

The real "pot meet kettle" situation is a loyal reader of Mr Brin's blog calling locumranch crazy. Talk about the narcissism of small differences. 你们都是走狗。

David Brin said...

Oh Aptly Named. You have a facility for turn of phrase, I'll admit. But you give us no reason to believe that I don't do more for civilization and the future in any 5 minute span than you have, across your entire, snarky life.

Given your clever phrasings and metaphors, I raise your limit to twice a day. But expect the attention a gnat deserves.

monkey said...

@LeadDreamer I didn't think it was particularly clever, no. It was a simple description of Mr Brin's mindset. I have family and loved ones in China so I'm afraid I don't have much tolerance for demented Yellow Peril fantasists.

David Brin said...

Aptly Named knows he is lying about my motives. For the simple reason he thinks he is huirting me by saying those things. But if he thinks I would feel hurt, then he knows they are lies!

Buzzing gnats are like that. Like locumranch, he spasms at a strawman who is WAY over there, having nothing to do with me and is mentally incapable of saying the the words: "Gee, what if my spasm interpretations are wrong?"

Heh, I just had here in my home one of the top Chinese SF authors on the planet, posing with me in front of the same painting Liu Cixin posed before, a couple of years ago. I regularly extoll the fact that America has been China's only friend, across 3000 years and should continue to strive to be.

In other words. waaaaay over there, gnat.

Larry Hart said...

Plus, he excoriates us for calling locumranch crazy, maybe not realizing that locumranch called him crazy. So that proves one of them must be.

All this not distracting from today's main concern, which is if a school shooter takes the life of a pregnant girl in Texas, can I sue him for $10,000?

(Yeah, I'm in a mood today)

monkey said...

Touched a nerve, huh? You're not fooling me with this shit. Your readers are stupid as pigshit but the rest of us can see right through you. I've seen the way you talk about China, and this "only friend" pigshit is at best chauvinist white messiah paternalism and more likely a thinly-veiled threat. I shudder to think what you have in mind for people like my family. I'm not surprised you call me an insect. That's what I expect from Yankee 傻逼 like you. Shame on you.

monkey said...

Larry I know exactly what locumranch said. Do you think I can't read English? Interesting.

LeadDreamer said...

I think I hear monkey farts. Was that a monkey fart? Must be a monkey fart.

monkey said...

Hey David maybe your US army and their puppets can murder a few million Chinese and then you can shrug and smile because America's "ratio" is still good. It seems that's your response for Vietnam, Korea, Hiroshima, Indonesia, Iraq.....

scidata said...

To accuse pasty white thumb-men of reeking of racism is... odd. And calling adversaries running dogs is almost Maoist. What century are we in?

Larry Hart said...

So sollee. No speekee Engrish.

monkey said...

It's not "almost Maoist" it's just Maoist. 70% right 30% wrong, and "running dogs" was right.

monkey said...

"So sollee. No speekee Engrish."

This is your loyal readership, David. But sure keep telling me how you're not a racist lol

David Brin said...

I keep almost banning... then realizing the jibbering froth is actually kinda amusing and costs me nada. Keep buzzing, gnat.

monkey said...

"So sollee. No speekee Engrish."

You gonna let this slide? lol What happened to "China's only friend"?

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

then realizing the jibbering froth is actually kinda amusing and costs me nada.


After Massacre Abbott, we almost could use the surreal distraction. We weren't going to talk about much else today anyway.

monkey said...

I have to be honest even I'm surprised that you're cool with your reader posting that. It just goes to show if you put ten "NatSec China-watcher" hobbyist guys in a room it's only a matter of time before one of them starts pulling his eyes back and saying "ching chong ling long ting tong"

LeadDreamer said...

It's past monkey's nap time. We're into the frothing meltdown.

monkey said...

"So sollee. No speekee Engrish."

?

Larry Hart said...

Touched a nerve, huh?

monkey said...

Not as much as I touched David's nerves cuz he's so mad he's deleting everything I post lmfao

David Brin said...

Wheeeeeee! Hallucinating as much as locum! Shows that the enemies of the enlightenment can take all kinds of rationalizations, but masturbate the same. Wheeeeee! I'm kind enjoying this.

Larry Hart said...

In a perverse way, I think I needed this today.

LeadDreamer said...

Clearly, Incel Monkey is looking for bragging rights on his Incel chat group "Hey, *I* got blocked by Brin!"

Paradoctor said...

About America's latest mass human sacrifice:

Thoughts and prayers to Cthulhu! I have a modest proposal, which I direct to the next mass shooter, on the off chance that it'll make its way to a blog that he reads. If you know any such blogs, then please forward this to there.


Dear Sir:

I get where you’re coming from. They don’t, but I do. Life sucks, doesn’t it? You’ve got no friends, and you get no respect. Girls won’t date you, the asshole boss pays an insultingly low slave-wage, so your revenge arsenal cost you all of your money. You’re trapped, you’re dying inside, you hate everything and everybody, especially yourself, so you want to go out with a bang. I get it.

I write to offer a suggestion. You see, all of your predecessors did their massacres all wrong, and we’ve grown bored with them. We’re jaded. Somebody shoots up a movie theater? Ho-hum. A school? Yawn. A church? Whatever! Then we do nothing, and a day later we forget all about it.

So what’s the point? Nobody’s impressed anymore!

The problem is the choice of target. Killing masses of unarmed civilians is for wusses. It’s unsporting; and what’s worse, it’s no fun. Sure, it’s practical to slaughter the defenseless, but what do you care about practicality? You’re mad as hell, and they’ll never take you alive! You want action, not survival; you want to prove something. So leave the women and children alone, and target heavily-armed men!

Now, where can you find a big crowd of well-armed men? A crowd that you can walk right up to, while just as well-armed, and they’ll do nothing before you open fire? Not the police station, nor the Army barracks; those guys are paranoid about other guys carrying. Really the police and the armed forces are gun-control organizations. They’re all about control: of the guns, by the guns, and for the guns.

If you want a rabble of well-armed posers mentally unprepared for battle, then the best target for you, Sir, is the gun show.

Never mind the odds. If you kill two of them right away, then no matter what happens next, the score will be at least 2 to 1, so you win. And your spree might last longer than you’d expect. Plenty of your predecessors were never stopped by gun-carriers; sometimes because those carriers couldn’t make a safe shot, sometimes because they didn’t want to look like mass shooters themselves. Really it’s because they’re posers. They want to seem as dangerous as you really are.

If you don’t mind dying, then the gun show is a soft target. You’ll shoot down plenty of them before they shoot back, and then they might miss you and hit each other. You might even spark a random fire-fight! You wouldn’t survive it, but so what? Think of the headlines!

You won’t see them, of course, but we will, and finally we will be shocked. Shocked, I tell you! Finally a convincing rampage! Shooters shooting shooters: proof of the practical necessity of a well-regulated militia! Proof that even posers will believe!

We might even name the resulting law after you.

Think about it.

Sir.

David Brin said...

Paradoc, if you past that somewhere, I will link to it, though not as a practical suggestion, but as a rock-em-back effort to make em blink and think.

An alternative? Do your research and go after mobsters and other villains. Yes, they have guards. But take em by surprise and there's a chance you'll be viewed afterwards - dead or aline - as a hero.

Paradoctor said...

Dr. Brin:

https://paradox-point.blogspot.com/2022/05/to-next-mass-shooter-modest-proposal.html

Alfred Differ said...

Mmm... Ick.

Messing with a masturbator gets you sticky without having any of the fun.


Larry,

In a perverse way, I think I needed this today.

I suppose. My wife's a school teacher. She was in a terrible mood today and shootings are just part of it. There is an impressive level of violence being unleashed right now.

I'm just gonna keep my head down for now. Mouth shut too. I don't have anything useful to add.

monkey said...

Hey David, is "enemies of the enlightenment" what you call the Palestinian children who get their brains blown out by the IDF?

Bill_in_the Middle said...

Paradoctor said...
I posted you modest proposal link on Facebook. We'll see how quickly I get thrown into Facebook jail....

Larry Hart said...

Everything you need to know about Republican consistency.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-column-facebook-twitter-florida-restrictions-republicans-chapman-20220525-rcvm5647zvdmxi7uphu3wxxn6u-story.html

Trump’s fans could also move over to the platform ProAmericaOnly, which brags of its “no censorship” policy — while proudly proclaiming that it “doesn’t allow liberals.”

Larry Hart said...


Last night, I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh, how I wish he'd go away.

Jon S. said...

One day I met upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today;
I think he's with the CIA.

Larry Hart said...

@Jon S,

Was that from Mad Magazine? I think I actually had that one.

monkey said...

Very good, Larry. Next time do it wearing a rice paddy hat and pulling your eyes back. I think "Dr Brin" would get a kick out of it.

Larry Hart said...

Amen to this...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/May26.html#item-3

Yesterday's post was, as we warned at the beginning, strongly worded. This item is also in that vein. However, we regard neither that nor this as a violation of our general preference to be evenhanded when it comes to politics. What we are criticizing today, and yesterday, and in the two a**hole pieces earlier this week, and in the third a**hole piece that will run tomorrow, is behavior rather than political viewpoints. When it comes to guns and the Second Amendment, there is no clear-cut right answer, particularly given the reality that the United States already has hundreds of millions of guns in circulation. But when one side of the political aisle says: "We clearly have a problem, and let's try to find a better way" and the other side dissembles, and gaslights, and distracts, and sticks its fingers in its ears? Then the latter faction is behaving badly, and we don't think it's bias to point that out.

David Brin said...

150,000 elementary & secondary schools in America. Fox wants to put TWO elderly armed guards - along with 'man trap' security systems - in each one. That's $billions to pay 0.1% of the entire population of the United States to totter around our schools brandishing assault rifles. As if that would even slightly slow a determinedly suicidal maniac, as in Uvalde.

Spend the same $ on visiting and evaluating and helping every loner issuing cries for help, online.

==
In case you missed your chance on BookBub a day ago, here's another! 'The Uplift Storm Trilogy' is highlighted today ($2.99) on eBookDaily.com and in the Bargain newsletter. Three big volumes in this epic trilogy, all together for less than a buck apiece!

https://ebookdaily.com/bargain-kindle-books/2022-05-26/B091YFWFZK

Paradoctor said...

Concerning removing guns from circulation: it's a manageable problem. It's true that persuasion and buy-backs only work on sensible people. It's also true that some morons will label themselves by bragging 'molon labe'. But one needn't use armed force on the molon-labe-labelled-morons; economic pressure will usually suffice.

The government need only mandate licensing and insurance for guns, like they do with cars. The more guns and ammo, the more it costs. Anyone who refuses to pay will be in arrears, and their accounts and credit lines can be cancelled, and their wages can be garnisheed. They will give up their guns after the lights go out and the toilets don't flush.

This won't work if they move to the woods and shoot opossums for dinner; but then they're out of our hair. The rest of the molon-labe-labelled-morons are posers. We live in a society, and the Coin is mightier than the Sword.

Larry Hart said...

Sad but true...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/opinion/roxane-gay-uvalde-school-shooting.html

When politicians talk about civility and public discourse, what they’re really saying is that they would prefer for people to remain silent in the face of injustice. They want marginalized people to accept that the conditions of oppression are unalterable facts of life. They want to luxuriate in the power they hold, where they never have to compromise, never have to confront their consciences or lack thereof, never have to face the consequences of their inaction.

Larry Hart said...

Shoulda read ahead. From the same article:


...
They called for civility again and again, as they did during protests after Black people were shot or killed by the police in Ferguson and Kenosha and Minneapolis and Louisville. They called for civility when a draft of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked this month. The draft decision tells people of childbearing age that they have no bodily autonomy. It is barbaric.

In the wake of the leak, there were lawful, peaceful protests outside some of the justices’ homes. Journalists and politicians proceeded to fall all over themselves to condemn these protests as incivility — as if the protests were the problem. The Washington Post editorial board wrote that justices have a right to private lives, that public protests should never breach certain boundaries.

They call for civility, but the definition of civility is malleable and ever-changing. Civility is whatever enables them to wield power without question or challenge.
...

LeadDreamer said...

I post this on Twitter frequently:

"Civility" has been the weapon-of-choice of the elite since time immemorial.

"Not now. Not here. Not that way. Not those words. Not those actions."

There *is* only one time - now.

https://twitter.com/video_manager/status/1529832088781803521?s=20&t=6zhAuMtrDd7M9bT_rZ7EKw

Paradoctor said...

Civility is a euphemism for silencing.

Don Gisselbeck said...

Put it on my Facebook page.

Don Gisselbeck said...

Has any RWNJ ever demanded civility from the likes of the Swanson heir or the Very Stable Genius?

monkey said...

"Fox wants to put TWO elderly armed guards - along with 'man trap' security systems - in each one. That's $billions to pay 0.1% of the entire population of the United States to totter around our schools brandishing assault rifles. As if that would even slightly slow a determinedly suicidal maniac, as in Uvalde."

I dunno David, this is pretty much how Israel operates and you seem pretty happy to support that. Maybe you think that's justified because some of those kids have uhh... rocks or something(?)

David Brin said...

"Civility is a euphemism for silencing."

Actually more accurate is that civility complaints are often the last refuge of those who are cornered with an indefensible stance, and who need an evasion.

I say 'often' because there are many times when the one being accused of incivility is simply being an asshole.

David Brin said...

While he learned to parse sentences in English, our visitor is actually pretty microcephalic. Look at the pathetic gambit.

Like Locumranch (though from opposite politics) he hurls a fecal strawman that he knows has nothing to do with me, under the assumption he can achieve his goal of hurting my feelings by attributing to me stances I find loathsome. But... alas for that... since the hurled fecal matter has nothing to do with me, it simple misses WAY over there.

In fact, I am pretty sensitive to accusations that seem plausible, that I have performed an injustice. But in these cases, well, it's a lesson that pathetic yammering loser modalities cross all political spectra, and are traits of incel whiners, that's all.

Snore. zzzzzzzz

Having said all that, forgive typoes (typed quickly) and I'll mostly ignore (not even skim) the aptly named dope.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Like Locumranch (though from opposite politics) he hurls a fecal strawman ...


It's right there in the name. :)


that he knows has nothing to do with me,


Yesterday was different. Today, I didn't feel like engaging. But if I had, I would have mentioned that no one here seems to be an Israel booster to the extent of excusing its stormtrooper tactics. That was a complete fishing expedition.

I mean, Netanyahu's Israel was pretty buddy-buddy with Putin, China's new best friend. So monkey-pox has some nerve blaming us running dogs for his team's failings. Or...


Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Netanyahu loved Putin
And so do you.


Excelsior.

Larry Hart said...

Post hoc, ergo proper hoc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/opinion/uvalde-shooting-republicans.html

No other country has the level of American carnage, but no other country has American Republicans.

monkey said...

lol "my team", your "team" are the ones who forced shock therapy on post-Soviet Russia, ransacked the country and then put Putin where he is in the first place. He's a pure neoliberal creation, and was the darling of the Third Way types for years. As always, centrists splattering shit all over their bedding and then blaming the left for why their room stinks.

Also hilarious to pretend that anyone other than the US is Israel's biggest supporter. The amount of money and arms the US pours into the country is a matter of public record. Israel is a de facto US military outpost, but you want to blame it on China in a game of six degrees of kevin bacon because you are an inveterate racist.

monkey said...

Pretty funny btw that "Dr Brin" confines his most rancid takes to this blog where they're read by seven or eight racist fossils from the early-2000s blogosphere, while toning it down on twitter because he knows he'd get dunked on mercilessly by everyone on the platform aside from bluetick Atlantic op-ed writers and somehow sub-Brin intellects like Matty Yglesias.

monkey said...

"So sollee. No speekee Engrish."

David Brin said...

An interesting possiblility in Ukraine depends on just how angry some Ukrainian fighters are. The current grinding (and costly to Russia) move to surround Sieverdonetsk would seem likely to create another Mariupol - terrible urban fighting amid ruins pummeled by RF artillery. With 3 differences. Less of a perfect fortress than the Azov Steel Works. But perhaps better-prepared with stores for a seige. Above all, RF artillery would (unlike Mariupol) then be in easy counter-battery range of Uk howitzers, both just to the south and within the city itself. And, if there is any component of the RF military that's both hated and crucial to them, artillery is it.

If - a big if - there are Uk units and troops so angry they'd volunteer for such a role, then this could be a trap to draw the biggest mass of RF asrtillery within range to be slaughtered. While yet another Alamo-THermopylae legend is made.

Armchair general, much? Speculation and whatifs are my job.

David Brin said...

Someone tell me if the twit says something worth skimming? If you are irritated beyond shrugging, let me know. Otherwise..... snore.

monkey said...

Nothing much, David. I was just pointing out that Israel is a Nazi state, etc. But you know that.

monkey said...

"microcephalic" was an interesting choice though, David. Scratch an "enlightenment liberal", find a weirdo race IQ phrenologist.

monkey said...

Also, wtf is going on with the cover art for your novels? The weird 90s CG models look unbelievably tacky. I may not like you but let me offer some constructive advice: please have a word with your agent/publishers about this!

Alfred Differ said...

I'm annoyed beyond shrugging.
He's here ONLY to piss on you.
Nothing constructive in that.

Locumranch shows up to be who he is.
He disagrees with what he thinks you are, but that's different.


Don't let my annoyance drive a decision, though. I just use the comment folding feature now and avoid him.

David Brin said...

comment folding feature?

Jon S. said...

Was that from Mad Magazine? I think I actually had that one.

Yep. Read it as a young lad, and it stuck with me through the years.

And yes, Dr. Brin, the vocabularily-challenged one has irritated me beyond shrugging since he first started hurling his droppings here. It's your home, though, and if you choose to indulge an occasional monkey, that's your choice - I simply skip past, just as I do with loco.

Alfred Differ said...

If I click on a post title, I get a page with the post and all the comments after it. Linear. No folding away comments I'd rather skip.


If I click on the number of comments at the bottom of the post (as it appears on the front page of the blog) I get a page of comments only. No blog post. Comments can be 'rolled up' by clicking near the poster's name... or all at once from the top of the comment list.

On posts were a lot of comments are written over a few days, I use the comments-only page and immediate roll up everything. Then I scroll down to about where I think I left off reading the previous day and start opening/unrolling comments. (Some I skip.)

It's not gisting, but it helps me manage the amount of attention I devote to those who fail to earn it.

Unknown said...

The blog seems to have a pet troll. 'Druther have an albatross, if I had my druthers.

Pappenheimer

monkey said...

Hi Jon S, what makes you say "vocabularily-challenged"? Is it because I pulled up David for "microcephalic"? I know what the word means. I just think it kind of reveals his basically phrenological mindset. Are you also a "race IQ" guy?

Or maybe you're one of those 60+ blogger guys who thinks people under 30 are "vocabularily-challenged" because we say things like "wtf"?

Also, lol that you also say "Dr Brin". This comments section is truly the dick-riding olympics. He's a third rate hack. If you actually want to read a genuinely good sci-fi novelist read Wolfe or Le Guin, or if you want to follow a living one, Chip Delany, or KSR, or William Gibson, or M John Harrison, or...

monkey said...

(I'd have suggested some of China's many fine SF novelists too but knowing the readership of this blog I don't think that would do much good)

Larry Hart said...

If the right-wing whackos on the supreme court were really as "originalist" as they pretend to be, they would have to concede that the framers of the Constitution in 1789 didn't mean for "arms" to refer to assault rifles with extended magazines.

David Brin said...

Thanks Alfred I had forgotten that feature. took (actual measure) 3.3 secs to roll em all up. No need even to skim past all the "ook-ook-shriek!!"

Larry Hart said...

This will sound like snark, but I'm really asking the question.

Do any NRA members ever try to sue the NRA for not allowing guns at their gatherings? It wouldn't surprise me if some of the crazier ones would do that.

LeadDreamer said...

One of the RULES of the "no normies" clubs is you never question the decisions of the No Normies Club.

Larry Hart said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/opinion/republicans-guns-uvalde.html

...
I don’t fully understand where this aversion to the basic rules of a civilized society is coming from. What’s clear, however, is that the very people who shout most about “freedom” are doing their best to turn America into a “Hunger Games”-type dystopian nightmare, with checkpoints everywhere, loomed over by men with guns.

A.F. Rey said...

Alas, Larry, NRA are allowed to carry guns at their gatherings. It is only for Trump's appearance (and probably some other notables) where they are prohibited.

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/guns-not-banned-at-nra-convention-but-are-during-trumps-speech/536-ac6d498e-fe9c-4dcb-8efa-3e3c6b71aa38

Of course, we are told that makes them soft targets, doesn't it? :D

locumranch said...


In response to recent references to the US Supreme Court, the NRA & the ongoing shitshow that is the Uvalde shooting, I'll just leave this little 2005 SCOTUS ruling (Castle Rock v Gonzales) here for your edification:

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

And, once you grok that the US protector caste does not exist to protect either you or your family, it sort of defeats the whole you don't need a gun to protect yourself & your family because that's what the police are for anti-gun argument, don't it?

Si vis pacem, para bellum, my friends:

Prepare for war if you want peace.


Best

Don Gisselbeck said...

Translation, "If you can't compete, die."

A.F. Rey said...

And, once you grok that the US protector caste does not exist to protect either you or your family, it sort of defeats the whole you don't need a gun to protect yourself & your family because that's what the police are for anti-gun argument, don't it?

And yet, somehow that argument always concludes with "...and therefore we cannot, in any way, impede crazies from getting high-powered weapons." :(

David Brin said...

Locum makes a point. A crappy one, since that simply shifts the onus to the elected local officials who can fire police cowards, if insane red constituencies paid attention. But a point.

Unknown said...

"Si vis pacem..."

Yes, because the Romans were so good at avoiding war.

More accurate:

"Ubi desertum faciunt, pacem appellant."

Pappenheimer

LeadDreamer said...

"The milk was dropped on the floor. It sort of defeats the whole don't-drink'from-the-milk-bottle argument, doesn't it? You'll just have to drink it from the floor."

Or, you know, fix the error at the source - return the laws back to where they make sense.

Dear Police:
Your first job is NOT to "go home to your families"
Your first job is "everybody lives"
If a bystander dies - You Failed.
If a hostage dies - You Failed.
If "the perp" dies - You Failed.
"Success" is only if everybody lives and "the perp" goes to trial. That's it.

Don Gisselbeck said...

Vaush lays into the cops.
https://youtu.be/bO0CafexYPI

Larry Hart said...

locumranch:

I'll just leave this little 2005 SCOTUS ruling (Castle Rock v Gonzales) here for your edification:


So the supreme court ruled in favor of the authorities and against the citizenry. That's as surprising as water being wet.

To mangle Ronald Reagan: "The supreme court is not the solution to the problem. The supreme court is the problem."

The Warren court fooled the compassionate side into thinking the court was a bulwark against encroachment on civil rights. Wrong. The supreme court has always been at war with Eastasia...I mean with us.


Prepare for war if you want peace


"My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to."

Larry Hart said...

Florida high school graduation speaker works around the "Don't Say Gay" restrictions...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/us/florida-curly-hair-graduation-speech/index.html

...
"I used to hate my curls. I spend mornings and nights embarrassed of them trying desperately to straighten this part of who I am. But the daily damage of trying to fix myself became too much to do," he said in his speech. "So while having curly hair in Florida is difficult, due to the humidity, I decided to be proud of who I was and started coming to school as my authentic self."

Moricz said his teachers were some of the first people he went to for advice because he didn't have "other curly-haired people" to talk to and said the support he got at school helped him grow.

"Now I'm happy. Now I'm happy, and that is what is at stake. There are going to be so many kids with curly hair, who need a community like Pine View and they won't have one," Moricz said. "Instead, they'll try to fix themselves so that they can exist in Florida's humid climate."
...

matthew said...

More on SEC investigations of Musk's market manipulations:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/27/elon-musk-sec-letter-late-twitter-stake-filing-takeover

He made $156 million by filing the wrong form. He stole $156 million from investors.

There are no good billionaires.

David Brin said...

"Good" or not... and he can be problematic and we need strong institutions to counter human tendencies, when males get great power... nevertheless, this world has electric cars and self-landing rockets at least a decade earlier than otherwise. And over a million more solar roofs.

I judge first by outcomes.

LeadDreamer said...

There seems to be quite a few assumptions in your null hypothesis...

Elon *bought* his way into Tesla - would they have succeeded to the same level without him?

Elon *bought* his way into SpaceX - would they have succeeded to the same level without him?

Elon/Tesla *bought* Solar City - would they have succeeded to the same level without him?
(and also: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4430137-teslas-uninspiring-solar-roof-performance )

duncan cairncross said...

LeadDreamer

(1) Musk bought his way into Tesla - true but they would have FAILED without his money and his leadership
Its obvious in hindsight but every other wanna be EV maker was trying to make an "eco car" - Musk wanted to start at the TOP of the market
Obvious - but nobody else appeared to see it

(2) SpaceX was Musk's right from the start - it was his vision and his philosophy

(3) Solar City - not a good example - at present its no more successful than a number of others - not a good example YET - I suspect in 10 years it will look completely different

Larry Hart said...

Why not a federal law, modeled after the Texas abortion thing, allowing anyone to sue anyone who in any way contributed to an active shooting--sold the gun, sold the ammo, drove him to the site, fed him lunch--for $10k? Dare the supreme court to rule it unconstitutional while upholding the Texas abomination. The entertaining reading of the supporting "arguments" alone would at least be a consolation prize.

Can't get such a law past the filibuster or Joe Manchin? Then I'd love to see Illinois or New York State or California pass their own law. Model it after the Missouri law that says that even a resident of another state can be sued for assisting in the death of a Missouri fetus in another state. So anyone who helps an active shooter kill an Illinois resident could theoretically be sued no matter where the shooting takes place.

I'm not kidding this time.

David Brin said...

1. "Musk wanted to start at the TOP of the market
Obvious - but nobody else appeared to see it"

Right. His bringing out the Roadster was true inspired genius. The 'put-put" image of e-cars died the day it first raced.

(2) SpaceX was Musk's right from the start - it was his vision and his philosophy

Again, the engineers did it. He forged the team and removed obstacles and said 'go!" and also acted to staunch sabotage.

Solar City's large enough that one can safely argue it made real difference. And the solar SHINGLES coming out this year were Elon-hype... till they came true because of it.

By his fruits you shall know him


Jon S. said...

Tesla merely needed venture capital. Their technology for high-speed, long-range electric motors was already ripe, and they'd already designed the sports car (for which Elon took credit, along with claiming to have founded the company). The historical moment was also ripe for EVs, with growing awareness of climate change and increasing fuel costs.

Musk is a highly successful hype-man, but what he's best at hyping is himself.

David Brin said...

Jon S with all respect.... nothing you just said is even remotely true.

Alfred Differ said...

locumranch,

...once you grok that the US protector caste does not exist to protect either you or your family...

Heh. There are two ways to go from there. One is the way you point out. The other argues for the rest of us taking guns away from others.

I agree that it isn't the duty of the police to protect me. At best, it is a secondary job duty. Their primary job is to arrest and deliver necessary evidence for charges to be brought by someone in the DA's office. So... protection of my person is up to me and those willing. What to do about it?

Arming myself is certainly a possibility, but I think it is a VERY weak defense. A man with a gun in his hands can get pretty stupid about what is possible and what isn't.

Disarming someone else is certainly a possibility and I think it is the stronger one. If I can't get government to do it, it falls to me and those willing to do it. Right? [Won't that be fun?]

David Brin said...

"Ukraine fears repeat of Mariupol horrors elsewhere in Donbas"... Unless... and I am armchair spitballing here... they plan to apply lessons from Mariupol, and this is all a trap.

I know nothing about Sievierdonetsk, whether it can be defended - amid artillery pummeling - the way the sturdy Azovstal steel plant was. If so, and pre-supplied much better than Mariupol, with no civilians, a similar-but-planned meat grinder could demolish what is left of RF morale and capability.

Especially since unlike Mariupol, all of the RF artillery pounding Sievierdonetsk would be within range of counter-battery fire from the south and west. A fine trap for the most-hated part of the invader's forces.

<ind you I am only speculating here. Not on Soc media. Because... armchair generalship must have limits. And I am all-too often wrong. And sometimes FORTUNATELY wrong...

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiENqoQom7qvbB0G4lvOgn2kwqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowhO7OATDh9Cgwu4lR?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

Alfred Differ said...

Tesla merely needed venture capital.

Ugh. Said by someone who it would appear has never tried to raise venture capital.

1. They don't give away money. There must be more than a whiff of something viable. This SUPPORTS the belief that Tesla was worth buying already.

2. They don't give money without becoming involved. Most VC's want seats on the board and to bring in their executives. There is a damn good reason why they want both and this is NOT robbery. This SUBTRACTS from the belief that Tesla was a long term viable operation.

3. They want their money back compounded at a rate related to the perceived risk. Most VC's look for around 35% compounded yearly (IRR) for operations that present very little risk. The rate goes up from there. They get this by predicting what the company will be worth at the time they intend to exit and work backward to the present value (PV) they can risk today.

3a. If your operation needs more than the PV they'll risk, you MUST reduce risks they perceive. This reduces the IRR they expect and increases the PV you can demand.

3b. There is a maximum PV most VC's will risk related to the other investments in their portfolio and the size of their investment pool. Don't bother asking for anything larger or you'll look unprofessional.

3c. PV generally buys shares. PV at a lower IRR almost ALWAYS means installing their officers and board members. You get to play with their money AND their people.


Musk actually breaks a number of VC rules when he uses his own money, but must obey them when he pulls other people's money in.

A. Most of SpaceX investments come from others. Not him. They do that because they look at HIM and THE TEAM and THEIR HISTORY and see a lower IRR, but they still get a fraction of the company and have an exit plan.

B. Musk is somewhere between a VC (people using other people's money usually) and an angel investor (small amounts of personal money.) Of course... small amounts is a relative term.

C. Where Musk breaks the VC rules the most is when he lets his mouth run. This is especially true when he triggers the SEC people. His other investors do NOT like it when he does that. Since he has a history of it, it contributes to a higher IRR from them.


Ugh. There is no 'merely' needed venture capital. Anyone who has tried to fund a company knows better. [I have. Their rigor is a PITA, but not without purpose.]

David Brin said...

Alfred, I disagree. The police are supposed to protect us so that we can (as Ayn Rand hereself demanded) give government a monopoly on force... WHILE limiting government, either in her way (giving control to demigods) or Franklin/Paine's method.

Any cop who has not played out in mind events like the recent TX tragedy is too dumb and unimatinative to serve. And any cop who has not pre-decided to GO IN under such conditions should be replaced. If need-be, by neighborhood parent militias. (Note that no such militia converged, that day. So much for the vaunted Txas narrative.)

As for locum's despicably ungrateful dissing of the Protector caste, EVERYTHING he used to believe is - country, honor, freedom, justice - we have because brave men and women DID step up. The Cold war... HIS damned "War on Terror"... the long (mostly) peace... all were won by those whom his cult now derides as 'deep state" traitors, because they dare to say "Sir, that is not true."

And hell yes, the PC has failures and crimes on its tally board! It is only by comparison to all of the previous 20,000 years that the American Pax looks good.

Compared to our dreams of what OUGHT to be? We're monsters. Both comparisons are vital. One fails without the other.

Harlan Ellison distilled the question. "Our duty is to make a world that's even just barely good enough that our kids do better. And theirs and theirs. Till super generations come who look back at us as monsters. Monsters who somehow rose above both their natures and their times....

"...even if barely enough."

Or as Roman Kznaric put it, more succinctly: Our duty and task is to be Good Ancestors.

https://www.romankrznaric.com/good-ancestor

Alfred Differ said...

David,

I used to feel that way about the police. I used the "monopoly of force" argument that way. One day I ran into a "use of force" I couldn't stomach, though, and wound up re-thinking it.

Yes. Rule of Law requires We the People to avoid using force. All coercive acts by private citizens are almost by definition 'arbitrary whim'. We allow some of them if a jury agrees not to convict or a DA agrees not to bring charges, but force applied by private citizens certainly undermines Rule of Law.

There is a flaw I'd rather avoid, though, that comes about from the conflict of duties our protector caste faces. Protecting Us (1) and Arresting Law Breakers (2) are often duties in harmony, but occasionally they are not. This happens when the protector caste (A) is wrong about what we want and (B) feels they know better what we need.

Being wrong about what we want is practically guaranteed when a significant minority disagrees with the law (both written and unwritten) because what WE want isn't really defined well without a supermajority. Prohibition is a classic example that had moderately good support at first. Jim Crowe laws are another that could be enforced because the targeted population didn't have the power to stop them.

Feeling they know better what we need is practically guaranteed in a representative democracy when voters defer governance tasks and go on with their lives ignorant of many of the details necessary for good governance. How many aircraft carrier battle groups do we really need? Some of our protectors know. Most of us don't and don't need or want to know. The disconnect between We The People and good governance information is actually necessary and an important feature of our republic. The People aren't The Government and that's a good thing. We get on with our lives deferring the annoyances to people we pick (mostly).

Something in my head snapped the day I heard the recordings of that man beaten by police in Fullerton. It was a few years ago now and I've had time to sort out what I believe. I was TERRIBLY angry that day I heard it. I had to leave work and go for a long walk to avoid smashing and breaking things. I would have scared the piss out of my coworkers had I not done that. My belief in the 'monopoly of force' argument died that day. [Had I been there, there is a decent chance I would have tried to kill those policemen*. Good thing I wasn't. Even better thing that I don't own guns.]

So… I think We The People have to be careful about the conflicting duties we assign to our protectors. I no longer believe the police have a duty to protect us that comes above their duty to arrest and collect evidence. Of course it's nice when they can, but the task is more ours than theirs. I don't say that aloud often, though, because gun nuts think I'm saying we have to arm ourselves against the police and government when I feel quite the opposite. My neighbors are more a threat to me than the police. I know that. If I ever do arm myself, it will be in defense against them… not our protector caste.


* The underlying problem is I was (easily) able to imagine the man being beaten as my son. Too many of our protectors expect us to follow orders when given and autistic boys simply don't do that.

The voice recording of the beating triggered my instinct to kill those who would threaten my offspring. That instinct is astonishingly powerful. My rational mind simply went away.

duncan cairncross said...

Alfred
The problem (IMHO) is that the American Police are descended from the Slavery Patrols

Here and in the UK the Police started out as "The Peelers"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.


Not perfect but a good starting point

Alfred Differ said...

Duncan,

We have most of our police force under local control. I actually get to vote for our county sheriff in a few days and have taken the time to study my options. You might understand why I pay attention to how they campaign and who endorses them. I'll be voting for the incumbent because he actually put effort into ensuring his forces were trained in de-escalation techniques and how to deal with special needs kids and adults.

I've got actual evidence that the county and city police (different units) have made these efforts, so I'm relatively happy with them. They actually ARE protecting my son... by learning how not to be the primary threat to him.

Add on top of that the fact that most people around me do NOT walk around armed and I'm relatively calm about my son's safety. They can't do much harm to him before he runs away IF they do any harm at all.

However...

I don't think it matters much what our history is regarding our police. The blunt fact is most of us are willing to accept what the police do. Juries rarely convict when our police step outside their job descriptions demonstrating that the unwritten job description is to keep the social order.

Most of our police ARE local and have the consent of those they police. Most of them anyway.

---

After listening to that voice recording of the beating, I just can't see them as our primary protectors. They simply aren't no matter how much we want protectors and active shooter situations point out the conflict in duties starkly.

If you ever find yourself in an active shooter situation, the first wave of police MUST be focused on arresting the shooter. Since many shooters don't go willingly, that often means shooting them. You MUST look after yourself... and make sure the police do not mistake you for a shooter. It is YOUR job to ensure the police do not think you are a shooter. It is YOUR job to protect yourself. While you do that, it is the job of the police to stop the carnage which happens to protect you as a byproduct if you do your part right.

I also happen to think there is no single right way to organize a police force. I might be wrong, but in the meantime I'm willing to let locals make these decisions. Unfortunately, that means letting the people of Fullerton hire and defend men who beat people who are mentally incapable of following strict orders. I'd hang the police who did it, but I'd blame the people of Fullerton for allowing it. It's THEIR job to protect themselves... including people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

duncan cairncross said...

Alfred
There we differ
Local politics is always going to be a cesspool - its only on the national scale that we can get sensible politics
If only because most people pay no heed to the "local" stuff

A National Police force can be trained (and indoctrinated) with sensible rules

Comments??

I saw an interesting article about the Australian mandatory voting - it maintained that mandatory voting PREVENTED politicians from acting to "restrict" voters and access to voting

Comments??

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

The blunt fact is most of us are willing to accept what the police do. Juries rarely convict when our police step outside their job descriptions demonstrating that the unwritten job description is to keep the social order.


I can't speak for everyone, but here in midwestern suburbia, that's because most people seem to think that we live in a state of war with druggies, rapists, and murderers, and that only the "thin blue line" keeps us from violation. I hear it in regular neighborhood conversation all the time. People are consumed with fear of crime (Chicago, you know) and therefore also consumed with virtue-signaling that they support the police in any way. It's almost McCarthyesque, and I can easily imagine a near future in which citizens will be ratting each other out for saying something unsupportive of police, jockeying for position in hoping that the authorities regard them personally as allies.

Lately, I've found myself binge-watching the show "Criminal Minds" on Netflix, about an FBI unit which tracks down serial killers. If you're not familiar, it's as if Silence of the Lambs were made into an ongoing series. I like it for the detective work, not for the depictions of violence. I haven't been tapped into the general zeitgeist of popular entertainment for a long time now, but watching this show and knowing that there are others like it, I wonder how much television contributes to the expectation that even our quiet neighbors are ticking timebombs ready to do monstrous evil. I do know that as a kid growing up on superhero comics and cartoons, it was a stunning revelation to me (at an age much older than it should have been) that bank robberies and car chases of criminals are not an everyday occurrence one expects to encounter in the course of one's daily activities. I suspect some people never get that revelation.

There's an "us vs them" mentality, and many of not most suburbanites are willing to allow the police to do as they will to "them" in order to be regarded by those police as "us". That's out of fear of what "them" might do to me without police protection, but also out of fear of what the police might do to me if they regard me as "them" instead of "us".

This digressed so far from the point I wanted to make that I'll do so in a separate post.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ continuing:

I agree that it isn't the duty of the police to protect me. At best, it is a secondary job duty. Their primary job is to arrest and deliver necessary evidence for charges to be brought by someone in the DA's office. So... protection of my person is up to me and those willing. What to do about it?

Arming myself is certainly a possibility, but I think it is a VERY weak defense. A man with a gun in his hands can get pretty stupid about what is possible and what isn't.

Disarming someone else is certainly a possibility and I think it is the stronger one. If I can't get government to do it, it falls to me and those willing to do it. Right? [Won't that be fun?]


I've often argued with you over the idea of competing private security, but I think I can find common ground with you in the area of protecting schools. If the police can't or won't do the job, then there should be such thing as militias authorized and empowered to use force in the protection of school buildings full of children. They would have to receive training in weapons and tactics, and in the boundaries of their jurisdiction. But within those boundaries, their primary mission would be to protect the students and teachers from a clear and present danger. In that regard, their calling would be more akin to that of (defending) soldiers than that of cops.

I'm not sure how workable this would be, but my first thought is that such a militia would be made up of volunteers from the community who would mostly be those with kids currently in school. Members would rotate in and out as their kids' status changed, much the way other parents' organizations do, e.g., the PTA or the band parents' association. I say that because those most likely to risk their own lives to protect a school are those whose own children are actually in there. Those with literal skin in the game.

* * *

Separate but tangential: I wonder how much the events of that recent Texas massacre will actually change the narrative regarding guns in this country. The easy answer is that nothing ever changes, but there's so much that this particular event debunks about the NRA narrative that I can't help but wonder if tht narrative is fatally weakened. There were good guys with guns who were ineffective. Police (justified or not) were ineffective. Governor Abbott's "could have been worse" remark might easily be answered with a line from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Do the macho, posturing gun-lovers really come away from this with their cop-worship intact? We'll see, but I'm actually wondering if this is the break in the armor that Sandy Hook and Parkland were not.

Larry Hart said...

duncan cairncross:

A National Police force can be trained (and indoctrinated) with sensible rules


In America, I'd be more concerned that a national police force would be used as Republican stormtroopers.

matthew said...

The primary driving force for police in America is that they personally get to come home safe. Not "Protect and Serve," but make it home alive.

This is why police will shoot an unarmed Black man who is perceived as a threat and it is why police will not enter a school to save children. Our police are trained that their *first and only job* is to make sure all the cops come home safely.

All cops are taught that it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.

The vainglorious bullshit about a thin blue line and decades of police procedural TV shows have sold the public a lie about what police actually do.

Police are there to protect police, keep the public cowed, and nothing more.


Larry Hart said...

matthew:

The primary driving force for police in America is that they personally get to come home safe. Not "Protect and Serve," but make it home alive.


I'm asking rhetorically, but why couldn't that goal be easier accomplished by disbanding the police force altogether and getting jobs at their cousins' cleaners?

There's an old Monty Python sketch in which Eric Idle wants to quit the army because he just realized that the job is dangerous. "I heard that if there's a war, and you're in the army, you have to go fight in it. Well, I mean!" That's almost exactly the excuses being given for the police in Texas standing by during the school massacre.

As often happens these days, life has outpaced parody.

LeadDreamer said...

Repeating myself:

Dear Police:
Your first job is NOT to "go home to your families"
Your first job is "everybody lives"
If a bystander dies - You Failed.
If a hostage dies - You Failed.
If "the perp" dies - You Failed.
"Success" is only if everybody lives and "the perp" goes to trial. That's it.

Larry Hart said...

@LeadDreamer,

Your point is taken, but the scenario you set up is no-win. You're telling the police that no matter what they accomplish in a difficult situation, they will ultimately be condemned for not doing enough. So why bother all all? "You failed" because the gunman killed 21 people, but even if they had rushed the place immediately, they would have just as "Failed" if he had already shot one kid, or even if he offs himself before you take him alive. If the reaction is "You Failed" no matter what happens, then what's the point?

LeadDreamer said...

Oh, please. If you're only doing the job for the praise, you shouldn't be doing that job.

Vast Vast majority of police interactions end exactly that way. "No matter what happens"?!? You really think all police actions are "guns a-blazing"?!?

Yeah, sometimes there's no good solution. You think the right response is "Whelp, I got to go home"?

LeadDreamer said...

Or even, "Hey, people died; more deaths will make it all better!"?!?

The goal is to protect and serve EVERYBODY, INCLUDING the perp.

Larry Hart said...

Lead Dreamer:

The goal is to protect and serve EVERYBODY, INCLUDING the perp.


If the perp is something short of an active murderer or military combatant, then sure.

Once he's crossed that line, the situation changes. Once the choice is between anyone else's life (including the cops') or his, it isn't even a contest.

LeadDreamer said...

Larry, you're making the common category mistake of assuming all action comes AFTER an event starts. Too late.

The goal is yo create conditions under which the NEED for such action is reduced.

Also... "...it isn't even a contest.." are you absolutely kidding me? So your solution is every cop, every soldier should run away and protect themselves first?!? What a sad, selfish world you seem to want to live in. It is EXACTLY THAT CHOICE that defines the role.

locumranch said...


This thread is typical, as there's an oversupply of those who claim to know exactly how the world 'should', 'ought to' and 'is supposed to' operate, even when (or, to be more precise, ESPECIALLY when) their ill-informed opinions clearly conflict with observable reality.

The police 'should' do this; the government 'ought to' do that; and people (in general) are 'supposed to' behave in an entirely different manner than people actually behave.

And then, there's the discordant few who dare emphasize all manner of factual unpleasantness, only to be roundly condemned as antisocial rat bastards by a prosocial reality-denying consensus.

I'm one such rat bastard, and our new self-anointed monkey king is another, but there are at least fragments of truth in them thar unpleasantness, the difference being one of irony as I expect to be silenced for said unpleasantness.


Best

Larry Hart said...

Lead Dreamer:

The goal is yo create conditions under which the NEED for such action is reduced.


I actually don't disagree with you. But unless you are saying police should not get involved once that point has been passed, there still has to be a course of action at that point. And it can't just be, "Whatever you do now is wrong."


Also... "...it isn't even a contest.." are you absolutely kidding me? So your solution is every cop, every soldier should run away and protect themselves first?!?


No, how do you even get that from what I said? I mean the exact opposite. Once the perp is in the active process of murdering people and holding off authorities with the threat of more murder, then he's not just a "perp". He's an enemy combatant. If the only way to stop him is to kill him or let him kill himself--if refusing to do that means other people die--then I give his life no more value than I do the Russian soldiers invading Ukraine. By being enemy combatants, they have forfeited consideration for the value of their lives.

What I think you were hearing me say was that if even after getting in there as quickly as possible, stopping or killing the shooter, and saving lives, the police will be condemned for failing to keep everybody alive, then they might as well only care about getting themselves home, because that's the only win left to them.

LeadDreamer said...

"Reality" is what you ACCEPT as true, apparently.

I do not accept Unlimited police violence and self-preservation as necessary, and work to change it. It doesn't hurt *me*, personally - I'm older, middle-class, white, privileged. But unlike others, I will continue to work to change it for everyone.

Choose your reality.

David Brin said...

Locum... "Whaaaaaaa!"

Wallowing in comforts and protections and health he never earned, given to the ingrate by generations of innovators and reformers and visionaries and hard-workers who strove to make the world and this nation and civilization more like it 'should' be.

While he and his cult cling to our ankles, biting and yowling how mean we are for taking steps forward.

Waaaaaah!

Alfred Differ said...

LeadDreamer,

I can't agree with you, but I do sympathize.

A big part of our policing problem lies with the unrealistic expectations we have of them. They are people. Not heroes... and certainly not angels.

Duncan,

A National Police force can be trained (and indoctrinated) with sensible rules

Ick. I don't trust my neighbors enough to risk it. I don't think they'll come over the fence spraying bullets in my direction, but I DO think they'll vote to deprive people low on the SES ladder of their civil rights. Even in California were we are supposedly very liberal, some of us are inclined to use the State to deprive our neighbors of basic freedoms. I'm even less trustful of my more distant neighbors (meaning cousins in other states) about these matters.

Besides, can you imagine such a force answering to Trump? Our FBI became something of a necessity, but it brought with it a huge problem that didn't die with Hoover. I visited the Reagan library a few months back when they had an FBI exhibit set up. OMG! Some of their shoot-up scenes were set up like little shrines! I was seriously creeped out when I left.

LeadDreamer said...

There seems to be, across the spectrum, a weird defeatism - that police and policing "just are", and you have to accept to reject that wholesale.

Nonsense. Police and Policing are just a service WE AS SOCIETY DEFINE. We have the CHOICE to define the service that suits our needs. You may CHOOSE to assert our needs are to keep "them" from "us" - but that's your *choice*; it's nothing inherent in policing.

Some choose to define policing as ways to help society do better - from "prevention" (which sure-as-hell does NOT just mean "shoot'em first") to response.

Even the "They are people, not heroes" response just assuming that "policing", as a profession, "just is". It's not.

LeadDreamer said...

"...accept OR reject..."

Larry Hart said...

locumranch:

and people (in general) are 'supposed to' behave in an entirely different manner than people actually behave.


A grocery checkout clerk "should" total up my charge and take my money. A taxi driver "should" drive me to my destination. A doctor "should" treat wounds or disease. That some people don't do their jobs well doesn't negate the fact that jobs have requirements.

Society prompts people to act in certain ways. Sometimes, they would do so anyway, other times they only do so in response to the reward/punishment stimulus, yet other times they disobey completely. Still, what's your point? That it is nonsensical to even discuss such encouraged behavior because sometimes the prompting doesn't work?

* * *

LeadDreamer:

I do not accept Unlimited police violence and self-preservation as necessary, and work to change it.


Good for you. I don't understand why you think I or anyone here except locumranch is on the opposite side. Is it because I advocate a carrot-and-stick approach toward improvng policing, and you would prefer just the stick?

Larry Hart said...

LeadDreamer:

You may CHOOSE to assert our needs are to keep "them" from "us" - but that's your *choice*


I assert no such thing. I do accurately report that other people I know assert such things as explanation for the way things seem to be now, and as explanation of why changing it isn't going to be easy. Don't mistake the messenger for the message.

LeadDreamer said...

Don't confuse an overly formal use of the third-person impersonal for directed comments.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

Heh. I was wondering when the private security argument would pop up again. Allow me to put my position forward and then I'll explain.

Al's personal opinion: It is a god awful idea to put armed guards in our public schools. We'd be better off suffering these massacres.

There. I believe this strongly whether the armed guards are public funded police or private funded security. The key point is ARMED guards, though. Security ISN'T a bad idea. Armed security is.


The best argument I know in support of my position is very similar to a test/vaccine argument. You may have seen something similar already, but I'll spell it out to make sure I don't mislead.

A. The probability of a school 'catching' a mass shooting is 0>P(shoot-up) because our brains are wired to see moving grass as hiding hidden tigers. P(FalsePositive) will dominate P(TruePositive).

In a vaccination argument, there are always consequences for taking the vaccine. Always. The side effects might be minor, but if you are among the unlucky few who have a strong allergic reaction, they could be death. For example, if a plague is sweeping the land and you know 1/4 of your people are going to die from it, you might accept the use of a vaccine that kills 1 in 25,000 of us. In a population of one billion, though, 750,000,000 would escape dying by the plague if they do nothing, but 30,000 of them would die if they took the vaccine on the belief that the plague might kill them. Worth it? If the vaccine can save 90% of the 250,000,000 who would be fated to die, you'd trade 30,000 people who wouldn't have died for 225,000,000 who would have. Worth it?

In school shoot-ups the 'vaccine' halts the carnage. A few lives get saved… no doubt about it.

In false positive tests, though, the armed guards might kill unnecessarily. A few lives are lost… no doubt about it.

If P(FalsePositive) dominates… we'd be utterly stupid to arm the guards. We'd lose more than we'd save and the fault would be ours for having grossly unrealistic expectations for what we can accomplish in matters of protecting our children.

———

VERY few people understand how these probabilities work, but intuitively grasp one of the Bayesian rules. Every event informs us and we adjust our probability expectations. The more violence you perceive, the more you expect to perceive. What doesn't get computed, though, are the events we don't notice. For example, most schools start and end the day without a mass shooting event. Most police don't beat mentally challenged people to death. If we could account for all these things (would probably take an AI that doesn't get bored), we'd see more realistic probability estimates.

So… I'm against armed guards in schools, but still favor competing private security and being primarily responsible for my own safety. By talking out these probabilities with future voters, I'm taking small steps toward ensuring my own safety by trying to discourage what I think are terrible ideas.

(No. I don't think you'd advocate for putting armed guards in schools.) 8)

Alfred Differ said...

LeadDreamer,

Don't read learned helplessness into my words. Recognizing that police are people actually puts them in range of realistic expectations for them.

Yes. We DO define the service. So... define it in a manner that doesn't set them up to fail. With that, we can reasonably smack down those who behave inhumanely.

My issue with your words (I might misunderstand your actual position) is they sound unrealistic. If we lay them out on the table over a few beers, we'd probably discover there are minor differences between us and major agreements. That's hard to do right after a massacre, though.

Larry Hart said...

LeadDreamer:

Don't confuse an overly formal use of the third-person impersonal for directed comments.


Heh. Ok, but to be fair, I was confusing second-person usage for directed comments.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

So… I'm against armed guards in schools,


I can agree for reasons you have largely articulated. However, I am fully in favor of an armed and armored militia ready to take the school back from hostiles and rescue hostages once such an attack is in progress. And I would prefer that that well-armed (and well trained) militia be composed of volunteers willing to risk their own lives to stop the carnage rather than armchair warriors whose only job is to go home at night.

Alfred addresses LeadDreamer:

Yes. We DO define the service. So... define it in a manner that doesn't set them up to fail. With that, we can reasonably smack down those who behave inhumanely.


That's more or less what I was trying to say.

There was a time in my daughter's childhood when, as I put it, "Everything Daddy does is wrong." Even when she was a toddler, I tried to impress upon her that insatiability was not a good way of encouraging Daddy to try harder. Rather, the impossibility of ever succeeding relieved Daddy of any responsibility to care.

I expect the same is true of police.

* * *

locumranch:

And then, there's the discordant few who dare emphasize all manner of factual unpleasantness, only to be roundly condemned as antisocial rat bastards by a prosocial reality-denying consensus.

I'm one such rat bastard, and our new self-anointed monkey king is another,


Oh, come on.

You're honestly asserting that anyone here has endorsed the stormtrooper elements of Netanyahu's government, or that Dr Brin condones racism because I successfully pushed the buttons of someone who came here solely to shit on the rug?

Don't lower yourself by insisting that anything that asshole asserted was factual.

duncan cairncross said...

In the UK if there is an "armed incident" - the Police armed response will be there pretty damn fast

These guys and girls have undertaken a HUGE amount of training and they are armed for bear

The normal cop in the UK has had no firearms training but has had a shitload of training in de-escalation

The Armed response team have each had as much firearms training as 100 US cops

Does/should the USA have the equivalent of the UK Armed Response Team specifically to go to such situations ?

Alfred Differ said...

Duncan,

FBI?
BATF?

If the event gets big enough (civil unrest) there's also the National Guard.

It's a big country, though.



I live in a nation that still believes the Death Penalty is necessary. De-escalation sounds like cowardice to many of them. It isn't... and it's catching on in some places... but we ARE a nation of barbarians. Our guns are masturbation aids.

Star_Dragon said...

In no particular order:
My logic here may seem strange. I'm a pro-gun Biden voter. I intend to vote straight Democratic tickets for the foreseeable future despite me feeling that the Republicans are more correct on a few issues, even a couple of important ones. I fear that if Republicans gain control of the federal government again, they’ll finish rigging things such that a nation-wide version of the Battle of Athens will be necessary to restore democracy. I believe that the NRA is slightly too compromising on gun control, and that David Brin's Jefferson Rifle proposal IS AN ACCEPTABLE COMPROMISE. I'll go one step further and suggest that the Amendment specify minimum barrel lengths for non-regulation, specifically the ones defined in the NFA, as short-barreled rifles and shotguns *are* concealable. I must note that such firearms are merely acceptable for the purposes of hunting, target shooting, and home defense, as semiautomatics like the AR-15 are strictly better for home defense(.223 rounds are small for rifles, with most bolt-actions being chambered in higher-powered rounds, and are less-likely to penetrate walls than alternitives, even pistol rounds. Still, even long-barreled manual actions are good enough for home defense, in a FINAL compromise.), and have their place in target shooting and hunting, especially the invasive wild hogs spreading in many areas of the country. However, it must be an amendment, clearly worded to make it clear that it is protecting the right of individuals to manufacture, purchase, and own the well-defined weapons(Have someone on the pro-gun side write the definition. "Assault Weapon" bans have so far been very easy to evade the spirit of.). No perfunctory clauses or other explanations of why the right is protected. Only permissible extraneous words shall be to ban prosecutors from plea-bargaining away charges for using a gun in a crime. Let's actually enforce our gun laws on criminals, like how other Western Democracies drop the metaphorical hammer on anyone using a gun in a crime.

Star_Dragon said...

Another compromise that everyone believes they want is regulating gun ownership like cars. Some want that because they believe that it’s easier to legally buy, own, and use a gun than a car, and those who are interested in legally buying, owning, and using guns generally believe that doing so is far more onerous than for a car. One of those groups must be wrong about the current state of regulations, so I expect whichever side is wrong about that to almost immediately demand that the regulatory change be reversed. I want this quasi-wager to have serious stakes, so I want the compromise to be very difficult to reverse. I’m not sure if there’s a step between law and constitutional amendment, but laws are too easy to reverse for this, in my opinion.

A Supreme Court decision that both sides of the debate should find horribly stupid: People forbidden from owning fireams, such as certain classes of felons, may lie on the background check form for attempting to buy a gun, on the question which asks if you are in that catagory. Attempting to buy a gun if you are in that category is still a federal crime, whether or not you lie on that question. The "logic" is that it's a 5th amendment violation(self-incrimination) to punish felons for lying in that box, as if the government was forcing them to try to buy a gun. Still, the background check should reveal any ineligibility (we also have problems with our laws mandating reporting of several factors in these checks not being obeyed), so submitting such a form when ineligible due to being a felon should still be a slam-dunk for the ATF and the prosecutor, but that doesn't seem to happen very often. TL:DR: If it's a crime for you to try to buy a gun, it's not a crime to lie on the background check.

Larry Hart said...

Star_Dragon:

Only permissible extraneous words shall be to ban prosecutors from plea-bargaining away charges for using a gun in a crime. Let's actually enforce our gun laws on criminals, like how other Western Democracies drop the metaphorical hammer on anyone using a gun in a crime.


The problem in the case of these mass carnage episodes is that the perpetrator doesn't expect to survive. So no amount of after-the-fact penalties are going to dissuade them.

The question at hand is what we as a society can do to prevent such atrocities.

Star_Dragon said...

@Larry Hart,
True, but not what that's supposed to target. Most gun violence, even most mass shootings(by most technical definitions), is committed by gangsters and relatively petty criminals. When caught and tried, prosecutors tend to just use the gun charges as bargaining chips in making a plea bargain. Still, other laws, mostly to do with reporting things to where the background checks can check them, aren't being followed.

I seem to have lost some of my broken-up post.

@duncan cairncross, the American equivalent of what the UK’s armed response teams is SWAT teams. They focus on training for their specialized mission, instead of routine police work. However, even our regular police usually take several minutes to get to the scene of the crime, regardless of if they actually bother to act quickly once they arrive.

While I believe that Gun-Free Zones make things easier for criminals and mass-shooters, we should keep our schools as such, as there were major problems with gang violence, involving guns at school, killing kids at a far higher rate than mass-shooters. Speaking of things killing kids at a far higher rate than guns, I can bring up the statistics and the math which show that it’s far more dangerous for a family to own a swimming pool than a gun.

An expansion on “Guns don’t kill people. Republicans kill people.”: While I suspect that that was written in spiteful jest(and I feel that such spite towards the modern “conservatives” is justified), the latter part rings quite true. Even if you simply subtract all the gun homicides, America still has a murder rate higher than our Western peers. If you starting digging into who is killing whom, you’ll see that it’s mostly gang-on-gang. Most of this gang warfare is fighting over the streams of drug money. I don’t think that many here will disagree with my belief that the War on Drugs was carefully designed and engineered as a partial replacement for Jim Crow. Even the effects of ended Jim Crow policies, like Redlining, still drive de-facto segregation and oppression today. Oh, and then there’s successfully extending this pandemic, waging wars, necessary and unnecessary, inefficiently when efficiency is measured in lives, rejecting their own damn plan for universal healthcare when it was implemented on a national scale, preventing sex education which would prevent far more abortions than banning abortion(Not that I agree with them that abortion is murder, but it’s nice to properly twist their logic against them, even though this particular twist is well-known on the pro-choice side), near-complete rejection of the idea that burning fossil fuels just might have negative effects, an Unamericanly hard stance on immigration, and so many more.

Star_Dragon said...

One thing I agree with Paradoctor, is on the general motivation of mass-shooters: Infamy. However, I don’t see any constitutional way of stopping for-profit mass media, of a kind far more unimaginable to the Framers than rapid-shooting rifles(there were very experimental prototypes presented to Congress) from giving them that in spades. There’s just too much money in giving them what they want.

There’s been some talk of neighborhood militias: This is what most gangs start out as, and most long-lasting neighborhood militias morph into gangs over time. Still, ad-hoc neighborhood militias which disband quickly after a short crisis is over, such as the somewhat-famous Roof Koreans(which only became necessary because racism is stupidly intersectional), have a pretty good record of not becoming gangs. Not sure how much of a problem I have with long-lasting neighborhood militias in places where the police have become a state-sanctioned gang.

There’s been some discussion of private citizens, not police, trying to disarm people by just walking up someone not comitting a crime to and trying to steal their gun. Most people who steal guns like this intend on immediately using it on the person they stole it from, so it makes for a very good self-defense defense.

Someone posted the address of a blog post which suggests making the NRA’s rules of gun safety actual law. I’ll accept a compromise of making that into law, making training in that manatory in school, implement in a manner similar to how good sex-ed is done, and make good sex-ed mandatory as well. No, a compromise isn’t not taking all of what you want right now. What do pro-”life” people give up by only making some abortions now, and more later, illegal, instead of all of them right now?

Fun fact: the US federal government has a program, known as the civilian marksmanship program. which sells literal weapons of war to civilians. These weapons, which Patton called “the greatest battle implement ever devised”, fire a round much more high-powered than .223 or 5.56mm, have and generally have a bayonet mount, which is one of the features which assault-weapon bans usually use to help define what that particular ban counts as an assault weapon.

David Brin said...

Interesting extended riffs by Star Dragon. I agree with some of it. Though I think (again) a lot of it can be distilled to :

1. Treat guns EXACTLY like cars, with training, tests, licensing and registration & insurand.... make the DMV into the DMV&G.

2. Bolt action rifles with limited magazines or clips are a permanent exception that anyone can own without telling anyone a damned thing. Any law that applies to other firearms or weapons does NOT apply to the Jefferson rifle.

The Jefferson Rifle: hidden essence of the gun debate - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html

3. If 1000 dads take to roodtops to keep police out of their neighborhood, the military may not carpet bomb or use artillery or interferewith the dispute for 6 monthswhile negotiations take place.

Don Gisselbeck said...

The premise of the 2nd Amendment is false. Amazingly, this needs to be explained. Militias are not necessary for the security of a free state as every other free state on the globe demonstrates.
That said, no one is going to take people's guns away. The logistics alone are far too daunting. Besides that, the knowledge of how to manufacture weapons is out there. A competent machinist should be able to make one from scratch in a couple of days. Pakistanis are making AK-47s by hand. 3D printing is nearly there. The country is awash in ammo.

LeadDreamer said...

"3D printer are out there"

Yeah, They are. No one needs to buy toys, or plastic kitchenware, even even lamps, lights, etc etc. Heck, they don't even need to buy musical instruments.

Yet they do.

Larry Hart said...

Star_Dragon:

I can bring up the statistics and the math which show that it’s far more dangerous for a family to own a swimming pool than a gun.


This may sound heartless, but my main concern at the moment isn't with preventing accidents. Swimming pools don't kill tens of random people inside of a few seconds.


An expansion on “Guns don’t kill people. Republicans kill people.”: While I suspect that that was written in spiteful jest...

That was me, and it was what Al Franken refers to as "kidding on the square". The snark was exaggerated, but also quite true. Republicans are the party of death, whether we're discussing gun violence, health care, or corporate (ir)responsibility. When Republicans deliberate over a decision between actions, the value of human life doesn't even enter into their cost/benefit analysis. Even on the issue they claim to be pro-life--abortion--they would force a woman to carry an ectopic pregnancy or an already-dead fetus until it kills her.


...(and I feel that such spite towards the modern “conservatives” is justified), the latter part rings quite true.


Oh, I thought you were again' it, not fer it.

I have a hard time deciphering your particular politics. My guess is "Republican who wishes the party hadn't openly embraced insanity to the point of giving itself a bad name." Is that close?

Star_Dragon said...

Thank you, David.
To clarify our points of agreement:
1. DMV&F: None of training, tests, licensing and registration & insurance is required to own a car, "merely" to drive it on private roads. Not sure if the equivalent for firearms is open/concealed carry, using them for hunting, at the firing range, or all of the above. Still, changing the regulatory agency to one which considers its mission to enable rather than to discourage activities is a step forwards. Still, so long as the spirit of your suggestion is followed, hacking down any regulation which is more onerous than any applied to any motor vehicle, I view this compromise as too-good-to-remain true. Not like the gun-control side kept its end of any of the previous rounds of compromise, after the purported benefits of the restrictions failed to materialize, or otherwise underdelivered. Which brings me to 2.
2. Jefferson Rifle Amendment: Strongly-non-preferred compromise, but acceptable because it halts the slippy slope after a couple more steps down. 2a. clips larger than the magazine they are being used to feed either don't work or only fill the magazine. Furthermore, magazine sizes matter even less for manual actions than for semi-autos, which matter far less than for full-automatic weapons, which tend to a standard magazine size of 30 rounds for the purpose of preventing jams, which take longer to clear than to perform a reload, from having an actual high-capacity magazine. To summarize, magazine sizes don't matter as much as you think, and you'd actually be better of mandating high-capacity magazines if you want to force mass-shooters to have a real pause in their shooting. Anyhow, the point of this digression is that the main accomplishment of magazine limitations is to annoy gun owners who want to do something weird. So long as the standard magazine size of the Lee-Enfield, ten rounds, remains acceptable, then this part of the compromise remains acceptable.
2b. Barrel lengths: Possibly the crime-preventing part of the National Firearms Act is restricting short-barreled rifles and shotguns, which *are* concealable. I'm only harping on this because you bring up manual actions not being concealable in your main post detailing your proposal.
3. Ad-hoc militias were being discussed in an offensive and in a defensive context, namely storming a place to stop a mass-shooter and of holding back racist rioters. 1000 dads(any armed moms should also be counted Yeah, there'll be less of them, but there'll be some at that scale.) expelling police, are far to easy for the kind of Trumpeteer that performed the Jan. 6 coup attempt to achieve, and I don't expect posse-comitatus-type laws to matter if they have legitimate reasons to uprise, only the decisions of the military officers and NCOs assigned to put them down. Considering the furor over precise drone strikes, which really do have less collateral damage than alternatives, it will probably be obvious to anyone paying attention that using Russian artillery tactics in such a situation will guarantee a victory for the defending side.
@Larry Hart,
To repeat my explanation of my politics, which was near the beginning of this series of posts, I'm a pro-gun Biden-voting Democrat. I agree with the Democrats on more issues than the Republicans, including the important ones. I assume that there's some issue that you disagree with your favorite political party on?

Oh, and sounding heartless is a major problem for someone most concerned with mass shootings. Your best rhetorical weapon is casting any opposition to whatever "something" you want done as heartless, so claiming the label of heartless for yourself in trying to refocus the debate onto the most emotionally driven part of the gun control debate... Let me put it like this: If you don't care about kids dying, why do you care about one something which can "kill tens of random people inside of a few seconds", especially when that happens far less often than either category of accident?

David Brin said...

In fact Star Dragon, the fastest growing clead of folks becoming NEW gun owners are black people.


onward

onward