I agree that this capability should never, ever be in the hands of the state, but don't extrapolate isolated instances and debunked statistics about the police as truths. Your own article demonstrates one of the major flaws of the domestic violence statistic, but doesn't discuss the most egregious methodological flaw: the criteria used for domestic violence, which includes shouting in the cited study.
Cops are sourced from the general population, so incidence rates need to be compared to the general population, and you'll find that police have significantly lower "negative" behaviors compared to the general population in virtually all aspects. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to remotely disable your car though.
They are notably not. Usually, immigrants are drastically under-represented compared to general population (at least in Germany, you have to hold German or European citizenship to join the police force).
> so incidence rates need to be compared to the general population
Oh hell no. Police officers act on behalf of the government and with powers that are both far greater than those of ordinary people and not immediately appealable. As a result of that, police officers in Germany are actually held to extremely high standards by law (§34 BeamtStG - https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/beamtstg/__34.html) and receive at the very least two years of training.
I won't say our police are perfect (because they aren't, they still are a bunch of bullies), but they are orders of magnitude better than the trigger happy, barely educated (seriously, 360 hours of training?! - https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_9dd5d48b-2152...) morons that make up the US police force.
My point still stands. The fact that police exhibit extremely low detrimental behavior rates compared to the general population illustrates that they are held to much higher standards.
Police in the US have far higher post secondary education rates than the general population. Over half have a bachelor's and over 80% have at least an associate's. And that's overall. Many states and larger localities require post secondary education, particularly in urban, higher crime areas.
>but they are orders of magnitude better than the trigger happy...
Can you prove it? Tens of millions of police interactions a year and less than a thousand deaths is pretty damn good and not at all indicative of the narrative you're spewing, especially when you account for how much violence the police experience at the hands of criminals. Sounds to me like you've bought into a narrative completely unsupported by data.
While I agree with you 100%. High level self driving is impossible on a technical level too imo, there's too many aspects of human perception, processing, and intuition that aren't possible to emulate or account for in, what machine learning really boils down to, a statistical model. There will always be novel situations that you can't simply math your way out of that a human could navigate effortlessly.
As much as the idea of full self driving is nice in theory, living in the northern midwest and having times in the winter where the traditional rules of driving go out the window when there's a question of "drive in the middle of what might be the road or find the ditch."
I'd like to see driver assist and some augmented reality for driving. Things like "driver's seat with bumps on the back to assist in awareness of 360° objects around the car". But self driving? I'm not sure I trust it yet or will for another decade or two. Developing software, I've seen how the sausage gets made - that doesn't inspire confidence.
I'm with you on the seeing the sausage made. I work in software development and algorithm research (though in a completely unrelated, but much better funded and cutting edge field) and the idea that we're anywhere close to truly level 3 autonomous driving, let alone 4 or 5, is laughable.
I love technology enhanced features, like radar cruise control, lane detection, etc. But only as extra sensory input for the driver, not replacement.
Those who work to produce housing would still be compensated, as are all government employees. The money would come from taxes, and taxes would be increased on those who are obscenely wealthy in excess of their needs or realistic aspirations.
To make it more apt, if a commodity such as housing is declared to be a human right, perhaps all those who own the commodity in excess of their needs should be taxed heavily to pay for homes/shelters for the unsheltered. It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with.
So then it's not a right. It requires compelled labor of yourself or someone else, not something you are granted simply for existing that can be taken away.
Chattel slaves were compensated with a roof over their head, food, facilities. All their needs were met at the hands of the wealthy. All they had to do in return was work. After all, their owner was entitled to their labor by virtue of paying for them and meeting their needs. Surely the state would never utilize this same reasoning on a populace that's wholly dependent on its provisions.
Who determines need? Who determines excess? We don't need restaurants, entertainment, video games, etc. We should just eat nutritionally complete kibble for humans, and all work solely to ensure everyone else's needs are met.
> It is, after all, their opulent greed that is strangulating the market and making home ownership difficult to begin with.
If housing was a right, the government would be compelled to provide it for everyone, not matter their income or wealth, as it would have to be nonexcludable.
They're calling it a "right", but it does not meet the US definition of a right as it is, definitively, a positive right whereas the US only defines negative rights as human rights.
If the US wants to adopt this model as a social program, I would respect the implementation of a strings-free service much more than the strings-attached approach that currently exists. As the article says, eradicating homelessness is more about getting a roof over someone's head than prequalifying them on "good behavior" before doing so. The outcome of the Finnish program is not surprising to me in the least.
Regarding the Finnish "right" of housing, I do have this question...
I cannot find the actual program documentation. My question is as follows: if I'm Finnish and make $14 billion euros a year, will the gov still provide me free housing?
Yes, we should all strive to emulate tiny, culturally homogeneous de facto ethnostates. Their policies will surely work in gigantic, culturally hyper-heterogeneous nations that already struggle with bureaucratic bloat, public service abuse, and horrid quality of public goods and services.
The conclusion of the WHO, which essentially took China's word for it with no independent oversight or real investigation into the lab, and big organizations that proselytized the results of the "investigation" to justify accusations of conspiracy theory thinking, are irrelevant.
"At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with healthcare workers and seven in the community. The review concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44); the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate for LCI."
Look, I'm not qualified to evaluate a study like this, but between Science and "el gato malo" published on Substack, I think I'm going to have to go with Science on this one, pending some recognized expert in the field with a human name saying otherwise.
The author of the study that the bad cat is trying to discredit wrote a long, persuasive rebuttal to the simplistic critiques he's been reading on Tyler Cowen's blog;
They saw a significant reduction in covid presence in communities with more masking -- even though total masking was still only 40% in those communities -- which is very much in line with all the other literature.
I literally can't believe people still pretend like masks (especially surgical/KN95s) don't protect people when it's completely self-evident since we've used them forever to protect people in medical settings.
It doesn't address the primary criticisms of the bad cat, and you should really read the comments on the article you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses in healthcare and community settings.
They don't work, at all, across decades of research and dozens of studies. They're not going to magically start working for COVID when they haven't worked for the flu or any other respiratory virus in the past.
>forever to protect people in medical settings.
Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
> and you should really read the comments on the article you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses in healthcare and community settings.
Unfortunately, Tyler Cowen's blog has worse Covid commentary than even HN does, which is pretty impressive given the amount of HCQ/Ivermectin/bioweapon conspiracy theorizing here.
> Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
This is patently untrue.. you're not one of those "virus particles can fit through masks" people are you? As just one example of how obvious it is that masks protect against viruses in HCW from the last SARS outbreak;
You should perhaps read the studies you've linked a bit closer? When mentioned (as several of them are explicitly about masks in non-healthcare settings) - they all advocate for universal masking in healthcare settings specifically to limit the spread of Covid...
> Although more research on universal masking in heath settings is needed, it is the expert opinion of the majority (79%) of WHO COVID-19 IPC GDG members that universal masking is advisable in geographic settings where there is known or suspected community or cluster transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
> 1. In areas of known or suspected community or cluster SARS-CoV-2 transmission, universal masking should be advised in all health facilities (see Table 1).
> All health workers, including community health workers and caregivers, should wear a medical mask at all times, for any activity (care of COVID-19 or nonCOVID-19 patients) and in any common area (e.g., cafeteria, staff rooms).
> Other staff, visitors, outpatients and service providers should also wear a mask (medical or non-medical) at all times
Opinions not supported by empirical evidence are not opinions worth listening to.
"Experts" supported eugenics, antibacterial soap, breakfast cereal, the food pyramid, lobotomies, and all kinds of other things on the basis of popular "consensus"
See now you've gone and boxed yourself into the typical HN corner...
The people making those recommendations are experts in the field and have all read the relevant research. Weighting the good studies vs. the bad ones, measuring evidence, etc. They literally exist to give guidance on world health matters based on the spectrum of results from all these different researchers.
And here you are, telling me that in your opinion, we should ignore their assessment and only trust these few specific papers that you choose to emphasize. (At least you've stopped advocating for ivermectin now?)
A bit of a paradox to get people to rely on your opinion when you've previously said we shouldn't rely on opinions isn't it? Or is it just that you don't like the WHO's opinion on World Health issues because they might be in the pocket of "big surgical mask".
I haven't boxed myself in anywhere, I've maintained the same position throughout.
I'm not telling you anything in my opinion. I'm telling you what the empirical evidence says or doesn't say.
I have not stopped advocating Ivermectin. The empirical evidence shows that it is still an extremely cheap, safe, and correlated treatment demonstrated across populations of billions through a mechanism of action that has been well established.
There's literally no reason not to try it, and there's a reason it's part of treatment regimens across several countries. Its use doesn't involve eroding the liberty of the populace or solidifying absolute power of state. It has virtually zero side effects medically or socioculturally, unlike things like masks or vaccines that have zero long term data
you should really read the comments on the article you linked
Even if I disagree with TC on something, I still think he's pretty much intellectually honest, i.e., is not beholden to one political agenda or another simply because it matches his world view or completely unaware of competing data. And he often does a good job in striking a balance on ideology & practicality (State Capacity Libertarianism comes to mind)
However the comments section on MR are often a hot mess of cherry picking or misinformation parroted back by people trying emulate TC's style without anything approaching his intellectual rigor.
Skepticism and methodological criticism are definitionally "science". Not cult like faith. Ad hominems and appeals to authority are not valid arguments.
Paying more attention to information in a peer-reviewed journal than information in a pseudonymous substack is not "cult-like faith." Of course the study could be wrong.
One actively cultivated a culture of establishing an absolutist surveillance state resulting in the death and torture of tens of millions, often at the hands of their own children, in the course of a decade or so, is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate, treats their population like cattle, and exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power.
There is no comparison of morality between the US and China. For all its faults and failures the US is unequivocally a more moral and just nation.
Let's not just leave it at that. I won't let you deceptively downplay the egregious evil China is and has been responsible for. It's directly responsible for multiple events that when measured over the course of history, are the most insane human atrocities ever committed.
China Oana monstrous regime to its own people, and has been exporting the technology and know-how for their monstrous treatment more and more.
However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations - Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Irak, Cuba, Palestine, Cambodia and many others.
They are both immoral, but i d different ways at different times, like all empires have been and forever will be, from the Romans to the Arabs to the Mongols to the French, Dutch, Belgians etc.
There are lots of places where your argument is nonsense, but I feel like the most important thing to address is this:
> However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries
That's just inaccurate. The founding of the current communist regime resulted in more deaths within China's borders than all of the US's military campaigns (and espionage) since WW2 combined. I've seen it said a lot that the "US kills more!" So I wonder if that's just a talking point the CCP is trying to disseminate to distract from their current genocide.
I meant the US has killed more people abroad than China has killed abroad. So, if I were a citizen of China, I have many reasons to fear the Chinese government; if I were a citizen of the USA, I would not have much reason to fear the US government.
But, if I am a citizen of, say, Lebanon, I have many more reasons to fear the USA than I have to fear China. I'm much more likely to be killed by the US government than the Chinese government.
Without context it is a pointless statistic. The US was involved on the just side of the two largest wars in modern history. That's where the overwhelming majority of its foreign killings comes from. And while regrettable, they were lawful and necessary. You can't call someone a murderer for defending themselves from attack.
I don't see how something can be both regrettable and necessary? Also, as well as the two wars that the US was on the 'just' side of, it's also been on the quite-hard-to-call-just side of many others, where it was not exactly defending itself either.
>However, the US has killed many times more people in other countries, and brutalized countless nations
You are very clearly uninformed about history. Especially if that's your list of brutalized countries with zero insight into the many factors stimulating US intervention in most of them and the aftermath resulting from failed or cessation of intervention, especially in those supported by the CCP.
El Salvador and Cuba
I will grant that the clandestine support of a coup and refusal to condemn an oppressive, violent junta that came to power was inexcusable on the part of the US, but its involvement still has nothing compared to the CCP and USSR involvement in mass genocides and democides across the globe. The guerillas weren't benevolent liberators either.
Nicaragua
Another good example of the faults and failures of the US historically, but incomparable to the CCP, and aligned with global economics at the time. A victim of the intense geopolitical tensions and climate in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks in large part to the fallout from the Spanish-American War.
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. The collapse of the Ottomon Empire was the motivating factor in harsh and enduring political tensions in Central Asia. Not US intervention.
US involvement in Afghanistan all started with solicited intervention by the populace for help against imperial actions by the USSR. Continued intervention was not purely political or economic in nature, and certainly not genocidal or democidal.
Iran
Another failure, yet still incomparable to the history of the CCP. The rise of an Islamic theocracy in the geopolitical landscape of Iran should not be surprising, regardless of US intervention. It coincides with other theocratic revolutions in the region that were not the consequence of intervention by the US.
Hopefully with this history lesson you develop an understanding that even with the many wrongs the US has committed over time, none come close to the CCP in its relatively short existence. The US has killed orders of magnitude less people domestically and internationally, justified and unjustified, across its entire history than the CCP has unjustifiably across the globe in the last 75 years.
> The massacre at Huế came under increasing press scrutiny later, when press reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle, searching out and executing citizens that had supported the communist occupation.[10][11]
This feels like the classic 'barrage of bullshit' strategy, where a load of dubious claims are thrown out in the knowledge that it's near impossible to refute them all, and refuting part of them will come across as "well, this one might be contested, but look at all the others!".
Taking just Cambodia - the Khmer Rouge regime was of course supported by China with massive resources. However, the US has also killed tens of thousands of Cmabodians directly in bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, between 30,000 and 150,000 (likely committing the war crime of Aggression, as they were not in a state of war with Cambodia); this helped galvanize the population towards joining the enemies of the US, helping the Khmer Rouge attain power.
Later on, in 1979 when the re-united Vietnam attacked the Khmer Rouge, both the US and China condemned the actions of the Vietnam liberators, and helped defend the Khmer Rouge from international opinion (since Vietnam was being supported in this by the USSR). The US sent lawyers to defend Pol Pot himself from the tribunals in the newly liberated Cambodia, and both China and the US helped keep Khmer Rouge affiliates on the UN seat for Cambodia until 1993. Of course, China went further and launched a retaliatory war against Vietnam for their liberation of Cambodia.
You also seem to be greatly minimizing the US involvement in many of these places. The US occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, installed a military dictatorship that ruled it for 50 years, and then trained, armed and directed guerillas that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians to try to stop the revolution that took down the Somoza dictatorship. Much of the rest of South America saw similar treatment from the US: coups taking down socialist popular movements and installing military dictatorships instead, then supporting violent militias if counter-revolutions started.
In the middle east, while many of the problems started with the British handling of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the USSR also led brutal wars of oppression, the US has picked up the torch in the last 30 or so years as the major source of strife in the region. They are responsible for:
- arming and training the Taliban
- installing Saddam Hussein in power, arming him, and directing him to attack Iran, even accepting his use of chemical warfare
- squashing Iran's brief democracy under Mossadegh, installing a military dictatorship under the Shah, starting the Iran Nuclear Weapons program, arming them (and then losing control to the islamic revolution)
- funding and arming Saudi Arabia and allowing it to spread its demented form of islamic fundamentalism, supporting even as we speak their invasion of Yemen
- supporting the Israeli apartheid state, illegal nuclear weapons arsenal, and illegal occupation of Palestinian territories
- invading Afghanistan in 2001 and killing thousands in the process, causing the deaths of as many as 100,000 civilians overall in the conflict
All of these things are adequately accounted for in my previous post except one which I find laughable every time I hear it, and provides sufficient evidence to me that you are an ideologue not concerned with realistic representations of history or current political events.
>Israeli apartheid state
Apartheid states do not let the oppressed class have massive representation in their representative government at all levels.
They do not have members of the oppressed class sit on the bench of the highest court in the land.
They do not mandate, at a federal level, that ALL state enterprise MUST have a member of the oppressed class on their board of directors.
They do not consistently have individuals from the oppressed class as cabinet members.
They do not have ambassadors belonging to the oppressed class.
They do not have members of the oppressed class as some of the highest ranking generals in their military, or as commanders of, hilariously, the border police.
Members of the oppressed class in apartheid states do not have the highest standard of living and quality of life compared to members of the same religious and ethnic groups in the region.
Apartheid states do not bend over backwards to accommodate, preserve, and enable the cultural and religious practices of the oppressed class, even when its members openly call for the genocide of the predominant ethnic group in the locale, refuse to participate in coalition governments, and reinforce sectarian, segregationist cultural policies and beliefs.
If you sincerely think Israel is an apartheid state, you are woefully uninformed, and a fool that has fallen for blatant propaganda.
The oppressed minority are not Arab citizens of Israel, they are the citizens of the Palestinian territories, whose property (and sometimes even lives) are considered expandable by Israeli authorities, who routinely destroy or seize these.
Israel is very obviously leading a campaign to eradicate the Palestinian population and take their land without taking the people.
They are violating all two-state solution guarantees through their obviously illegal settlements. And they do not want to simply occupy the Palestinian territories and go for a single-state solution, because that would leave Palestinian Arabs a majority (or at least extremely large minority) of the population, which contradicts the dream of an Isareli state controlled by God's chosen people.
All of your examples of how the minority Arab citizenry of Israel is treated well are entriely irrelevant, and if you know anything about the history of calling Israel an apartheid state, by people like Noam Chomsky, you would definitely know this, so I can only assume you are arguing in bad faith.
Palestinian Arabs are exactly who I'm describing in the previous examples. They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century. You're regurgitating ignorant nonsense. The ruling parties and majority population of Palestine are VOCALLY genocidal when it comes to the Jews, but you'd rather ignore that and accuse Israel of subversively carrying out a genocide against people it has in its highest levels of government. Then you have the audacity to accuse ME of bad faith. How many Jews are in Palestinian leadership positions?
I couldn't care less what Noam Chomsky says or thinks on this subject, he's one of the worst ultracrepidarian clowns in contemporary history.
And yet, despite this enlightened love of Israel for its Palestinian citizens, Israel is one of the developed nations of the world, while Palestine (the Gaza Strip and West Bank) live in squalor, are blockaded with not even the Red Cross being allowed to freely bring medicine in, and have to endure planned bombardments from Israel whenever a terrorist attack happens, all while their land is taken away by colonists flying the Israeli flag.
How exactly do you square this circle?
> Palestine has rejected every two state solution proposed for the last half century.
This is twisting history. UN resolutions for a two-state solution have always been approved by Palestine, with the USA being the veto against them. The idea of recognizing the state of Israel has been accepted by Palestinian leadership since the 1970s. But, the specific proposals that have usually been on the table have been almost universally laughable: taking away even more of Palestinian territory, limited access to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, limited access between the two halves of the Palestinian state and many other issues.
Not to mention, almost all of these negotiations were "arbitrated" by Israel's single biggest ally in the world, the USA. This would be as if you'd expect peace talks between Ukraine and the Donetsk separatists arbitrated by Russia to go well.
> They are free to become Israeli citizens at any time and those are the positions they end up in when they do.
And looking a little bit into this, it's amazing you can claim this, as the truth is precisely the opposite. 90% of the Arabic population of Palestine before the war did not qualify to become Israeli citizens. Now, not only do they not have any special right to become Israeli citizens, they don't even have the right to enter the country, even if they have a spouse or property there, unless they meet some other conditions.
By contrast, any person of Jewish decent or that converts to Judaism has the right to become a citizen of Israel with minimal other conditions. They will also likely receive property from the JNF if they wish to settle in Israel.
Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) the US is not a very moral or just nation, especially with how it has used its military power & (2) the US is a more moral and just nation than China, especially with how they use military power.
This isn't a whataboutism equivalency. It is a statement that one needs to first be honest about ones own shortcomings before disparaging another.
> absolutist surveillance state
I'm pretty sure that neither Google nor the rest of the world is thrilled about NSA warrantless mass surveillance programs.
> is currently participating in genocide, has institutionally striven to sustain an ethnostate
State supported ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the 19th century. State supported subjugation and murder of African Americans in... well, improving, but still counting.
> exercises extrajudicial imprisonment and execution...
Extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and torture in third party countries and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
> ... against vast swaths of the population to preserve political power
20th century voting rights struggles, in which African Americans were systemically disenfranchised with the goal of preserving white political and economic power.
---
I'm a proud American, support the use of the US military on the global stage as a force for increasing moral good in the world, and consider the Chinese model of authoritarianism incompatible with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness owed to every human. I believe the US holds individual freedom and equality before the law as much higher ideals, and delivers on them more often and fully, than China does.
But there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. talks about "self purification" as one of the three prerequisite steps before direct action, and it's because easy hatred corrupts true justice.
Enumerating the ways in which your opponent looks like you, and the ways in which you've fallen short of your own ideals, isn't an argument for inaction, but a clarification and sharpening of action. 1960s racial injustice in the United States provided an embarrassing talking point while the US lectured the USSR on individual freedom. Using the evil that another does as justification for righteousness requires first accepting the evil that one has done.
You're belittling the Soviet Union's gulags when you describe 1960's racial injustices. The difference, if you can't register, is the the latter nation has the civilized means for progressing its justice through political means. It's astonishing how negligent this basic truth is when doing nation-state comparisons over the last century.
It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society. It also opens up the Chinese society for foreign influence and sends millions abroad for studies.
The idea that this is to "increase the power of the CCP" is only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity. In classic dictatorship thinking sending your best students abroad and accepting foreign educators is the last thing you would want to do.
Sending your best abroad while you hold their family at gunpoint locally is how you cultivate absolute loyalty and subvert adversarial thought and nations. The best way to defeat your enemy is to understand them.
That's why you consistently see Chinese born, US citizens with decades of time in the states prosecuted for espionage.
> It is a part of the industrial policy of China that broadly raises living standard and wealth of the society.
I agree. It doesn't contradict what I said, though. Both are true.
> only true in sense that economic growth may increase the ruling party's popularity
No. It also gives them better weapons, AI, surveillance technology, etc. It literally increases their power, both abroad and within their borders.
CCP's popularity is guaranteed because it is criminal in China to tell negative truths about them. Their popularity is irrelevant because they have control over the entire country's military and surveillance networks. If they can intern and slaughter millions of Uyghurs, it's almost impossible for a rebellion to overthrow them.
Cops are sourced from the general population, so incidence rates need to be compared to the general population, and you'll find that police have significantly lower "negative" behaviors compared to the general population in virtually all aspects. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to remotely disable your car though.