Vilageidiotx

Writing mental disorders

One possible way of going about it would be to read up. Get books both about the subject (like this), and fiction books written from the perspective of antisocial characters (like this)

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

At the end of the day, I would bet Sleepy Ben is smarter than any one of us in this conversation due in part to a combination of his years of wisdom, experience, and learning. If you think he's stupid because he's a devout Christian then you have to first realize that you're below the bar you're about to set.

@j8cob

You can be really smart in one area and a complete mess in another. We all know things that Ben doesn't know, for instance. And I am not just talking about what your mom looks like naked. I'd suspect most people in this thread have skills that Ben would take a while to master, for the same reason he has skills that took him (and would take us) decades to master.

Which is to say just because a person is accomplished doesn't mean you can't question their competence in other fields. And since we are talking about people running for public office, it's almost our duty to question them. I have more than once been persuaded not to vote for someone because their religious devotion caused me to question their judgement.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

Casual reminder that China has been modernizing and enforcing labor laws. There will be no such thing as "cheap Chinese slave labor" in fifteen years and manufacturing our goods in China will become unsustainable for us.

@j8cob

2030 is looking to be a shitty year. All the shaky predictions (automation of transportation industry, the moment the US outpaces pre-revolutionary France in wealth inequality, and now I guess China catching up to the west) seems to pick that date. Which makes me wonder, is that just the most comfortable date for people to use for prediction because it is far enough in the future, is 2030 really the year/decade western capitalism boils over?

Though it should be said there is a whole lot more developing world out there just waiting to become the next China. I feel like Africa might do some interesting shit before the century is over, especially now that parts of West Africa are urbanizing and growing a middle class. Time will tell I suppose.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

People with decent paying jobs shop and Walmart too. It's not a 1:1 ratio.

@Jotunn Draugr

Oh yes of course, but they aren't going to start consuming more because people who are no longer in the country cease to consume. I'm not saying that Wal-Mart will fold without illegal immigrants, just saying that there will be a drop in consumption equal to the jobs opened up. This isn't an argument for or against illegal immigration (since, on the other hand, an increase in consumption via immigrants comes with an equal increase in new competitors for labor). All I am saying is this consumption gap negates the jobs created by chasing out illegal immigrants.

What's wrong with stopping cheap goods from being imported from China? I shouldn't have to remind you that there was a time when such products were all made in America, and the economy was doing just fine.

Again it's a negation thing. American access to manufacturing would increase, but because manufacturing would then need to pay American wages instead of Chinese slave wages, the cost of living would increase. So long as investors require a certain cut, Americans workers are going to have to make up the difference.

And don't get me wrong, I love the idea of making shit in the US. I'm not exactly financially stable, but when I can do it, I love trying to stick to local shit. Keeping my own community up seems ideal. And, you know, gives me and my people access to employment But there are problems that come from legally mandated protectionism. Aside from the cost of living rise, we'd also lose equal access to foreign markets for our exports, since they'd all have to compensate with their own protectionist measures to protect their own markets, which would slow the global economy in turn.

Well if there are any academic-level economic books on the subject, that you've personally read, you're welcome to cite them, and I'll give them a look.

I've been vague here because economics is such a broad subject and there are so many directions you could go in. I personally liked Capital in the 21st century (I mean liked the theory, it's a fucking dull read), but that one is controversial. He puts the blame for our economic woes on wealth disparity, and though his solution is lackluster, his description of the economy just meshes more with how I have experienced it.

Regarding this discussion, really, Wealth of Nations is still relevant 200 years later. I think it is because of that book that most economists still scoff at protectionism, because that is the subject of his argument.

I'm sure you're likewise aware that protectionism comes with tariffs on imported goods, meaning a Mexican thrown out of Tulsa, won't "steal another job in manufacturing", as there won't be any American manufacturing south of the border.

We can't really gunboat our way out of the tariff problem liked we could in the 19th century. Back then we could get away with forcing people to buy our goods against their will so we could keep our tariffs high without our industry suffering as a result.

But since the modern world makes that difficult to do, what would happen is those foreign markets would close themselves to our goods, so that the economy would dip from a loss of sales just as the cost of living starts to rise. Mexico would suffer the same result, as would anybody else involved, which would certainly destabilize Latin America. They'd have to respond to our tariff with a tariff though, to protect their own industry.

Now doing this with Mexico would yield small results for the same reason I think illegal immigration is a small potato in our economic woes. But if we did that with China, especially if done awkwardly? That is downright dangerous. As in, worst case scenario @Keyguyperson gets his proletarian revolution dangerous.

I think you lost me a couple times. One was at the Chihuahua comment. If you don't mind, could you explain how exactly they're going to continue occupying American jobs when they're thrown out of the country? Likewise, what does "Latin America getting their shit together" have to do with this?

Taking jobs producing for American companies via NAFTA.

Also, Latin America getting its shit together would fix the illegal immigration problem from the other direction. Latin America hemorrhages people now because Latin America is a mess that people want to flee from. Hell, fixing Northern Mexico might be enough, since they border us and are producing the lions share of the immigrants.

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

Often, they're much smarter than a good portion of humanity. I would consider them the smartest of all in this whole conversation.

Humans: Philosophical babble.

Wolf: Eat the deer, see the world, and never have to worry with religious/philosophical/otherwise human-created nonsense.

@ArenaSnow

I eat deer, see the world, and also get to have some babble too.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

Yah, you could go with the carrot method, and bribe them into doing it. Or you could use the stick, and say "you must attend and pass these classes, or you will not be granted citizenship/residence/landed-status/etc, and you will have to continue hoping your visa can be renewed on time". Of course, this would necessitate enforcement. The United States already has laws and punishments for visa overstays, but they're not regularly enforced. To quote Ann Coulter, "We already have an immigration task-force, JUST LET I.C.E. DO THEIR JOB".

@Jotunn Draugr

I think I brought up before that the "They just need to be allowed to do their jobs" is a political line and describes more or less paying a few people to look for needles in haystacks. Case in point, Ann Coulter said it. She's as trustworthy a figure as quoting, like, Bill Maher or something. Political pundits are not sources.

Hold the phone. Why don't you need illegal immigrants to keep Walmart wages poor? Surely, if you vastly reduce the supply of low-skill workers, and the demand is still there (Walmart being America's biggest sole employer), they'll have to do something to entice people to come work for them. When there's a limited supply of workers, and an excess of employers, the employers have to start offering more to beat out their competition, or risk being understaffed and going out of business.
How did agriculture, and other low-skill labour ever function, before you were able to bring in cheap Mexicans to do it? Oh yah! It used to be that teenagers and young adults would do it, which is coincidentally the most under-employed group in the country now, more so than ever in American history (possibly excluding the great depression).

Low-skill workers are also Wal-Marts base. Limiting the amount of employees doesn't work because it limits the amount of patrons by the same number. This I think is where I really disagree with Trumps economic policies; It's smoke and mirrors, to hide the fact that the conditions the working class are faced with are naturally dictated by the nature of capitalism. This is pure economic snake oil. It's a good position because it's a problem that cannot be fixed (short of Latin America getting its shit together) and therefore can always be there to be blamed on the liberals.

As for agriculture, this is where illegal immigrant and just immigrant gets mixed together. The migrant agricultural workers, generally legal, have been part of the Western economic culture since, like, there was white people out there owning farms. It exists because the work is seasonal, low paying, not enough to sustain non-migrant populations, and because Americans generally don't like migratory work. Even if Trump manages to somehow get rid of all the illegal immigrants in the United States, Hispanic migrant workers would still be there. Which is good, because getting rid of them would be highly disruptive. You aren't going to be able to empty a bunch of Idaho bedroom communities to get your potatoes picked.

If you want to handle the exploitation, first start enforcing the law. There are entire cities, occupied exclusively by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants each (if not more). These cities are known to the police, but nothing is done. When a local company needs new workers, they can just swing by one of these "sanctuary cities", and pick up two dozen willing workers. Step one is build the wall, to shut off the flow of immigrants. Step two is send the illegals back over the wall, creating a vacuum of low-skill employees. Step three is shutting down the guest-worker program, increasing the vacuum. Step four is simply waiting for the illegal immigrants that are already employed to integrate into society. Before you know it, there aren't any more easily exploitable non-English-speaking foreign workers, and their wages will start rising already, as more and more employers find themselves short on cheap labour, and are forced to pay more to bring them over.

That sounds so easy on paper, but it's a lazy dream of a plan. Okay, so you build the wall. The coyotes get clever, illegal immigration becomes a professional deal, and we have a big cement mess on our border for people to bitch about. You drag a few abuellas out of their sanctuary cities, make a few ugly headlines, and what you get out of it is a population stealing industrial jobs from Chihuahua because as it turns out you cannot get rid of them as economic units even if you throw them across the border. You shut down the guest worker program and western agriculture has a fit (probably won't be shut down because of this. Agriculture is a hell of a lobbyist). And what you get is... well, like I said, you've just moved economic units around. If we take a protectionist stance against Mexico and China, our access to cheap products dwindles equal to our cheap labor so that the purchasing power of the average American either stays the same or dwindles.

Protectionism doesn't work. This is, like, economics 101 from every modern economic theory still in practice. It's populist but it's impractical because it always requires making decisions on half of the information. A competing worker lost is a customer lost, a foreign competitor quelled is a foreign market closed. It sounds good because it allows people to imagine that there is just this one tiny thing in their way, but it's not the way the real world works.

I guarantee you, grab some modern economic books, the heady academic shit and not the silly pundit to-be-sold-in-grocery-stores stuff, and you'll find immigrants on the backburner to real, and much more complicated, problems.

When we're talking about rising poverty levels, record unemployment, income inequality, human exploitation with conditions akin to slavery, I couldn't give a shit about your ability to get a tasty novelty food category, and no one else who takes this situation seriously should either. If the livelihood of your fellow man, and the suffering of your neighbour to the south, is worth less than a good burrito... Well I just hope you're in the minority.

Calm down. Take a deep breath.

I mention Hillary Clinton, because the pro-immigration/amnesty side of this discussion always brings up food as the example of "cultural enrichment", as though this doesn't pale in comparison to real issues. It's such a privileged position to speak from, where your life and livelihood is secure enough that your only concern is getting more food variety.

Always? I've done this plenty of times and never saw food come up as a serious argument. It seemed a bit tone deaf that you took it so seriously.

Yes yes, I'm not saying they're going to do a good job. I'm just noting that the concept of a border wall is far from unprecedented (Israel is another great example), and that it's a bit ironic that Mexicans are complaining about a wall, when they themselves are building a wall.

I guarantee you I don't base my ideas on what the Mexican government thinks. They're to blame for a lot of this. That they'd chase a childish policy like building a border wall is par for the course as far as their poor method of government is concerned.

Yes, crime springs up from poverty, even in our own culture, but America isn't doing itself any favours by importing millions of dirt-poor people, with no education or prospects, who's culture (language included, of course) conflicts with the local culture.

I'd like to note that the influx of Mexican labour driving the wages down, and sucking welfare money out of the system, sure isn't doing the poor any favours, and may even be contributing to the conditions that result in white ghettos. Also, where are these locals getting their hard drugs from in the first place? Ten bucks says it's from Mexico.

Of course, everything is a matter of scales and degrees, but the more socio-economical-cultural division we have, the more likely we are to get these unlivable, inhospitable sections of our own country.

The drug problem is incidentally where I come to agree with you here. Whereas the economic argument might be diversionary at best, the drug problem is something we should really be focusing on. A big part of Mexico's problem, and really our problem as well, is the cartel empire in the north pushing drugs over the border. There is nothing good coming out of that. Now, I don't think a wall will fix that issue, but moving resources currently committed to chasing abuellas, or cracking down on drug-users or the production of soft drugs, to deal with the hard drug problem, that seems like it would be good policy.

But the rest of it is weak. The world economy as it stands now is global. A Mexican stealing an American job in Tulsa, if sent back over the border, will steal another job in manufacturing. If we went back to the high tariff system, Mexico (or China or whoever) would reciprocate and our access to cheap goods would diminish. You can't really find the 'Golden Capitalism' or whatever, what you see is what you get.

Illegal immigration is as it stands a cheap populist issue the right likes to use because they know it can't go away, and because they have maneuvered themselves into a place where they can always blame liberals on it. It's like a pinata with an endless supply of candy (or whatever a Trump regime would rename it. A Freedom Beating-doll?). Hell, I'm not even particularly offended at the idea he may try, because whereas I think he's chasing unicorns, It's not like anybody is suggesting anything growed up yet. Because really, the thing that annoys me about it is that we'd waste so much resources chasing such a stupid fix, taking away energy from any real fixes. But for that to be a problem there would have to be somebody trying to get a real fix in place, and we aren't really spending the energy to do so yet.

It's like we are biding our time until the whole system blows up or something. What do we do in the mean time, watch Trump pollute a few news cycles beating up field workers, or watch Hillary basically do nothing and tell us everything is fine? Neither does much of anything that'll have a good effect, so we are basically just choosing how we are going to fuck up.

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

Creationism, if that is the extent of your religious views, is irrelevant to most things this is true. (Well, except maybe if you are a geneticist or something).

But it does tend to be comorbid with other stuff. You run across a hardcore creationist you have to start wondering what other hardline evangelical stuff do they subscribe to. Are they in the camp who believe certain things need to be achieved to bring about the end of the world? Because those people, the ones who want to help along the apocalypse, could make some poor judgements about middle eastern diplomacy. And if they are that evangelical, do they want to curtail the rights of others? People of other religions, or the irreligious, or fuck, even other brands of Christianity.

That's my first concern when I hear a candidate is creationist. If they are into that, what else are they into, and what affect might it have on their behavior? You know, it'd be like finding out your candidate believes he was abducted by aliens. Like, that belief when taken alone is pretty irrelevant as well, but it can be taken as a symptom of other peculiarities which might cause something of a problem.

And being a Brain surgeon doesn't really cast that concern away. I mean yeh, absolutely it is better to pick a guy with bizarre beliefs who is successful over a person with bizarre beliefs who lives under a bridge, but just because a bizarre belief hasn't hindered a persons ability to perform complex surgery doesn't mean it won't effect their judgement in leading a government.

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

Mostly all I ever see in the status bar is people alluding to some sort of personal crisis but not saying what the crisis actually is.

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

Really? Looks like almost every poll says that he won.

Personally, I thought it was a wash. They both came out looking horrible. He had her in the beginning on trade, and she was stuttering over herself trying to think of a comeback, but then the moderator started outright arguing with Trump closer to the end, and he had to completely go on the defensive. Hillary really just through out accusations faster than Trump could dispute them, but he seemed actually more solid on specific policies.

What's your take?

@Jotunn Draugr

Online polls were regularly declaring, like, 90% for Bernie back in the spring. Of course, the Media isn't exactly a better judge, but they seem to know that, and most media personalities I have seen have been tossing in grains of salt with their reports. You know, always talking about how bizarre this election is and how they ultimately can't figure out what is going on, before they go on with their opinion. I think the real indicator will be how the professional polls look, and we got at least a week if not two before those come out in large enough numbers to tell a story.

My own opinion, I expected him to do well, but I don't think he did well at all. I was surprised by it actually. He is good on the offensive but petulant and weak in the defensive, so I assumed he'd take the offensive. But instead he played his weakest hand and came off like he was way out of his league.

Hillary came off as robotic (The way she awkwardly felt her way up to that "I call it trumped up Reaganomics" line was like watching a blind man having sex for the first time). She always has seemed robotic. This is especially true when she is answering a moderator question. Clinton's debating style always comes off to me like a college freshman who practiced a few choice lines in a mirror and sort of ad-libbed the rest, because it always feels like she is setting herself up to deliver the line she had practiced. It's awkward and unimpressive. She did better when rebutting Trump's ideas, especially that one time where she did that aside to America's allies, I felt that made him look like a little boy getting apologized for by his mother.

But Trump comes off exactly like a cartoon villain in an old saturday morning cartoon. He starts off cocky, then slowly looses his cool, spouts generically evil lines, and starts falling apart near the end. It sorta felt like Batman should jump up any minute, kick him into the lava, say some corny line, and then credits role. He also has this thing for petulance. Like, let your supporters bitch about the media, don't do it yourself. A presidential candidate whining about the media... i mean, here you have a bunch of spineless milquetoast upper-middle class reporters and you're going to say they are being mean? How the fuck you gonna lead the free world if those people are enough of a challenge for you to call time-out? A billionaire whining about how the election is too hard... that doesn't inspire anything but disgust in me, guy. Man the fuck up.

The biggest danger for Trump in these debates I think will be himself. Clinton is not charismatic enough to do him in, he has to do it himself. He said Trumpy things in August and had bad polls. He toned it down in September and had really good polls. But if that is how he is going to act in a debate, he really is in danger of saying Trumpy things again, and he can't afford to do that in October. This is the home stretch. What happens in this next month will actually stay with the voters. He did really well with the TPP line, actually managed to choke her up, so whatever he did there he'll have to learn how to hold if he is going to win this thing. But if he plays it, like, basically the rest of that debate, he's going to have to hope for outside forces to get him the swing votes. Pray for an economic collapse (again), or something like that.

Meanwhile, I can say that the debate only really reinforced my resolve to vote third party this year. The next president is going to be some sort of disaster or another, so fuck it.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Holy shit! You guys are still doing this! I'm so impressed. Is there some kind of world record for longest-running online RP or something? Because we should get it.

How are things, famalam?

@wehr

holy shit we thought you forgot us forever

we been waiting for your next post