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If you will excuse my saying so, I think your priorities are misplaced. There is substantial reason to favor, for example, Trump over either any Democrat or the establishment Republicans who formerly dominated their party, not on ideological grounds but on what might be called structural grounds.

Some years ago, the Scottist science fiction writer Charles Stross wrote about what he called the "beige dictatorship" (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-and-th.html): the population of British people who spent their whole lives preparing for careers in politics, who never worked outside the political sector, and whose viewpoints, regardless of party label, take it for granted that everything should be controlled by people like them. Stross summed up at the end of that essay by saying that "the future isn't a boot stamping on a human face, forever. It's a person in a beige business outfit advocating beige policies that nobody wants (but nobody can quite articulate a coherent alternative to) with a false mandate obtained by performing rituals of representative democracy that offer as much actual choice as a Stalinist one-party state."

We can see the outcome of their dominance in the policies of the European Union, and of the UK, despite Brexit, and increasingly of the Democratic Party in the United States:

* Abandonment of the central Enlightenment value of freedom of speech and the press, in favor of forcible suppression of officially unacceptable viewpoints, and now, it appears of attempts to treat people who attempt to preserve these as criminals (as in recent calls for the extradition of Elon Musk to the UK and his trial as a criminal there)

* Suppression of the petroleum economy in favor of "sustainable" power systems that cannot provide reliable power, and that have massive environmental costs, from fires caused by the importation of electricity over interstate power lines, to damage to animal populations from birds to bats to whales, to unrecyclable breakdown products of solar and wind systems, all justified by climate hysteria (accompanied by demands for the forcible suppression of any dissent on climate)

* Suppression of much of farming and ranching in highly efficient countries such as the United States and the Netherlands that feed a disproportionate share of the world's population

* Centralization of the financial sector, with consequent ability to shut dissidents out of the economy and leave them in poverty (and unable to hire lawyers to defend their rights)

* A return of religious intolerance in the form of blasphemy laws that specifically make it a crime to criticize Islam (while not giving the same protection to Christianity or Judaism)

* More broadly, an insistence on special rights for officially "oppressed" groups that injure less oppressed groups (white people, East Asians, men, heterosexuals, and with the transgender movement, increasingly women) and make the "oppressed" groups clients of the state

All of this has generated hostility in large shares of the population, and rightly so. And it has produced the parties not only of Trump, but of Milei, Farage, Wilders, Le Pen, Meloni, and others. Their positions are a mixed lot, and some of what they want is often undesirable. But it's undesirable in a mundane way, not in the totalitarian way of the beige dictatorship; and it offers a possibility of breaking up the beige dictatorship, which is highly to be desired. So I support the American branch of that movement, with, admittedly, mixed feelings, because my feelings about their opposition are not at all mixed.

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I’m not sure I disagree with any of the individual points you note, but how does that make DF’s priorities misplaced?

DF said he finds Kamala’s policies worse than Trump’s for everything except immigration and trade.

Now I happen to disagree with DF on immigration because he fails to separate legal immigration from illegal immigration, and I quibble with him that in practice - as opposed to be rhetoric - Trump is worse than Kamala on trade. But that’s still different than his priorities, especially as he made clear he prefers the Trump package to the Kamala package.

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I think what I would say is that David is looking at things policy by policy, as if he were comparing two conventional party platforms. And in many situations that's what you have to do, trading off virtues and faults and looking for a balance. But there are times when one option is fundamentally wrong, and asking whether it has some good points is at best idle and at worst a distraction. We do not, for example, discuss whether the National Socialist German Workers' Party's concern for the natural environment was a virtue. I think that we are in a situation where "a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce [us] under absolute Despotism," and it's a mistake to ask whether the abusers and usurpers have some good points.

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I hear you.

But in fairness to DF he has said clearly to anyone paying attention that he agrees with you that team Kamala is indeed worse than team Trump.

He just chooses to root for a 3rd team because he doesn’t like either.

And he criticizes the policies of each that he doesn’t like.

I got no problem with any of that.

Perhaps where we do agree is on his answer to me elsewhere that even if in a swing state he would still vote 3rd party, as a “signal”, rather than vote for his acknowledged lesser evil.

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I stipulate that. But there is a difference between "I would rather buy A than B" and "I would not even consider buying B." I think David is saying the first, and I'm saying the second.

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If B is Team Kamala, I think he has indeed pretty much said exactly that.

At least that’s what I take “Kamala Harris is an extreme representative of an ideology I have opposed for most of my life” to mean.

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Regarding the emotional reaction, I'm the same but admittedly more right than you are. I give Republicans much more credit than they deserve from their record because I believe that libertarianism is in their DNA to some degree, even if they often fall short. I think they want the government to be smaller with reduced regulation, and so on (leave out abortion if you need to).

Democrats, on the other hand, seem to like large government for its own sake and appear to go after every excuse to grow it (COVID lockdown the most glaring recent example). I think in the sense that libertarians think of them, they have no base principles and pick whatever position is favorable to their interest groups at the time, flopping back and forth with circumstance. If they ever randomly do something that grows the economy, reduces government power, is economically literate or seems libertarian in some way, I interpret it as an accident that so happened to come along with some other agenda they had.

In recent years, of course, climate and gender stuff has gotten so crazy on the left that I'd vote against them on that alone. And then there's SCOTUS, which if Hillary had won, who knows where we'd be. I'm pretty sure the first and second amendments would be hollow toothless shells that a left SCOTUS would interpret away.

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I agree about climate and gender, but Trump is more of an economic isolationist than Harris and restrictionist on immigration. And he could switch sides on climate if there were policies he wanted that could be supported on climate grounds.

If I vote for either candidate and he wins I will feel responsible, even though my vote (in California) has no effect on the outcome of the election. And either candidate can be expected to do things I don't want to feel responsible for.

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How do you know Harris' policy regarding free trade? I don't think she's said anything, though perhaps you can infer from Biden policies. But I agree, Trump tends to use tariffs as a weapon more than I would prefer. Perhaps an intelligent argument could be made for them against the likes of China (as a potential least bad option when something probably needs to be done), but I'm not prepared to defend that.

I'd personally be surprised if he switched on climate since doing much of anything on climate is "right coded" at this point.

For me, SCOTUS alone is enough reason to vote for Trump. Plus, I am personally so put off by the left on the cultural front that I really want them to lose at a gut emotional level. I want people to be rebel against their excesses on censorship, gender and climate just to give me faith in the basic reasonableness of the American people.

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Court appointments are a reason to want Trump to win as long as he continues to subcontract them to the Federalist Society which, I think, is still a conservative/libertarian group, and he probably will. At least until one of his past appointments take a position he really dislikes.

I expect Harris, like Biden, to impose tariffs against China, but I don't see the same element of tariffs as "protecting American workers" that I see on the other side.

Vance is a bit of a puzzle. It's hard to believe that he doesn't understand the relevant economics —Thiel certainly does, and I gather he listens to Thiel. He could still argue for protecting American auto workers at the cost of American farm workers, which is what an auto tariff does, but that doesn't sound like what he thinks he is doing. Either he really does believe in absolute advantage and a vaguely mercantilist view of trade or he pretends to.

I want the left to lose on gender and climate and the like, but I am not sure that Trump winning will change that. It might if he does a sufficiently competent job of reforming the bureaucracy, the Project 2025 plan, but he probably won't. I discussed a little of that a couple of posts back.

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/preference-falsification-collapse

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Have you written anywhere about the 4 years of Trump administration ? Wonder how you judge those.

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Aug 25·edited Aug 25Author

I haven't.

One of the things that struck me reading the Project 25 book was that many of its authors think he did a good job. My impression, based largely on media reports hostile to him, was that he didn't succeed in doing much of anything, good or bad, other than appointing conservative judges.

Ideally I would find an extended debate between a Trump supporter and a critic and use the information from that, checked where possible, to form my own opinion. Going over what he did for myself, starting with a blank slate, would be a lot of work.

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I’d say his tax reform was mildly successful compared to the alternative, but otherwise he didn’t do much domestically.

On foreign policy I would rate Trump quite highly, and Biden disastrously. For about five minutes I gave Biden credit for Afghanistan, but his own party would probably repudiate that decision today.

Honestly with republicans I mostly see them as just “not fucking up”. If you elect them and they do nothing at least they aren’t making things worse.

It’s kind of like COVID. Is “don’t close schools” some unique and amazing policy position? It didn’t take a genius, but somehow only republicans could manage it. When the next covid comes up I want the party that defaults to “do nothing”.

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I would suggest that trade and immigration aren’t that important to you. I know a lot of people that feel they are “supposed” to believe these things because they are libertarian.

On tariffs they know that America had higher tariffs most of its existence, and it’s probably a better way of raising revenue than many others (unrealized capital gains). Just pretend the tariff is a VAT, which it kind of is, and economist would fall over themselves to substitute a VAT for an income tax.

On immigration most know about HBD and low Hispanic and Arab IQ. They see non-white voting patterns. They know what happened to California and malmo. There is a whole class of libertarians that just decided to get real on the immigration issue, some of which admit it publicly and others privately.

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The problem with libertarians is they tend to be extremely naïve about immigration, supporting mass immigration of people who then vote against libertarian policies.

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I argue for mass immigration, not mass naturalization, and for not including new immigrants in welfare programs, hence getting ones who will support themselves. See Chapter 14 of _The Machinery of Freedom_.

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There is no realistic way of doing this, so it’s not a serious position.

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Except that's not how our current system is set up.

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>The answer I came up with is that I judge someone as a human being according to how he treats his ingroup.

I recently read the primatologist Robert Sapolsky's memoirs about his time in Africa. He had an anecdote about how one time a bandit invited him for dinner, then robbed him. But later when the bandit's fellows learnt of this, they forced the bandit to return everything, and treated Sapolsky to a meal. It was acceptably to rob strangers in their eyes- but once you dine with someone, it's unacceptable to do so. Like moving from the fargroup/outgroup to the ingroup.

Also parallels the ancient Greek custom of hospitality, in which so many characters in the myths got brutally punished for violating.

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One of my medieval Islamic stories is about that from the other side. The thief, on his way out of the governor's palace with his loot, in the dark touches a crystal of salt to his tongue to see what it is. Having tasted salt under the governor's roof he is the governor's guest and bound by the rules of hospitality. Since he cannot honorably complete the errand he came on he dumps his loot and departs empty handed.

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There is a common tale of thieves having stolen a car, and then returning it (with an apology note) when they learned the owner was Fred Rogers.

Unfortunately, the tale, while appealing for reasons suggested here, is probably false. (And yet again, so appealing.)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/remorseful-car-thieves/

(written by Barbara Mikkelson herself, so I believe it even more than other Snopes articles I've come across)

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I read this with interest. Justifications. Like your comments about Biden and corruption but not holding Trump to the same standard.

So, you got this guy who ran things for 4 years and when he was fired, didn't want to leave. He is best buds with several other competitors and took company secrets when he was forced out. But not before he encouraged a group of people to actually murder his second in command and the board that fired him. He made a lot of money on the side selling and renting to the business. He is currently awaiting trial for some of his crimes and he wants to come back and run the business again. Should we rehire him? He does promise that he will run things like a dictator from day one this time. That should make the "smaller government" group happy. For me, I think we came very close to not having an option to vote any more on January 6th.

I would also ask if you expect to see supporters of Harris to react the same way Trumps supporters did and storm the Halls of Congress.

I'm sorry, you want to put some people back into power that support, and I think, will implement "Project 2025".

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What makes you think I regard Trump as a decent human being?

I would probably have a less negative view of Trump if I expected him to actually implement Project 2025, especially the parts that go against his preferences, but I don't.

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> especially the parts that go against his preferences

That sounds like a good general measure of a person: whether they're willing to acknowledge that their personal preferences are not always the best path to achieve their goals. The alternative seems to be people who reflexively rationalize why their personal preferences are actually objectively correct, or who lie about their past.

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Can I ask what you thought would happen on Jan 6th that would end democracy?

What actually happened is that some people entered a room, did no (serious) violence to anyone, then got bored a left. Politicians then re-entered the building and did what they were going to do.

I suppose in theory they might have done violence to someone even if they didn’t, though the political outcome would have been the same.

Many of the politicians that were attacked took the whole thing as not being serious enough to warrant impeachment.

By contrast, “the left” tried to lock me in my home over COVID. I went through roughly two years of impositions on my freedom that I felt went far beyond what I thought liberal democracy guaranteed me. I always wondered why we didn’t have more covid riots. Why weren’t politicians supporting lockdowns violently hung by mobs. I would have supported it, I always thought of Jan 6th as the pent up covid riot we never got.

The left wants to pack the Supreme Court so they can arrest people for tweets like in Europe. But yeah that guy with the shaman horns is the real threat.

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He’s dropped Project 2025.

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He says he has, because it had things his opponents could attack, but that doesn't tell us much. And he didn't "drop" it — he never endorsed it.

My guess is that he won't follow its recommendations, partly because he is not an ideological conservative and its authors are, partly because he doesn't like for other people to tell him what to do.

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My guess is that he'll end up appointing people who'll follow at least parts of it.

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Those being the parts he is in favor of. His speeches and web page are better evidence of what he will do, although still not very good evidence.

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Personally, I rejoice whenever I hear that either of Trump or Harris seems to be losing and despair whenever I hear that one of them seems to be winning, even though these are of course equivalent conditions.

My real feeling is that although I am closer to Trump on policy, Trump, far more than Harris, stands in the way of future candidates to whom I would be far closer on policy. If Trump wins, I fear it will be a long time until we have anything like a Reaganesque conservative in contention, whereas if Haley wins, I expect we'll have one --- and one who will be likely to win the presidency --- in just four years. So count me as an extremely dejected voter for Harris.

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If Harris wins, don't you expect that Vance will inherit Trump's movement and get the 2028 nomination? He is intelligent but not on our side, as I pointed out in my previous post.

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I think that if Harris wins, there's a good chance the Republicans will re-think whether they want to continue going down the path of Trump. Whereas if Trump wins, Vance will get the 2028 (or 2032) nomination.

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I don't know if you read my old post on the political machine system.

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/how-politics-worked

The critical thing is control of the primaries, since that gives you control of your party. Trump has followed that playbook so far, losing once didn't prevent him from doing so and I am not sure losing twice will.

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Why would Vance will get the 2028 nomination? Only if he proved to be a much better Trump he'd be nominated without competition.

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Not a chance. All the evidence shows that populism is system-wide in the West. In some places, it's Left populism reacting to Centre-Right politics and economics. In others it's Right populism reacting to Centre-Left politics and economics.

Neoliberalism had been good for the developing world, but the effects on Western middle incomes has been a terrible Faustian bargain- cheaper goods at the expense of labour security, community cohesion, social trust and stable family formation.

There is a good YouTube Google Zeitgeist with Niall Ferguson from 2016 entitled A Recipe for Populism. He looked back at American history and found four occasions when populism occurred. Each time, the rate of foreign-born citizens increased above 14% and was accompanied by an economic shock and downturn. Populism , with a call for migration restriction was the inevitable result. Each time the conventional politicians prevailed by limiting migration for a generation.

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1. Why do you think neoliberalism resulted in less social trust, stable family formation, or labor insecurity? That's a large question — can you point me at something, by you or someone else, that explains your claim?

2. What do you mean by neoliberalism — liberalism in the 19th c. sense or what we have had at least since the New Deal?

3. Except for restrictions on Chinese immigration, I don't believe there were serious immigration restrictions until well into the 20th century.

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The 1819 Steerage Act was a veiled concession- it was an attempt to limit immigration through pricing. The Know-Nothing Party was politically successful- it was also a form of economic protectionism, especially through patronage and labour restrictions. You've mentioned the Chinese Exclusion Act, but the period had several lesser known effects. The 1891 Immigration Act was an attempt at introducing a selective migration bar. 2% isn't a particularly huge figure, until one considers just how many would have been deterred from making the journey in the first place. We'll never have any real understanding of just how many were deterred from making the journey, but given a guess about human nature, the figure is likely in excess of a third of those who arrived and possibly more than half. It would have changed family decisions. Older people would have been left behind, and kids- brothers and sisters. Most extended families would have opted for a 'send money home' strategy.

The most successful period of immigration restriction (by far) began in the 20s. Many blame other government policies for the rise of African Americans and the ascendance of the American middle class. They don't understand just how crucial the balance between labour and capital is, in terms of essentially shifting what is essentially a coupled system towards its optimum setting- an ecosystem where labour gains enough consumption power to substantially grow the economy. The Chinese Economic Miracle wasn't down to profits from manufacturing, which at a measly 6% barely covered tax, risk and inflation. It was down to the purchasing power of labour, as well as direct economic development through (admittedly inefficient) intervention, creating a whole wave of new consumer industries.

Think of it this way- the Black Death in Europe, the loss of a third of all labour supply, probably helped kickstart the Enlightenment. It began the erosion of the Feudal system breaking up strict social hierarchies. It undermined the authority of the Catholic Church, leading to the Reformation and the end of the Church's monopoly on absolute truth. It was likely a causative factor in the emergence of the Renaissance and the rise of Merchant Princes. All through increases in the negotiating power of labour.

Anyway, here's Nobel Economist Angus Deaton on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRBsDcHoWZU&t=15s

Neoliberalism generally refers to anything after 1980. Productivity gains halved in America after 1980. Capital doesn't invest in training or machines, when labour is cheap and interchangeable. Minimum wage rises in Denmark might have removed a lot of cheap labour in McDonalds and supermarkets, but it also created a machine, innovation and installation industry and a service engineer infrastructure, as well as remote tech support.

Homogenous societies have higher levels of social trust. Stable family formation is largely a result of male employment patterns and job security- hypergamy. It's a particularly salient factor given that Dr Raj Chetty's research on Social Mobility, a population-wide study which followed every kids in America, identified fathers in family homes at a community level, the most important factor in upward social mobility- even more important than educational quality. The lack of fathers has a practically profound effect on the upward social mobility of boys from blue collar backgrounds. Economics is heterodox- construction jobs can help restabilise and heal whole communities, as can manufacturing plants.

Broadly speaking the highly educated and affluent can handle multiculturalism. That's because the migrants they associate with are bicultural. Mass migration reduces the chances of bilculturalism and integration. The West can handle multiracial societies- especially if there is a concerted effort towards patriotism, civic integration and uplift through education intergenerationally, but only when kids are encouraged to form peer groups across cultures and ethnicities, instead of the current educational focus on affinity-based division. But people are far less able to handle multiculturalism in the bottom 60% to 70%, especially when it's not the melting pot, pro-integration variety. Ingroup is higher, as is social conservatism in both the native population and the migrant group.

Here is study from the Netherlands showing just how complex and profound the problem is. It shows that once basic needs are fulfilled, migrants chose co-ethnic networks over native ones, even at the expense of greater employment chances and economic prosperity.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00168-019-00953-8#Tab4

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Your interpretation of the steerage act as an attempt to make immigration more costly is interesting. The only part that seems relevant is the limit of two passengers for every five tons of ship burden. It should be easy enough to check on whether that was a binding constraint. Prior to the act, what was the usual ratio of passengers to tonnage? Do you know?

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> It began the erosion of the Feudal system breaking up strict social hierarchies.

That happened in the twelfth century, if not before. The decisive early moment in the rise of the Italian cities against the Holy Roman Empire is the Battle of Legnano, 1176. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnano)

> It undermined the authority of the Catholic Church, leading to the Reformation and the end of the Church's monopoly on absolute truth.

The first major anti-Catholic religious movement of the medieval era that I know of is well before the Black Death (1209), and they keep failing until the printing press comes in (1450s).

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

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

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

> It was likely a causative factor in the emergence of the Renaissance and the rise of Merchant Princes.

The rise of the merchant princes of Venice was started in the eleventh century, if that late, with the Byzantine–Venetian treaty of 1082 and decisively settled as a fact in 1204 when the Venetians and their Crusader allies took Constantinople.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Venetian_treaty_of_1082

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

Your history, where I know it well, is bad. In an attempt to avoid Gell-Mann Amnesia I therefore assume your history, where I do not know it well, is bad.

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I don’t think Vance is an effective politician. He’s doesn’t seem to bringing in extra support. I’d be surprised if he was a contender in 2028.

It’s radicalism of the Obama/ Biden/ Harris trio that’s bringing these populist types like Trump and Vance to where they are.

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The lesson that people would learn from a Harris win is that wokeness is the new permanent religion of the west, that the deep state is unassailable, and that anyone who doesn’t like it should keep their head down or get destroyed.

If they can take down Trump, who can’t they take down. You know a lot of politicians that would put up with what he has and still be standing?

They are locking people for tweets and you’re talking about how we need to go back to the Romney-ism of 2012 (that lost). We did learn a lesson from that, that Romney-ism was a dead end.

I just don’t get this mindset. People respond to power. If the left can psy-op an unpopular communist into the presidency the only lesson people are going to learn is to give up and learn to love big brother.

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You are wrong. One advantage of Trump is his age and another one is he will leave no heir. After him, before the 2028 election, the big challenge would be for the party to search for a better Trump.

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I think Vance is likely to be Trump's heir. He is a better Trump in some ways, although probably not as able a demagogue.

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It may be that my streams of information bend far more left, but Vance seems to lack charisma necessary to head a cult of personality. Populism, though it seems counteriintuitive, actually needs a salesman.

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Aug 25·edited Aug 25Author

I judge Vance mostly by his book, which I liked, and what he has said more recently about his political position, which I don't like. I haven't listened to any of his speeches, which would probably be the best way of judging charisma. I should.

I did recently hear part of a Trump speech and was impressed by how good he is at what he is doing.

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P.S. I have now spent ten minutes or so listening to a Vance speech. He is no more truthful than Trump and a much worse speaker, so Benjamin may be right. Is there anyone else in a better position to take over Trump's movement if he dies or retires? Does the movement need a charismatic leader or can it continue, as a viable political coalition, without one?

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I share your reactions. For me I think it’s mostly my conviction that if I somehow attained such prominence that my opinions threatened their path to rule, Harris and Walz and Obama would hate me and try to destroy me as they have Trump. I’m also convinced that Trump, in contrast, though he is a crude, blustery blowhard, would not. He might call me names but I don’t believe he would try to put me in jail.

Possibly I’m wrong on both counts. But I don’t think I am.

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> The answer I came up with is that I judge someone as a human being according to how he treats his ingroup. Treating his outgroup, his enemies, decently is more than one can reasonably expect.

By this definition, Hitler was a decent person.

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Several household servants of Adolf Hitler reported that he was a good, kind, and respectful employer, and had treated them well, while having bad things to say about Himmler and one of the Gs (I forget which). Hitler doesn't seem to have been an asshole to his immediate associates, but "merely" (!) to have been objectively extremely evil. In contrast to, say, the fictional character Xykon from the "Order of the Stick" webcomic, who is both extremely evil, and also a nigh-complete asshole to everyone around him.

I personally wouldn't describe this distinction as "judg[ing] someone as a human being", but it seems like a distinction worth making, albeit perhaps by another name? I think it's an important failing of modern American culture that we conflate the two, because it makes it harder for us to notice when people are being evil, if they have a few redeeming characteristics. After all, Mao was a good poet...

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My guess is that being a decent human being, in my sense, makes you more dangerous if you are evil, since it means that the people around you like and trust you. C.S.Lewis makes a related point with regard to the Devil — that if he had no virtues he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, including anything evil.

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I think David hits on the correct distinction, it's about psychological distance. Most people are nice to those who are close to them, but don't care at all about those who are far away. (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/17/newtonian-ethics/) Some people reverse this and are altruistic towards distant others but rude to their personal acquaintances. Others are various combinations of both or neither.

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False.

i’d say we have to consider “the German people” his “ingroup”. How did he treat the German people? I seem to recall him asking Speer to burn the whole country to the ground and let everyone die because they failed them, while pussied out and out a bullet in his head when he had run out of child soldiers to help him have one more day of getting high in his bunker.

I think a better example of this phenomenon might be a ghengis Kahn, who did seem to do right by the mongols.

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I think this essay implicitly describes the problem with modern US society: our factionalizing government has moved people from extended ingroup to outgroup, which is to say people in the same rough category as actual enemies.

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Govt spending & taxes is the biggest reason to vote Trump.

Biden/Harris seems to be focused on forgiving everyone's debt, market distorting handouts (e.g. first-time homebuyers), and significantly raising taxes (even ignoring insane proposals like 25% annual unrealized gains). That is a stark contrast with a Trump admin which doesn't do those things and maybe even puts Elon in charge of govt efficiency.

RE immigration, while I probably share David's politics on that topic, Harris immigration policy seems to be focused on the "oppressed" category, accepting huge volumes of illegal immigration. My preferred immigration would be greatly expanded legal immigration, which Trump at least said the words that he was supportive of ("Anyone with a college degree"). In my view, Biden/Harris took a terrible immigration situation and made it worse.

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Trump spent a lot of money and ran a sizable deficit. Given the tone of both Trump and Vance, I expect they will do it again, given the opportunity.

As will Harris. The best outcome from that standpoint is probably for one party to control the White House and the other one or both houses of Congress.

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Agreed that trump spends too much, but I don’t think it’s true that the two parties are approximates on spending.

Trump spent a trillion on covid response. Biden spent as much or more on giveaways. These are not the same.

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The “incremental” deficits from 2017-2019 were a lot lower than the incremental deficits from 2021-2024.

By incremental I mean deficit - starting deficit the candidate had the year before taking office. In the 2021-2024 case we will use 2019.

Even that is being generous as while 2020 can deserve some bi-partisan blame I still think the left owned COVID more.

Harris/biden passed a series of very high spending party line spending bills. Larry summers called it the worst economic policy in 40 years, said it would cause a lot of inflation, and it did. I think based purely on the numbers Harris/biden was clearly worse on spending by Trump by a long shot.

I would add that a spending fueled deficit seems worse to me than a tax cut fueled deficit.

What we are likely to get from Harris is some very bad taxes on “the rich”, SALT deduction and other measures stop subsidize blue state spending, student loan forgiveness, more Ed’s and meds subsidies, and a bunch of industrial policy.

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Trump is not Genghis Khan but too close to home to be anyone's far group. I do see the appeal of distancing it affords, along with other rationalizations, like "lawfare", "TDS", and the idea that he can break the law as long as he does it in his official capacity. All that jazz is evidence of the near group, hence the relief once he gets elected. I could be wrong.

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Have I written that Trump can break the law? Referred to TDS? I might have referred to lawfare somewhere.

You are committing the common error of dividing the world into two groups, us and them, and attributing to anyone not in us all views you dislike held by anyone in them.

If I am mistaken in accusing you of tribalism, explain how what you wrote explains my reaction to his winning, given that most of it is not about me.

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As I understand it, the court ruled that the president cannot be sued for doing his job. It is not his job to break the law.

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On the other hand, I think war and peace need to be the highest priority issues for any honest libertarian. Nothing is so disruptive of human rights and liberty as war.

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And then libertarian polities end up conquered by more statist polities.

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When Trump won, it made me happy, because it meant that my local enemies lost. I have no idea if the world is better or worse off as a result of his time in power. This time, because of the Ukraine issue, I am intellectually hoping that he won't win, but emotionally, I still enjoy seeing the elites or the establishment or whatever we want to call them lose.

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Well this article and its comments is a decent microcosm of why libertarians absolutely suck at politics.

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I pretty much agree with all of this. For better and worse. :-/

I've heard it said that Jesus' injunction to "love thy neighbor" was intended to combat the near/out/far distinction: that neighbors were the ones in potential competition with oneself, but of course a stranger could be treated with hospitality because they weren't a threat. I don't know how plausible this was for Judaic society circa 30 AD - it certainly wouldn't match the earlier story of Sodom and Gomorrah - but AFAIK it does seem to describe Bedouin Arab society circa 1900, and some other societies I can think of.

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I am kind of shocked. I’ve read some of your writings and even met you occasionally at libertarian events. You always struck me as a very smart and ethical person. Kind of like your father. I don’t think your father would say a plague on both their houses. I said that myself in my foolish younger days. And while the Republicans are still the same old party totally wrong about legalizing drugs and abortion they’ve improved with being better about gay rights and being more pro-Israel. But no huge changes in recent years.

The Democrats on the other hand have clearly become the fascist party that Orwell was trying to warn us about. While they’ve improved slightly with marijuana legalization in every other aspect they’ve degenerated into a deep state authoritarian movement. I can’t really respect people who are so far above petty politics that things like pure evil don’t bother them. I wonder what your father would have thought.

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Aug 24·edited Aug 26Author

My guess is that my father's response to Trump and his revised version of the Republican party would be the same as mine, but unfortunately we can't ask him.

I am not offering an opinion on which candidate would be worse for the country, only trying to explain my feelings. I note that one commenter has responded to me as if I were a Trump supporter and now you are complaining that I am not.

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George Orwell would be voting for Trump and consider the Democrats the fascists? Really? The illiberal hard Left is as odious to us now as the communists were to Orwell. They are the jackasses demonstrating outside the Democratic convention, as well as the most radical ones of the elected representatives. These people strike me as roughly as paranoid as you and your deep state obsession, only on the other end of the horseshoe.

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Aug 25·edited Aug 27Author

The original version of this comment interpreted Use's comment as directed at my comment just before it, for which I apologize. Rereading it I think it was probably directed at Mark's comment before mine, to which it is more relevant.

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My reaction is different, but might fit the same model. I have personal, face-to-face friends on both sides of the aisle. I feel somewhat happy when the Democrats get a poke in the eye, and somewhat sad when the Republicans do - but not as sad as in the 1990s / early 2000s, esp. in the days of Trump. A lot of that comes from seeing Trump's team as misbehaving, so when they get some comeuppance, I see it as a needed slap on the wrist. That changed somewhat with both the PA trial and definitely the assassination attempt - both struck me as wholly undeserved - but I could easily see Trump doing something later that has me expecting another wrist slap.

Because of my friends on the right, I see Republicans as stereotyped, and as underdogs. Because of my friends on the left, I see Democrats as people with good intentions but warped premises. The latter are hampered further by no small amount of arrogance, but the former are starting to catch up. (McArdle's Law is being confirmed.) I feel the GOP as more ingroup than the Democrats, but again, only slightly; the GOP still feel like their own flavor of stubborn righteousness, and to the extent I feel at all at home, it's with their libertarian wing. (And in some places, I'm seeing more of *their* stubborn righteousness.)

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