By David Futrelle
It’s a rarity in this year of terrible, but tonight has been a night of actual good news! Dems are winning elections, and Reddit has banned the toxic cesspool known as the Incels subreddit! Celebrate while you can in this open thread!
No trolls. Fuck trolls.
This is the first time a wall of news notifications hasn't been a nightmare in god knows how long pic.twitter.com/NpTaW5QK6e
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) November 8, 2017
Dems have won all three of the marquee off-year races — NJGov, VAGov, NYC Mayor — for the first time since 1989.
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 8, 2017
Democrats decimated Republicans across the country tonight, at every level and in every branch of state government.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 8, 2017
Thanks, Trump!
And this is the icing on the cake:
Trans woman Danica Roem (D) just defeated anti-LGBTQ candidate Bob Marshall (R) in Virginia, becoming the first trans state legislator in America.
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) November 8, 2017
The man who wrote the anti-trans bathroom bill just lost the election to a trans woman. Let that sink in. https://t.co/KFEZXSYvMy
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) November 8, 2017
Oh, and there’s this:
Jeff Sessions' DOJ Drops Prosecution Of Woman Who Laughed At Jeff Sessions https://t.co/slOPOhmLYN pic.twitter.com/ekRsU1RJAq
— Curt and Frank 🏳️🌈 (@curtandfrank) November 7, 2017
Let’s all celebrate by laughing at Jeff Sessions!
Meanwhile, on Reddit:
Reddit has banned the Incels subreddit. About fucking time; it was a cesspool of misogyny and violent hate. pic.twitter.com/8RieXtxZLN
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) November 8, 2017
HEALTH NOTE: Though cheered by tonight’s news, I’m still dealing with a shitstorm of health issues. I will return to regular posting as soon as I can, but I’m not sure when that will be. Thanks again for your patience and your support!
Press [F] to pay disrespects.
@mrex
Look at how disabled people are exploited right now because the government thinks they should be exempt from the minimum wage because they’re viewed as less productive (even when they’re not and/or their employer decides not to make accommodations they *could* make but aren’t required to by law).
Fuck last bit got cut off.
*WIC? Section 8? All problematic.
@kupo
Yeah that’s fucked.
I can see this becoming Workhouses 2.0, but I think as long as an UBI is provided regardless of whether or not someone is working, people, including disabled people, will be able to quit abusive sitations.
ETA: This is more about guaranteeing that people who want to work can work if they so desire. 🙂
Finally, incels got nuked.
Also, David, Are you aware of two things? 1. r/IncelTears, Its a watchdog sub that documented the shit incels have said, it even got mentioned in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/reddit-incel-involuntary-celibate-men-ban?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
2. The incels made a website: incels.org
UBI would just lead to inflation, probably mostly in rents. Landlord knows that everyone pulls in $15K? Raise rent by $15K a year. The poor still can’t afford to live there, which is the objective. Rent controls don’t solve this, because they decrease the amount of housing available. Rent control is fantastic if you win the rent control lottery, but it’s kind of shit if you don’t.
Other things, like food, would also experience inflation, due to the increased money supply so that the $15K (or whatever other arbitrary amount) suddenly doesn’t go very far anymore. The answer would then be to raise UBI, which increases the money supply further, increasing inflation, etc. etc. the upshot being that giving everyone $15K is not the same as giving just one person $15K. That much money changes the economy in fundamental ways.
I think you would also see an increase in fraud and exploitation of children and the disabled and the elderly, and anyone else who is vulnerable and suddenly has a non-trivial amount of income. The government already doesn’t have the resources to track down social security fraud that exists today, and people steal other people’s benefits all the fucking time. I can’t imagine that this would just not be a problem with UBI. I just don’t see the situation of, for instance, the severely mentally ill improving if they can be turned into cash cows by con artists.
That ignores, though, the problems with means-tested programs — and these are numerous and severe:
– Often one-size-fits-all.
– Disincentive to work: if you get small amounts of work, the benefits get reduced as the government claws back whatever you earned, so you’ve put in labor without any improvement in living standard. Past some threshold the benefits are canceled completely, probably at an income lower than the benefits themselves, so if you can only find unstable part time work (which means everyone, these days), you could well end up poorer after accepting a job than you were on benefits.
– Often take the form of “EBT cards” or other distinctive things, so everyone can see which shoppers are on benefits and who has “an honest living” and discriminate against the former. Including the store employees.
– A social program used only by “the poor” is politically much easier to kill than one used by everyone. Social Security is the classic example of a hard to kill program, because it benefits everybody. Obamacare might have joined it in this category in the states, and universal healthcare is in countries that have it. But a general welfare program that benefits everybody is, by definition, a universal income program rather than means-tested.
Inflation, meanwhile, is addressable.
– I already mentioned getting rid of most of the monopolies that plague us which could just raise their fees endlessly.
– For (housing!) rents, the solution is public housing. Quality public housing. To avoid means-testing issues perhaps this should just mean that government steps into the housing business as a competitor with private developers, providing its own units at cost and keeping prices reasonable.
– For everything provided competitively by the market, prices should remain close to marginal costs as a consequence of competition. Inflation could only come from an increase in those costs. There won’t be any for non-scarce parts contributions to costs, and the major scarce “parts” costs these days tend to be luxuries (gemstones, etc.) and real estate (see above). That leaves labor. The price of labor will go up, because the ability of workers to say “fuck you” to any sufficiently crappy employment deal gives labor more bargaining power — which is a feature, not a bug. Empowered labor will demand more and get it, up to a point. Satiability and other effects (most of the diminishing-marginal-utility variety) ensure that this process will cap out at some horizontal asymptote. So you’ll get some initial inflation, caused by tandem wage and price increases, but it will likely settle down, or even turn into a slow long-term price deflation as the march of automation continues.
My answer is not means-tested, which I agree causes issues, so I’ll ignore everything you said about it.
This is my entire position: give people quality housing, for free, with food included and some basic non-food necessities, and everything they desire above that must be paid for with cash obtained in the normal labor market. You can tweak things so that the disabled obtain a nominal stipend for luxuries, and whatnot, but people who are able to work but who don’t want to work for whatever reason (going to school, getting their shit together, just lazy, skills mismatch, whatever) live decent but spartan lives. No cash changes hands and no cash is needed, so a cash UBI becomes superfluous.
Two words: rent seeking.
You’ll never get rid of it. The rest of your argument falls apart if rent-seeking strategies are implemented, which they will be, because capitalism is intrinsically flawed like that.
@PoM
Now that is something I have experience with, as it’s pretty much how the army works and it doesn’t work well, if it works at all. You can count on a minimum of one fuck up per week per person, sometimes minor, sometimes dire.
In the case of the Army, supply clerks know you have money and, if they throw enough hassle your way, you’ll spend your own cash. They get praised for inventory control and cost savings, a handy little boost to their income via the grey market (bribery normally – they’re not pricey, but it shouldn’t be necessary), and a large boost to the ego via a bit of power tripping (don’t forget, rent seeking – a problem you rather eloquently described – doesn’t have to be monetary. Power is equally acceptable, if not moreso).
Would you really trust the government to provide your food every week? Or be your landlord? – here in the UK we have extensive public housing (council housing). Grenfell Tower was public housing, and, sadly, one of the better examples.
Like I said – I really don’t know the answer. Not without completely redesigning people to remove the ideas of greed and status. 🙁
WWTH, wasn’t it you that brought up that cult in NY? I had never heard of it before, but look what I just came across:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5063683/amp/Former-Smallville-actress-second-command-sex-cult.html
(Yes, I know it’s the Fail. But.)
Hi, everyone! I just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive-I’ve been really busy covering various shifts at work (my probationary period’s slated to end next week) and have had an irregular schedule, so haven’t really been able to comment. This is all great news!
@Alan Robertshaw
That’s — that’s dastardly! What ever shall we do!
Incels, you have outdone yourselves. And you’ve completely undone us SJWs. For all time and then some.
@Nikki
Welcome back!
PeeVee,
Yeah. That was me. From what I saw poking around online, it’s even worse than the article goes into because Mack apparently recruits underaged girls into sexual slavery. I got that from Reddit and Dlisted commenters, so grain of salt. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true.
@POM: Your proposal still runs afoul of points 1 and 3: one-size-fits-all-ism and susceptibility to stigmatism … what happens when someone with special dietary requirements shows up? And what other commenters have said. And all of that hoop-jumping just to punish people for not working? When others have pointed out that people get bored of idleness after a while, so such is not necessary?
Markets have problems with rent-seeking. But there are solutions. Enforcing antitrust. Nationalizing natural monopolies. Preventing artificial scarcity (abolish copyright, abolish patents, supply supplementary amounts of stuff the market undersupplies like housing). And of course these can also serve as steps toward evolving to full-on socialism.
Sad news: the First Cat of New Zealand, Paddles, has died after being hit by a car. Paddles was a beautiful, white and orange, polydactylic, puss with her own twitter account. Her humans request donations to the SPCA in lieu of flowers.
@Nikki the Bluth Wannabe
Welcome back!
@eibhear
Condolences.
Re: car troubles
If the dealership couldn’t find any codes to reveal what’s wrong, there’s definitely the “battery going bad” thing to think about. One symptom is “can’t read codes, because ECU reset when we tried to start the car”.
Agree with mrex that they should check battery/charging system, see if that’s working properly.
Hi, Nikki! *waves*
eibhear, I read that. I had just found out about Paddles, like 2 weeks ago, and then yesterday I heard that the poor mouser was hit by a car. So sad.
WWTH, double ewwww. Self-help, my ass. What he means is that he helps himself to women’s bodies.
On a lighter note, I found out that I’ve been blocked by Jason Kessler on Twitter, despite *never* having interacted at ALL with him. I had forgotten all about him until I saw today he’d been verified and was running a poll “Is it okay to be white?” I was going to report that, and that’s how I found out I was blocked.
Preemptive block. Much free speech. So wow. No loss.
I’m watching the Rifftrax of Cool as Ice starring Vanilla Ice right now. I can only come to the conclusion that no. No it is not okay.
@Sarcastic,
I only read about her on Tuesday, and the next thing, she was dead. I liked the bit on her twitter feed where she posted a nude photo of herself in the bath (actually, she was just sitting in the sink). Risqué!
Glad to see David’s feeling a bit better, and happy about the election results.
Shadowplay:
I’m not convinced it has to be as bad as Grenfell. I grew up on a post-war rural council estate: two-storey semi-detached houses with gardens. The council was (mostly) a decent landlord.
In London, at least some councils used to take genuine pride in providing good housing. I’m thinking in particular of Camden, where I live. The Alexandra and Ainsworth estate referred to there has has an active tenants’ association which is proud of their housing.
What’s changed? Architectural trends, which led to a lot of shitty high-rise housing. Thatcher’s “right to buy”, which depleted the council housing stock. The relentless drive to transfer money from poor to rich: local councils are under huge financial constraints, thanks to central government, so housing is neglected. The demonisation of the working class. It doesn’t have to be this way!
I’m glad that r/incels got nuked. Hopefully r/theredpill is next.
@Moggie
The 60’s and the love of concrete brutalism in social architecture certainly didn’t help, nor did originally building them without more heating than a gas fire.
Our council (Greenwich) has been tearing them down as fast as they can and replacing them with semi decent council housing – if you happen to live in the right area. If you don’t, they’re being torn down and replaced with £500k one bedroom flats. The Crossrail link has really opened up the area for exploitation. 🙁 .
Abbey Wood still looks like an explosion in a cement works, and the flats are, quite literally, rotten – cement spalling off everywhere, mold growing happily in every crack. Cheaply built, poorly maintained trash I’d not keep a dog in.
I know it’s “better than nothing” but if you’re going to sort out housing for people who need help with it, do it proper. With places that aren’t going to fall apart, aren’t going to make them sick, and aren’t stuck at the end of the bus route as far from the shops (and the jobs) as possible.
mrex says:
I imagine there’s a mental illness aspect to it, too. A lot of “laziness” is probably untreated depression, anxiety and executive dysfunction. These are issues that are often helped by being able to plan ahead for periods of dysfunction and/or get through them without facing drastic repercussions. I’m sure that merely being pulled back from financial ruin, or the threat of it, would make a lot of people less “lazy.”
How much more of it is learned helplessness, caused by a system that, when it’s not just being utterly capricious, seems designed to claw back anything you do manage to gain from it through luck or hard work and effort?
Kind of disincentivizes hard work and effort if you can’t improve your situation more than very temporarily with them, unless you have a lot of intersecting privileges including class (and then it’s hard to make your situation worse just by avoiding hard work and effort, and you pretty much have to commit serious crimes to fall from the upper class privilege bracket nowadays).
Only the top few percent of the income distribution have much control any more over their own life circumstances, other than some ability to choose between “dismal” and “even worse”. Lack of control breeds learned helplessness.