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Patrick's Platform


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2017 Feb 19, 6:18am   277,502 views  317 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

Copyright
Limit copyright to 20 years like patents, with no renewals, because renewals just protect the profits of Disney and other wealthy lobbyists.
Make DMCA takedown abuse a felony because it is used to stifle free speech.

Corruption
Issue massive cash rewards for exposing illegal or unethical behavior by government officials. Turn the rats against each other.
Ban congressmen and their family members from owning individual stocks, to stop flagrant insider trading like that by Nancy and Paul Pelosi.
Ban all levels of government from attempting to influence public opinion aside from direct quotable speech by specific elected officials; government should respect and reflect the will of the people.
Make it a felony for any elected official or government employee to knowingly lie to the public, or to materially misrepresent facts to the public the same way it is a crime for members of the public to lie to government.
Require all laws — like vaccine mandates and insider trading bans — to also apply to members of Congress without any exemptions.
Aggressively rotate out DC politicians with term limits before they can fully develop their corrupt networks.
Make a point of bringing in total political outsiders as often as possible.
Forbid everyone at the FDA or family members from ever working at any pharma company, and forbid all pharma employees or family members from ever working for the FDA, until the FDA is eliminated and its functions transferred to the states.
Make all government expenditures, down to the dollar, without exception, easily available for public inspection.
Hire the elderly, who often know how things work and have a lot of available time, to watch all public contracts for excessive spending and corruption.
Require all retail establishments including cafes and restaurants to clearly post all prices, any item without a price being free as a penalty.
Overcharging at checkout also makes the item free as a penalty. This especially applies to "out of date" menus in restaurants.

Crime, the Law, and Prisons
Openly address the extremely disproportionate violent crime rate by black men relative to all others, instead of hiding it.
Abolish all "hate crime" laws because they inevitably result in unequal application of the law, favoring some groups over others, and violate the First Amendment. We already have laws against crime.
Implement public honors and a large cash reward for anyone who captures and flogs a looter or shoplifter.
Require all police to wear functioning bodycams at all times when interacting with the public or prisoners, all video to be used as evidence.
End civil forfeiture because it is theft by government.
Ban private prisons because they bribe judges to feed them more prisoners.
Legalize marijuana at the federal level because it is less harmful than alcohol.
Allow free speech for all prisoners so that we can learn about injustice.
Segregate prisons by biological sex. No men should ever be imprisoned among women, nor women among men.
Define "right to a speedy trial" to mean that a verdict must be reached within one year of imprisonment, defaulting to innocent.
Compensate those found innocent for their unjust time in jail. The money should come from the budget of the agency which imprisoned them.
End selective enforcement of laws by DAs. We should have minimal laws, but they should be enforced 100% of the time to avoid cases like Hunter Biden's never being charged with running the Biden Crime Family bribery racket.
First-time criminals should be given the option of flogging rather than imprisonment. Imprisonment creates hardened criminals who learn bad habits in prison.
Anyone who instigates a lawsuit and loses should have to pay his opponent's legal fees so that the suit itself was not a financial punishment. This is the law is most of the world already.

Discrimination
Forbid government from counting or classifying citizens by race.
End racism by refusing to talk about it, as Morgan Freeman suggested in his famous interview with Mike Wallace.
Prohibit any special access to government services regardless of a person's status, wealth, or payment.
Eliminate all government favoritism or exclusion of citizen by race; therefore no Affirmative Action, nor exclusion of whites or Asians from any programs.

Education
Offer a basic citizenship, numeracy, and literacy test for a high school diploma, administered by the US Office of Weights and Measures.
Fund college with temporary income share agreements, not loans, to give colleges a true motive to help students.
Let middle school and high school students test out of any subject and study whatever they want on their own, so they don't waste their time.
Require any university which gets government funding to award class credits and degrees purely for passing objective tests, no classes required.
Require elementary, middle, and high school classes on how to avoid getting trapped in debt.
Create state-level virtual universities of the very best teachers and classes, online, free for all students of any age.
Allow school choice, where parents can spend their tax money on any school in the state, public or private.
Promote practical education, such as plumbing and HVAC, but also promote reading the Latin and Greek classics, especially in the original languages.
Require middle school and high school courses to teach what rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, and how to sue for them.

Food
Make is a serious crime to introduce any insect-based food for humans without prominent warnings on the food that it includes insects.
Ban all seed oils as not appropriate for human consumption because they are poisonous, especially rapeseed oil, aka "Canola" oil.

Foreign Policy
Put compensating tariffs on foreign goods from countries with lower wages or lower environmental standards, to protect the US manufacturing base.
Seek national economic self-sufficiency in all necessary goods like oil and medicines so that the US may never be extorted by a foreign country.
Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.
Stop sending taxpayer money to Israel. They can take care of themselves.

Freedom of Speech
Create a Constitutional Amendment explicitly prohibiting all levels of government from "advising" or influencing any media on what to report or suppress.
Prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing based on political activities outside of work.
Revoke all laws against "hate speech" because such laws violate the First Amendment.

Homelessness
Require mandatory prison time for hard drug use, because most homeless are addicts, and former addicts testify that enforced sobriety in prison saved them.

Immigration
Issue permanent shoot-to-kill orders against anyone invading US borders. This was normal in all parts of the world until recently.
Make everyone who enters the US illegally permanently ineligible for citizenship, green cards, employment, and welfare, except for any who help to convict and imprison their own employers for employing illegal labor.
Build a wall along the southern US border, to protect low-wage American workers from illegal competition.
Deport everyone who entered the US illegally. Exception: grant US citizenship to any illegal alien who gets his employer convicted of employing him and imprisoned. This would be yet more effective than a wall.
Mandate federal prison time for all employers of illegal aliens.
Eliminate all H1B and similar visas unless the incoming worker is paid at least twice as much as an American would be for that job, to prevent, eg, Facebook's abuse of H1B.

Infrastructure
Give official federal priority to fast and cheap rail transit to city centers as in Europe, in place of subsidies and favoritism for highways and airports.
Attempt to re-achieve US energy independence to help keep us out of foreign wars and to improve our balance of trade.
Officially disparage and refuse to grant permits to sterile modern architecture because it is merely cheap shit pretending to be classy.
Return to classical public art, perhaps with subtle new touches. Refuse to spend money on crappy modern public "art".
Create pedestrian-friendly and completely safe town squares with fountains in every town, with a particular emphasis on introducing young people to each other.

Leaf Blowers
Ban gasoline powered leaf blowers in dense residential areas. They pollute with dirty engines, blow dust around, and make a lot of noise.

Legislation
Restrict the commerce clause’s interpretation back to what it was before the 1937 Supreme Court case "National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp." This reversal would greatly reduce the size of the Federal government.
Eliminate all regulations and rules. There must be only laws enacted by elected representatives of the people, and never any regulations and rules created by unelected bureaucrats.
Require lesser authorities to defy unconstitutional laws and orders.
Prohibit all "states of emergency" because they are used to subvert the Constitution, as was done in the Wuhan Virus scamdemic. We should be ready for emergencies at all times anyway.
Create a Constitutional amendment to explicitly state that no part of the Constitution may be suspended ever, for any reason, for any amount of time.
Anyone attempting to suspend any part of the Constitution for any amount of time, especially for an "emergency", shall be guilty of a capital offense.
Require all federal laws to be read in their entirety by all legislators before they may vote on them, to discourage lobbyist-written bills.
Require all federal laws to be clear enough that a 12th-grade education is sufficient to understand them perfectly, for more public participation.
Limit bill length to 30 normal-sized pages of normal sized font, for more clarity about what is in the bill, and more public participation.
Promote the principle of very few laws, very well enforced. "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -Tacitus.
Guarantee the right of the president to fire anyone within executive branch at any time, especially long-time "civil servants" like Fauci.
Eliminate anti-competitive imposition of "safety" costs on small businesses because those laws are almost all written to benefit large businesses.
Require 20 year sunset provisions for all federal laws, requiring a new vote on whether the law is to be continued after it expires.
Allow the public to vote to revoke the corporate charter of any company which they feel has abused the public, companies like Pfizer.
Publicly post all bills two weeks in advance of Congressional vote, to give the public a chance to read them.
Let the president have a line item veto.
Repeal the poorly-named "Patriot Act".

Medical Care
Repeal the PREP act. All vaccines and other medical products must come with unlimited liability for manufacturers at all times.
Establish a Constitutional ban on lockdowns, mask requirements, and vaccine mandates. They must never be allowed under any circumstances.
Prosecute everyone involved with the creation of Wuhan Virus, especially the mass murderers Fauci, Collins, and Daszak.
Prosecute everyone who abused his or her power to mandate the dangerous and ineffective mRNA injection, whether in government, schools, or workplaces.
Require short clear written presentation of all non-emergency medical costs before treatment for market discipline of medical costs.
Absolve all patients from legal liability for medical care bills whose costs they did not agree to in writing in advance of treatment, aside from emergency care.
Require all emergency medical charges to be limited to moderate fixed prices by law, because there can be no market in emergencies.
Require medical insurers to give a coverage response to a proposed non-emergency medical bill within one day, again to control medical costs.
Allow import of prescription drugs from Canada and from every other country because the import restrictions are a scam to boost profits.
Make it a felony to offer doctors or other medical providers payments to recommend any drug or treatment.
Ban the practice of charging higher prices for the same medicine or treatment when the patient is uninsured. See image below.
Establish a Constitutional right to visit in person and hug any relative who wants visitors in a hospital or nursing home with no exceptions for any disease on either side. It must be their choice alone, never an administrator's.
Prohibit all hospitals and nursing homes from benefitting financially from the deaths of their patients, as they did with the Midazolam Murders.

Mens Rights
Ban kangaroo courts in corporate HR and University Title IX departments to protect men's rights.
Mandate paternity testing at birth to give all men the certainty which encourages paternal care. Eliminate all child support obligation for a non-biological father unless he legally adopts the child.
Require courts to assume that a woman of age, voluntarily alone in a bedroom with a man, has consented to sex.
Grant equal post-conception rights to men.

Military
Eliminate the US Army and instead require mandatory training and arming all sane non-felon adult male US citizens to defend US territory ONLY, organized into well-regulated militias.
Implement a mandatory death penalty for anyone who deliberately attempts to send US troops off of US soil.
Create a constitutional amendment prohibiting interventionism; American soldiers must never fight except against invasion of America, per George Washington's advice.
Ban gays from the military because they are corrosive to morale and because they spread the disease of homosexuality there, not to mention anal warts.
Ban trannies from the military because they are mentally ill.
Eliminate NATO, because Europe is not America.
Close all US military bases in foreign countries.
Create a Constitutional amendment prohibiting all interference in the affairs of foreign countries, especially sending weapons.

Money
Define the US currency to be one ounce of 0.999 pure silver, to be called an Ounce. Silver by weight worked well for thousands of years.
Prohibit the creation of any term for US currency except weight of 0.999 pure silver. So "pound" is OK for a pound of 0.999 pure silver, but "dollar" and all other such non-weight terms are to be prohibited because they can be redefined to devalue to the currency.
Require every business and government agency to accept silver metal by weight as payment.
Establish a Constitutional right to pay all debts and taxes with physical silver by weight, so that everyone can preserve savings as silver metal.
Ban all taxes on buying or selling silver. Such taxes are punishment of those who try to avoid being cheated by the Federal Reserve.
Forbid businesses from requiring payment in any form which can be blocked by government, the way Canada blocked the bank accounts of legitimate protestors who opposed deadly injection mandates.
Create a Constitutional prohibition on political discrimination as a reason to deny banking or payment system access.
Require classification and prominent marking of all non-metal payment instruments as "Not money, only a debt, MAY DEFAULT", because they are merely debts.
Eliminate the requirement for anyone to ever accept or pay with paper money because all paper money eventually becomes worthless.
Legally define all banking as either storage of silver for a fee, or participation in the bank's lending risk and bank run risk in return for an interest payment.
Eliminate the Federal Reserve entirely. Let the open market set interest rates at all times.
Limit the annual federal budget by Constitutional amendment to 1% of GDP with no exceptions, especially not for "emergencies".
Completely and permanently eliminate the national debt. Require the federal budget to be paid out of current revenue, similar to the "Swiss brake".
Ban asset managers, especially Blackrock and Vanguard, from voting the underlying shares that they don’t own but are merely managing.

Privacy
Create an amendment establishing a Constitutional right to privacy because it is not perfectly clear from existing law that we have this right.
Prohibit all levels of government from collecting or holding information on any citizen except as absolutely necessary for census, taxation, criminal investigation, or driver's licenses.
Prohibit the federal government from monitoring the activities or location or even knowing the home address of anyone not currently accused of a specific crime. So no mass license plate reading or cell phone tracking without a warrant naming the specific person and the crime.
Require all private people and companies which collect or distribute home addresses and phone numbers to prominently display all of the owners' home addresses and phone numbers, and all similar information they collect. That is, demand equality of exposure.
Prohibit airlines and other transportation from demanding identity papers. Everyone should be able to travel anonymously, as we did before.
Prohibit websites from including 3rd party javascript, especially that from Google or Facebook, without a prominent notice that every keystroke or mouse movement etc is visible to Google or Facebook and that those sites may have altered the page content. It's spyware and most people are unaware of it.

Real Estate
Completely eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and all policies which serve only to keep houses expensive, because they cripple new family formation.
Aggressively implement policies which drive down the price of a house as much as possible, to give young families space to rear children.
Prohibit all foreigners, including everyone with any non-US citizenship, dual citizenship, or any foreign passport, from owning any land in the US.
Require notarization and publication of all bids on real estate to slow down the routine fraudulent bidding by realtors.
Require a publicly advertised price for a house to be a legally binding offer to immediately sell at that price, the same way it is with toasters and all other goods.
Prohibit government loan guarantees of all kinds, particularly housing or college loan guarantees, because they simply raise the cost of housing and of college.

Regulation and States Rights
Eliminate all federal government agencies outside of the military and commerce; everything else belongs to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Eliminate the FBI, CIA, NSA, NIH, FDA, and CDC in particular, with their functions transferred to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Allow girl scouts to bake their own cookies at home.

Sex
Strictly separate multiple-person bathrooms for men and women, whether a person is mentally ill with the fashionable "trans" disease or not.
Ban gay men from adopting, since the majority are gay because they were molested as boys, and then frequently go on to become molesters themselves.
Ban gay men from being alone with boys, ever, because most gays were created through homo-pedophilia.
Ban the sodomy or trans flag from any property funded by tax money, however indirectly. Only official government flags may be displayed.
Define the promotion of homosexuality or trans ideology to children as child sex abuse.
Revert the classification of transsexuality to be the mental illness which is obviously is.
Revert the classification of male homosexuality to be what it really is: a contagious life-shortening mental illness.

Schools
Ban the rainbow sodomy/pedo/trans flag from all schools.
Require middle and high school courses in law, taxes, personal finance, insurance, coding, cooking, home repair, car repair, self-defense, survival skills, etiquette, public speaking, and stress management.
Require daily weight lifting and running in PE classes at every level including publicly funded universities.

Taxes
Eliminate all income and sales taxes, to be replaced with Georgist land value taxes and import tariffs.
Swap the current maximum tax rates on income from work vs capital gains until Georgism is implemented and income tax eliminated.
End Prop 13 in California, to be replaced with a land value tax, with zero taxes on buildings.
Prohibit sales tax on used property which was already taxed when first sold. Ultimately eliminate sales tax in favor of a land value tax.
Prohibit all public sector unions, especially teachers unions and prison guard unions. Government workers may not unionize against the people they serve.

Voting
Make Jan 6th a national holiday honoring the political prisoners who protested the 2020 election fraud.
Arrest Pelosi, Ray Epps, and the other FBI goons of Jan 6th for conspiracy, entrapment, and incitement to violence.
Prosecute everyone in the DOJ who fabricated charges against the election fraud protestors entrapped by Pelosi and the FBI.
Eliminate all voting machines in favor of paper ballots alone because it is insane to give centralized control of the totals to Dominion and similar companies.
Eliminate mail-in voting or drop boxes; have only paper ballots with photo ID in person at a local school on that one day only, counted by each party.
Require proof of US citizenship with photo ID to vote.
Publicly fund all congressional and presidential campaigns.
Set term limits for Congress: 6x for the House, and twice for the Senate, so 12 years each, maximum.
Require a roll call vote in both houses of Congress on the verbatim topic of any petition with more than 10% popular support, without amendments.

#politics

All of this could be classified as paleoconservatism



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« First        Comments 239 - 278 of 317       Last »     Search these comments

240   indigenous   2023 Apr 4, 10:16am  

They still put the ridges on the edges don't they?
241   richwicks   2023 Apr 4, 10:21am  

indigenous says

They still put the ridges on the edges don't they?

Yes, but they serve no purpose.
242   Patrick   2023 Apr 4, 12:24pm  

Right, used to be to make it easier to tell if someone was shaving off bits of silver.
244   AmericanKulak   2023 Apr 11, 10:51am  

Yep, Banknotes - Private OR Public, are counterfeit reciepts for the metal.

How will a 90/10% Reserve Private Bank come up with 9x more metal than it actually has?
245   AmericanKulak   2023 Apr 11, 10:53am  

Patrick says

An excellent example of corruption:

I say Nay! Or is it Neigh?!

Those prize horses can be worth millions. Hell, the breeding rights to stallions, horse semen, can be worth 5 figures or more. The people who own them are loaded and have lawyers on staff.

Keep this in mind if you ever wonder if medicine made for another mammal is safe and effective.
246   Patrick   2023 Apr 15, 2:06pm  

Patrick says

Mandate paternity testing at birth. Eliminate all child support obligation for a non-biological father unless he legally adopts the child.





France is going in exactly the wrong direction for national prosperity.

Men take care of their children best when they know they are their own children.
247   AmericanKulak   2023 Apr 16, 8:54am  

I have a strong feeling Turkey doesn't have a generous Hofare program
248   Patrick   2023 Apr 16, 9:16am  

I bet you're right.
251   Patrick   2023 Aug 8, 1:31pm  




Gold is OK too, but silver is more practical since there is to much more of it.
252   Patrick   2023 Aug 23, 10:26am  

Added "Lesser authorities have the obligation to defy unconstitutional laws and orders coming from above"
253   Patrick   2023 Nov 2, 2:11pm  

Patrick says

Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.




254   RC2006   2023 Nov 2, 4:36pm  

Patrick says

Patrick says


Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.







Also how many of the hostages that they say are Americans dual citizenship in Gaza? Is a IDF that has dual citizenship become an American if he is captured?
255   Ceffer   2023 Nov 2, 4:43pm  

Is 'dual citizen' an euphemism for 'paid infiltrating foreign spies and subversives, turning the engines and resources of government away from the interests of the People and the Republic'? Any 'dual citizen' in government office needs to register as an agent of a foreign government, or give up the foreign citizenship, honorary or not. They used to have a Constitutional Amendment about that.
Of course, most are just executive class for the RIIA and Chatham House or the Bankster Reich and are in the class of disposable useful idiot officers and intermediaries destined to fall on their swords when the time is right.
256   Patrick   2023 Nov 5, 11:08am  

Patrick says

Define the dollar as one ounce of 0.999 pure silver. Silver by weight worked well for thousands of years.



257   Patrick   2023 Nov 6, 11:23am  

Patrick says

Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.



258   Patrick   2023 Nov 12, 2:17pm  

Patrick says

Ban congressmen and their family members from owning individual stocks, to stop flagrant insider trading like that by Nancy and Paul Pelosi.



259   Patrick   2023 Nov 14, 6:53pm  

Patrick says

Eliminate all H1B and similar visas unless the incoming worker is paid at least twice as much as an American would be for that job, to prevent, eg, Facebook's abuse of H1B.


https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/apple-discriminated-against-us-citizens-in-hiring-doj-says/


Apple discriminated against US citizens in hiring, DOJ says

Apple deterred US citizens from positions open to foreign workers, DOJ found.


So that they could pay foreigners less.

Yet Apple escaped all punishment, except for a fine far less than the money they saved.
261   Patrick   2024 Feb 5, 10:34am  

Patrick says

Require all laws — like vaccine mandates and insider trading bans — to also apply to members of Congress without any exemptions.



262   AmericanKulak   2024 Feb 5, 10:43am  

Patrick says


Patrick says


Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.





I would bet $20 that most, perhaps all of these, don't have Israeli citizenship.

Eligibility != Possession.

Many European countries offer fast tracks to those who can prove ancestry, but they aren't auto-given.

However, all Palestinians are automatically Refugees and enrolled, regardless of whether they apply. So Linda Sarsour and Trashida are Palestinian citizens.

Bernie, Upchuck, Blinken do not have Israeli Citizenships.
263   AmericanKulak   2024 Feb 5, 10:49am  

RC2006 says


Patrick says


Patrick says


Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.






Also how many of the hostages that they say are Americans dual citizenship in Gaza? Is a IDF that has dual citizenship become an American if he is captured?



The chart is pure Dawson-Pol BS. Upchuck and Bernie have both issued statements from their office they do not hold Israeli Citizenship.

"He’s not a dual citizen," Schumer spokesperson Alex Nguyen told PolitiFact.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/oct/27/viral-image/no-sen-chuck-schumer-isnt-an-israeli-citizen/

I would be dubious of all the others.

Trashida and Ilhan Omar are dual citizens, however.
264   Patrick   2024 Feb 5, 10:50am  

Thanks, how can we get a definitive list?
265   AmericanKulak   2024 Feb 5, 10:53am  

Patrick says


Thanks, how can we get a definitive list?

Good question. I might arse myself to call every office and take notes as to time and name of staffer I spoke to.

EDIT: People with dual citizenship OR stateless/refugee status should not be allowed to hold federal elected or appointed offices of ANY kind, not just elected. I also think this should apply to states also - nobody can run for a state office who hasn't resided in the state as their primary address for at least 7 years.
267   HeadSet   2024 Feb 6, 1:59pm  

Patrick says





Open border and the resulting mass inflow of illegals is necessary for vote packing and downward pressure on wages. Funding foreign wars generates massive kickbacks. That is why it is so hard.
268   Patrick   2024 Feb 6, 2:04pm  

Exactly.
269   Patrick   2024 Feb 8, 7:40pm  

Patrick says

Absolve all patients from legal liability for medical care bills they did not agree to in writing in advance of treatment, aside from emergency care.




273   Patrick   2024 May 30, 8:00pm  

https://x.com/wanyeburkett/status/1732415313138823189


@wanyeburkett

Basic propositions that inform my worldview:

* People vary. Most traits are normally distributed.

* Intelligence varies and is largely heritable. (And, yes, IQ tests measure something that approximates it.)

* The United States maintains a fairly generous welfare state that's at the same time cruelly administered. Nobody starves and lots of money is spent, but it's easy to fall through the cracks if nobody is helping you, because of the adversarial nature of the bureaucracy that gatekeeps access.

* Incentives obviously matter and clearly there are people at the margins who, given an easy path to do nothing, will choose that over maximizing their full human potential. This is bad for them as much as it is for everybody else.

* Crime is bad and addressing it is a core function of the state. If the state didn't exist, then I would be free to track down and take revenge on those who might hurt me. We trade away that right for a guarantee from the state that they will handle it.

* It should be legal to build housing. Many of our problems are downstream of housing affordability. The main impediment to support for more housing is the crime and disorder Americans associate with dense cities. That crime and disorder is real and YIMBYs have to face it head on by supporting polices that address it.

* Capitalism and markets are good, both in that they maximize human freedom and choice and in the happy coincidence that they also make us rich in the process like no other force in human history.

* A very small percentage of all people are hyper-productive and inventive and it's completely rational for us to reward them proportionally. Again, people vary and, no, not everybody can do what they do.

* Inequality, therefore, isn't a big deal or, rather, it's mainly a big deal only to the extent that it makes people irrationally feel bad, which is exacerbated by the constant media drumbeat about how bad it is. (Many such cases.)

* Having children is a core human experience. Having as many core human experiences as you can is probably a good default approach to life.

* Too many people go to college. (This is another area in which extreme generosity in the form of low-interest loans with extremely favorable terms is completely ignored and even described as predatory.)

* The country you live in is fairer and more generous than you've been told (as many of these items argue) and you'd be happier if you practiced gratitude instead of resentment.

7:02 AM · Dec 6, 2023
274   WookieMan   2024 May 31, 1:05pm  

Patrick says

Patrick says


Absolve all patients from legal liability for medical care bills they did not agree to in writing in advance of treatment, aside from emergency care.






You don't have to pay medical bills. You have insurance I presume. You guys have to get into the dispute game. I've had 2-3 emergencies and never paid a dime. Just have to be diligent. "Supposedly" insurance covered most of it. Fuck 'em. You got paid, fuck off.

Never accept certified mail. Don't answer numbers you don't know. These people disappear. They give up. Fuck credit and figure out how to get cash. I don't rely on banks.
275   stereotomy   2024 May 31, 1:23pm  

Patrick says


https://x.com/wanyeburkett/status/1732415313138823189

wanyeburkett
Basic propositions that inform my worldview:

* People vary. Most traits are normally distributed.

* Intelligence varies and is largely heritable. (And, yes, IQ tests measure something that approximates it.)

* The United States maintains a fairly generous welfare state that's at the same time cruelly administered. Nobody starves and lots of money is spent, but it's easy to fall through the cracks if nobody is helping you, because of the adversarial nature of the bureaucracy that gatekeeps access.

* Incentives obviously matter and clearly there are people at the margins who, given an easy path to do nothing, will choose that over maximizing their full human potential. This is bad for them as much as it is for everybody else.

* Crime is bad and addressing it is a core function of the state. If the state didn't exist, then I would be free to track down and take revenge on those who might hurt me. We trade away that right for a guarantee from the state that they will handle it.

* It should be legal to build housing. Many of our problems are downstream of housing affordability. The main impediment to support for more housing is the crime and disorder Americans associate with dense cities. That crime and disorder is real and YIMBYs have to face it head on by supporting polices that address it.

* Capitalism and markets are good, both in that they maximize human freedom and choice and in the happy coincidence that they also make us rich in the process like no other force in human history.

* A very small percentage of all people are hyper-productive and inventive and it's completely rational for us to reward them proportionally. Again, people vary and, no, not everybody can do what they do.

* Inequality, therefore, isn't a big deal or, rather, it's mainly a big deal only to the extent that it makes people irrationally feel bad, which is exacerbated by the constant media drumbeat about how bad it is. (Many such cases.)

* Having children is a core human experience. Having as many core human experiences as you can is probably a good default approach to life.

* Too many people go to college. (This is another area in which extreme generosity in the form of low-interest loans with extremely favorable terms is completely ignored and even described as predatory.)

* The country you live in is fairer and more generous than you've been told (as many of these items argue) and you'd be happier if you practiced gratitude instead of resentment.



I agree on everything except the last point. This country plays favorites. If you're favored, you succeed, otherwise, you will fail. Occasionally, our country will decide to demonize a particular people or demographic, and there will be no recourse within the financial means of those persecuted to effectively resist such persecution. This is also characterized as "blaming the victim."

We truly live in evil times.
276   Onvacation   2024 Jun 4, 8:15am  

WookieMan says

Fuck credit and figure out how to get cash.

What about "rewards"?
277   WookieMan   2024 Jun 4, 9:40am  

Onvacation says

WookieMan says


Fuck credit and figure out how to get cash.

What about "rewards"?

I'm talking about people that default on things. If you pay your bills, use a credit card. If you default then you have to go to cash and keep limited amounts in your bank. I know the game. My dad was a BK attorney among other business.

I'm 100% behind using CC's to get points if you're financially well off and can pay the cards off. If you're going to dump debt there's a way to do it. The only reason to ever BK is if you can't pay for your primary residence, pay the IRS or property taxes. They can garnish wages or foreclose/lien you. You're going to take the same credit ding or worse with BK versus just letting shit go into collections. They'll never collect if you don't respond.

Trust me I could be spamming the forum to get myself points with CC referrals. I don't do that to anyone I don't know very well. I couldn't sleep at night if I knew I was getting referral points off people that can't pay credit cards. I might be a dick here at times but I'm still an honest man. I'm not perfect, but there's been a lot of users that have given shit advice and disappeared because they couldn't own up to it. Won't list them, but I know you've been around long enough to know them.
278   Patrick   2024 Jun 14, 3:36pm  

Patrick says

Eliminate the FBI, CIA, NSA, NIH, FDA, and CDC in particular, with their functions transferred to the states, as is written in the Constitution.


https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/trustworthy-friday-june-14-2024-c


Yesterday, TechCrunch ran a spooky story headlined, “Former NSA head joins OpenAI board and safety committee.” Because ChatBots need the very best deep state security expertise. I’m reassured. Are you reassured?

After decades of leading domestic spying operations (including those exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden), General Paul M. Nakasone, 60, just retired from his job commanding U.S. Cyber Command and directing the NSA in February. Apparently unsatisfied with the slow pace of his retirement, a few weeks later, the nation’s top spook is now joining A.I. giant OpenAI, on its board of directors, and also to supervise its “trust and safety” operations.

Because of course.

This isn’t the first time TechCrunch reported on General Nakasone’s various public-facing operations. In January — right before the general “retired” — the tech magazine ran a story exposing Nakasone’s secretive, quasi-illegal interface with big data...

One month after that story broke, Nakasone retired and went to OpenAI. He’s obviously the perfect man for the job, depending on what you think his new job will be.

Corporate media has fussily ignored this story. Media will never ever push OpenAI to explain why the head of the NSA was a good fit for an “open” organization — it’s right in the name! — allegedly committed to trust and transparency. OpenAI has been touting the spy chief’s expertise in security and privacy.

It’s a nifty excuse. But the General’s job running the NSA was never to protect consumer data. It was to hide stuff and spy on citizens.

In other words, the NSA’s entire raison d’etre is mass surveillance, signals intelligence, and shielding its activities from public scrutiny. Nakasone’s core competencies were spying on people, finding ways to circumvent or creatively interpret privacy laws, and keeping potentially controversial practices hidden—not exactly qualifications you'd normally look for in an advocate for transparency and ethics.

But looking at the glass half full, it was a good move to help protect the AI developer from unprofitable government regulation. If it’s in business with the security agencies, Congress will avoid OpenAI like a vampire fleeing a hall of mirrors. They have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

It was probably inevitable. It’s happened again and again, in countless other authoritarian examples throughout history — from the KGB in the Soviet Union to the Stasi in East Germany to the SAVAK in Iran under the Shah — to the point it’s become axiomatic: A nation’s ungovernable secret police must have a stake in everything. Anything they can’t control is a potential threat.

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