- Isn't that basically the venture capital model, though? Your winners go many times X, and the losers become worthless.
- The Monroe Doctrine goes back 200 years; the reasons are quite well known.
- The GP's point is that levelheaded cost-benefit analyses on things like that seem to escape regulators, and everything is greatly skewed towards "it's worth it if it saves even one life".
Sure, fire safety in homes is a good thing to have. But is it so good that we can't economically build buildings to meet them, and people end up with no home at all?
- The U.S. Code is over 20 million words, and the Federal Register was over one hundred thousand pages last year. That's on top of state and local laws. You're sure you haven't contravened a single thing therein?
With jaywalking and driving over the speed limit on one end, and murder on the opposite, you're positive that a motivated prosecutor can't ruin your life?
- > it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it.
Exactly. There's zero chance that anybody not named Donald Trump would have been prosecuted in the same way for the same circumstances.
> If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that.
It's unfortunate that America is no exception to "show me the man and I'll show you the crime". One wonders if that had always been the case.
- > But you could go to any marina on a US coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on them.
I live on the coast, in an area of the country where the local culture is, shall we say, fond of excess horsepower in all areas of life, including on boats. My next-door neighbor is a member at the local yacht club. I spend a lot of time walking by boats of many shapes and sizes. I don't recall the last time I saw one with four outboard motors.
- Some rando on the internet isn't going to be able to prove or disprove this. You believe what you want based on what evidence is available to you.
Myself, the imagery I've seen of the multiple very expensive and very powerful outboard motors on these boats is enough for me to believe that these are not in fact honest fishermen. It's totally incongruous.
- > It's not really a high risk situation
It's only not a high risk situation if they are in fact honest fishermen. If they were drug smugglers, I would expect them to also carry weapons. Boarding seems risky to me.
- I hope you have half as much care and concern for the victims of the drugs smuggled into this country as you do for drug smugglers, alleged or not.
> This is precisely why we have due process
> a well-armed force committing extrajudicial killings
What process is due foreign drug smugglers operating outside of U.S. jurisdiction? It's a military operation. Did you want Osama bin Laden to receive his day in court, as well, instead of being shot in his sleep by a well-armed force?
"Due process" has been perverted in recent years in the Anglosphere to mean "infinite process, with no end result". Process for process's sake, because a lot of people's livelihoods depend on participating in and perpetuating that process; and zero recourse for taxpayers who want some semblance of results for their tax dollars.
- I assume the GP assumed that it was pirated media material.
Hundreds of TB over what timeframe? It does seem like quite a bit of data.
- The controversy with Biden is that the autopen was allegedly used without the President's knowledge or directive. Nobody has a problem with POTUS's signature getting on a piece of paper without his hand actually holding the pen; that's not the point here.
- > I miss when science was celebrated.
One could argue that science being celebrated too much leads to this type of present-day outcome. Science can tell you how to do something, but not why, or even what we should do to begin with.
- Billionaires don't exactly have a great track record in submarines. A crazy megayacht, or even a regular yacht, might serve you better!
- I assume your point is that not all laws are just only by virtue of being laws. I agree with this. And of course, not all lawbreaking is equal in severity. We all can tell that jaywalking is not the same as vehicular homicide. At the same time, we should also be able to agree that selective following and enforcement of laws is disparaging to the spirit of a nation of laws.
Do you find the current American immigration laws, and the enforcement thereof, to be unjust? Do you see it as your moral duty to abrogate them, and help others do so? If so, can you explain why?
- Of course that's not acceptable, but my point is that it's the same level of unacceptable that has occurred countless times by all levels of law enforcement entities, be it local or federal. It's just as unacceptable as if your door was broken down and your stuff confiscated because you happened to live in the same building as a drug dealer.
I'm just pushing back on the whole "fascism", "end of the republic" narrative on the grounds that the problem is not specific to this particular administration.
- VPNs can serve a legitimate purpose, like shielding your traffic while using a public network. Seems to me the better technology analogue to ICEBlock is The Pirate Bay; maybe there's some flimsy pretext of it being used for a legitimate purpose, and maybe it's not outright illegal, but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose.
- Take a breath. Obama drone-struck and killed more than one American citizen. Biden's rhetoric against his political opponents was no less "fascist" than Trump's. Do you find yourself nostalgic for the civility of the McCain-era Republicans? He was called a Nazi by his detractors, as well.
Trump doesn't hold a candle to FDR when it comes to being an authoritarian.
- > There's nothing stopping ICE from raiding where you live and destroying your shit.
This isn't specific to ICE, and sovereign immunity especially around law enforcement is a topic that has been contested for a while. Every now and then there's a story that pops up of some innocent's house being destroyed due to a clerical error leading the local SWAT team to look for drugs at the wrong address.
In my experience, not everyone's primary policy goal is to ensure that as much taxpayer money as possible gets redistributed in their favor.
Of course, this isn't to say that the problem you described (of people wanting government services but not wanting to pay for it) does not exist, but I find that to be applicable broadly, not just to rural America.