The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein
scottaaronson.blog
scottaaronson.blog
Well it looks like Bill Gates had his wife for advice, and apparently his not following it played a part in ending his marriage.
Our story of this sort comes from when my partner interviewed at Theranos (!) long before the collapse or any public recognition, related the super-creepy interview process, and I was like "sounds like a big no to me." When the Theranos story blew up it was like "oh boy".
"black ops or bullshit?"
- Sunny asked me why I went to such an unprestigious academic institution for undergrad
- Sunny flipped out at an extension cord going to the table AV setup in the meeting room. He called in 5 IT people and yelled at them during my interview about the extension cord and yanked it out of the wall.
- Elizabeth and Sunny parked their Lamborginis in the handicapped parking spaces directly in front of the office
- When I got the offer, the fine print noted the location my office would actually be located in was NOT at the fancy HQ in Palo Alto where they had recruited me at and showed me that I would be working, it was at a trailer park on the east side of highway 101 in Menlo Park (um, no thanks. Part of the reason I passed).
- part of the hiring process was to go get your blood tested by them and my lab results were discordant with my lab results from Stanford so it showed their testing didn't actually work
- security stood outside the restroom stall while I peed before the interview and came in with me while I washed my hands.
- Elizabeth rescheduled my interview with her 4x, once with 18 minutes notice. Their entire process took 3 months and 7 rounds.
I know it would be far from the only illegal thing Theranos did, but that sure does sound extremely illegal.
It is from an extremely articulate and intelligent Epstein victim, that is only speaking out after the DOJ, either trough incompetence or most likely via malicious compliance, had her personal information in the released files.
Doubt it would have changed anything for Bill. There's a pattern there and this is just a piece of that pattern.
Basically the post-WWII period was a golden age for all of the above because the middle class of returning soldiers was there, and it was as power and wealth consolidated in the 80s and onward that there was less and less interest and agreement about spending on stuff other the essentials (which turned out to be mostly just defense).
So really it's a two pronged thing:
* the wealthy need to pay much more, and the government needs to invest that in services that benefit the middle class (education, health care, energy & transportation infrastructure) and also which keep people from falling out of the middle class (social safety net, consumer protections).
* eventually there's a critical mass of middle class people comfortable enough to look out their windows and feel concern about pollution, the poor, etc, and then you ultimately get a combination of individual action, NGOs, and government programmes that meet the very needs that are noticed and lobbied for.
But I think the issue is that many advocates want to jump directly from "more taxes on the rich" to "gov't spends directly on my pet issue", and if you miss the second step, you're never going to get the willpower to either raise the taxes or direct the money into environmental initiatives or whatever else.
I think some of it is the psychology that government is incompetent and will just waste the money anyway ("let Bill keep his money and build toilets in Africa himself, at least he'll get it done"), and the best way to fight that is probably what Carney is trying to do right now: kick off a bunch of ambitious programmes to build new things like pipelines, rail, airport expansions, etc on an accelerated timeline. Perhaps if people see visible progress they'll be more open to saying yeah okay, I'm all right with paying more to live in a country where we get stuff done.
I'm sure the government will accept donations. Just pay extra as you think they are worth it.
Yes, I don't love that he puts out hits like that on solar and wind in his effort to promote nuclear as a sole solution, but I still find his larger arguments around the dynamics of environmentalism as a movement persuasive.
Like, actual facts.
FWIW, Bill Gates is one of the people I would have pointed to as one of the less disreputable modern billionaires, and finding out that Melinda divorced him over his Epstein connections really soured my opinion of him.
I think OP has a point, it's very difficult to accumulate vast wealth without behaving ruthlessly and being kind of an asshole when it comes to making tough profit-over-people decisions.
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
- https://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
One would have had to try very hard to avoid ever hearing about Microsoft's behavior in the '90s.
So he is no longer a billionaire? And donating to what charity, The Gates Foundation? The one that he controls? The one that he uses to push his ideological stances and repeatedly fails to help anyone? Just look how successful his work on improving education system in America was. What a sacrifice it was for him...
Their work to clean water and cure diseases has saved millions of lives. They know what they are good at and they've decided to double down on that.
It's only hard if you don't want to help anyone and your only goal is to push charter schools(by any other name) by any means necessary.
>Their work to clean water and cure diseases has saved millions of lives. They know what they are good at and they've decided to double down on that.
They helped so many people by not allowing them getting covid vaccine or by fighting generics? Also their "good" deeds weren't without negative consequences that could be avoided if someone actually listened to people they were "helping".
Why are charter schools bad? What is the ostensible easy way to improve US education that you know for sure will work?
I am a big supporter of public schools, but I also understand that only allowing rich parents to opt out of public schools can lead to some very bad outcomes as schools don't have to respond directly to public pressure.
Recently the Seattle public schools reverted some very bad decisions because so many parents in Seattle pulled their kids out of public schools to go to private, at such a high numbers it started to cause budget issues.
That was only possible because the so many parents here can afford to do that.
Another example is with how many schools stopped using phonics for reading and an entire generation of kids ended up with poor reading skills. No marketplace of ideas means even if parents wanted to have their kid learn phonics, only rich parents could afford to switch to private schools. Even today Seattle schools is just slowly switching back to phonics (my local school is a pilot for returning to phonics! Year later!)
Same goes for 1:1 laptop usage. Evidence now shows that every school that moves to one to one laptops (a dedicated laptop for every kid in every classroom) has educational outcomes plummet. It will take years of concerted effort by parents to get those laptops out of public schools (to be fair, took years of effort to get them into the schools....) and break the contracts to school district has with technology providers.
Having all the kids in the city go to a single School district has many huge benefits that lift everybody up, and a well-funded public school system is essential to democracy.
But there are also issues with putting all your eggs in one basket.
I don't think anyone has a good solution to these problems.
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ ranks him at #13 wealthiest in the world with $108B net worth.
He's donated about half his fortune, and 60% of that to his own org.
These guys don’t want to be remembered for the awful behaviors they had in their personal and business life. They’re extremely conceited and concerned with their image.
It's just one more method of buying good feelings and trying to buy good will while being in control of large numbers of people.
He wants to feel like he's doing good and using money to give him that feeling.
I'd rather have better men had that money to spend and his victims both personal and business leave him penniless and alone at the end.
1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities.
2. Don't abuse children.
3. Stay off Twitter.
Because they don't want to be beloved, they want to turn people into dinosaurs. (to adapt the Spiderman quote)
There is nothing at all you can do that could ever overcome the harm of helping that man, participating in his business, and calling him a friend.
I don't care if Jesus Christ himself comes down and says Bill Gates is solely responsible for the ending of all suffering.
Raping kids is Bad. Enslaving kids to rape is Bad. This is as clear as you can get in real human society to being The Bad Guy, and Bill Gates spent his precious, limited time on this earth helping him, legitimizing him, and participating in his influence peddling and child rape and slavery
Bill Gates is a piece of shit.
At the time they met in 2011, Epstein had been convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
How did he help him and call him a friend?
He took more from the society than he gave back. And when you take from society, you're not supposed to decide alone how to redistribute. That's the issue
Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are also behind Common Core and basically ruined public education in the US.
The foundation is a way for Bill to keep doing what he likes without having to pay taxes on it, he's just done a better job of repairing his image than Larry.
And yeah, it's got Melinda's name on it, but let's face it, virtually all the money is from Bill/Microsoft.
Where one side provided all the money, the other side provided the direction.
Both were necessary. Weird huh?
How would you do it? Do you have a way to earn his trust, a service to offer him that he values a lot, a way to steal from him, or anything like that?
Melania apparently managed to do it with true love and kindness. Are you capable of sincerely loving Bill Gates for a period of several years, or fake it in a perfectly convincing way for several years?
Notably, she played a huge part in how Amazon was structured due to her influence on Bezos.
I do find it very interesting though the apparently common pattern here of ‘woman gives away massive fortune she got from x to make the world better/rehabilitate her image’ or something.
Meanwhile, the men all seem to go on hooker binges. See Bezos, and now Gates (vs Epstein files).
No one, including the people getting screwed at the end, are actually innocent, but some definitely are more guilty than others eh?
Melinda also, of course, did work for their joint foundation before she left. Since leaving, she shifted her philanthropic focus more to US women's health and reproductive rights.
Bill has committed to giving away nearly all his wealth (99%) over the next 19 years. Melinda is still committed to giving away over 50% of her wealth over her lifetime.
I don't see any evidence that Melinda was the primary driver for Bill's philanthropy.
Follow up question: do you buy indulgences?
Him giving her STDs and then trying to sneak antibiotics in her food without her noticing would have been grounds all by itself.
> basically his entire fortune
If I give away 50% of my fortune my entire life falls apart and I am struggling. If I give away 10% it is going to hurt.
But Gates? He gives away 99% of his money and he's still a billionaire. His life isn't really going to change in any meaningful way. His money still generates tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year without him lifting a finger. He gives away 99.9% of his money and he's still worth $100m and again, his life effectively does not change, making now only millions of dollars a year doing nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I am glad he's giving his money away and this is far better than Ellison or plenty of others, but that doesn't absolve their crimes/behavior. There's definitely a hierarchy of wrongness, being a cheater is definitely better than being a pedo cheater but neither is good or an excuse. The dude was associating with a known sex trafficker. Definitely not an "ops, I didn't know", his wife definitely knew and told him...
I’ll give you the creation of the country but modern democracy was not born in the USA. Your overall point is still valid though.
For example, the typical tax structure is to put assets into a foundation. That allows the assets to grow and earn income without being taxed. The only requirement is that 5% of the asset pool has to be used on the stated goal of the foundation. That might sound good but it also includes costs like "administration" so, say, having your family as employees. There are limits to this but it's still somewhat of a slush fund.
That charity can be used for political influence. A foundation can't donate to candidates or PACs but can instead, for example, fund a think tank from which policy is created or influenced. That think tank will employ people while their party is out of the White House and otherwise nurture people who will go into the administration when their party returns to power.
Also, a large foundation such as this wields influence just by its size, by choosing what to fund and where. It can exact generous conditions from governments. Those conditions can extend to companies the foundation's benefactors have an interest in.
All of this is about influence. Governments are accountable to their people. Outsized private foundations are accountable to no one.
I guess I'm not cut out to be a "big shot". I opened the DAF, but use the money for actually donating to charitable organizations to which I have no other connection.
Gates has always been a piece of shit. For example, when Paul Allen got diagnosed with cancer, Gates and Ballmer tried to screw him out of Microsoft stock that he owned (this was roughly 1982-ish?).
You're a shit person if you try to screw over your "friend" like this. You're a shit person squared if you do it when they just got diagnosed with cancer.
Put a dollar figure on your daughter, sister, mother.
Now you get it.
He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing.
The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines the good in this case.
I’m not a fan of MSFT but there are worse uses of the money he made from the company.
I think it’s a bit unfair to categorize all of his contributions to charity as “not charitable”.
Compare that to Elon Musk, who uses his Musk Foundation as a tax shelter, only spending from it for a private school for his children.
Because it's almost impossible to not help someone if he just throw wads of money at random. What important is how many people weren't saved because he decided to be a middle man in all of it?
At some point it stops being a philanthropy when it makes lives of people he tries to "help" worse. Like his actions have a ulterior motives...
A few states published their Common Core guidelines. I looked at one state, and the curriculum goals looked no different than the things that I learned when I was a kid. It seemed completely ordinary. I remain baffled about why it was so controversial.
Don't get me wrong. I was one of the successful ones, but I think math education is in need of reform. In fact I would reform it quite radically.
I have a kid in school and a math degree so I have some knowledge of this.
Yeah everyone forgets, he killed Hitler. That was a huge win for Germany. But no one ever gives him the credit.
It sounds a bit cartoon villainy, but honestly, I see no reason to doubt that he said this. Everything points to these people being casually desperate to be let into ever innermore circles. Even now that this particularly ugly circle is blown open, notice that they still simply do not talk about what their fellow insiders did except in vague generalities.
Except for the parts involving criminal coverups. That seems to plague close-nit groups at any level of society, e.g. world religions, police, finance, families, etc.
Back to your main point, mafia operates similarly. In fact, there is not much difference between the two. What is Larry Summers not saying there is that being part of this circle is making this circle more powerful. Them not talking about what they know is itself "influencing powerful people and outcomes".
'...a short jail stint in one’s past for “soliciting prostitution” simply doesn’t sound disqualifying, according to the secular liberal morality that most academics hold, unless you researched the details, which most didn’t.'
Uh. Really?
“Secular liberal morality” here plays the same role as “cultural Marxism” elsewhere: neither exists concretely as an actual entity, but if you abstract away enough of the details you can still point to it like a bogeyman or a cryptid.
(I repeat for emphasis, since I know people will bring it up if I don't, that the ages of the people Epstein solicited and the circumstances under which he solicited them were not as widely known at the time.)
Peter Says: You think Bill Gates or Larry Summers would have listened to your Mom’s advice?
Scott Says: Peter #1: If she was their mom, maybe they would!
I get the sense that Bill does care about money, and so does Larry Summers, so Mom's advice probably wouldn't have done much there.
Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease.
Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.
We should strive for extremely limited power by our public representatives, so their corruption impact is reduced to a minimum. But not only limited power, but also limited budget access, as an extension to limit that power. And that actually means reduced taxation.
But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice.
Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. Government has no say in that. That is unless companies break the law, and that's why a strong Justice system is necessary. With a reduced size of the state there's also way less risk of private companies and individuals to corrupt public representatives.
Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
I'll have some of whatever you're smoking.
It's not that useful separating public and private when there are revolving doors and the people who run the companies bribe — sorry, lobby — politicians. It's an incredibly intimate relationship
The judical branch should very much NOT be a part of the government itself, but a fully separate branch.
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders.
As we have seen in the past, we have the same, if not worse, power imbalances in private companies as in the public sector. I would therefore not call it irrelevant, but agree that the Justice system can help here if appropriatly staffed.
> Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
Do you have a single example for a company who did not over time monetized its monopoly power to the detriment of the customer?
If you don't give that entirely separate branch any executive power, it cannot enforce its rulings. If you do give it separate executive power, there is nothing to rein it in when it becomes corrupt.
This is not a theoretical problem. Prosecuting politicians is a preferred approach in dysfunctional democracies, like Pakistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly77v0n8e9o
But Prosecutorial would have to be its own branch to avoid the current SCOTUS crushing on the "unitary executive" theory.
You're not going to solve this problem with a 'strong justice system', you're going to solve it by making sure no one can get that wealthy in the first place. I mean we're literally in a topic about Jeffry Epstein who is so deeply connected to everything that it would make your average TV show seem like a hack.
God forbid a representative being reelected but there is no problem with a billionaire destabilizing dozens of democracies and around the world.
Libertarianism is just the blind worship of people who have money.
As for budget, a country needs money to do stuff; if they don't have money they can't do stuff. Stuff can range from having the world's biggest army (several times over) to providing free education to everyone (the great social equalizer IMO, as in social mobility).
As for your justice argument, it depends - if power corrupts, wouldn't giving more power to justice corrupt them as well? You see what's happening in the US with various law enforcement branches getting A Lot Of Money - militarization of local police force for example, meaning they have the means to apply more violence.
TL;DR, governments and justice systems need a clear description of what they can and cannot do, and checks, balances and consequences when they don't.
> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders.
This ignores the vast majority of anyone involved in a private company - the customers. Or even the not-customers that are still affected by what a private company does (think e.g. pollution), but that's where as you say the law should come in.
And a few millions of people suffering because they're being misled into buying "wellness" solutions.
And a few hundreds of millions of people around the world suffering the effects of local pollution and clean water laws being skirted.
And a few billion folks who are gonna suffer the effects of climate change.
etc...
Other than the 6-7 billion humans who suffer due to private company corruption, it's basically only the shareholders.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with investigating this same case. The accused are very wealthy very powerful people with deep pockets. They can and will take action against you, if you're revealed to be chasing after them. Plus, their network of allies is so vast, that you cannot even trust your superiors or other government agencies to back you up. And indeed that is exactly what happened here.
This could be quite good for competition, but would probably hurt sectors a lot that have high fixed costs/barriers of entry and need to compete with (foreign) unlimited-size companies.
I do think that this could fix or at least vastly improve some really difficult problems: The whole judiciary is IMO blatantly unjust right now, because higher wealth can basically buy you better outcomes, democratic representation is flawed because wealth/donations buy you access to politicians (or allows you to enter politics yourself) and even national public opinion on anything is essentially for sale to a degree via profit-driven media.
Such wealth-gap limiting could be possibly achieved by progressive taxation that rises logarithmically with revenue for companies and individual wealth (giving a strong incentive to split up wealth, and no leeway via declaring zero profits): Think 1% of revenue under 1M, 2% under 10M, ...
I'm very curious how a nation that made strong efforts in that direction would fare.
Is it? Here's another version I like even more that unsettles democracy dogmatics: power attracts the corrupt.
(Granted, in e.g. the Ottoman Empire and Imperial China, it was frequently the case that there were dozens of princelings who were, de facto, pitted against each other in contests for the throne. That definitely selected for ambition, brutality, and a willingness to get one's hands dirty.)
In the real world, there was (and is!) an incredible power game over who decides over what, who gets to live, who must abdicate, how much the real power lies with the King and how much with aristocracy or the Church and so on. It's a constant rebalancing of power factors.
The trouble with representative democracy is that it always selects for the most power-hungry of its denizens.
And now we're in the midst of a situation that Polybius would immediately recognize: The crossroads where one path leads to rule by entrenched and corrupt oligarchs, at least as bad as any of the court eunuchs of old, and where the other path leads to ochlocracy. I'd take my chances with the latter, especially in this era where direct democracy is possible, but I'm afraid that's not likely how things are going to turn out.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by Brits “voting against the status quo”. That’s what happens any time you change from one party to another in a democracy. Wouldn’t it be more worrying if everyone kept voting for the same party and same policies all the time?
Gordon Brown did an interview with a member of the public and forgot to take his microphone off when he got in the car. He said (in private) he'd just spoken to a biggoted woman. That was broadcast and it lost him the election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bigotgate-gor...
I'm a bit confused; assuming you are aiming at the US situation with this, I kinda fail to see a clear contrast between entrenched oligarchy and ochlocracy.
Isn't the Trump side a pretty good example of combining both?
Riling up the masses, promoting selfish "got mine" attitude from the top down, partial and weaponized use of the law are basically textbook fits for mob rule?
On the other hand, if you put Harrison or Waltz on a "entrenched oligarch" scale, there is no way they weight as heavy as Trump and his cronies in the current administration, at least in my view? Both of them did an actual job instead of just enjoying a life in the spotlight funded by generational wealth and the work of others...
I'm very interested in conflicting viewpoints-- if you disagree with my perspective, please tell me how instead of just downvoting!
A shattering bow
A burning flame
A gaping wolf
A screeching pig
A rootless tree
A mounting sea
A flying spear
A falling wave
One night's ice
A coiled serpent
A bride's bed-talk
or a breaking sword
A bear's play
or a child of a king.
(Odin listing up some of the things a wise man never trusts, in stanza 85 and 86 of Hávamál)
This… well, I’d urge you to read some English history. I’m choosing English because it’s the one I know best.
It is a litany of power struggles, of brother and sister plotting to kill aunt, uncle and father, nephew cousin, niece and anybody else. Of factionalism in court, bloody takeovers and power struggles. Noble houses vying for position as the monarch’s favoured ones, taking land and riches from less favoured houses, or winning it back. Scions of noble houses at war with each other over succession. Monarchs slaughtering potential usurpers. 9 day monarchies as one successor is positioned against another when the old king died, all based on religious backing…
There were long periods of stability under certain monarchs too, but often these coincide with periods of extrinsic conflict. Sometimes their wars of adventure would come close to bankrupting the country. Other times their choice of who to marry (or divorce) would cause massive loss of life.
They very much select for the power hungry, the venal, the egotistical and those capable of subterfuge and great violence to their own blood.
That's not what the Crusader Kings series tells me. Or Brett Devereaux's description of pre-industrial states as a "Red Queen's race" where the strong had to devour the weak to stay ahead of the competition.
They think we just need more LKYs, or really, AI systems controlling everything. A benevolent dictatorial AI running society is exactly what all the futurists think is coming. Go read Orions Arm.
An ill intentioned participant in power will not have unlimited time to do that much damage. A good intentioned participant will not have too much time to become corrupted.
The downside is that a good intentioned ruler, may not have enough time to accomplish their good vision. But my thesis is that is a reasonable price to pay to avoid the opposite. A malicious ruler with infinite time to complete their destructive plan.
The operation of the revolving door would seem to imply otherwise. You set up a situation where politicians are not just expected but required to leave office and then need a job in the private sector. Are they then inclined to do things while in office that make it more or less likely that they get a lucrative gig as soon as their term is up?
> A malicious ruler with infinite time to complete their destructive plan.
The assumption is that the ruler is the elected official. What do you do if the malicious ruler is a corporation and the elected official is just a fungible subordinate?
Group A invests millions of dollars into your campaign.
You go into politics in a debt to Group A that you feel obligated to repay.
You give favorable treatment to Group A in your political career.
Group A provides a lucrative contract to you after you leave politics so that they have a good reputation with the other politicians they finance.
The problem is elections aren't just about donations. Suppose you're not a fan of Zuck/Musk/whoever, or pick your least favorite media conglomerate. Is limiting their financial contributions to a campaign going to meaningfully reduce their influence? Of course not, because it mainly comes from controlling the feed or the reporting, so limiting money is primarily to the detriment of their opponents. This is one of the reasons you hear some talk about "campaign finance" from the media industry -- it lets billion dollar media corporations pretend they're defending the little guy when they're really trying to cement an asymmetric advantage in influencing politics because they can de facto donate airtime rather than money. But they have a mixed incentive, because they're also the ones getting money from the ads and don't actually want the spigot closed, which is probably why it's more talk than action.
And then there's this:
> Group A provides a lucrative contract to you after you leave politics so that they have a good reputation with the other politicians they finance.
Which isn't campaign finance at all. It's also kind of a hard problem, because after someone leaves office, it's reasonably expected that they're going to work somewhere, but then how are you supposed to tell if they're getting a fat paycheck because they're currently providing a valuable service or because they were previously providing a valuable service? It's not like they're going to put "deferred bribe" in the memo field of the check.
>> power attracts the corrupt
> hence why limited terms are a prerequisite for functioning democracies.
But if you want to take Vienna, take Vienna! Embrace limited power
Limited government power is often rightfully challenged as being unbalanced to the tremendous power of non-government entities such as corporations. However, this claim elides that the power and charter of any particular entity is downstream of what is granted and enabled by government functions. Less government power makes for less powerful corporations.
However, once everything is cut down a few notches, will the remaining power still attract the "corrupt?" Yes, power, status and other social markers will still exist and act like a bug lamp for sociopaths. But on the plus side they won't be as able, as you say, "to do that much damage."
0. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
You have this already without term limits. An elected officeholder is given more than enough resources to be enabled to perform her duties, if she wants to. It's a matter of willingness, term limits aren't making things worse than they might otherwise be.
I disagree. Term limits make politicians unaccountable to their constituents and thereby more open to bribes from lobbyists. If they know they can't seek reelection no matter what, they have no motivation not to accept a bribe or disregard everything they campaigned on. On the other hand, when politicians don't have term limits, they must at least worry about their next election campaign and whether the things they're doing right now will ruin their chances at being elected again.
Note: when I say accept a bribe I'm talking about being wined, dined and lobbied by lobbyists, not literally accepting bribes that would get them thrown in jail.
In monarchies you’d often end up with kings and people in line for the throne being murdered and all kinds of palace intrigue to select for the most conniving psychopath.
In theocratic systems you get hypocrite self dealing priests.
In socialist and communist systems you get an aristocracy of political pull where high ranking bureaucrats are basically identical to our billionaires and political elites.
I’m not aware of any system that durably protects against being taken over by deranged dark triad personalities. Democracy’s virtue is that it provides some way to clean house without destroying the stability of the whole system, at least when it works.
The closest we can get is striving to elevate our cultural and spiritual level as individuals, family, friends, neighbours and strangers.
The entire power of the psychopaths in charge all stem from corrupting normal people, and the more that can be avoided, the less power they have.
But it is difficult, because they corrupt our strongest feelings: fear, greed, pride, laziness, desire, community.
Millions of young men have died in senseless wars because they didn't want to be seen as "cowards", they thought of their "honour". Who remembers them now?
Who even thinks about the thousands of young soldiers dying in the battlefields in Ukraine? Why is Trump the only leader who talks about their deaths?
Billions of people are paying taxes to support their psychopath rulers, because of simple fear. If everybody stopped tomorrow, the world would be liberated. But people are held in fear.
Because democracy at least pretends to give power to the people. Except letting a few individuals wield enough wealth and power to buy media, politicians and judges is completely antagonistic to the basic ideals of democracy, and not many realize this (yet).
> I’m not aware of any system that [...]
Liberal democracy is better than feudalism, I see no reason why our systems of governance can't be improved further. And, at least to me, the obvious path forward is to keep any of those "deranged dark triad personalities" from gaining too much power, maybe by limiting the amount of wealth any single individual can hold unto.
Not that there is any specific number we can attach to this, but yes, there are actual idealists who then abused their powers and we know that because there is ample historical evidence of it.
On top of that I know some people personally who were part of the 68 student movement who also have been true idealists in their youth, but since them became defenders of their own order.
Not all corruption is obvious though. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing, "just need to bend the rules slightly over here". It is all for a "good cause". I feel like I am as much worried about people who are the righteous wrong, as much as people who are just out there trying to grift to make a buck.
> moves power from the people to the government
In a functioning democracy, the government is the people. If the government is against the people, it's not a functioning democracy.
And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they lose their power), then they are going to have to meet the wealthy half way. Idealism is the enemy of the the common sense, rational, self-interested move.
> And needless to say, a non-functioning democracy is not a proof that the concept of democracy doesn't work.
Yes, democracy is a good idea precisely because imperfect implementations of it work well. If it worked in theory and not in practice, then it wouldn't be a good idea. Contrast it to communism, which is literally an info-hazard. If you try to bring it in to existence, you won't achieve your goal, and the system you do create will be much worse for you. Even if it works in theory, it's a bad idea because it doesn't work in practice.
That doesn't change the state of the negotiation, which is that cutting taxes for the middle class will also require cutting them for the wealthy. If you optimize for your own personal notion of fairness, or retribution, you may very well fail to coordinate in your own self-interest.
Neither our democracy nor our position as a world power survived capitalism eating itself and everything else. We are down to single individuals holding more nominal wealth than whole continents, and the worship of the billionaire has replaced the worship of Jesus Christ for most Americans, a palace cult committing national suicide on your behalf. If you want any of the things that America pitched as its merits in fighting for influence in the Cold War, you want this situation over with.
Let them eat three commas and not a penny more. When you become a billionaire we give you a medal and confiscate every dollar above 1 billion. Using a carrier strike group if necessary.
It sure sounds tough though! Literal war with people for being successful, how much time have you spent on this line of thought?
We haven't passed a budget in almost 30 years, we've been routinely filibustering nearly all legislation for 15 (breaking the gameplay loop for electoral democracy), we're unilaterally withdrawing from trade and military alliances week by week. We have fascist armies on the streets pulling people from their cars and houses. Our leaders openly brag about their corruption and a good fraction of our people praise them for it simply because it pisses other people off.
We are allegedly about to "Federalize Elections" and also enter a war with Iran that a supermajority of voters do not want.
In terms of state capacity, in terms of our agency in the world, in terms of what we historically regarded as our legacy and our culture and our material security and our institutions, we are in freefall. And it is mostly down to having far too much wealth concentrated in far too few people.
Just not, you know, a space program and a larger military than Krushchev's reporting to you personally.
That's basically my main argument for replacing election-based democracy by lottery-based democracy. Electing the right representatives is a coordination problem in and of itself, a process which the wealthy are already quite adept at manipulating, so we might as well cut the middle man and pick a random representative sample of the population instead, who can then coordinate properly.
If that were a viable model for the real world, we could make existing elections just as tamper-proof.
That is a different debate. I think what the parent means is that taxing the rich is a way to prevent them from becoming too powerful.
I do agree that it should be illegal to be too powerful. One should not be more powerful than an entire country, it makes no sense.
Everyone except about 90% of republican voters, aka temporarily poor millionaires
That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.
I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world.
That being said, I do think the extremes of wealth (there is a big difference between a millionaire and a billionaire) have a particularly detrimental effect on society by completely distorting our economic system (there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).
This confusion is precisely why the middle class has less power than ever before. You and many others have been sold a meme that your tax dollars are in service to a greater good, and you are a bad person if you recognize this to be a scam.
At an individual level, for each person in the middle class, 90% of the social programs they pay for are negative EV for them personally. It would be better for each of them if they just kept what they earned, and didn't expect to get it back "later" or "when they really need it" whenever that is. This is an empirical, testable claim, and the math will be slightly different for each person. You should check for yourself.
If everyone turned off the news, and totally ignored the messaging around taxes and government programs and just looked at their own cash inflows and outflows to/from the government, the middle class would retain far more power than they do.
This whole "expected value" concept when taken to the extreme is just rationalist patter. It's a useful exercise when you're running a business, but there is more to life than fiscal efficiency. Empiricism, when taken to an extreme, is as dystopian as anything else.
90% of those social programs are what keep us from being killed in the street for our watches and jewelry. They keep people less fortunate than us from becoming desperate. They level the playing field so our children aren't all victims of the circumstances of their birth. By those metrics, which are my preferred metrics and not the size of my paycheck, they are a huge benefit.
Also one could argue that the US military is the world's largest social service program in that it provides jobs for a large part of the country that otherwise has no prospects for a good life.
Are you only counting material benefit that you personally get from the government rather than the benefit that other less well off people get in your calculations? Because if my tax dollars enable otherwise less well off people to live a lifestyle closer to my own, then I would consider that a benefit to me and a large part of the intended outcome of that taxation.
That's a very big 'if'. Less well off people have to pay taxes too, such as payroll taxes on their labor income, or sales taxes on essential purchases that amount to a large fraction of what they spend money on. And government redistribution is extremely inefficient. They'd be far better off if most of these taxes were done away with for lower-income folks, letting them keep far more of what they earn from their work.
Well I'd certainly be in favour of a more progressive taxation system that taxes higher earners more and lower earners less, and puts more emphasis on wealth and income (incl. capita gains) taxes and less on sales taxes.
But I'm also realistic that as a software engineer, my salary is above the average, and thus in such a setup I'd likely end up paying more.
The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.
>...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).
A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.
Not OP, but just look at a company town as an example in a bottle.
When the rich and powerful control the means of production so completely that they are the only people one can buy what one needs from, then in what way can the exchanges still be called "voluntary" and in what way is "mutual benefit" achieved vs the lesser of two evils: "perpetual debtorship that one must endlessly toil to slow the progress of" vs "abject starvation"?
At the end of the day consent and free will are actually really complicated topics, and they can be surprisingly easy to pervert by unequal power dynamics. The market cannot be free whenever feudalism forms to take its place.
Obviously actually vetting these organizations to make sure that your dollar accomplishes what you wish of it remains a Very Hard Problem, but at least while making baby steps from where we are right now (with our dystopian government) increases in taxation would not constitute a small step in the right direction.
EG: a better environment might look like a healthy government being supported by higher taxes than we see today, but without that first "healthy government" component the latter cannot be a net positive.
The U.S. are a republic not a democracy. The people vote for the government but are not expected to be directly involved with it after the fact.
If 100 people were about to embark on a journey on a ship, what makes you think 51 of them know who should run the ship if none of them have ever even been on a ship?
The US, for example, apportions representatives and votes for President in a way that overweights less populated states, and there are various aspects of parliamentary systems that help avoid landing in a two-party system where a simple majority gets the say in everything—they force compromise and coalition building among disparate groups. Additionally, Constitutional systems will enumerate the rights of its citizens such that they cannot simply be taken away by a simple majority of any body.
Democratic countries are also basically never "pure" democracies where everyone votes on every decision as in your Plato's ship analogy—we elect people who audition for the role of running the ship, ostensibly those among the people who are best suited to the task.
Only if those are enforced. The wealthiest are the ones with the power, as they can pay for the guns.
If you take an example of a non-functioning democracy, it's not a good way to describe a functioning democracy.
Ultimately it comes down to who has the power. The more that power is concentrated the more fragile it becomes. It doesn't change overnight.
I wish I knew :-). A functioning democracy seems to be an unstable equilibrium.
But it remains that a functioning democracy is what we should aim for.
> Ultimately it comes down to who has the power.
Well it starts with the people giving them power. Trump did not seize the power in the US, for instance. He was elected. Twice.
If the government ends up filled with incompetents that's a failure of the people that elected them.
I think you're confused.
First, it is not always the case that there are only two parties. You can totally have a government made by representants of all "relevant" parties (by "relevant" I mean that the party needs a minimum size, otherwise anyone could create a party of one person).
Second, your ship example is pretty weird. The people gets to elect representatives regularly. It's not embarking on a ship with complete strangers: you have been on this ship all your life. "Never have been on a ship" would mean electing a newborn baby... that wouldn't count as a functioning democracy :-).
This is unwanted, first because it produces individuals powerful enough to topple the people’s will, and second because it is not in the interest of society for wealth to be accumulated rather than moving.
By first principles you need a system to limit accumulation and redistribute it. That’s taxation.
The money not being extracted from the right places, or not being distributed where it should, is a sign that the government is unwilling or incapable or working for the people.
It is the people’s collective responsibility to prevent and fix that problem.
I'd also feel a lot better about "Elon gets $200B payout", because he gets $2B and $198B goes to tax payers -- seems pretty fair. $2B is still more than anyone ever needs to live a lavish life of luxury and/or start any reasonable self-business, or buy off any politicians.
The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.
In one case, the money goes to whichever investment the individual favors (e.g. buying tons of gold). In the "redistribute" scenario, it goes to improving the lives of many millions of people in real tangible ways, and creating a more equitable and balanced society and social trust.
The top 1% of the US hold roughly 30% of all the wealth. That's roughly the same as the bottom 90% of the population. I understand there are implementation issues, but I'm merely calling out the obvious immorality of "90% of people should scrape to get by while trustfund kid lives in 4th mansion, because 'market efficiency'".
The critical insight is that this doesn't actually work. When we say Jeff Bezos is worth $200B, we don't mean that he has $200B of money that's locked up in a vault when it could be redistributed. We mean that there are a variety of productive businesses in the world - for Bezos, mostly Amazon - which he holds ownership claims to. The vast majority of wealth in the modern US isn't money, and can only be converted to money by finding people with lots of money and selling them the right to sit on the investments instead.
Of course I would. It shouldn't be up to Elon how that money (and the capital/labour they command) gets spent. It should be up to all of us. And if I want it spent on libraries or healthcare instead of space exploration then I should get my equal say in that.
How is it different from me looking at my neighbor in his bigger house with his nicer car and deciding that those should be mine instead? Or my neighbor with a smaller house wanting my stuff?
And even if you thought so you can't be surprised when the have nots band together and attack or topple the rich society even if it obly for a small temporary gain. Desperation is the largest source of crime and political instability throughout history.
I'll even link them for you:
The veil of ignorance says you should design morals for a society as if you don't know which position you'll be in in that society. If you want to know if it's moral to feed people to crocodiles, imagine that your mind and soul is placed into a random body in the world where people are fed to crocodiles. You might be feeding someone to a crocodile, you might be fed to a crocodile, and in some versions you might be the crocodile. If you had the choice to live in that world but you don't know which one you'll be, would you take it? If you wouldn't because the chance feels bad to you, that's a sign it's objectively immoral.
Categorical imperative: follow rules that you'd be okay with everyone following all the time. Suppose you're very hungry and you see a supermarket and you steal a loaf of bread. Is this moral? "Everyone should steal food" quickly breaks down commerce and isn't good. "Very hungry people with no money should steal bread" works well enough because most people aren't very hungry with no money. We can say it's moral for very hungry people with no money to steal bread. "Very hungry people with no money should just die" works too, but it fails the other principle: that could be you who dies, and you'd rather be allowed to steal bread to prevent death.
These might be different versions of the same principle but I'm not philosophically savvy enough to know that so I'm stating both.
I don't see how either of those principles suggest I should go steal the steaks, because I could easily end up being the person who is stolen from.
Its not surprising when starving people steal, and you can't really blame them for it. And people shouldn't waste frivolously when there are people in their community that are lacking.
But adding these unwritten caveats to private property rights based on whether someone is satisfied with their lot or not... I can't wrap my head around it.
90% chance of being a hungry person who steals a steak instead of dying
10% chance of being someone with 100 steaks and having 9 stolen?
I think the EV of this ends up positive.
Like I said before, if the alternative is death, then obviously stealing is justified. But if the alternative is the soup kitchen or something, then I can't justify stealing the steak. Otherwise you're on a slippery slope.
The slope stops when the expected value is zero.
You have a hundred (dollars|pens|shoes|boxes of cereal), you probably won't notice if I take one.
I don't feel right taking one if I have other options. Whether or not someone notices doesn't make theft OK, it just means you get away without consequences (depending on your religious beliefs).
Not to mention you probably have to trespass/break and enter to do it.
Asthma and lung cancer from Elon's gas turbines, polluted water everywhere, high electricity prices everywhere, RAM and SSD price hikes, Micron and Nvidia completely stopped making equipment for consumers, disinformation is everywhere, the internet is full of slop.
Oh, seems like billionaire projects are actually bad for people and there's plenty of reason to object.
Making the government resistant to manipulation is a distinct problem. It's a game theory/mechanism design problem, and its solution doesn't require taking in lots of money. Giving the government more power/money causes people to spend more effort to manipulate it, so any weaknesses are exploited to the fullest extent.
> and second because it is not in the interest of society for wealth to be accumulated rather than moving.
This reveals a significant misunderstanding of how capital works in an economy. None of the billionaires that come up when you type in "billionaires" into Google have access to liquid cash anywhere near the number that shows up next to their face. Their money is invested in productive projects, it's paying salaries and invested in equipment. Concentrating capital is what allows a civilization to take on big projects. As a society we want big projects to be paid for by individuals bearing the risk (skin in the game). In a free-market, capital concentrates in individuals who, empirically, know how to use it well. Spending other people's money is a great way to make sure that money is spent frivolously. You can criticize luxury spending all you want, and taxing that is something most people consider "fair", but you aren't speaking for anyone economically literate when you say that you don't want capital to concentrate. I want it to concentrate as much as it does naturally.
Who is saying YOUR taxes or MY taxes should go up? Our taxes should go down. Billionaires should be taxed more instead.
Of course there's the cause and effect issue -- does the high corruption cause lower tax, or do the lower taxes enable the corruption.
Absolutely. The source of most of the corruption I see in the world today is wealth, and specifically wealthy people paying people off to get their own way. If there was less wealth inequality there'd be much less scope for this.
Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government (not that I suggest that's what we do).
Politics has it's fair share of corruption too. But at least in my country (the UK) it's the lesser evil. And even if you look at a country like the US where there is a lot more political corruption, the source of a lot of that seems to be private money influencing elections.
No need to literally burn the money, either: just use the entirety of that increased tax revenue on paying down the national debt, and lower the debt ceiling by the exact same amount so it can't go back up. This is an even better deal if you think "interest rates are too high, the Fed should cut a lot more". It all fits. And we managed this throughout the 1990s.
This is so wrong, its not expensive to bribe politicians so higher taxes wouldn't stop this at all. The problem is that its possible to bribe politicians, meaning government has too much power, taxes would make that worse not better. And even more important most bribes doesn't come from individuals, it comes from super PACs and corporations, and those would exist regardless how much you tax rich people.
What you need is a less centralized government so its harder to bribe a few key people to get what you want, and a more direct democracy that can eliminate politicians that takes bribes.
When voters can't punish bad politicians since the incumbents has so much power to draw voting lines and decide who is on the ballots then corruption will always escalate out of control.
It's like, if you want to sell your cyanide penis pills under big government, you need to bribe someone. If you want to sell them under small government, you just... you just sell them, that's what.
There may be ways to design a government where power is better distributed, e.g. using sortition, but ultimately it needs to be richer and more powerful than its wealthiest citizens, otherwise these wealthy citizens will assess, correctly, that when push comes to shove, the laws won't apply to them, and they do not need the government's permission to do what they want.
Moreover -- why would low-level elites (think: entrepreneurs, small business owners, etc.) stay in nation N if it was more profitable to do business in nation B -- recall this is precisely the type of person that is often most mobile and internationalized.
Is this a widespread view where you live? As an outsider watching the fall of Britain in slow motion, this explains so much.
Here's what I say: how about both? Or neither? I think the scope of the problem is defined too narrowly so far in this particular thread.
*Or say, 10 dollars, since a donor's dollar is leveraged
You fundamentally misunderstand the relationship.
The donors donate because the politician will then direct more money at the donors interests.
I spend $1mil on lobbying, $1mil on bunk science at labs I fund or astro turf'd grass roots support (something the government can point to to justify their action), $1mil on donations I get a preferential change in law or rule, or perhaps even government investment in my industry, that lets my business make billions, bringing back say $6mil in profit to me personally. Repeat for all my other business activities.
Politician, political appointees and regulatory agencies pet interests only matter insofar as I get better value for my money by choose one who's interests align.
That's why computers never became an industry, they just kept getting cheaper every year so nobody bought them. If only computing power had kept getting more expensive every year, we might have some kind of tech industry!
The one part of your comment with which I certainly agree is:
> Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government (not that I suggest that's what we do).
...except, I am perhaps prepared to suggest actually implementing such a system, at least as an experiment.
Removing spending power from places where it's concentrated seems to have obvious benefits, but giving it to the state (the entity in which political power is maximally concentrated, at least with respect to the legitimate initiation of violence) seems like it's moving the power dynamic in the wrong direction.
A sufficiently strong progressive taxation regime would obviously have this effect, assuming you could actually enforce it. For example, if you taxed 99% of earnings above $10 million that would greatly reduce the wealth of the ultra-wealthy, even without taking into account how that money was redistributed.
That's obviously an extreme, and I'm not suggesting we do exactly that. But 80% tax rates were common as recently as the late 20th century, and coincidentally there were much lower rates of wealth inequality during this time.
The question is,
> even without taking into account how that money was redistributed.
...if you're taking money from people earning $11 million, and giving it instead of the military and prison industrial complexes, obviously you've concentrated, rather than diluting power.
I think there's a real question about how possible it is for a taxation regime to ever have a progressive effect inside the belly of empire.
Taxes are much lower in Belarus and Russia vs western Europe, and they're much more authoritarian, coupled with third world tier public services outside of their capitals.
If taxes go up on everyone, the rich are still the ones that manipulate the government, but now they have control over more tax revenue. If taxes go down for everyone, the rich are still the ones that can manipulate the government, but now the government has less revenue and can't cause as much damage.
This is absolutely false, especially in the US. Progressive tax brackets, breaks for the rich, and targeted changes for capital vs. income, deductions, etc. are the norm. Tax rate change is _always_ selective.
How about taxing the...Government ?
For example: I am a teacher. I run for office. I win. Now, as a consequence of my win, my tax bracket for the rest of my life, is 100% after i exceed the higher of either: a) my elected official salary, OR b) the average last 5 years of W2 income, OR c) the average last 2 years of W2 income.
You'd delete inmediately all the grifters getting into government to be rich. And because those narcissists griefters people would self select themselves out of the running; it gives breathing room to those willing to actually do their DUTY for country. Those willing to sacrifice lifetime income.
This is pathway to the less charismatic, but more duty-oriented people that would not mind working in the govt and also do a good job. Under these rules, you dont care if I stay in govt forever, either. Limited terms have no point, when you can't grift.
This also takes care of those pesky post-election speaking fees, as well!
in the end , the people running for office should decide if its a price they are willing to pay
it used to be a celebrated virtue to be a company man. why cant it be the same to be a "government" man ?
Taxation is the system where innocent people are forced to pay enormous amounts of money to the rich, powerful, corrupt. The whole basis for the Babylon system is taxation. Epstein and associates are able to thrive thanks to taxation. It has always been from the poor to the rich, never the other way around. Why do you think kings invented taxation in the first place?
Even the famous/infamous billionaires never come out against income tax for normal people. At most they're against taxation of themselves.
When did you hear the owner of a bank or a large hedge fund or a major industry talk against income taxes which the poor pay?
The rich are 100% pro taxes. It funnels money to themselves from the population, and keeps competition down.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/pam-bondi-trump...
One of the best businessmen I have known is Paul Orfalea, broadly known as Kinko. When he couldn't hold a job he started a company, he focused on trying to make things work for employees and customers alike, and it grew. When he sold Kinko's Copies it had a record of serving not only individuals well, but also the broader society as capitalist enterprise ideally should. And he got five billion out of that deal, which he shared with this family. Now I am supposed to believe that this is all a horrible tale of darkness cursing us all because there was some boundary that he accidentally blew through with his extensive business success. In all honesty the one who sounds corrupted and disconnected here is you.
Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.
In this case: Do we use IQ tests? Do we use random numbers and allow babies to win?
If you want to be traumatized about statistics, I like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy6xXEhbGa0
My factory produces squares, and every square is between 1ft and 3ft in side length.
Now what is the probability that the next square it outputs will be between 1ft and 2ft long?
The probability is zero percent, of course. Because my factory only produces squares with a side length of exactly 2.5ft (to within a micrometer tolerance, hooray!), day in and day out.
And as anyone can easily verify, every single one of those squares is between 1ft and 3ft in side length.
Notice how I didn't have to even begin to talk about areas?
The video's thesis is simply that "Talking out of your ass when you have insufficient information has the capability of backfiring sometimes: oh the horror" and I find the subject approximately as uninteresting as the fact that different interpolation methods (nearest neighbor, bicubic, "ask AI image gen to fill in the gaps", etc) are capable of inventing completely different false details into an image or dataset.
But I probably only find it equally uninteresting due to the claims being isomorphic.
When you don't have enough data, guessing at what is missing can be incorrect, and guessing in different ways can be incorrect in different ways, and you have to allow that to wash out as enough genuine data arrives (which means washing out the differences between potential methods of interpolation) and maintain your error bars correctly in the meantime instead of throwing them away.
So to loop back to the start: the probability that the next square will be between 1ft and 2ft is 50% plus or minus 50%, which is just an over-engineered way of saying "there is literally not enough information yet offered to make a guess of any trustworthiness at this point".
In any case, you might be interested in Georgism, which is an anti-monopoly ideology most famously associated with very Strong Opinions on taxation of land and natural resources and untaxing production, along with taxation on pollution and negative externalities.
My impression is that sortition is very much in vogue within Georgist circles.
...and even there, it's terribly corrupted. There are all kinds of bizarre ways that people are excluded from juries which bias the result. One commonly-cited example is that people who report moral objections to capital punishment are excluded from being empaneled on a federal jury, under the pretext that because capital punishment is legal under federal law, they'd be unable to carry out the gammut of their duties. Of course this has the convenient result of dramatically biasing juries in favor of the state.
There's also no commonly-implemented proof-of-randomness for selection. We're told that people are randomly selected and get a notice in the mail, but there's no public event where one can go and watch a number tumbler generate the entropy used to select names from the voter rolls, etc.
Easiest out from jury duty ever, and if the judge want's to be a bltch and force me on anyway, well, let's just say that if the law is immoral than the defendant is going to walk.
Have you actually said that during voir dire, or is this a hypothetical?
It's an extraprocedural consequence of how the system is designed to function, the same way the right to revolution is an extralegal option in the Union. Yeah, you can know it and apply it - but don't say it out loud if you want to show any semblance of virtuosity.
> Easiest out from jury duty ever, and if the judge want's to be a bltch and force me on anyway…
“Easiest out” is clearly you avoiding the responsibility. If you wanted to be on a jury you wouldn’t be talking about easy outs or the judge “forcing” you to be on the jury.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217981747-lottocracy
The current system of oligarch patronage is bad, but at least it keeps the train mostly on the rails.
Similarly in a lottocracy you'd want everyone to be a capable leader when their name is picked from the hat. As the professor I listened to put it, lottocracy makes you think what a democracy really values. Is it about everyone's voice being heard, or is there another goal we should care about more? Not an easy question to answer.
I think it's a nice idea, but I'm not sure how we get from here to there
If you can find good leaders by random draw, that means the average citizen is a good leader, which would seem to suggest that the average citizen should be a reasonable an hard-to-dupe judge of good leaders, and therefore that elections also work well.
If elections don't work well to select leaders, that's a pretty good piece of evidence that sortition won't, either.
OTOH, the particular failures of sortition and elections may be different, and using a system where both are used for different veto points might be net less problematic than either alone. Consider a bicameral legislature with one house chosen by elections and the other by sortition, for instance.
(OTOH, there is plenty of solid evidence in comparative government of how to do electoral democracy better and people in the US don't seem too interested in that, which is probably a better focus for immediate reform than relatively untested, on a large scale, ideas about avoiding electoral democracy.)
Then you get "at least approx. top 1%" -- but it's still not necessarily an entrenched elite.
Not quite. Private education is not prohibited in Finland, but for-profit basic education is prohibited and private education is pretty rare.
https://www.aacrao.org/edge/emergent-news/private-education-...
Japan, a heavily bureaucratized country, systematically moves junior and mid-tier staff around in some departments to minimize the possibility of nest-feathering and empire-building, although I would not say it's perfect by a long way.
Introducing term limits only forces the wealth and power to change it's face periodically. It is addressing a symptom, not the cause.
At least one constitutional scholar has argued that campaign finance reform strikes closer to the root of the problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers ) by enabling interested regular folk to afford to run for office. I would add some form of ranked choice voting to that, which permits folks to vote for a third party candidate without "wasting" their vote or throwing the race to an opponent. As well as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
All sorts of insane stuff.
If you don't think officeholders that are randomly chosen amateurs in the field that are guaranteed to be out of it in short time aren't very often going to be extremely vulnerable to manipulation by people whose interests are stronger, more permanent, and durable, then you haven't thought things through very well, IMO.
The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.
Is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but probably has something to do with that.
Bill Gates's mother was self-dealing up nepo baby business contracts while Scott's Mom was warning him away from bad people.
[0] Link: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/
[1] HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696764
"great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems, if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount . self deception, ( necessary to prevent accidental disclosure of inate algorithms. WE need more hackers , also interested in biological hacking , security, etc."
Damn! I once worked with a guy that was exactly like this. Not just writing but his style of speech irl was like that, incoherent loosely bound ideas around one topic. Ironically, the harder he tried to appear smart the more idiotic were the things that spewed out of his mouth.
We were working with GPUs, trying to find ways to optimize GPU code, he called the team for an informal meeting and told us dead serious, "Why can't you just like, ..., remove the GPUs from the server, then crack them open, turn them outside out and put them back in to see if they perform better". :O
I don't know if this has a name, I just thought the guy had schizophrenia. So glad I moved on from that place.
But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
So they then hear someone who speaks like that, with a fast cadence and Andrew Tate's "Confidence" TM, and are inclined to think "yeah, the guy looks like he knows what he's talking about".
But for people who have minimal knowledge about the thing, it's evident that said person is just stupid.
To them, actually learning a "normal" topic is a distraction. Their game is finding and exploiting weaknesses.
Some people will be attracted by the menu, some people won't realise what's happening until they see the video they're starring in.
Either way, you own them.
Usually meaning the revenues and results are there .. although everything about their personal or professional ethos disgusts me.
Eh. From time to time you’ll have that one brilliant but grossly tangential asset on a team who leaves you wondering if they’re manic or cracked out from the weekend.
Who’s in infrastructure and hasn’t sent a few sleep-deprived and cringey status updates out at 6am :D
Okay okay okay fine, it’s an internet comment section I don’t have to be PC. I think this one’s coke.
I kinda assumed that was (at least partly) a "flex," basically doing something dumb to show you're such hot stuff you can get away with it. It's like Sam Altman writing in lowercase all the time.
I'm not asking you to believe me on this, but sharing it more as an anecdote of: something on the surface is sometimes not the reality of what's underneath.
(Also not saying I believe this at all, just relating an anecdote).
Some people have superiority complex and reeky pile of irate thoughts in their heads, and you're very lucky if nothing in your life depends on these kind of people.
A failing math teacher at a New York prep school leading to a job at Bear Stearns and then as a wealth manager for billionaires... let's say it doesn't add up unless there were other reasons than his own ambitions and organization skills.
Mossad or the Russians engineered his life.
It very much all adds up if you view Epstein as a financial genius in terms of financial crimes.
This idea he was some intelligence created stooge is just absurd. I would suspect he was an intelligence asset exactly because of his ability to launder money and commit financial crimes. His wealth came from taking a cut. The size of his wealth was a reflection of the amount of financial crimes committed. That level of financial crime is how you get a sweetheart deal to keep those crimes in the shadows.
Also the kind of thing that would get you suicided. This podcast/social media narrative that he was a created intelligence asset to blackmail the rich and powerful is probably misdirection to not focus on the actual financial crimes. The cover up has been executed to perfection considering the misdirection narratives have taken on a life of their own and we know basically nothing about the financial crimes he commited.
Wouldn't immoral foreign intelligence be doing a terrible job if they weren't doing everything they could to become involved in Epstein's world?
Why wouldn't Russia or Mossad be involved? It's almost a cartoon caricature of what a spy agency does. If it was in a movie it wouldn't be believable it's so on the nose.
I think they engineered it from the start, a Jay Gatsby kind of situation – find the right young man and engineer him to be the center of a situation to attract everybody and use the access to who comes to their advantage.
Even if it wasn't from the start idk how incompetent foreign intelligence would have to be to not be involved.
The grammar police as well as PC became a thing and now everyone is expected to construct paragraphs of text without any grammatical errors otherwise you're mobbed and lynched.
Just because you're expecting full pronunciation doesn't mean others do. I'd rather write with laziness and short hand than having to punctuate a whole paragraph and bore the person to death like this paragraph.
I'd more focus on the ideas being expressed being incoherent. Spelling is surface level, but that word salad made no sense.
I can spell correctly in a few different languages without having to think about it. I suspect you can, too. I can do a lot of math in my head that Jeffery Epstein probably couldn't have done with a calculator. I'm not a billionaire, though, and I never will be. The kind of smart - "street smart", it's sometimes called - that makes you that kind of rich is a different kind of smart that shows up as being a competent writer. Make no mistake, though, it wasn't stupidity or incompetence that got him where he was.
computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems,. He is confused about software/programming/hacking. Hacking absolutely involves intercepting messages e.g., man in the middle attack. I have no idea what he thinks biological systems is; does he think that bacteria/viruses intercept chemical messages that our brain sends to different organs in our body?
if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount. Free energy -- yuck -- that is what happens when scientists give a terrible name to "usable work" or "usable energy". Free energy is about the usable work you can get out of a e.g., coal powered steam engine. He is mixing physics/thermodynamics with biology.
Don't let the label fool you. Thermodynamics is the study of energy flows at the fundamental level, not only heat.
And, you not only need to get fuel from the food, but also the materials to build the engines, and for making spare parts and consumables. And everything that actually uses the energy. There will be no energy spent on lighting if you can't get the indium needed for making LED lights, and the body only knows how to make LED lights.
Anyway, the core problem of obese bodies is that they can't produce energy. You can't outwill it, the reshuffling just isn't happening, and there is actually no great reason to believe that fat tissue is some kind of fuel tank, rather than a mass of broken cells.
Also, the body can just reshuffle the molecules in an idle mode. You don't need to spend the energy on moving around.
I'm admittedly in no position to argue deeply about biology, or even physics for that matter, because I studied mechanical engineering. I dealt with physics in an applied manner.
With that said, this story comes to mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri
It seems to disagree with your idea that fat is not fuel. And the first law of Thermo seemed to be applying to this man. He had little to no energy input (via food) and a baseline energy expenditure from just existing, so his system burned stored energy via body fat.
i mean working in tech you haven't run into that CTO or vp eng who snowjobs the c-suite with a word salad of hot button technical terms that don't quite add up?
hell ive even interviewed developer candidates for positions who are like this.
Yeah, it's on my comment.
* He has money
* People want a share of his money
* He has enough people to tell him stuff to make his bullshit seem to have some connection with reality
* Anybody who argues with his stupid bullshit is no longer welcome and gets no chance to get a share of his money
Someone[3] mentioned how he sounded in an interview and I went and found his conversation with Steve Bannon. My daughter just went back to sleep and I'm not one for listening to stuff anyway so I sent it through Voxtral and put it through a visualizer[1] so I could read it and I can see why someone might want to listen to him.
He name-drops famous people a lot, definitely farms those connections and so on, but the things he mentions do reveal a systems-level comprehension of many concepts and how they affect each other. And he does it by describing these things in a simple way that must have been easy for them to understand. Personally, I think it obscures a lot of the detail but it has the flavour of the insight porn genre that was once popular.
A few of the examples are that he describes the subprime crisis as originating in Clinton-era home-ownership reform that pressured government lenders to essentially back many subprime mortgages (expanded during the Bush-era). Then he talks about mark-to-market accounting and how that accelerated (maybe even was one of the causes) of the 2008 crisis. That is sort of true, which is why new rules allow for some kinds of assets to be valued differently[2].
Anyway, unlike others here I don't think he's incoherent or stupid or whatever. The crimes he was convicted and about to be convicted for are pretty horrific but I think people are treating him like some kind of moron when I don't think that's accurate. I'm not saying this to praise the guy or defend him. I just don't think it's true.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpWEc-LMT10
1: https://viz.roshangeorge.dev/voxtral-viewer/?t=jeffrey-epste...
2: https://viewpoint.pwc.com/dt/us/en/pwc/accounting_guides/loa...
Claude suggested an interesting pattern: on several topics, Epstein starts with some medium level concept (not naive, but not expert-level), then distracts with a metaphor or a short anecdote, then drops some hint that he has great authority on the subject ("I was in the room", "I had insider knowledge") and finally changes subject or claims that nobody really knows, without ever going deeper.
But I think that's incorrect. The lynchpin of the subprime crisis was really the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1998, which made sure that consumer-facing banks had strict limits on how much they could be leveraged in their investments. This set them apart from investment banks which were allowed to take bigger risks.
Then, a bunch of financial fuckery in new kinds derivatives generated the idea that they had "solved" the risk factor of subprime mortgages and that they could open the floodgates on accepting any and all mortgages without doing any of the traditional underwriting. They sliced them into tranches using a magic formula which nobody understood and sold them off. The ratings agencies helped by stamping this garbage with top grades and tricking institutional investors into holding the bag.
The result was that when it all imploded the US consumers were the ones who got hosed -- because those consumer banks were over-leveraged in these bad investments.
It was criminal activity all the way. It was conspiracy to make billions of the short-term commissions on all the mortgage transaction activity, while sticking someone else with the toxic waste.
It was not a simple policy decision from the 90's. That narrative is just another way for the oligarchs to rewrite history and evade responsibility. Ensuring that we'll learn nothing and they can do this all over again once people forget.
Bill Gates was known for making PMs and tech lead type people scared, often literally so, by going deep into technical details.
Elon Musk sometimes also talks a lot of details, to the point of actual rocket engineers working for him being impressed. At the same time, it is sometimes painfully obvious that he hasn't got the basics even remotely correct.
I'm not saying that Epstein was like that, but the fact that these three people used to hang out isn't surprising, they're likely to be socially compatible.
I don' know what "turn them outside out" but it sounds like they are suggesting removing and replacing the heatsink. Funnily enough, replacing thermal paste can improve temperatures [1].
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/finally-replaced-gpu-thermal-...
That's assuming Bill Gates didn't know what he was doing. Sadly, it sounds like he knew exactly what he was doing.
This is the most-interesting bit. The introducer put this up front. Maybe it's Nigerian-prince scame logic? Or maybe there really is that much sympathy for pedophiles in Silicon Valley [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/business/epstein-investme...
I think it's pretty well established now that powerful people in and outside the Valley considered to think that Epstein was a useful contact knowing his "personal situation" rather well and sometimes explicitly referring to it. Suspect it's possible to have innocently accepted an introduction to him or even advice from him in the 2010s because he wasn't that famous at the time, but it seems like they were motivated to minimise that possibility. Even easier to add people to the list you can blackmail in future if you don't even have to arrange island visits for them
Helping poor children from Africa, investing in AI, and burning CDs with dolphin sounds. A classic.
So given that it anyway comes out sooner or later it's better to be upfront about it as that can create a feeling of trust. It can create misconceptions like "if he where unserious he would have hidden that he works for Epstein" etc.
At the same time it acts as filter, people with a upstanding moral compass will directly say no and you don't wast time on trying to recruit them.
Lastly for people which some but not robust morals iff you can convince them to work with you and they start having doubts you now have the argument that "you told them upfront about the issue and they where okay with it, and bailing not would make them look like a very unreliable business partner affecting their carrier beyond this situation". To be clear I'm not saying that this is "true", but that this argument presented carefully in the right way at the right time can be effective to manipulate people _even if not true_.
Disgusting nature aside, I can't help but be amazed as to how someone can be so well connected. What sort of skills did Epstein have that managed to have so many people on speed dial?
How do you get in a position to correspond with presidents, royals, celebrities and getting them all hooked on you?
Amazing indeed.
The answer may be disturbing.
There are after all multiple people being "given" girlfriends or contacts for social networking, shown in the Epstein files.
Most obvious example is of course Donald Trump with Melania.
How do you become omniconnected? You offer people a good time. How do you have repeat customers? You offer them a too good time. Why the disgusting acts? Because mere sex isn't scandalous enough.
Sometimes you do it because you've been commissioned to do it to a specific person. Sometimes you do it on spec because you think you can sell it. There is no one goal or ideology or theme to it other than it's gotta be nasty enough to blackmail a target.
This is/was one of such groups.
They never get the opportunity though because those groups are intentionally protected from those kinds of players.
Is Scott referring to this Charles Harper, of the Templeton Foundation, dedicated to the science of theology?
http://capabilities.templeton.org/2006/interview/c_harper.ht...
may be somebody would train a model on the Epstein and his associates emails/etc. which would allow to research the workings of the such psychopaths' minds
The fact that Scott here was able to find that information and cut ties shows how corrupt every powerful person that didn't do that was. Sorry billionaires and politicians, you don't come out looking clean being friendly to the known pedophile pimp.
Good lunch spot for a nudnik
I suspect there is no way to establish, if one has an Epstein number >2, what it is.
Hey. Fuck them. At least most of us are not greedy corrupt fucks. Or died in prison as a consequence of our own sins.
- Where did he get his money from?
- Who's interests are served by this whole dodgy setup?
- The Trump connection.
- The Trump Russia connection.
Maybe I imagine but it all seems aligned.
Actually the person who was trying to help him was until this week the UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson. He had to resign this week due to the emails. He previously spent decades attacking the UK Labour's left like Corbyn and trying to make the party more amenable to the type of people Epstein hung around with.
Odd that this very American American, with heavy Israeli contacts and some UK contacts is claimed to be associated with Russia with little evidence. He's American through and through (or failing that, Israeli aligned).
Also look up Israel’s relationship with pedophilia (being a safe haven for the accused and convicted). You’ll find plenty of Jewish in isreal media sources reporting on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age-o...
You might be thinking of his stepping down from the House of Lords (upper house of UK parliament) which did happen recently.
Didn't he steal it from Les Wexner?
These are not the same, even if the government of Israel deliberately conflates them.
I think we need to start calling out this deliberate attempt from the Israeli government to correlate the two.
But I'm not sure why it's more likely that Epstein was a Mossad spy over CIA or Russian or any other spy agency.
I am not sure what the evidence was that he was an intelligent operative at all as opposed to just a depraved, rich, criminal.
Jews can be in opposition to the current government of Israel while still recognize when someone is picking specifically on the only Jewish state, and doing so obsessively and irrationally.
This is driving me up the wall. Look, I know part of this talk/accusation [about Mossad] is coming from Nazi/antisemitic circles, so people being hesitant to engage makes a bit of sense. But come on, it's not a stretch to consider. The idea that the US would let a Russian operation go unchecked like that is completely bonkers.
What's missing is definitive proof, so far at least. I think you're conflating the two. Evidence and proof are different things - see [2] for a good example of this conflation used the other way.
Anyway, yeah, you can very seriously consider this based on the evidence already out there. Considering the stakes, it would be kinda silly not to imo.
0 - https://www.commondreams.org/news/epstein-israeli-intelligen...
1 - https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA000903...
2 - @NormalIsandNws on X:
“Here is the proof Epstein was a Russian asset:
- his girlfriend was the daughter of a Mossad agent
- one of his best friends was Israel's lawyer
- another of his best friends was a former Israeli prime minister
- he met with the current Israeli prime minister
- a senior Israeli spy would stay at his house for weeks at a time
- a friend invited him to bring his girls to Israel
- he fled to Israel when he was charged with sex crimes against a minor
- he was pictured wearing an IDF shirt
- he was funded by pro-Israel fanatics
- he worked for the Rothschilds
- he donated to pro-Israel student groups
- he was responsible for the Wexner group's "pro-Israel philanthropy"
- he supported Israeli settlement projects
- his friends were all Zionists
- he scathingly referred to non -Jews as "goyim"
- he was involved in Israeli diplomacy efforts
- he brokered security deals for Israel
- he aimed to profit from regime changes in the Middle East
- a former Israeli intelligence officer said he ran a honeypot for Israel
- his business partner confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel
- one of his victims confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel
As you can see, all of this was done for the benefit of Russia. There is no other explanation.”
> his girlfriend was the daughter of a Mossad agent
Some have speculated that he could have been; that doesn't make it true. Anyway, not everyone copies the career track of their ex-girlfriend's father.
> one of his best friends was Israel's lawyer
Dershowitz? He never even represented Israel. Even if he had, I'm not sure what it would have to do with Mossad.
> another of his best friends was a former Israeli prime minister
He was on friendly terms with a lot of politicians. By this logic, he must have been a spy for several different countries.
> a senior Israeli spy would stay at his house for weeks at a time
"Spy" is being used very loosely.
> a friend invited him to bring his girls to Israel
He was invited to lots of places. What does this have to do with spying again?
> he fled to Israel when he was charged with sex crimes against a minor
It's not fleeing to visit somewhere before returning for a trial.
> he was pictured wearing an IDF shirt
This is like suggesting a MAGA hat makes someone a CIA agent.
> he was funded by pro-Israel fanatics
Too vague to refute, and irrelevant anyway.
> he worked for the Rothschilds
This is just false.
> he donated to pro-Israel student groups
Meaning Hillel? I'm not sure what it was to do with Mossad, beyond just being a Jewish organization.
To see how absurd most of the Mossad spy arguments are, just replace Israel with the US. Most of the arguments get much stronger - Epstein was friendly with many American politicians, etc. By the same logic, Epstein was surely a spy for the CIA or other US intelligence.
Or substitute Epstein with some other wealthy, high-profile Jew. In most cases there are just as many Israeli connections, trips to Israel, donations to Jewish groups, etc.
Or, don't bother, because it's pretty clear that you're not very familiar with the facts here.
Epstein: "As you probably know I represent the Rothschilds". Thousands of emails with Ariane discussing such.
You: "This is just false" - no counter evidence whatsoever.
> By the same logic, Epstein was surely a spy for the CIA or other US intelligence.
That's what all the evidence points to, yes. That he worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time?
Either country had more than enough resources and info to have shut down such an operation - if they had wanted to. Instead, it looks a lot like they protected/are protecting him at every turn; sometimes by extreme means.
We know for a near-certain fact that there were compromising tapes on hundreds or thousands of powerful people. Where did they all go, in your beskepticled view?
> "As you probably know I represent the Rothschilds".
What would this have to do with Mossad anyway? It's not surprising that a Jew had some Jewish acquaintances. You probably have Jewish acquaintances too, does that make you a Mossad spy?
Who's 'we'? What's your definition of evidence?
> evidence /ĕv′ĭ-dəns/
> noun
> A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.
> "The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weighed the evidence for and against the hypothesis."
> Something indicative; an indication or set of indications.
> "saw no evidence of grief on the mourner's face."
> The means by which an allegation may be proven, such as oral testimony, documents, or physical objects.
...
I'd still like you to see you try and answer my questions:
> he [probably] worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time?
> We know for a near-certain fact that there were compromising tapes on hundreds or thousands of powerful people. Where did they all go?
If you keep ignoring them, it will be hard to imagine that you're arguing in good faith.
But okay, I'll respond to yours -
> he [probably] worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time?
No idea. That might be evidence of some relationship with the US, not of being a Mossad spy.
> We know for a near-certain fact that there were compromising tapes on hundreds or thousands of powerful people. Where did they all go?
No idea, but even if we assume there was a blackmail scheme (which isn't the only explanation of inappropriate recordings), there's still zero evidence of Mossad involvement.
Please, please learn the difference between evidence and proof. There's a lot of evidence, from circumstantial to testimonial to an abundance of hearsay.
Not proof, no. Proof is what follows from investigation - which hasn't happened. Are you familiar with the concept of "the dog that didn't bark"?
> how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evidence of being a Mossad spy?
Never said it was.
You claimed "This is just false" when my source [2] claimed that he worked for the Rothschilds, and now have moved the goalposts because he said so himself and there's thousands of emails backing that up.
By this absurd definition,
- Sure, Epstein having a Jewish client is evidence of him being a Mossad spy.
- Similarly if you have any Jewish acquaintances, that's evidence of you being a Mossad spy.
- If you've eaten at McDonalds, that means you're not an extreme BDSer, which is evidence of you being a Mossad spy.
- If you know even a couple words of Hebrew, that’s evidence of you being a Mossad spy.
- If you have any encrypted messaging software installed, that’s evidence of you being a Mossad spy.
etc.
You're right that people on social media aren't talking about it very much for some reason but that doesn't mean that it isn't being talked about in American media.
Must be russia.
I'm kind of disappointed that my name is not in there. (Well the name is in there but not as my name. When you have a last name that has been in the top 5 in the US for over 230 years and a first name that was top 20 when people in the age group most likely to be in those files were born, you get a lot of false positives).
The bar to ending up in those files for perfectly innocent reasons is pretty low. Epstein was involved in a lot of legitimate things, probably to draw attention away from the illegitimate things.
Do some interesting research that gets some attention in the popular science press and Epstein might want to talk about funding you. Write an interesting book or article that comes to his attention and he might mention it in an email. Heck, write an interesting answer on Quora and you might end up in the files, because Epstein was subscribed to Quora's digest email.
If even 5% of what 15 year old tzs planned to accomplish with his life had happened, I'd be in there in at least one of those innocent ways. It highlights how mundane my life turned out.
Ne pas comprende? That means that the blackmail was used to ensure definiteness of otherwise variable elements. If we were in Ancient Greece, it wouldn't be pedophilia (then, a "good") it would have been "chthonic excess"- or "ideological heresy"- based blackmail. The architects of this twistedness merely used the tools available that leveraged the age we live in.
So, that bacchic excess (beyond such needed for blackmail)? Human nature in secret succumbed to unchecked desires, itself a predictable outcome. The OG plan was not "evil" per se (ensure predictability of unpredictable system), it was pragmatic, but the implementation, necessarily became evil and the evil was normalized and justified by the "importance" of the plan to the stability of the playmakers.
The banality of evil, eh?
A different Jeffrey, mind.
Not sure how he's meant to come back from this.
A very strange action to take for someone who claims to have no recollection of the meeting.