mikeash

How would you keep track of that, and confidently identify people who have been banned?

This was an actual reason for not having authentication devices, and why the Minuteman force had a password of 00000000 for a couple of decades. But it doesn’t apply to safety in a fire.

Think of all the other things you also declared to be stupid and didn’t bother with, that turned out to be stupid and would have cost you a bunch if time or money.

People always say, “if you had bought Microsoft at IPO....” For some reason they never say “if you had bought Enron at IPO....”

Yep, we’d probably be reading about how stupid Blockbuster was for buying Netflix when it was Moovster that kicked everyone’s ass.

They were intended to defend against conventional attacks by their neighbors, not deter other nuclear powers. It would still be nice to deter such attacks, but it also works to reveal them after the attack begins, or just use them. I imagine they didn’t think it was worth provoking condemnation from the international community by revealing them.

Nuclear had some horrendous accidents before TMI. It’s just that they were military facilities, so it got hushed up. TMI was far from the first, it was just the first that didn’t get the cover of “national security” thrown over it. Look up Windscale, Kyshtym, and SL-1 for some prominent examples.

We can certainly do much better today, though.

There are plenty of fossil fuels available. Far too much. If we burn it all, or even a decent fraction of it all, we’ll wreck the world. We must leave the vast majority of it in the ground.

We’d be much better off if, in fact, we were running out.

Didn’t Magellan visit the Philippines previously, coming from the other direction?

I donated to the ACLU a couple of years ago. They’ve since spent the entire amount mailing me solicitations for more. Their latest one was this really obnoxious envelope with FINAL NOTICE written on it. I like their mission but fuck everything about their solicitation techniques.

I suspect it’s because the typical programmer can’t really put themselves in the shoes of a fast food worker who gets fired for refusing to clock out and keep working. But an eccentric techie with uncomfortable and unconventional views on sex hits way too close to home.

So it’s nothing about the morality of killing dozens of innocents. It’s just might makes right?

Maybe not, but this seems like a terrible way to advocate for something better. Thousands of people get unjustly fired every day for much worse reasons than this. Why is this one the one to fight?

Since when did anyone ever expect due process when being fired? This is a world where you can be fired for showing up 30 seconds late because of a road closure.

I don’t think that’s done in the US. At least I’ve never heard of it, and if a dealer tried it with me I’d probably walk out, assuming they were scamming me somehow.

Sure, it’s in terms of the existing situation. Why can’t there be an ISIS cell in the US right now, or at least why can’t the Chinese think there is one?

So anything they fight for must be bad no matter what it is? Even if they’re hunting down ISIS and al Qaeda members just like we are?

Why is my comparison absurd? Let’s say that the Chinese drone operators thought they were targeting an ISIS cell. (This is, in fact, what I had in mind.)

Anyway, I don’t have to imagine. There are, in fact, lots of people in this country who want to kill people for having the wrong birthplace or sexual orientation. One of them massacred twenty people just a few weeks ago.

I didn’t say what China was fighting for. Why are you so sure it’s bad?

“This was a horrible accident, but you have to realize there are probably some very bad people they intended to target and the US doesn't blow up random Afghan farmers for fun and games.”

We wouldn’t accept this excuse in my hypothetical, so we shouldn’t accept this excuse when we’re the ones murdering dozens of innocents.

I’m talking about a garbage company because they’re an example of a polluter that can’t just dump their pollution wherever they feel like, and their pollution is much more visible. It’s not an analogy, it’s an example. Polluters aren’t analogous to companies dumping trash on your property, they are companies dumping trash on your property.

If it’s part of a money making business that you own, why not?

If the government allowed your neighbors to use your property as their sewer without paying for the privilege, that would definitely be a subsidy for them. We make people clean up their sewage before dumping it.

Breathing isn’t an issue only because it’s a negligible quantity. If it was more significant, we’d have to have rules around it just like we do for other human waste.

It’s true that you have to measure the same thing, but you also have to measure a useful thing.

If you compare fossil fuels and renewables based on the number of letters in their names, that’s the same thing for both, but it’s not useful.

Comparing explicit monetary subsidies is like that. If you want to include the implicit ones for renewables as well, you definitely should. But giving up and only comparing direct monetary subsidies gives you a woefully incomplete and misleading picture.

The double standard is easy to understand. The Taliban is evil, and we think that we are not.

I like to imagine the reaction if it happened here.

Imagine that, say, China blew up 30 Americans in the US with a missile. And their reaction was, “sorry, my bad, I thought they were terrorists.”

Can you imagine the response? I think we’d have a nuclear war before the end of the day.

Just to approach this from another angle: Teslas currently make up about 0.1% (very very roughly) of all cars in the US. From that, you’d expect around 40 fatalities per year, and increasing fast.

It doesn’t matter if we’re willing to shoulder the cost. We bear it whether or not we want to. The question is whether you want to bear the cost in the form of health and climate effects, or in the form of money.

What if an entity doesn’t possess those resources, but gives them anyway by taking them from someone else because they’re powerful enough to do it, does that count?

Why do subsidies have to be an active policy decision?

You’re right, when people talk about fossil fuel subsidies, that’s thinking of government gifts and tax breaks. My point is that this is a deeply inadequate way to think about it. If you only look at these, and compare fossil fuels to renewables, you’ll come away thinking that fossil fuels are far cheaper than they actually are.

There’s a clear point where Fat Tony goes off the rails: depending on your view, it’s either right at the start (if you believe it’s not right to steal bread to feed your starving family) or at the point where he spontaneously switches from bread to cigarettes.

I’m curious which part of my comment you think plays that role.