Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into.
Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability.
> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
> Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read
Well-read in the 18th century. And they borrowed heavily from 17th century philosopher John Locke. Imagine relying on 17th or 18th century medicine now.
The founders weren't nearly as wise as they're alleged to be. For example, they thought their system would suppress political parties, and then political parties arose almost immediately.
> Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable.
Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.
In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.
> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
> Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
We're certainly in agreement here, but I would say that most modern wealth is fictional: based on equity, which is based on credit, which is based on confidence, which at the end of the day is just vibes. So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates. However, they're definitely wildly overpaid in the US. That, imho, is because culturally this country still wants to cosplay at having an aristocracy.
> So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates.
It's misleading to say "they're employed in production", using the present tense. Many were engaged in production, and some choose to remain engaged, but others don't. It doesn't seem to matter much. Bill Gates quit his job 20 years ago, claims to be trying to give most of his money away, yet he's still one of the wealthiest people in the world. The dude was already ultra-wealthy by age 30. Sure, he engaged in production for a number of years, but most ordinary workers have no choice but to engage in production for 40 or 50 years or their life at least.
The ultra-wealthy are not wage earners, paid by their labor. They are capital owners, and capital continues to earn returns regardless. If you're smart with your wealth and diversify, and by smart I mean not dumb—safe long-term investment doesn't take a genius—it's extremely hard to lose it all. That would happen only if you put all of your eggs in one basket. I'm not aware of too many riches to rags stories, except among professional athletes for example. But those athletes were wage earners rather than capital owners. They don't own the sports teams.
Your question is ambigious. Are you asking what a different system would look like, or how we would get there?
As for the first question, there are many obvious ways to improve the system. Here are some suggestions: abolish the electoral college, abolish the Presidential veto and pardon, abolish the Senate, abolish lifetime Supreme Court terms, add term limits for Congress, publicly fund political campaigns and outlaw campaign contributions as illegal bribery, allow public recall campaigns against the President, Congress, and Supreme Court, etc.
As for the second question: "The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years."
An Orwellian dystopia has grown unabated, regardless of who is in power. Remember that the Snowden revelations came out in the Obama administration. The pervasive surveillance that has invaded every aspect of our lives is not even a political issue that leaders debate. The political duopoly has been bought off. I'm not sure exactly who you think "the good guys" are.
It’s bad enough the politicians lied when they campaigned on no more wars in the Middle East, they don’t need to insult our intelligence with these moronic cover stories.
If they didn’t want Israel dragging the US into wars they could’ve just placed a call to Iran to warn them.
I see the White House adopting the strategy that the Russian and USSR government / state media use frequently: change the narrative early and often, to the point where people don’t feel like they can ever know the truth.
If your “ally” is, as this story goes, forcing you into a war against your will, protecting your own citizens and troops takes priority over any favors you might owe these “friends.”
Of course if you actually wanted to start this war, and wanted a low effort cover story, you’d…do exactly this kind of lazy, low effort lie.
What are you even calling a lie? (not the campaign promises, the recent statements) The claims are something like this, right?: 1. Israel decided to attack 2. The US thought about how that would play out. 3. The US decided to attack too.
Which of those claims is untrue? Is there a claim I missed?
"The US could have snitched to Iran" does not contradict any of those claims.
Also I'm not convinced that warning Iran would have made things much safer for US troops. And you can say what you want about what the US priorities should be, but that's a whole different discussion.
The US claim is that their attack is a sort of pre-emptive self-defense because Israel forced their hand. That’s what I’m calling a lie: Israel could’ve been dissuaded, trivially, if the US didn’t want to start a war with Iran.
Their hand was forced, and it was "a sort of pre-emptive self-defense". I'm still not seeing the lie. You think they should have done something different, but "should have done something different" is a completely different criticism.
And what you think is "trivial" is far from certain.
It’s an absolute howler that the United States would be led around by the nose by a country smaller than New Jersey. C’mon, man. You honestly believe that the massive military buildup that preceded this was just a wild coincidence?
If the Israelis were actually pushing the US around in the way we’re supposed to believe in this story the US would absolutely ruin them in a heartbeat. Netanyahu would be in prison in a timeframe measured in hours.
Pushing the US to make some kind of decision isn't the kind of "pushing around" that would make the US attack Israel. Your ideas of alternate ways for this to play out have gone from weird to absolutely ridiculous.
The US might have already decided it was going to attack, but it just as easily might not have.
It's plenty serious. You don't like how they acted and how they gave partial explanations so you're calling it an obvious lie even though it's not.
They didn't say it was their absolute only option or something like that, as far as I know. (If they did say that you needed to mention it.) That would have been a clear lie. Saying Israel moved first is just... plausible.
> I don't like having my intelligence insulted by such brazen falsehoods, so in that regard this is true.
Okay I guess I assumed you disliked the stuff you were calling a lie and a moronic cover story.
> I'm happy for your heroic amounts of credulity, it must make life a lot easier in this administration.
It's not that I'm being very credulous, it's that they said very little about their decision process. The claims you're objecting to are relatively minor details about the situation. You keep exaggerating the implications of their claims every time you say why they must be wrong.
We live in a post truth age, unfortunately. Many citizens are happy to only hew to the truth that they want, versus the "real" truth. (note the quotes -- truth is tricky).
There's a bitter irony in this issue -- toppling the regime in Iran would be a wonderful thing, but doing so via bombs is not the way. We have Afghanistan and Iraq as very dear lessons in how not to do it.
I get the feeling AI will be blamed for this, but I would not rule out the hypothesis that this was done intentionally in order to incite Iran to do something that bolsters support for the US regime’s actions. They desperately need domestic political support for this war and right now even the hardcore MAGA people are against it.
Reporting from the CBC mentioned that the school was located within an area surrounded by other military buildings. The building housing the school was used for military purposes in the past.
I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
"It can be said with a degree of confidence that, in 2013, the site was used exclusively as a military barracks with a strict security character, as there was no indication of an independent civilian use of any part of the complex.
But this changed radically in 2016. Satellite images dated September 6, 2016 capture the main turning point, when new internal walls were created and built, fully and tightly separating the school building area from the rest of the military block."
If they work with intelligence data older than 10 years, then this would still account to gross negligence, possibly counting as a war crime. But misstakes happen and they did used AI for target tracking.
But the other interpretation is more dark. Because it was not just some school, but a school where the children of the IRGC go, the elite of the system. And Trump said he does not want a regime change, but rather someone from the current system who just bows to US demands. So the threat of killing all the leadership, anyone could be next - but also the threat to kill also their children and familiy until they surrender.
To quote Hegseth:
"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”
Threatening to kill also their families makes sense with this kind of language and logic. At some point you will find someone who values the life of his family higher than that of the nation and religion.
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families,” Trump said.
During the past week, in a series of interviews and events, Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles that, if enacted, would mark a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy from the limits put in place by Democratic President Barack Obama and the Republican-led Congress. In addition to arguing in favor of reinstating waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and "much more than that," Trump has advocated the killing of suspected terrorists' wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.
Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.
As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...
> I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
While Israel has enough intelligence to track where the Ayatollah is hidden away after the initial strikes on Iran. Does that sound believable to you? Either Israel and USA are pisspoor at coordinating intelligence, or Israel wilfully let the US attack the place and take the flak for it.
Many similar incidents occurred in Ukraine, where Russia targeted apartment blocks that were built on the former site of some sort of military building that was demolished decades ago.
The ultimate hubris is launching a multi million dollar missile to kill civilians because you couldn’t be bothered to check Google street view (or whatever).
What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.
They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”
Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.
The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.
Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.
I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.
I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.
>Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
We're not dealing with a rational or competent military chain of command. We're dealing with people who believe they're bringing about the Biblical Second Coming and that rules of engagement are "woke." These are literally cartoonishly evil people. They probably chose targets by asking Grok.
I'm going to confidently state that nobody in the US military chain of command gave the order to "mix some schools into the target list" for any reason, religious or not.
That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
>That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
I'm not talking about the world or people in general, I'm talking about about the Commander in Chief Donald Trump and "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, the people who set the tone and make the decisions. And if you listen to either one of them, especially Hegseth, you'll realize it isn't absurd on its face at all.
Even if no one gave a specific order to "mix some schools into the target list" this administration clearly and explicitly - as in, has literally stated on the record - does not care about morality, ethics, rules of engagement or anything of the sort. It's not out of the question that they would intentionally target civilian infrastructure just as a show of force and aggression, or simply not care because their goal is and I'm quoting here "killing people and breaking things."
Oh sure, and the US did it against both Japan and Germany in WW2, but those were not even remotely the same scenario as precision strikes against the IRGC and Iranian leadership in general.
This was clearly a horrific mistake, especially obvious since the girls school used to be a military building.
They target civilian infrastructure like power plants and the like, but again, that's "not the same" as purposefully targeting a school or an apartment block. The latter they do fairly clearly by accident, because I've seen at least four video clips of Ukranians interviewed outside of a bombed civilian building saying something to the effect of "Oh yeah, back in 1990 there was a military training facility here but it was demolished in `91."
Note that 1991 was the year Ukraine and Russia split and Russia stopped getting a "direct feed" of things like urban planning information from Kiev.
Yes, well... the Russians seem especially unconcerned with checking targets for validity before mashing the fire button.
The logic they're presenting is largely the same as Israel's excuse for bombing hospitals in Gaza.
When there's a war in a civilian area, injured soldiers from the front line will be mostly treated at the nearest available hospital, which then overflows into regional hospitals further back, etc... A country under siege at the scales seen in Ukraine and Gaza don't get to pick and choose specific hospitals, they're all overflowing, so they use every available medical facility, including children's hospitals.
Worse, the convoys taking the wounded to these hospitals are more than likely military trucks and are driven by and/or escorted by military personnel in uniform.
On a blurry satellite picture or drone video the enemy will see a building frequently visited by the military.
That's a lot of contortions to go through to avoid the clear Occam's Razor conclusion that these people are simply evil scumbags doing evil scumbag things. Bombing hospitals because they thought they contained wounded troops isn't a defense, that's a whole war crime of its own!
They have an extremely long track record of committing atrocities. You don't need to go out of your way to give them the benefit of the doubt, unless you're literally in Russia where they'll imprison you for telling the truth about what they're doing.
I do think there is a strong possibility the people in charge in the US government believe an Iran state sponsored terrorism attack would be a political benefit to them. Such things boost support for the sitting President, and could also give political cover for additional authoritarian acts to help them retain power. Would they do the school attack on purpose? Maybe? But for sure they keep the war going until they generate the response they are looking for...
In the moment before war is initiated, before a strike is launched against a country, the leaders considering war must immediately assume they are likely to destroy a school full of children some point.
It's a really warped mind that could think the best way to build domestic war support would be to blow up a girls' school, but frankly i haven't seen anything from the u.s. government that makes it sound implausible.
I think a tragic mistake like this was foreseeable (in a vague sense), but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children.
The NYT had some good reporting on this, and you can see how the mistake was made. The elementary school used to be part of the IRGC base until 2016. Then it was fenced off and made an elementary school. The “shooter” (in this case, the USA) had a duty to check that the target was currently a valid military target. This verification, if it was done at all, was clearly the problem.
I’m sure you have someone directly responsible for this mistake who is going to have a hard time living with themselves. But like I said, starting a war leads to inevitable tragedy, and I doubt the people who are indirectly responsible will ever recognize their culpability in this.
It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or how the mistake was made. If it were your kid's elementary school that got blown up, would you say "Oh, well, it wasn't intentional. The bad guys just had outdated intelligence. These things happen."
It's not, but that's not what the USA wants. They want Iran to stop destabilising the ME, and to eliminate the threat to the USA consisting of the Iranian nuke program, the ballistic missile program, and the religious zeal to use them.
What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'? If this war goes on for too long Trump is cooked. He'll lose the election and might even be unpopular enough to cop the persecution he deserves.
> What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'?
The "Department of War" they created before promptly starting an absolute textbook War of Aggression is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the war was premeditated.
> They want Iran to stop destabilising the ME, and to eliminate the threat to the USA consisting of the Iranian nuke program, the ballistic missile program, and the religious zeal to use them.
US and Israeli leaders have said recently that the war will continue until Iran is not a threat, for mostly the exact reasons you just listed. I'm not sure how you bomb the religious zeal out of someone.
I was listening to a fairly right wing British pundit today, who is very publicly funded by British and European NATO interests, he said that the US saying they will continue to bomb Iran until it is not a threat reminded him a lot of one of Russia's state Ukraine war goals of "we will de-Nazify Ukraine".
very open ended nebulous goals with the benefit of being easily stretched around any agenda the invading party has at the moment.
"No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives," Hegseth said.
Words of your Secretary of War, not mine.
This is not a woke war. This is a war where you bomb schools and kill children.
The ridiculous renaming to "Department of War" supports this attitude, as well. They're declaring to everyone our intent to be belligerents. That the US military is meant to be aggressors and instigators, rather than defenders. All signs point to an administration bent on aggression and destruction.
I mean, to be fair, the US always has been the instigators, but it's now official, something this administration is proud of.
And? It's quite a leap to take from that statement that they intentionally bombed a school. In fact, if they were trying to bomb schools, then it's quite the coincidence that they missed all the rest, and just happened to hit the one that used to be a military base.
You're intentionally missing the point. Every time a bomb drops we're rolling the dice. Hits on civilian targets are inevitable, just like bugs are inevitable. The only solution is not to go to war at all. Don't blame the person who dropped the bomb, blame the people who ordered the bombs to be dropped.
No, I firmly believe that decades of dehumanization of Iranians in particular and Muslims in general makes this sort of "tragic mistake" desirable.
I don't think whoever was responsible for this gives many fucks about the lives of Iranians.
If a foreign power bombed anything in the US and children died people would just consider them monsters, without further considerations. No one would be pondering about faulty intel.
I refuse to launder the vileness of the aggressors here.
>but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children
Hegseth said to your face "No stupid rules of engagement", "This is not a politically correct war"
These are the people who have been purposely and loudly defending Israel bombing innocent people. They genuinely believe, as they say to your face, that it is important and necessary to be brutal and extreme to win war.
Intentionally disregarding rules of engagement and protecting innocent life IS intentionally bombing that school. Civilian casualties are a reality of war and the best you can do is work your ass off to reduce them, so openly advocating for NOT doing that is intentionally killing people.
Trust me, I’m not trying to defend the leadership of the DoW. But I do believe that there is a difference between reckless indifference and actually intentionally bombing a girls school.
Both sound like war crimes to me, but the latter sounds implausible given the known facts. Let’s not redefine words like ‘intentional’ just because we are appalled. Giving something awful an “awfuller” name is not going to help.
For the same reason they deposed Maduro, control, obviously.
Your mistake is thinking they care about Iranians enough to want them dead. The reality is that they want Iran to bend the knee, at which point they'll go back to not thinking about them at all.
This doesn't justify them double dipping. Raising prices on consumers to cover tarrif costs and then getting refunded for tarrif costs isn't ethical no matter who caused the tariffs.
Consumers didn't ask for this either, so are we going to see year-long sales from companies?
Guns aren’t a service, which is what Anthropic sells.
Anthropic has a contract for how their service is to be used, the government committed itself to following the contract by signing. Then it violated the contract.
Basically the government committed fraud by signing a contract that it clearly intended to violate. Then they tried to bully Anthropic into not doing anything about their breach of contract.
It’s mobster behavior. You’re saying Anthropic should just not sell services if it’s going to enforce the terms of service. You have it backwards: the government shouldn’t enter into contracts that it intends to violate.
The current administration has been caught flouting court orders in dozens of cases, to the point that courts are no longer even granting them the assumption that they’re operating in good faith.
I can think of a million good reasons not to give these people the tools to implement automated totalitarianism. Your proposal that they simply refuse service to the government entirely would be ideal.
They can have a contract that says whatever they want. My argument is this shouldn't try to push one of these contracts and the government shouldn't agree to such a contract.
Nowhere did I say elected officials should violate contracts.
> At present, the bare economics of it, without any subsidies, put solar as the most cost-effective new power capacity to add.
Not just more cost-effective for new power.
The operating expenses for a given coal plant are greater than the buildout cost for the equivalent solar+battery plant.
It no longer makes financial sense for coal plants to continue existing in almost all cases. This isn't some environmentalism thing, it's strictly hard math. Fossil energy is no longer viable without taxpayers keeping it on life support.
Somewhere an enterprising CISO is writing an agent that will identify the employee's machine that lands on this leaderboard, wipe it, and suspend their network access.
Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into.
Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability.
> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
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