This is partially true. In places where there isnтАЩt much in the way of police, criminals are often dealt to in very violent ways. Part of the reason the penal system exists is to stop vigilantism.
Progressives seem to think that if they stop punishing people that those people wonтАЩt receive any punishment, when really it just comes later and is much worse.
The perfect example is the parent who wonтАЩt discipline their children. The child never escapes discipline, it just ruins their life when it eventually comes. The same thing will happen with the lax policing and sentencing the progressives push for. If the state wonтАЩt exercise itтАЩs monopoly on the right to use violence, eventually the citizenry will be forced to take it back.
This is correct, and not only in Ireland. If the authorities refuse to do their job, others will, rather more decisively. And they will become the new authorities.
The girl, her boyfriend, his brother and two half-brother set a trap for the taxi-driver that had raped her (him being a non-western migrant, to the surprise of no-one), hanging him from a bird-watcher's tower where he hung for a week before the boday was found.
However, being not all that bright they also stole his wallet and phone and emptied his accounts, and the girl posted on social media that "my rapist is dead, tihihi".
One of them received life in prison for this, due to his age and to him having several previous convictions for narcotics-related crimes and violently resisting arrests. The others received between a few months to three years of juvenile detention (essentially youth prison).
Odds are, they'll get violently abused in there, or even murdered since almost all prisoners in Sweden are non-western migrants or of such origin.
I'm guessing the reason for no-one seeing this as some kind of fight-back against non-western migrants committing crimes is the backgrounds of the youths involved - low-key WT-people with no real political conviction, knowledge or affiliation, only interested in booze and drugs and petty crime.
Whether that is true or not I don't know and since several of the involved parties are minors, the court proceedings are partly classified.
Odds are, this will go to higher court and the sentences may be partially commuted - but if it gets political, the reverse is likely to happen.
Thanks for the update on this. Can't say I'm surprised they threw the book at them.
Honestly, I think the Swedish right is being a bit overprincipled by not turning them into folk heroes. Who cares if they're plebs who did it for personal rather than political reasons? Makes it more visceral. Who cares that they helped themselves to the rapist's belongings? Law of the jungle, that.
White Trash. The term has made great inroads in Sweden that last ten-ish years or so, especially among the far left (our far left, that is) and the libertarian/upper class where it intersects with "alt-right" people.
Or in other words, classic Von Oben-attitudes of the nouveau riche towards common people.
Here in Sweden, poor people live in council housing apartments in the cities or regional administrative centers; "rural poor" isn't a thing here.
If you're poor (i.e. on welfare), you aren't allowed to own property, not even a car unless you get an exemption and then the car may not be worth more than 10 000:- (about USD 1 000).
These kids come from two-income families living comfortably in the areas right outside the cities, and are uncultured, uneducated, ahistorical, apolitical and most concerned with creature comforts.
Poor in culture, not money - our class divides are kind of weird that way, that a highly educated and trained professional such as myself may earn as little as about $2500/month (gross) for a full-time teaching position, while a construction worker rakes in 50% more.
Five years university studies, demanding top grades from compulsory and secondary school vs. compulsory plus two years as an on-site intern worker at a local company.
Add to that the student loan debt anyone with "higher education" has (I've got about $30 000 left to pay, if that seems low remember we don't pay tuition here) - which the construction worker doesn't have. This means that his pay is even higher still, since the amount you have to pay back is determined by how many years you have to retirement-age. If you want to pay off at a faster rate, you have to ask permission to do so (not that you'll be able to).
Swedish class-divides are nowadays largely by income alone, not culture. Since it galls and irks the "crypto-bro" kind of people who see themselves as Homo Novus Nobilis that lowly plummers or welders earn far more and command much greater respect, they feel a compulsive need to "get back at them" by denigrating anything the working class enjoys.
Not to mention that the worker will drive a city-jeep or a covered pick-up and tinker with it to keep it going, while the bourgeois yuppie-wannabe drives a Tesla and have to drive it to a mechanic's just to change to winter-tyres.
It's tangled and messy and there's a metric fuck-ton more to say on this, but that's the core: bourgeois class-snobbery and envy vs uncouth and uncultured hedonist workers.
That's not so different from North America. Tradesmen tend to be a kind of working class aristocracy, making excellent money but quite plebeian in their tastes. The bougie "middle" class types hate them, since they don't make as much and are burdened with more debt. The lumpenproles are really their own thing - an underclass supporting itself from welfare and drug dealing, politically irrelevant for the most part.
That experiment with "Mouse Utopia" comes to mind, as the likely explanation.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened, had the US-and-friends either picked Huntington over Fukuyama, or simply declared a new Enemy when the East Bloc started crumbling.
I can't but help thinking that we'd been better off, culturally speaking, with either choice than with the path picked.
That goes for both makro-scale stuff like NATO and EU as well as mikro-scale stuff like a taxi driver buyintg alcohol for minors in exchange for sexual favours (this last is from the trial re: the five youths).
Be very careful with that thought. They are not politically irrelevant, they are bought votes here in Canada, as well as in the great Democrat-run cities south of us...
I also wanted to comment on the "Rural WT." Real rural (ie farm) families have enough work and structure for the children. Despite attempts via genetic engineering and other research it has not yet proven possible to breed cows who get up at 11:30 and only want to be milked once. We do have some good robotic systems now but the real rural families are working people.
The great thing now is that the trades can raise their prices to keep up with actual inflation, most of the salaried "intelligentsia" continue to fall behind. (I have had my fees (income) suppressed from the time I started working in 1981 until I was purged for declining my clot-shot.) The other benefit for the trades is the ability , so far, to work for actual cash. Little wonder that the CBDC is so attractive to our rulers.
Very little of the rural population works in agriculture anymore. Those who do are the salt of the earth, I agree, but they're a small minority.
Problem with trades is that there's a hard cap on earnings. Also hard on the body. Doesn't really use the mind - I rather bridle at the meme that smart boys rejected from universities due to DIE should just become plumbers, it's a waste of their potential. Also an excellent way to isolate them from the mechanisms of status and power.
Funny how the snobby bourgeois behave the same in different countries.
Here in the Uk theyтАЩre the ones holding up the refugees welcome placards, if questioned about their willingness to take in and house a refugee in their homes they never have the space or the time.
They openly show their disdain for the working class, many are hardworking tradespeople who earn a very good living.
These are the people who will spend their money wisely, pay off their mortgage and retire early as possible.
The bourgeois may have higher education levels but little hands on practical skills, they see mass immigration as a way to punish those who they view as lower than them. They however donтАЩt want to live with or anywhere near the dross theyтАЩre happy to import, their contempt is now catching up with them now though.
My mother, a life-long socialist, except once in 1968 (any Canadian will get this, and my wife and her daughter revisited the error in 2015!) welcomed sequentially three Hungarian refugees into our home in 1956. My father supported a Czech defector in 1968 for three years. But this was all done privately, and we kept social contact for many years .
This is true in all globalist-corrupted western nations. We see it here in Canada and in the USA. People ARE starting to adopt a vigilante attitude: we have no other choice. IтАЩd rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
Discipline or beating? Because the latter is not the former, and to the degree the latter is employed in purported pursuit of the former, the farther from the path of discipline you have wandered, and the further down the road to creating your own personal Hamas you have travelled (that is: someone instructed in violence seeking to eradicate its originator).
My very complex needs (severely autistic, developmental delay, allergies, OCD, etc) stepson is a two-person containment risk, and when he melts down, strength and agility are essential to the task. However, if those are the only criteria for choosing support staff there will be constant daily meltdowns, violence violence violence. If the support teams also have three more qualities: empathy, strong communication skills, & strong working knowledge of autism (becoming client specific over time), meltdowns may occur once every month or two.
Violent men are all too eager to claim more violent men are the answer to violent men. The problem is that only rarely is that truly needed; however, once commenced, it is too late for the other solutions to save those upon whom the violent men act.
Nobody but latent authoritarians want a king, and then only one in their own image.
Also: letтАЩs not forget the Irish were as good at running slave raids as anyone. The Roman Empire was stretched too thin and the indomitable Irish were feared raiders. Where do you think Saint Patrick came from?
тАЬHow The Irish Saved Western CivilizationтАЭ is a great little read.
No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
So, I agree we need a different way. And so far all the ways chosen by men with guns, have brought us here. Like I say, men with guns always want to participate too soon.
I sure donтАЩt look to accelerationism.
If we were living in northern Gaza on Oct 8 we would be there still, or dead. Families w major disabilities go first when systems collapse.
Have you done a cost-analysis of what such care for a severly autistic human is?
Ideas of rights, -isms and whatnot doesn't enter into it, because they do nothing to mitigate real costs.
24/7 care means at least three full-time employees, probably more than that (weekends, sick leave, et c). That's three adults, and by what you list as "truly needed" you want people with skills and traits you don't get for minimum wage.
Since I don't know wages in Ireland or Britain, I'll not use any numbers but consider this: the autistic produces nothing. That human's economical effect will be an ever-increasing net-negative during his/her's lifetime. The three full-time caretakers are all also a net cost, since caring for someone who can't produce so they can pay for their own care isn't productive either.
Odds are, you're looking at an average net loss equaling a year's average pay, every month. That means that those resources used up cannot be used for others, or for lowered taxes.
Since I know it's very easy to read the above the wrong way I'm putting in a caveat here: the above is the way it is, no matter anyone's opinion. It is not an endorsement for any specific policy: it is simply something that must be considered and solved.
You are absolutely correct. The community or state take on the burden and tax the citizenry, so we as a civilization must decide: support all similarly challenged individuals to the greatest degree possible? Warehouse them efficiently with little regard for quality of life? Or sacrifice all runts?
Some argue the worth of a civilization is revealed in precisely this choice.
And as it is technologically possible for everyone on the planet to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle, we *can* go with option 1 part and parcel. We just seem to prefer to worship billionaires.
Technologically possible is debatable, since we are not all equal as human cultures. Look at Ethiopia: there's land a-plenty and the nation needn't ever have suffered the famines it became synonymous with in the1980s.
But the communistic regime let party officials confiscate well-tended and profitable lands and farms, making it pointless for anyone to grow more than they themselves needed, ensuring any disruption would result in starvation.
Also, foreign aid ensured the regime could remain in power, keep the people down and even "tax" refugee and expat ehtiopians by holding their kin hostage in the homeland, since the regime completely lacks incentive to change.
Now compare it to Norway, which was a dirt-poor barely industrialised nation during the 19th century and who went from this state to one of the most prosperous, peaceful, least crime-ridden and most high-trust societies inside two generations after gaining independence in 1905.
Point being, each people must develop along its own cultural path, thereby being able to by itself determine what and how to solve problems (and decide what is a problem in the first place) if it is to achieve post-scarcity levels of production/distribution. Imposing a cookie-cutter model or ideology, be it neo-liberalism or corporate capitalism or communism, doesn't work for that very reason: ideologies are culturally coded to start with.
I cannot recommend Francis Fukuyama's works on this topic enough, not just because of his learning but becasue he has shown himself willing and capable to change his position when reality doesn't act according to theory.
> Point being, each people must develop along its own cultural path, thereby being able to by itself determine what and how to solve problems (and decide what is a problem in the first place) if it is to achieve post-scarcity levels of production/distribution.
The problem is, most cultural paths just lead to poverty.
However, even if they do we are left with these alternatives:
Either leave them alone to let them learn how to work their way out of poverty - as all european nations did.
Or try to "up-lift" them. Look at 20th century history. Look at all the money spent in Africa to zero net benefit for anyone save dictators and corrupt officials.
The only thing aid ever achieved was making a problem permanent: it's the well-known well-studied welfare-trap on a national, even global level.
> Or try to "up-lift" them. Look at 20th century history. Look at all the money spent in Africa to zero net benefit for anyone save dictators and corrupt officials.
Well, the "up-lift" strategy did work in India. Of course, that was before the World Bank and WTO were taken over by woke/green lefties.
> Convesely, the Industrial Revolution led to poverty as-yet unseen anywhere as people became surplus to machine-labour.
Um, no. The only reason that seems like a reasonable claim is that you have a ridiculously rosy picture of what pre-industrial society was like, heavily influenced by leftist propaganda.
Jeremy, you and Rikard have raised some very interesting and difficult questions, to which I freely admit I do not have answers. But here's a thought...
If the rise in autism, allergies and the other tribulations troubling your stepson are in fact vaccine injuries, how about the billionaires in the pharmaceutical industry be held liable for his lifetime care?
We might see a very rapid decline in such disabilities if the concept of Responsibility was seriously revisited in these the late stages of our civilization.
IтАЩd put a lot more stock in enviro-chemical soup as a significant causative factor; and I believe legislation there is wilfully ponderous, obliging a plaintiff to show direct action of agent X to cause condition Y or some such.
TтАЩwould be better if it was onus legislation, obliging the mfr to prove Agent X safe, period.
And making a case for autism as distinct for financial support (especially based on disproven vaxxophobic theories), is the wrong direction. MEDICAL SUPPORT should be free period, and societyтАЩs general position here re: all disabilities is the key.
The last thing we need is a(nother?) non-medical тАЬyour condition may not qualify for support according to bureaucracyтАЭ layer.
I disagree with you regarding "disproven vaxxophobic theories": I think the evidence is in regarding a causative link between childhood vaccination schedules and autism.
And this leads to why I also disagree with the contention that "medical support should be free period."
The whole concept of Universal Healthcare fell apart for me once I put this together: I am a healthy person who works at being healthy. I haven't used the "services" of the medical profession for at least a decade and a half. Why do I have to pay for other people's health care, especially when they refuse to listen to any advice from a demonstrably healthy, well-informed person like me?
Don't get me wrong - I have great admiration for people who do the work of caring for the less healthy among us. But we have to get past the victimhood model of healthcare. It's just a license for the pharmo-medical industry to keep siphoning off our wealth, and our well-being.
The patient data of Dr. Paul Thomas, comparing health outcomes of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children in his practice, sure struck me as evidence that vaccination increases rates of many chronic health problems. 2 minute video:
From a purely epistemological perspective, secure identification of the causal agent is historically the last element to be identified in a casual relationship. Examples of "if we do X, Y happens, but we don't know why" vastly outnumber cases in which we do know why. Insisting on a causal agent before admitting an obvious relationship is pure midwittery.
We always use the fallback explanation "It's Multifactorial" when we haven't identified a cause for a symptom cluster (syndrome) or diagnosis.
When I was a schoolboy I do not recall any "peanut allergies" , nor any autistic children in a school of 5-600. Now there are 2-3 in a class of fewer than 30. Consider the Bradford- Hill criteria and reconsider your certainty. I have learned three new concepts through the Covid Plandemic- Cancel Culture, Gaslighting, and Blue (or Red-) Pilling.
Despite enjoying many lectures and dinners with attractive representatives, I am aware that the pharmaceutical companies have a fiscal requirement; after the 737Max crashes I also began to understand the concept of "captured regulators."
Late to the show, I now understand the corruption and lies perpetrated by our medical journals, authorities, and mainstream press.
YouтАЩll understand IтАЩm not interested in ceding control of public health to a proponent of tinfoilia. (You have to pay because childhood poverty, malnutrition, and the many attendant ailments that share map overlays with poverty and/or industrialization, are not the fault of those most affected but instead are negative externalities of our nicer life opportunities. DonтАЩt think of dis-ease as individual; it manifests individually but infects or affects the community or society.
I agree with you that there is are some arguments to be made for publicly funded health care. The problem is, we have such a corrupt system administering that health care.
How many public health dollars were spent on covid vaccines? Or covid countermeasures (ventilators, midazolam, remdesivir etc.)? Or paying off hospitals and doctors to go along with the scam? And how much are we paying for all the vaccine injuries, those that have already manifested, and those that are yet to manifest?
I тАЬchoseтАЭ not to take the vaccine, yet, as a tax payer, I have to fund all of this?
If we are going to have a debate about the pros and cons of publicly funded health care, we have to find a way to make sure the тАЬhealth care systemтАЭ is not a slush fund for the pharma-medical complex.
> And as it is technologically possible for everyone on the planet to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle, we *can* go with option 1 part and parcel. We just seem to prefer to worship billionaires.
True, in a sense option one is in fact technologically possible. However, the only reason society is capable of reaching and maintaining that level of technology is due to the incentives inherent in capitalism, what you derisively dismissed as "worshiping billionaires".
The number of non-subsistence humans has grown remarkably over the past century and the proportion in penury has dropped. Industrial economies are almost incomprehensibly productive, but also considerably destructive to the natural environment, soil, and biosphere.
Why do you think the globalists want us culled down to 500 million or so?
When I read Thomas Malthus at age 15 and then saw the projections from the Club of Rome I was a proponent of constrained population growth.
I have travelled to many places on earth and seen much open land, I don't think we all need to eat bugs at this density. Even Japan is now worried about declining population; between visits 4 decades apart I still could see considerable open space.
We eat diesel: look at tractors, trucks, trains, and ships. The current assault on energy consumption is the rate limitation on continued growth, wealth, and sustenance. This is targeted at the wealthy productive western economies of course- China and India are building coal power plants as fast as they can, and third world countries are not rushing to build windmills or solar farms.
So "technologically possible" is a rather disingenuous statement.
You donтАЩt know whether this particular autistic, or another kid with some other issue, or anyone else for that matter, will тАЬproduce nothing.тАЭ Sometimes the odds are going to be higher, sometimes lower, but you really canтАЩt know that with certainty. What you can be certain of, is that the odds that a child with a developmental disability will тАЬproduce nothingтАЭ are much higher, when that child (and its caregivers) donтАЩt have the resources to grow up to its maximum potential.
Sadly, you're wrong. In an older world where most labour was done manually, even severly autistic people could be given simple manual jobs and could provide if not a lot so at least some kind of contribution to the farm's economy.
For the past century or so, that isn't the cae any longer and today an autistic will compete with a lot of normal humans for what low-income low-requirement jobs there are.
Furthermore, consider what I pointed out: the amount of care and time (i.e. cost) required. That cost will never be recouped, it remains a net loss economically speaking, no matter if you manage to train the autistic to stack shelves in a supermarket or not.
Yes, I do know most people who are born retarded or with other disabilities and handicaps will be a net cost to their family or soceity, that's such a basic fact it can't really be debated. Autistics especially are severly impacted by today's extreme focus on personality and sociability over actual skill, dilligence and getting the job done. An employer simple cannot spare the resources it takes to make a profitable labourer out of an autistic of the kind initially described - especially not when said employer can simply hire someone /without/ those problems. It's not any queerer than that a man with two functioning legs will always beat a one-legged one in a race.
The able autistic is largely a myth, enforced by Hollywood and people who feel better if they in contravention to fact and reality see the disabled, retarded and handicapped as equally abled of only society would make it so. The vast majority of them are mentally retarded with low IQ and low tolerance for stress, add to that hypersensitivity and anxiety disorders cause by their inability to comprehend social interactions on insitinct. A tiny percentage are HFAs (or "Aspies") and it is from that group media and sadly many educators have chosen to creat "the able autistic". While HFAs can be very intelligent in their limited way, they are still socially impaired and have to use their rather mechanistic intelligence to compensate their disabilities, something which causes great emotional stress and anxiety their entire lives.
You see, I used to be a teacher, and have taught and trained HFAs for about 25 years, on and off, of all ages from early teens to young adults. Here in Sweden, unemployment among autistics is close to 85% - that includes the HFAs. It's not discrimination, it's that they simply can't compete: they aren't adaptable enough, they are too specialised, and they have meltdowns and frequently need sick leave, and few can take working full time or the rat-eat-rat mentality of having a career.
It's not a question of -isms, as I initially mentioned: it's sadly and simply the way it is, economically speaking.
> Sadly, you're wrong. In an older world where most labour was done manually, even severly autistic people could be given simple manual jobs and could provide if not a lot so at least some kind of contribution to the farm's economy.
The older world also couldn't afford to give an autistic three full time caretakers.
Of course not. As I said, the middle-class-for-all scenario is only recently technologically possible, so if my stepson were born elsewhere-or-when, things would be very different.
Rationally discussing things in a civilized manner is itself a skill that must be learned and accepted. And that, by definition, cannot be done via rational discussion.
Surely you didnтАЩt misunderstand me to be serious about doing you harm? The whole point was that our rational discussion of the alternative to punching, that is: rational discussion, was demonstrably preferable to might-makes-right.
And as far as my point about billionaires, you misunderstood.
Weilding power in the form of money on the order of a billion dollars, is not an order of magnitude any of us would agree to cede. I recognize no such king as rightful. Most people canтАЩt grok a billion dollars. I use this illustration to make the point: a million seconds takes less than 2 weeks; a billion seconds lasts more than thirty years. A billionaire is not a fancy millionaire, a billionaire is a policy catastrophe.
If there is profit AFTER the Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization achieves its titular mission statement, then those so inclined can duke it out for their share of that excess. But they donтАЩt get seconds before weтАЩve all had firsts.
> Surely you didnтАЩt misunderstand me to be serious about doing you harm? The whole point was that our rational discussion of the alternative to punching, that is: rational discussion, was demonstrably preferable to might-makes-right.
Well, I am being serious. The problem with rational discussion is that it only works if the other party is interested and able.
> Weilding power in the form of money on the order of a billion dollars, is not an order of magnitude any of us would agree to cede.
Hence the need for a distributed system with multiple billionaires. As opposed to putting all wealth under the control of some "Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization".
> If there is profit AFTER the Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization achieves its titular mission statement, then those so inclined can duke it out for their share of that excess. But they donтАЩt get seconds before weтАЩve all had firsts.
Let me try to explain my point one more time before I give up on your ability to engage in rational discussion. Your "Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization" would find that as it attempted to carry out its mission, all the wealth it was counting on suddenly starts evaporating.
Violence works a heck of a lot more than you seem to think it does. I seldom see it escalate. Usually a strong violent rebuttal to violence ends it. What the US does is a tit for tat violence. That is really bad. Someone kills 10 people needlessly. The US kills 10 back. ThatтАЩs dumb. You want to win. Not тАШget back at themтАЩ. I was a little guy in a very tough neighbourhood. 80 pounds in Grade 8. A bully was harassing me for months at lunch. He was two years older than me and normal size for his age. He would grab my milk carton and poke four or five holes in it with his pencil. My milk would stream out from each hole. I would get milky and have to cover the holes with my fingers and gulp it down. He would laugh and insult me. I had had enough so he did it one day and I poured it all over him. From across a lunch room table. He was going to fight me so I ran around the table and fought him. Before I could lose too badly it was broken up by teachers. The after school fighting arena was the church yard nearby. Every day the church yard would be where the days scraps were settled. тАШAfter school, William. At the church.тАЩ He outweighed me by probably 50 pounds. A totally unfair fight. Everyone said I should not go. It was not a fair fight. I knew it would not end until I fought him. I did okay. Not a win, but close enough my friends were saying I beat him. Which wasnтАЩt true. I remember saying тАШif that is a win I am sure glad I didnтАЩt loseтАЩ. Did that end everything? Probably not. But a buddy of mine, one of the tough guys in the area, Golden Gloves champ, who had tried to talk me out of fighting but who had respected my decision said тАШokay. Well done. I am proud of you. Now itтАЩs my turnтАЩ. My bully said тАШI donтАЩt have a problem with you Terry.тАЩ Terry said тАШyeah but I have one with youтАЩ. And beat him real bad. And the guy never bugged me ever again. Ever.
I recommend a reading of "Turtles All the Way Down" (not the children's story but the book available from RFK Jr.'s Children's Health Defense) and a perusal of AMidwesternDoctor on Substack with attention to essays on immunisation from fall, 2022.
I'm not really sure what the point you were making is. I'm not advocating violence, I'm saying that as discipline is inevitable, and the refusal to exercise it doesn't make it go away, it postpones it and makes it heavier when it eventually comes.
Your autistic stepson probably needs to be constantly regulated with a light touch, but if you get tired and let things slide then things will get out of hand and there will be a big, traumatic drama before his behaviour is re-regulated. I'm not saying that drama is a good thing, I'm saying it's inevitable. Your choice isn't whether or not you want to deal with his behaviour, it's the level at which you want to intervene.
Correct, he is not. In fact he is not a violent person. The meltdowns happen to him, he has no agency, he is as traumatized by what is unfolding as anyone. You canтАЩt imagine it, itтАЩs like nothing youтАЩve seen.
My point was that employing only the last resort (physical containment capable staff) will result in terrible quality of life for my stepson and constant meltdowns. The corollary for society is that the men with guns are mostly not needed, should be avoided as long as possible; but instead they are unleashed far, far too often.
I say again, violent young men are poorly socialized. I come from a family of educators and education-adjacent, and have a retired schoolteacher partner who spent the last half of her career in kindergarten. She probably knows more about five-year-olds than anyone youтАЩve met; sheтАЩs encountered every kind of personality, just as it is first confronting and engaging with the world. Her job was to lead these kids to cooperate with and value each other (o and curriculum cuz the little workers need their math, cram it in early- NOT! Her play-based-learning classroom always was the best behaved class (just ask the gym teacher and librarian!) and gets the best report card metrics without focusing on curriculum. Once kids learn how to cooperate and get the best out of school, they generally do).
> I say again, violent young men are poorly socialized.
I.e., they weren't spanked enough.
In any case, if people rationally believe violence will get them what they want, they will use it. The expected punishment is a major factor in that calculation.
> I come from a family of educators and education-adjacent, and have a retired schoolteacher partner who spent the last half of her career in kindergarten. She probably knows more about five-year-olds than anyone youтАЩve met
Given the abysmal performance of our schools, I rather doubt that. Compare our current education system with that from as late a the 1920s. People left after middle school having learned more than most college students today.
Your US schools and my partnerтАЩs Canadian classroom are already worlds apart. You understandably decry a crummy system run by beancounters under policies meant to babysit the poor into the workforce. Anyone wanting more from public education in the US faces major uphill battles.
Fortunately the hundreds of students who benefited from her classroom are that much better off.
She knows the difference between socialized and beaten. You and your theory do not.
You imprison someone for stealing a TV NOT because the TV is so important. But because it is necessary to draw a line that cannot be crossed. Going into someoneтАЩs home is one such line. I hope Conor takes over.
That's absolutely insane. The police aren't there to protect the people, they're there to protect criminals from the people.
This is partially true. In places where there isnтАЩt much in the way of police, criminals are often dealt to in very violent ways. Part of the reason the penal system exists is to stop vigilantism.
Progressives seem to think that if they stop punishing people that those people wonтАЩt receive any punishment, when really it just comes later and is much worse.
The perfect example is the parent who wonтАЩt discipline their children. The child never escapes discipline, it just ruins their life when it eventually comes. The same thing will happen with the lax policing and sentencing the progressives push for. If the state wonтАЩt exercise itтАЩs monopoly on the right to use violence, eventually the citizenry will be forced to take it back.
This is correct, and not only in Ireland. If the authorities refuse to do their job, others will, rather more decisively. And they will become the new authorities.
That happened recently in Sweden. A young woman hanged her rapist with the help of her two brothers. I believe he was a "hooded youth" as it were.
She, her brother, and her boyfriend were heroes. Through I heard the Swedish nationalist underground did not treat them as such, surprisingly.
The verdicts in this case came today.
The girl, her boyfriend, his brother and two half-brother set a trap for the taxi-driver that had raped her (him being a non-western migrant, to the surprise of no-one), hanging him from a bird-watcher's tower where he hung for a week before the boday was found.
However, being not all that bright they also stole his wallet and phone and emptied his accounts, and the girl posted on social media that "my rapist is dead, tihihi".
One of them received life in prison for this, due to his age and to him having several previous convictions for narcotics-related crimes and violently resisting arrests. The others received between a few months to three years of juvenile detention (essentially youth prison).
Odds are, they'll get violently abused in there, or even murdered since almost all prisoners in Sweden are non-western migrants or of such origin.
I'm guessing the reason for no-one seeing this as some kind of fight-back against non-western migrants committing crimes is the backgrounds of the youths involved - low-key WT-people with no real political conviction, knowledge or affiliation, only interested in booze and drugs and petty crime.
Whether that is true or not I don't know and since several of the involved parties are minors, the court proceedings are partly classified.
Odds are, this will go to higher court and the sentences may be partially commuted - but if it gets political, the reverse is likely to happen.
Thanks for the update on this. Can't say I'm surprised they threw the book at them.
Honestly, I think the Swedish right is being a bit overprincipled by not turning them into folk heroes. Who cares if they're plebs who did it for personal rather than political reasons? Makes it more visceral. Who cares that they helped themselves to the rapist's belongings? Law of the jungle, that.
What are WT-people?
White Trash. The term has made great inroads in Sweden that last ten-ish years or so, especially among the far left (our far left, that is) and the libertarian/upper class where it intersects with "alt-right" people.
Or in other words, classic Von Oben-attitudes of the nouveau riche towards common people.
Offensive as the term may be, having grown up around the rural poor I don't find it inappropriate.
A bit lengthy, because background is needed:
Here in Sweden, poor people live in council housing apartments in the cities or regional administrative centers; "rural poor" isn't a thing here.
If you're poor (i.e. on welfare), you aren't allowed to own property, not even a car unless you get an exemption and then the car may not be worth more than 10 000:- (about USD 1 000).
These kids come from two-income families living comfortably in the areas right outside the cities, and are uncultured, uneducated, ahistorical, apolitical and most concerned with creature comforts.
Poor in culture, not money - our class divides are kind of weird that way, that a highly educated and trained professional such as myself may earn as little as about $2500/month (gross) for a full-time teaching position, while a construction worker rakes in 50% more.
Five years university studies, demanding top grades from compulsory and secondary school vs. compulsory plus two years as an on-site intern worker at a local company.
Add to that the student loan debt anyone with "higher education" has (I've got about $30 000 left to pay, if that seems low remember we don't pay tuition here) - which the construction worker doesn't have. This means that his pay is even higher still, since the amount you have to pay back is determined by how many years you have to retirement-age. If you want to pay off at a faster rate, you have to ask permission to do so (not that you'll be able to).
Swedish class-divides are nowadays largely by income alone, not culture. Since it galls and irks the "crypto-bro" kind of people who see themselves as Homo Novus Nobilis that lowly plummers or welders earn far more and command much greater respect, they feel a compulsive need to "get back at them" by denigrating anything the working class enjoys.
Not to mention that the worker will drive a city-jeep or a covered pick-up and tinker with it to keep it going, while the bourgeois yuppie-wannabe drives a Tesla and have to drive it to a mechanic's just to change to winter-tyres.
It's tangled and messy and there's a metric fuck-ton more to say on this, but that's the core: bourgeois class-snobbery and envy vs uncouth and uncultured hedonist workers.
That's not so different from North America. Tradesmen tend to be a kind of working class aristocracy, making excellent money but quite plebeian in their tastes. The bougie "middle" class types hate them, since they don't make as much and are burdened with more debt. The lumpenproles are really their own thing - an underclass supporting itself from welfare and drug dealing, politically irrelevant for the most part.
That experiment with "Mouse Utopia" comes to mind, as the likely explanation.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened, had the US-and-friends either picked Huntington over Fukuyama, or simply declared a new Enemy when the East Bloc started crumbling.
I can't but help thinking that we'd been better off, culturally speaking, with either choice than with the path picked.
That goes for both makro-scale stuff like NATO and EU as well as mikro-scale stuff like a taxi driver buyintg alcohol for minors in exchange for sexual favours (this last is from the trial re: the five youths).
Be very careful with that thought. They are not politically irrelevant, they are bought votes here in Canada, as well as in the great Democrat-run cities south of us...
I also wanted to comment on the "Rural WT." Real rural (ie farm) families have enough work and structure for the children. Despite attempts via genetic engineering and other research it has not yet proven possible to breed cows who get up at 11:30 and only want to be milked once. We do have some good robotic systems now but the real rural families are working people.
The great thing now is that the trades can raise their prices to keep up with actual inflation, most of the salaried "intelligentsia" continue to fall behind. (I have had my fees (income) suppressed from the time I started working in 1981 until I was purged for declining my clot-shot.) The other benefit for the trades is the ability , so far, to work for actual cash. Little wonder that the CBDC is so attractive to our rulers.
Very little of the rural population works in agriculture anymore. Those who do are the salt of the earth, I agree, but they're a small minority.
Problem with trades is that there's a hard cap on earnings. Also hard on the body. Doesn't really use the mind - I rather bridle at the meme that smart boys rejected from universities due to DIE should just become plumbers, it's a waste of their potential. Also an excellent way to isolate them from the mechanisms of status and power.
Funny how the snobby bourgeois behave the same in different countries.
Here in the Uk theyтАЩre the ones holding up the refugees welcome placards, if questioned about their willingness to take in and house a refugee in their homes they never have the space or the time.
They openly show their disdain for the working class, many are hardworking tradespeople who earn a very good living.
These are the people who will spend their money wisely, pay off their mortgage and retire early as possible.
The bourgeois may have higher education levels but little hands on practical skills, they see mass immigration as a way to punish those who they view as lower than them. They however donтАЩt want to live with or anywhere near the dross theyтАЩre happy to import, their contempt is now catching up with them now though.
Interesting.
My mother, a life-long socialist, except once in 1968 (any Canadian will get this, and my wife and her daughter revisited the error in 2015!) welcomed sequentially three Hungarian refugees into our home in 1956. My father supported a Czech defector in 1968 for three years. But this was all done privately, and we kept social contact for many years .
This is true in all globalist-corrupted western nations. We see it here in Canada and in the USA. People ARE starting to adopt a vigilante attitude: we have no other choice. IтАЩd rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
Discipline or beating? Because the latter is not the former, and to the degree the latter is employed in purported pursuit of the former, the farther from the path of discipline you have wandered, and the further down the road to creating your own personal Hamas you have travelled (that is: someone instructed in violence seeking to eradicate its originator).
My very complex needs (severely autistic, developmental delay, allergies, OCD, etc) stepson is a two-person containment risk, and when he melts down, strength and agility are essential to the task. However, if those are the only criteria for choosing support staff there will be constant daily meltdowns, violence violence violence. If the support teams also have three more qualities: empathy, strong communication skills, & strong working knowledge of autism (becoming client specific over time), meltdowns may occur once every month or two.
Violent men are all too eager to claim more violent men are the answer to violent men. The problem is that only rarely is that truly needed; however, once commenced, it is too late for the other solutions to save those upon whom the violent men act.
Nobody but latent authoritarians want a king, and then only one in their own image.
Also: letтАЩs not forget the Irish were as good at running slave raids as anyone. The Roman Empire was stretched too thin and the indomitable Irish were feared raiders. Where do you think Saint Patrick came from?
тАЬHow The Irish Saved Western CivilizationтАЭ is a great little read.
"Nobody but latent authoritarians want a king, and then only one in their own image."
As opposed to our wonderfully open-minded liberal political class, who are anything but authoritarian.
No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
So, I agree we need a different way. And so far all the ways chosen by men with guns, have brought us here. Like I say, men with guns always want to participate too soon.
I sure donтАЩt look to accelerationism.
If we were living in northern Gaza on Oct 8 we would be there still, or dead. Families w major disabilities go first when systems collapse.
Have you done a cost-analysis of what such care for a severly autistic human is?
Ideas of rights, -isms and whatnot doesn't enter into it, because they do nothing to mitigate real costs.
24/7 care means at least three full-time employees, probably more than that (weekends, sick leave, et c). That's three adults, and by what you list as "truly needed" you want people with skills and traits you don't get for minimum wage.
Since I don't know wages in Ireland or Britain, I'll not use any numbers but consider this: the autistic produces nothing. That human's economical effect will be an ever-increasing net-negative during his/her's lifetime. The three full-time caretakers are all also a net cost, since caring for someone who can't produce so they can pay for their own care isn't productive either.
Odds are, you're looking at an average net loss equaling a year's average pay, every month. That means that those resources used up cannot be used for others, or for lowered taxes.
Since I know it's very easy to read the above the wrong way I'm putting in a caveat here: the above is the way it is, no matter anyone's opinion. It is not an endorsement for any specific policy: it is simply something that must be considered and solved.
You are absolutely correct. The community or state take on the burden and tax the citizenry, so we as a civilization must decide: support all similarly challenged individuals to the greatest degree possible? Warehouse them efficiently with little regard for quality of life? Or sacrifice all runts?
Some argue the worth of a civilization is revealed in precisely this choice.
And as it is technologically possible for everyone on the planet to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle, we *can* go with option 1 part and parcel. We just seem to prefer to worship billionaires.
Technologically possible is debatable, since we are not all equal as human cultures. Look at Ethiopia: there's land a-plenty and the nation needn't ever have suffered the famines it became synonymous with in the1980s.
But the communistic regime let party officials confiscate well-tended and profitable lands and farms, making it pointless for anyone to grow more than they themselves needed, ensuring any disruption would result in starvation.
Also, foreign aid ensured the regime could remain in power, keep the people down and even "tax" refugee and expat ehtiopians by holding their kin hostage in the homeland, since the regime completely lacks incentive to change.
Now compare it to Norway, which was a dirt-poor barely industrialised nation during the 19th century and who went from this state to one of the most prosperous, peaceful, least crime-ridden and most high-trust societies inside two generations after gaining independence in 1905.
Point being, each people must develop along its own cultural path, thereby being able to by itself determine what and how to solve problems (and decide what is a problem in the first place) if it is to achieve post-scarcity levels of production/distribution. Imposing a cookie-cutter model or ideology, be it neo-liberalism or corporate capitalism or communism, doesn't work for that very reason: ideologies are culturally coded to start with.
I cannot recommend Francis Fukuyama's works on this topic enough, not just because of his learning but becasue he has shown himself willing and capable to change his position when reality doesn't act according to theory.
> Point being, each people must develop along its own cultural path, thereby being able to by itself determine what and how to solve problems (and decide what is a problem in the first place) if it is to achieve post-scarcity levels of production/distribution.
The problem is, most cultural paths just lead to poverty.
I'm not so sure about that.
However, even if they do we are left with these alternatives:
Either leave them alone to let them learn how to work their way out of poverty - as all european nations did.
Or try to "up-lift" them. Look at 20th century history. Look at all the money spent in Africa to zero net benefit for anyone save dictators and corrupt officials.
The only thing aid ever achieved was making a problem permanent: it's the well-known well-studied welfare-trap on a national, even global level.
> Or try to "up-lift" them. Look at 20th century history. Look at all the money spent in Africa to zero net benefit for anyone save dictators and corrupt officials.
Well, the "up-lift" strategy did work in India. Of course, that was before the World Bank and WTO were taken over by woke/green lefties.
> I'm not so sure about that.
You can see that most paths lead to poverty by looking at how horrifyingly poor people were before the industrial revolution.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1638185526078451713.html
In fact, the only known path out of poverty is the one England discovered during the second half of the 2nd millennium.
Convesely, the Industrial Revolution led to poverty as-yet unseen anywhere as people became surplus to machine-labour.
Yes, it eventually evens out but for those being made surplus until a new equilibrium is reached, that's cold comfort.
Oh, and people weren't poor the way we think they were, before the Industrial Revolution. Not here, since we never had a feudal system.
That's the problem with economists using money as a measurement for development - it doesn't show reality.
> Convesely, the Industrial Revolution led to poverty as-yet unseen anywhere as people became surplus to machine-labour.
Um, no. The only reason that seems like a reasonable claim is that you have a ridiculously rosy picture of what pre-industrial society was like, heavily influenced by leftist propaganda.
Jeremy, you and Rikard have raised some very interesting and difficult questions, to which I freely admit I do not have answers. But here's a thought...
If the rise in autism, allergies and the other tribulations troubling your stepson are in fact vaccine injuries, how about the billionaires in the pharmaceutical industry be held liable for his lifetime care?
We might see a very rapid decline in such disabilities if the concept of Responsibility was seriously revisited in these the late stages of our civilization.
IтАЩd put a lot more stock in enviro-chemical soup as a significant causative factor; and I believe legislation there is wilfully ponderous, obliging a plaintiff to show direct action of agent X to cause condition Y or some such.
TтАЩwould be better if it was onus legislation, obliging the mfr to prove Agent X safe, period.
And making a case for autism as distinct for financial support (especially based on disproven vaxxophobic theories), is the wrong direction. MEDICAL SUPPORT should be free period, and societyтАЩs general position here re: all disabilities is the key.
The last thing we need is a(nother?) non-medical тАЬyour condition may not qualify for support according to bureaucracyтАЭ layer.
I disagree with you regarding "disproven vaxxophobic theories": I think the evidence is in regarding a causative link between childhood vaccination schedules and autism.
And this leads to why I also disagree with the contention that "medical support should be free period."
The whole concept of Universal Healthcare fell apart for me once I put this together: I am a healthy person who works at being healthy. I haven't used the "services" of the medical profession for at least a decade and a half. Why do I have to pay for other people's health care, especially when they refuse to listen to any advice from a demonstrably healthy, well-informed person like me?
Don't get me wrong - I have great admiration for people who do the work of caring for the less healthy among us. But we have to get past the victimhood model of healthcare. It's just a license for the pharmo-medical industry to keep siphoning off our wealth, and our well-being.
" the evidence is in regarding a causative link between childhood vaccination schedules and autism."
Yes, it is in: there is no causative link.
The patient data of Dr. Paul Thomas, comparing health outcomes of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children in his practice, sure struck me as evidence that vaccination increases rates of many chronic health problems. 2 minute video:
https://heroesvsvillains.substack.com/p/vaccinated-compared-to-unvaccinated
So I don't care whether a "causative link" with autism has yet been proven to your satisfaction. Why poison children?
From a purely epistemological perspective, secure identification of the causal agent is historically the last element to be identified in a casual relationship. Examples of "if we do X, Y happens, but we don't know why" vastly outnumber cases in which we do know why. Insisting on a causal agent before admitting an obvious relationship is pure midwittery.
We always use the fallback explanation "It's Multifactorial" when we haven't identified a cause for a symptom cluster (syndrome) or diagnosis.
When I was a schoolboy I do not recall any "peanut allergies" , nor any autistic children in a school of 5-600. Now there are 2-3 in a class of fewer than 30. Consider the Bradford- Hill criteria and reconsider your certainty. I have learned three new concepts through the Covid Plandemic- Cancel Culture, Gaslighting, and Blue (or Red-) Pilling.
Despite enjoying many lectures and dinners with attractive representatives, I am aware that the pharmaceutical companies have a fiscal requirement; after the 737Max crashes I also began to understand the concept of "captured regulators."
Late to the show, I now understand the corruption and lies perpetrated by our medical journals, authorities, and mainstream press.
How could I forget? The CDC shredded that information years ago.
No, I mean, there is no evidence that there is a link because there's no causative link.
YouтАЩll understand IтАЩm not interested in ceding control of public health to a proponent of tinfoilia. (You have to pay because childhood poverty, malnutrition, and the many attendant ailments that share map overlays with poverty and/or industrialization, are not the fault of those most affected but instead are negative externalities of our nicer life opportunities. DonтАЩt think of dis-ease as individual; it manifests individually but infects or affects the community or society.
I agree with you that there is are some arguments to be made for publicly funded health care. The problem is, we have such a corrupt system administering that health care.
How many public health dollars were spent on covid vaccines? Or covid countermeasures (ventilators, midazolam, remdesivir etc.)? Or paying off hospitals and doctors to go along with the scam? And how much are we paying for all the vaccine injuries, those that have already manifested, and those that are yet to manifest?
I тАЬchoseтАЭ not to take the vaccine, yet, as a tax payer, I have to fund all of this?
If we are going to have a debate about the pros and cons of publicly funded health care, we have to find a way to make sure the тАЬhealth care systemтАЭ is not a slush fund for the pharma-medical complex.
> And as it is technologically possible for everyone on the planet to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle, we *can* go with option 1 part and parcel. We just seem to prefer to worship billionaires.
True, in a sense option one is in fact technologically possible. However, the only reason society is capable of reaching and maintaining that level of technology is due to the incentives inherent in capitalism, what you derisively dismissed as "worshiping billionaires".
And it is still working, so far.
The number of non-subsistence humans has grown remarkably over the past century and the proportion in penury has dropped. Industrial economies are almost incomprehensibly productive, but also considerably destructive to the natural environment, soil, and biosphere.
Why do you think the globalists want us culled down to 500 million or so?
When I read Thomas Malthus at age 15 and then saw the projections from the Club of Rome I was a proponent of constrained population growth.
I have travelled to many places on earth and seen much open land, I don't think we all need to eat bugs at this density. Even Japan is now worried about declining population; between visits 4 decades apart I still could see considerable open space.
We eat diesel: look at tractors, trucks, trains, and ships. The current assault on energy consumption is the rate limitation on continued growth, wealth, and sustenance. This is targeted at the wealthy productive western economies of course- China and India are building coal power plants as fast as they can, and third world countries are not rushing to build windmills or solar farms.
So "technologically possible" is a rather disingenuous statement.
You donтАЩt know whether this particular autistic, or another kid with some other issue, or anyone else for that matter, will тАЬproduce nothing.тАЭ Sometimes the odds are going to be higher, sometimes lower, but you really canтАЩt know that with certainty. What you can be certain of, is that the odds that a child with a developmental disability will тАЬproduce nothingтАЭ are much higher, when that child (and its caregivers) donтАЩt have the resources to grow up to its maximum potential.
Sadly, you're wrong. In an older world where most labour was done manually, even severly autistic people could be given simple manual jobs and could provide if not a lot so at least some kind of contribution to the farm's economy.
For the past century or so, that isn't the cae any longer and today an autistic will compete with a lot of normal humans for what low-income low-requirement jobs there are.
Furthermore, consider what I pointed out: the amount of care and time (i.e. cost) required. That cost will never be recouped, it remains a net loss economically speaking, no matter if you manage to train the autistic to stack shelves in a supermarket or not.
Yes, I do know most people who are born retarded or with other disabilities and handicaps will be a net cost to their family or soceity, that's such a basic fact it can't really be debated. Autistics especially are severly impacted by today's extreme focus on personality and sociability over actual skill, dilligence and getting the job done. An employer simple cannot spare the resources it takes to make a profitable labourer out of an autistic of the kind initially described - especially not when said employer can simply hire someone /without/ those problems. It's not any queerer than that a man with two functioning legs will always beat a one-legged one in a race.
The able autistic is largely a myth, enforced by Hollywood and people who feel better if they in contravention to fact and reality see the disabled, retarded and handicapped as equally abled of only society would make it so. The vast majority of them are mentally retarded with low IQ and low tolerance for stress, add to that hypersensitivity and anxiety disorders cause by their inability to comprehend social interactions on insitinct. A tiny percentage are HFAs (or "Aspies") and it is from that group media and sadly many educators have chosen to creat "the able autistic". While HFAs can be very intelligent in their limited way, they are still socially impaired and have to use their rather mechanistic intelligence to compensate their disabilities, something which causes great emotional stress and anxiety their entire lives.
You see, I used to be a teacher, and have taught and trained HFAs for about 25 years, on and off, of all ages from early teens to young adults. Here in Sweden, unemployment among autistics is close to 85% - that includes the HFAs. It's not discrimination, it's that they simply can't compete: they aren't adaptable enough, they are too specialised, and they have meltdowns and frequently need sick leave, and few can take working full time or the rat-eat-rat mentality of having a career.
It's not a question of -isms, as I initially mentioned: it's sadly and simply the way it is, economically speaking.
> Sadly, you're wrong. In an older world where most labour was done manually, even severly autistic people could be given simple manual jobs and could provide if not a lot so at least some kind of contribution to the farm's economy.
The older world also couldn't afford to give an autistic three full time caretakers.
Of course not. As I said, the middle-class-for-all scenario is only recently technologically possible, so if my stepson were born elsewhere-or-when, things would be very different.
> Discipline or beating? Because the latter is not the former
It can be.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/is-spanking-really-harmful-to-children
YouтАЩre wrong here, and without addressing the article cited (TL/DR yet), I propose to punch you in the mouth until you agree with me.
Or...hear me out...maybe youтАЩd prefer to discuss it in a civilized manner.
And that, my friend, is all the proof you need. No one chooses punches in the mouth. No one does not resent corporal punishment.
Rationally discussing things in a civilized manner is itself a skill that must be learned and accepted. And that, by definition, cannot be done via rational discussion.
https://www.scifiwright.com/2023/11/believing-is-seeing/
In any case, you are the one badly in need of correction, possibly via physical violence.
Of course it is done by rational discussion.
Well, so far you've yet to demonstrate the ability to engage in rational discussion.
Surely you didnтАЩt misunderstand me to be serious about doing you harm? The whole point was that our rational discussion of the alternative to punching, that is: rational discussion, was demonstrably preferable to might-makes-right.
And as far as my point about billionaires, you misunderstood.
Weilding power in the form of money on the order of a billion dollars, is not an order of magnitude any of us would agree to cede. I recognize no such king as rightful. Most people canтАЩt grok a billion dollars. I use this illustration to make the point: a million seconds takes less than 2 weeks; a billion seconds lasts more than thirty years. A billionaire is not a fancy millionaire, a billionaire is a policy catastrophe.
If there is profit AFTER the Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization achieves its titular mission statement, then those so inclined can duke it out for their share of that excess. But they donтАЩt get seconds before weтАЩve all had firsts.
> Surely you didnтАЩt misunderstand me to be serious about doing you harm? The whole point was that our rational discussion of the alternative to punching, that is: rational discussion, was demonstrably preferable to might-makes-right.
Well, I am being serious. The problem with rational discussion is that it only works if the other party is interested and able.
> Weilding power in the form of money on the order of a billion dollars, is not an order of magnitude any of us would agree to cede.
Hence the need for a distributed system with multiple billionaires. As opposed to putting all wealth under the control of some "Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization".
> If there is profit AFTER the Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization achieves its titular mission statement, then those so inclined can duke it out for their share of that excess. But they donтАЩt get seconds before weтАЩve all had firsts.
Did you even read my comment on the subject? Here is the link in case you lost it. (https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-day-the-irish-snapped/comment/44275690)
Let me try to explain my point one more time before I give up on your ability to engage in rational discussion. Your "Make-Everyone-Basically-Middle-Class organization" would find that as it attempted to carry out its mission, all the wealth it was counting on suddenly starts evaporating.
Never mind the corporation, that wasnтАЩt serious. IтАЩll come back to this but bedtime now.
Violence works a heck of a lot more than you seem to think it does. I seldom see it escalate. Usually a strong violent rebuttal to violence ends it. What the US does is a tit for tat violence. That is really bad. Someone kills 10 people needlessly. The US kills 10 back. ThatтАЩs dumb. You want to win. Not тАШget back at themтАЩ. I was a little guy in a very tough neighbourhood. 80 pounds in Grade 8. A bully was harassing me for months at lunch. He was two years older than me and normal size for his age. He would grab my milk carton and poke four or five holes in it with his pencil. My milk would stream out from each hole. I would get milky and have to cover the holes with my fingers and gulp it down. He would laugh and insult me. I had had enough so he did it one day and I poured it all over him. From across a lunch room table. He was going to fight me so I ran around the table and fought him. Before I could lose too badly it was broken up by teachers. The after school fighting arena was the church yard nearby. Every day the church yard would be where the days scraps were settled. тАШAfter school, William. At the church.тАЩ He outweighed me by probably 50 pounds. A totally unfair fight. Everyone said I should not go. It was not a fair fight. I knew it would not end until I fought him. I did okay. Not a win, but close enough my friends were saying I beat him. Which wasnтАЩt true. I remember saying тАШif that is a win I am sure glad I didnтАЩt loseтАЩ. Did that end everything? Probably not. But a buddy of mine, one of the tough guys in the area, Golden Gloves champ, who had tried to talk me out of fighting but who had respected my decision said тАШokay. Well done. I am proud of you. Now itтАЩs my turnтАЩ. My bully said тАШI donтАЩt have a problem with you Terry.тАЩ Terry said тАШyeah but I have one with youтАЩ. And beat him real bad. And the guy never bugged me ever again. Ever.
I did read Cahill some years ago.
I recommend a reading of "Turtles All the Way Down" (not the children's story but the book available from RFK Jr.'s Children's Health Defense) and a perusal of AMidwesternDoctor on Substack with attention to essays on immunisation from fall, 2022.
I wish you the best in managing your son.
I'm not really sure what the point you were making is. I'm not advocating violence, I'm saying that as discipline is inevitable, and the refusal to exercise it doesn't make it go away, it postpones it and makes it heavier when it eventually comes.
Your autistic stepson probably needs to be constantly regulated with a light touch, but if you get tired and let things slide then things will get out of hand and there will be a big, traumatic drama before his behaviour is re-regulated. I'm not saying that drama is a good thing, I'm saying it's inevitable. Your choice isn't whether or not you want to deal with his behaviour, it's the level at which you want to intervene.
Most violent men are nothing like your stepson.
Correct, he is not. In fact he is not a violent person. The meltdowns happen to him, he has no agency, he is as traumatized by what is unfolding as anyone. You canтАЩt imagine it, itтАЩs like nothing youтАЩve seen.
My point was that employing only the last resort (physical containment capable staff) will result in terrible quality of life for my stepson and constant meltdowns. The corollary for society is that the men with guns are mostly not needed, should be avoided as long as possible; but instead they are unleashed far, far too often.
I say again, violent young men are poorly socialized. I come from a family of educators and education-adjacent, and have a retired schoolteacher partner who spent the last half of her career in kindergarten. She probably knows more about five-year-olds than anyone youтАЩve met; sheтАЩs encountered every kind of personality, just as it is first confronting and engaging with the world. Her job was to lead these kids to cooperate with and value each other (o and curriculum cuz the little workers need their math, cram it in early- NOT! Her play-based-learning classroom always was the best behaved class (just ask the gym teacher and librarian!) and gets the best report card metrics without focusing on curriculum. Once kids learn how to cooperate and get the best out of school, they generally do).
> I say again, violent young men are poorly socialized.
I.e., they weren't spanked enough.
In any case, if people rationally believe violence will get them what they want, they will use it. The expected punishment is a major factor in that calculation.
> I come from a family of educators and education-adjacent, and have a retired schoolteacher partner who spent the last half of her career in kindergarten. She probably knows more about five-year-olds than anyone youтАЩve met
Given the abysmal performance of our schools, I rather doubt that. Compare our current education system with that from as late a the 1920s. People left after middle school having learned more than most college students today.
How many children do you have, Eugene?
Your US schools and my partnerтАЩs Canadian classroom are already worlds apart. You understandably decry a crummy system run by beancounters under policies meant to babysit the poor into the workforce. Anyone wanting more from public education in the US faces major uphill battles.
Fortunately the hundreds of students who benefited from her classroom are that much better off.
She knows the difference between socialized and beaten. You and your theory do not.
You imprison someone for stealing a TV NOT because the TV is so important. But because it is necessary to draw a line that cannot be crossed. Going into someoneтАЩs home is one such line. I hope Conor takes over.