Ron Swanson

Jackson and Lincoln

Oh no. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just my existence. It just streams out of my brain, through my fingers instantaneously. There is no first half second half.

Although I am a known terrible writer.

Worth noting, this is normal from my perspective. I think all of you are the weird ones.

Nope

I’m one of the people who doesn’t have a little voice. It weirds me out that other people do.

I am libertarian-ish, but generally don’t like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren’t represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).

For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant’s pollution.

From a libertarian lens:

• The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it’s obvious that markets failed and we’d all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
• The government should stay out of people’s bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
• The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)

Unfortunately the things I’d like to see from a libertarian don’t actually show up.

Ok I. The interest of an honest conversation these are my thoughts:

• I haven’t seen any reports of beatings during the arrests. Can you send me something if you saw that? Were there brutalizations taking place? If so, you’re absolutely right.
• I have no problem with the protest, but I do think there is a line between protest and vandalism/rioting. I went to the NYC MeToo marches and a protest in DC against the US in Iraq when I was younger, causing material damage is just not what you do. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/campus-protests-live-updates-students-occupy-columbia-university-rcna149926
• Looking at the pictures of the baracades and furniture, doesn’t Columbia have an obligation to disperse a situation that is becoming dangerous? Isn’t that one of the police’s jobs?
• I haven’t been in a situation like that, but I’m pretty sure the police officer in that situation can’t tell the difference between a Nazi and not a Nazi. And they might not self identify. I’m guessing things are getting heated. I read somewhere (sorry I don’t have a source on this either) that the students were let off with a misdemeanor of trespassing, and the identified external agitators were charged with more. Then the students freely went back to protesting. I’m going to reiterate, b.c. this is the internet, I would be protesting Israel too if I were a bit younger. My issue is with the way the story was reported.

I live nearby, I walked by.

I think (I don’t know for sure) that the students were peaceful, it looks like it got co-opted by a few loud neo-nazis who were being assholes.

My thing is the original article was pretty off.

Ok listen, I’m all in favor of Israel knocking it the f*ck off and students protesting, but this article is written with a very specific skew.

Last week, Columbia University summoned an army of heavily armed, riot gear-clad police officers to attack its own students for peacefully protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and the university’s financial ties to Israel.

Couple of notes here.

• It has evolved to a non peaceful protest. Some neo-nazi assholes were physically engaging with Jewish students. That’s not cool.
• A good number of nom-students showed up and we’re the ones causing the problems.
• Columbia called the local police to disperse a situation that was getting unsafe fast, because a university isn’t really qualified to do that. Which is the right call IMO. It’s the NYPD that choose riot gear.

Should it have been handled differently? Yes. Was the school dumb? Yes. We really don’t need this slanted BS news to see that.

This is some of the quotes from a Newsweek article:

One video posted on X, formerly Twitter, showed a masked protester outside the university’s gates appearing to chant: “Go back to Poland!”

Another video showed a man telling Jewish students outside the campus gates that “the 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”

IIRC, that was one of the ways Nixon sold it. If the plebes have more money, they spend it on more consumerism bullshit . . .which is money that ends up in the hands of the 1%.

Again, this is a 20 year old college course, so my memory could be way off (and aspirational b.c. I personally like UBI).

Oh this is an awesome comment. I love talking about this part of UBI

I studied Economics in school and dived deep into UBI. Some interesting facts/research for you:

1. (Fun fact) The US already has UBI, just a super watered down version. It’s called EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit). It’s a Nixon brainchild and was thought they could use UBI to reduce the inefficiencies of such a big government. I.e. get one nice UBI check that covers healthcare, retirement, insurance, education, food, housing, etc. blah blah blah, and you can shut down a bunch of federal government agencies that are pretty inefficient.

2. The car dealership thing happened because of a variable that we often discount: information (or knowledge). The car dealership knew exactly how much money was coming out and who got it (mostly), and they knew it was a one-off not an ongoing thing. A lot of UBI macro research guesses that we’d see some small inflationary pressure at the beginning when it’s new, but then return to normal as it becomes part of every day life. And even if it does, the benefits strongly outweigh the benefits and the Fed has other tools to reign in inflation to balance the affect out.

Caveat, this knowledge is 20+ years old. I may be way off base.

Economists hate this one simple trick . . .

I do make sure things are spic and span back there. It’s just not her thing. That’s OK, I’m not complaining at all. Relationships include a lot of compromises to love and support your partner. She does this for me once in a while even though she doesn’t love it. I do things for here that aren’t my fav to do, but I love doing them because they make her happy.

Surprised Pikachu Meme

My wife tolerates it on occasion, but it’s not her thing. She’s a lovely wife for doing it for me.

Pegging

My super secret tip: for every little ache and pain - get a doc to give you an Rx to a physical therapist. It might turn out to be nothing, might turn into something worse - either way PTs are awesome magic workers. I will elaborate:

• Drs are mostly limited to two things, surgery or an Rx (ok maybe a few other things).
• PTs can’t do those, but they can use stretching, massage, electro stimulation, exercise, and all sorts of practical, cheap methods to make you feel better.
• (In the US at least) medical plan PT allocations are designed for the elderly when they break a hip. So there are usually a ton of free (or very subsidized) sessions in your plan. Way more than you’d need in a year, even if you do break something at 40.
• They know the mechanics of the human body in a practical way that no doc has ever learned at school. I call it PT magic. Hey, your shoulder hurts, do this leg hammy stretch, voila and your shoulder feels better.
• I can also share some of my other personal training goals (don’t be fat, don’t die early) and it’s like having a subsidized personal trainer. And one better than any you could get at the gym.

LGTBQ+A Motherfucker. Do you speak it?

A cold glass of milk.

Where my lactards at?!?!