2024 ELECTION THREAD

Friedman was a staunch advocate for free and fair global trade. Claiming he only meant for one country (USA) to impose a pollution tax, which would create unfair pollution arbitrages across world markets is the opposite of free and fair global trade.

Friedman disagrees with you:

“There’s always a case for the government, to some extent, when what two people do affects a third party,” it said. “There is a case, for example, for emission controls.”

It's already accounted for by the fact that emerging economies are being asked to incur pollution-control costs that first-world countries did not have to pay when they built their economies. That represents trillions in value enjoyed by first-world nations. There's your offsets.

I am not asking third world countries anything and right-wing people aren't either so your answer is nonsense.

you guys are asking them stuff (which they completely disregard, and they make up fake numbers when they are needed to keep getting your cash) but not us at all.

I could care less about how much India or china emits in CO2

Sometimes the complexity of the world overwhelms people and they long for a time when everything was much simpler. It's natural to reactively and aggressively fight against the demands of the modern world. This is a central thrust behind the nationlist movement around the world.

lol I never rejected his “science” I told you he’s not a scientist and why I think his model is flawed. I also pointed out that he completely disagrees with your assessment of his own models! It’s like you just have this yap you want to go on and will just insert it even when it has nothing to do with what’s being talked about. For a right winger you sure are emotional.

Secondly, I reiterate, for decades and decades your lot didn’t just ignore science but called it fake, saying it wasn’t possible for humans to warm the planet due to the relatively small portion of emissions contributed by humans. Now that it is clear that humans really are causing global warming/climate change, you guys want a seat at the table with the adults. No I’m not going to let conservatives have a seat at the table until you grovel and beg for forgiveness.

Thirdly, bringing up lockdowns is such an obvious red herring but I’ll bite. Epidemiologists are the ones who determined that lockdowns are not effective. You’re using research from epidemiology to discredit epidemiology. You constantly do this, where you say epidemiologists are bad because they don’t listen to the science while citing work from epidemiologists. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone that isn’t completely brain poisoned that scientists change their views based on new information.

Lastly I would get to your point about costs of not using fossil fuels (I happen to agree closing down the economy is unacceptable and will be throwing out the baby with the bathwater) but I think it’s useless even going down these roads when our first principles are so unaligned. We’re not even going to get to your rudderless ranting because we can’t even agree that most people are not acting in the way you say they are for the reasons you say they are. Why discuss the finer points of climate science with someone who accuses 90% of the media of being Marxist for accurately reporting that climate change is real, which you yourself admit it is real and caused by human action? It’s a pointless convo to have. It’s like discussing where we should go to eat with someone who thinks there’s a gang of people stalking him and he has to avoid being seen because if they see him they will kill him. Why even deal with what we’re having for dinner when he is so far off the deep end most places will be unacceptable to him?

Good post.

there is no denial of complexity rather a denial of any kind of mandate to help every human being in existence.

we just deny there is a moral mandate to internalize the utility function of every human being in existence. it's folly, it's absurd, it doesn't make any sense outside leftist morality.

If you enjoy whiteclaw, you are probably a commie.

Since you are caring only about northen Italy (which is weird considering the amount of time you spend commenting on USA politics), I'm wondering where you get your oil from, food, etc...
You make it sounds like you don;t need anyone.

an economist is better equipped scientifically to assess tradeoffs about ANY human activity for society than a climate scientist.

it's not about how wrong epidemiologists are or were, it's about you shouldn't even think of asking them about what to do given the epidemy, they can only supply models with what happens depending on what you do and they have no skill or tool to choose among them. After they tell you "I think that if you implement NPI x cases will go down by Y" they are worthless for society in any subsequent assessment.

they are the worst people in society to decide if lowering cases by Y is worth the costs. because they want to prove their model so they want the NPI implemented , there is no one more biased than them in tradeoff assessment.

same for climate scientists.

I don't hold you responsabile for the bullcrap climate activits are pulling these days like claims the sea will raise meters soon if we don't get to net 0 immediately, so stop now mixing me with people who denied the climate is warming because of human actions.

90% of the media is skewed horribly to the far left on this topic (AP in particular). it's not just about claiming the world is 1/1.2 cleaius warmer than the 1850-1900 average which is settled science. it's everything else.

they should be telling us 24/7 that most activists are claiming bullshit. IPCC sees sea levels raised by 50cm on avg under RCP 4.5 in 2100.

everyone claiming more should be attacked WITH THE SAME STRENGTH they attack denialists if the media was BALANCED AND SCIENTIFIC, ie centrist.

someone claiming the sea will rise 2 meters by 2070 is a lot worse than someone completely denying climate warming ok? objectively, in centimeters vs scientifical predictions.

every paper which uses RCP 8.5 is bad faith apocalyptic masturbation as we already aren't under 8.5 . the media should tell that every single time they cite any paper which keeps using 8.5 (which is complete bad faith, utter crap, partisan non sense, worse than denialism).

Greta should be depicted as a psychopath which constantly makes deranged antiscientific claims which has a cult following by people who lost their minds and that's a huge problem for society. if the media was centrist.

and so on.

and you know that

not criticizing Greta (and everyone who doesn't treat her like the utter joke she is) as a fraud, a sham, is already being to the very far left of the discourse on the topic

You don't have to explain conservatism's implicit absence of compassion to the forum - it's already a well-understood precept of the ideology.

But your thesis is wrong irrespective of that ideology because pollution and climate change affects first-world nations as well, so it's not about helping others in distant lands.

I care about northern Italy for the topic of the climate.

My dad lives in the USA but you have no history, no roots, and he doesn't have any there as well, you just move if things go bad. there is nothing geographical to preserve or with enough history to justify caring in the USA.

my region is a huge food exporter (Emilia Romagna) so I am not sure about your mentioning of food.

I care about oil and other imports yes, and? a warmer Europe as mentioned will mean less need for fossil fuels to heat in winter, it's a big part of why warming is a blessing for my area.

not sure if you followed but in the 22-23 winter we were risking a disaster after the Ukraine war with Nat gas reserves risking full depletion before end of winter before we managed to get supplies from non-russian sources in size.

luckily we got a very warm unusual winter, thanks to global warming, which was an unadulterated blessing and by itself fully makes global warming a monstrous positive for the area I live in and I intend to preserve for posterity because it has actual history worth preserving.

climate change affects Europe *positively*, Canada as well. and not by small amounts, it's a huge boon, kind of a miracle.

they are making decent wine in Germany (!!!!). our beaches are usable in may which they never were in the north.

fog almost disappeared in the pianura padana.

far less expense for heating which was always the worst utility bill around here.

plenty of celsius yet to reach full year around of beaches being decent.

Are you ever gonna mention drought?
Like the one in your very region?

i am not going to mention climatic events that have no relationship with a one Celsius warming no, because they are fully orthogonal to that.

the "science" about the claim that everything bad that can happen climatically gets worse with one more Celsius isn't settled at all, it's very controversial, I know it's the latest scare technique used to convince people who weren't scared by warming, weren't scared by change, and that you guys hope to scare with "crisis" and the utter bullshit claim that the frequency and intensity of everything bad increases.

but it's pure non sense without any logical or scientifical basis, with the exception of course of heat waves that do increase with warming, and cold spells (that kill a lot more in Europe) which do decrease in intensity and frequency, for a net outcome which saves a lot of European lives.

btw right now we have excess water not a drought.

I am pretty sure that can be blamed to one Celsius warmer than 150 years ago as well by some kid paid by a leftist government to "research" in some basement

This post was going ok until the last sentence where you couldn't just resist it.
Your ability to undermine every one of your posts with one out of the place sentence is admirable.

You literally just did in the post I was quoting!

I’m not going to respond to the nebulous claims about random activists being crazy or Greta being a sociopath (she’s probably just a midwit and autistic who was thrust into the limelight by activist parents, not a sociopath)

What I will say is that I don’t understand your morality at all, because while you rejected utility in the past, you seem to favor economic analysis which is almost exclusively about utility and not morality. You also seem ok if the rest of the world just thanos snaps out of existence as long as northern italy isn’t effected. I don’t think even the most coldhearted conservatives would agree with your morality, and in fact it might be far less contemptible to be mistaken on the facts than what you’re saying.

Also I’m very much concerned about insane claims of lefties, but I also think it’s a category error to compare it to what conservatives are doing. It’s much worse of an epistemological sin to say that climate change is a hoax, which would involve many parties to collude together at institutional levels that are for the most part independent of each other and very incentivized to be the person that breaks open everyone else’s theory, causing a paradigm shift, as well as countries who are in direct competition to each other saying we should all use less resources, etc. The incentives are to deny climate change, not to hoax it. That’s a much worse sin than misinterpreting climate models.

If we wanted to I’m sure we could find issues where I agree far lefties are guilty of that sin, but I don’t think saying 0 is closer to 50 than 300 is a particularly convincing argument, especially since the whole thing is based off isolating one variable.

lold 😀

“Mein Kampf is a good read,” the user, dubbed
“minisoldr,” wrote in a thread seeking book recommendations.
“It’s very informative and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a real eye opener.”

Its been 10 days since the debate (and Taylor Swift's endorsement) and there have been significant changes in the polling for the most part. What the polling that 538.com is using has now reduced the Undecideds (Un) substantially. My guess is that the debate swayed a lot of undecided voters, including some RFK Jr supporters who won't be able to vote for him in most swing states). Un now includes all Multi-Candidates (MC) as well. For the most part both candidates increased voter %.

These are the swing states where Kamala gained ground since the debate:
AZ: Trump leads by 0.5% with 5.5% Un (Kamala +1.5%, Trump +1.3%)
MI: Kamala up by 2.7% with 5.5% Un (Kamala +1.9%, Trump +1.1%) Note that with RFK Jr on ballot there might be just 3% or less Undecided which would make it very hard for Trump to win...
NV: Kamala up by 0.7% with 6.1% Un (Kamala +1.6%, Trump +1.1%)
PA: Kamala up by 1.5% with 4.9% Un (Kamala +2%, Trump +1.1%)

These are the swing states where Kamala lost ground since the debate:
GA: Trump leads by 1% with 5% Un (Kamala +1.1%, Trump +1.5%)
NC: Trump now leads by 0.2% with 5.2% Un (Kamala +1.1%, Trump +1.5%)
WI: Kamala up by 1.8% with 5% Un (Kamala +0.9%, Trump +1.7%) Note that with RFK Jr on ballot there might be just 2.5% or less Undecided which could make this very close

These are now no longer swing states in my opinion but are still somewhat close and this is what has happened since the debate:
FL: Trump leads by 4.1% with 4.9% Un (Kamala +1.3%, Trump +1.2%) Trump would have to tank for Kamala to win as Trump is at 49.6%...
MN: Kamala up by 6.2% with 6.6% Un (Kamala +0.8%, Trump +1.7%) Note RFK Jr is on ballot and Kamala is at 49.8% (with Walz as her running mate)
NH: Kamala up by 7.5% with 4.9% Un (Kamala +1.2%, Trump +0.2%)
VA: Kamala up 7% by with 7.6% Un (Kamala is at 49.7%) VA was just added to 538.com's graph list so no comparison with prior stats but Nate Silver had significant gains for Kamala.

I looked at all Likely Voter (LV) polls, primarily considering MC polls over HU polls by the same pollsters, nationally and in MI, PA, and WI to see how Kamala fared during each phase so far:

Nationally Kamala gained 0.9% prior to Walz, was +2.1% after Walz announcement, +0.1% after DNC, and +0.2% since the debate. This surprised me because I thought Kamala lost some ground after the DNC and the RFK Jr thing. Just not nationally with LV it looks like.

In MI Kamala lost 0.3% prior to Walz, was +2.5% after Walz announcement, then lost 0.8% after DNC, and then went up +2.2% since the debate. So very volatile in MI

In PA Kamala gained 1.3% prior to Walz, lost 0.8% after Walz announcement which makes sense because some PA people must have resented not picking Shapiro especially Jews who are 3.3% of the PA population, Kamala lost 0.2% after DNC, and was +1.7% since the debate

In WI Kamala gained 1.6% prior to Walz, was +1.5% after Walz announcement, then lost 0.6% after DNC, and has lost 0.6% since the debate... I think that because WI has a very small % black and
Hispanic population that the undecideds may tilt more heavily towards Trump. It seems like its happening at a 2:1 margin which could make this the 3rd election in a row that will be within 0.5% either way.

One thing to note is that since the debate there have been 5 LV polls in PA and MI and 6 LV polls in WI. Overall there have been 33 LV polls in MI and WI and 40 in PA and 80 LV polls Nationally.