Check out my digital garden: The Missing Premise.

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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • There’s a few ways in practice.

    1. Court decisions are binding broadly. The conservative capture of the Supreme Court is political genius, honestly. They tend to have the final say regarding policy.

    2. Federal agency rules are also broadly binding. EPA rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions, for example, apply everywhere in the country.

    3. State legislatures are often less polarized, which facilitates a more productive legislature.

    4. State agencies, like a state environmental department, mirrors its federal counterpart but is more localized.

    5. Non-state organizations can get things done, though their interests are often limited and not necessarily in the interests of the broad public as state and federal institutions are.

    6. International institutions can ‘set the tone’. They may not have any power to actually do anything within a specific jurisdiction, but people within those jurisdictions can draw policy inspiration from international organizations and try for something locally binding.





  • What’s particularly strange about it is that it doesn’t really serve any purpose for a vast majority of people aside from a government-approved official statement that someone finds their in-laws unbearable.

    That’s a pretty good purpose. Everybody can save face by taking part in bureaucracy. That sounds like I’m being facetious, but I’m serious. Think about the alternative: avoiding them awkwardly all the time or telling them to screw themselves directly, which will engender negative feelings. At least with the bureaucracy, the sentiment gets filtered through a impartial, uncaring medium.



  • I think this misunderstands free speech in principle rather than as interpreted by law or colloquially.

    Classical liberal philosophers, like Locke, Mill, and Dewey, understood that deliberation required broad perspectives to handle sufficiently. Understanding and solving problems required a debate about their nature and their solutions for society to choose well. Free speech was instrumental in solving problems in principle.

    But a modern understanding of it is basically license. It’s like calling freedom both the opportunity to live your life on your terms and shoot black people on your doorstep because you’re afraid of them. And then someone comes along and asks, “Do you think people should the freedom to defend themselves from intruders?”

    Free speech, similarly, nowadays is just conflated with pure lies and obfuscation. It’s about creating unreal problems and redirecting social energy into some ineffective bullshit.

    Thus, it’s not a contradiction to say that Americans support free speech and that some people need to have their platform taken away. Productive free speech would be improved by a reduction in unproductive and destructive speech done freely.