econofox

[econofox]

I haven’t posted in a while. I have perused it still, but there’s always been something that has bothered me about the site, looking through my feed from those I follow. It is a different, but similar version of the sort of discomfort I get from Facebook.

Here is my hot take: If you want to virtue signal over something that is meritorious, do so. But do not pressure others into virtue signalling with you. Here is why I have this take.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Some Christian on your feed shares on their feed some picture of Jesus with some of that Impact font text saying something along the lines of, “scroll past if you love the devil, re-share and like if you’re not afraid to say Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior! If you deny Jesus he will deny you in front of the gates of heaven!” Or maybe some other copypasta asks you to paste some text to profess your faith as a Christian.

Have you ever found these Religious Expression Performance Tests ™ tacky? Weird? If you are not a Christian, did it make you think less of Christianity as a whole? If you are a Christian, did you ever find it unbiblical and Pharisee-like nonsense?

Matthew 6:1 Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

I’m a Christian and I’d rather just have people act like Christians, who do not oppress the poor and the weak. I would rather the people of the church not have what seems to be a very un-discerning reflex to showcase its cultural hegemony through social media. “Look at how many millions of people believe in Jesus”, is a fine sentiment if we are happy that so many people find joy in Jesus Christ. It is a very unhappy sentiment if it is just used to flex on atheists or if it used as a justification in itself for why Christianity is the way to go.

Look at how many Facebook likes this cool Christian post can get.

The thing is though, this problem does not exist just with religion. It exists with economic ideologies (e.g. socialism, capitalism), social issues like LGBTQ rights, etc. On tumblr the problem might manifest itself whenever you see someone say, “x group better reblog this” or something like that.

Trying to tell people straightforwardly that they have some moral obligation to virtue signal actually seems immoral no matter what you are asking them to support. I think it is actively harmful because it only really induces disingenuous allies to share or reblog or retweet what you support. Christian copypastas at best will attract new or enthusiastic believers in Christ who already are firm believers, and at worst will attract fanatics or moral high horse sort of people who love to signal that they are such a good Christian, without actually living a life like Christ. Similarly on tumblr, insisting on people to reblog your post will only attract those who are already staunch allies or  “ “ “ “ “ “ “allies” “ “ “ “ “ “ “ who won’t really be there when the going gets tough. At the same time, fence sitters make be pushed away from your message, no matter how genuine or bold or truthful it is.

Maybe people will disagree with my anecdotal observations. And honestly, I have no right to judge others for what they do. I just think sometimes people care more about being right than they do about being persuasive and willing to teach. It is often that way because those who try to be good teachers of course will always be met with trolls or other disingenuous people. So evil tends to persist.

[econofox]

What’s the math mood for july, fellas

[econofox]

The Book of Isaiah (Ch. 1-Ch. 3)

Isaiah 1:15-17

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,

learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.

Isaiah is a very harsh book of the Bible. So far, Isaiah has painted a picture of a society that neglects its poor and where there is great oppression and injustice. Despite powerful leadership making trade deals that bring great wealth to Israel, the wealth is not used to help those in need, and made into useless things like idols, things that also directly flaunt against God.

In chapter 3, God's punishment outlined is that he will replace the competent leadership with incompetent leadership and allow great brutality to both the men and women in society, directly causing great socioeconomic turmoil and lack of basic essentials like food and water. It is even specifically mentioned that there will be even more oppression at more levels of society as a result (literally everyone). God's people will be invaded by outsiders and ravaged. This is the prediction Isaiah gives and God absolutely knows how devastating it will be.

And this book still has like 63 chapters to go.

I'm rereading the prophets because I definitely did not get the weight of it back then, and it is definitely a hard read even now. I think it does have sense to it though. Everyone is complicit in society with contributing to the oppression of the poor and marginalized, whether through passive indulgence as outlined for the women, or through a direct abuse of power as for the men (who are predominantly in positions in Israelite society here). Even in this chapter, God reassures that in the long run, the righteous will be rewarded.

It seems that no matter what leadership is in power, competent or incompetent, it is doomed to lead to great suffering, and the inadequacy of human ideas or knowledge still leads to the same old problems. Maybe the picture is clearer when there are bad times with bad leaders.

And is the picture for Israel and Judah here, so much different from America today?

[econofox]

omegalul ur an xd nerd

Hi cody

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Stop liking videos & audio and actually reblog something

no i’m letting my blog dIE

[econofox]

" A hole in a mathematical object is a topological structure which prevents the object from being continuously shrunk to a point. When dealing with topological spaces, a disconnectivity is interpreted as a hole in the space. Examples of holes are things like the "donut hole" in the center of the torus, a domain removed from a plane, and the portion missing from Euclidean space after cutting a knot out from it. “

1 hole kids

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Mandatory schooling should generally be paid for (some people need assistance paying) because it constitutes a public good that won’t be provided for by the free market.

Imagine for example if the government did not tax for or provide military defense. The free market you can imagine would generally lead to two results. One is that rich people will be the only ones able to afford military protection and will then rent out that protection to poorer people, maybe, if they can afford it. So basically medieval feudalism where poor people suffer. The second is that communities will create pools for voluntary contributions to public defense of their specific communities, or maybe do their own drafts, and basically have a mini army. The important thing about both these scenarios is that your defense becomes extremely inefficient. It is not fun coordinating many local armies together. There will be an underprovision of the public good. So we all suck it up and pay taxes for military defense or we die in the modern era. The military will have its own share of inefficiencies, but making people contribute to even if they might personally want to just have a mini army for themself--against the social good--is a good idea. Having uniform standards of operation, equal protection for poor and rich alike, and benefits of scale are some of the reasons we accept government funding for the military.

But paid mandatory schooling is the same idea. There are two aspects to this idea; there’s the “paid” part and the “mandatory” part. You need both.

Suppose you have paid schooling, but you get rid of the mandatory part. Okay, so rich people get to have an education. Other people maybe get to do trade/craft jobs, like HVAC, electrical work, etc. That’s not bad, but some people (and particularly our generation) hate blue collar work (don’t take jobs in those industries even if they pay very well). What if you can’t afford that schooling? Do you just not go to school? Do you get more people getting American evangelical religious educations (some ending up fine, some not so much)?

The part that seems to be contested in this post isn’t about having mandatory schooling, but getting rid of the paid part, meaning paid for by the students and their families. In this case, who pays for the good? If the government pays, who funds it? If you tax families with students, then they’re paying some, all, or even more of the cost they would have been paying anyway depending on the efficiency of the government and who else is being taxed. The only way a student “doesn’t pay to attend” is if you go out of your way to tax everyone else for a service they don’t use. Essentially you punish single people who are more likely to be poor, celibate people who are disabled, people too busy to have kids, etc, and provide all sorts of idiotic perverse incentives to have even more bad parenting in a world of lots and lots of bad parenting. That is, specifically singling out ONLY taxing people who do not have a student in school will land you in loads of trouble.

You could reasonably make an argument that says, hey, maybe people who don’t have kids should still be expected to reasonably contribute towards funding schooling anyway, since now they now always have the option to have a kid, and they are contributing to the public good of living in a more educated society. Maybe you can argue that we should provide assistance with regards to meals, fees, etc., to poorer people who will struggle to afford mandatory schooling. I think those arguments are reasonable. Most local governments, do try to keep those considerations in mind I feel like.

But there’s literally no way to just have people not pay for schooling, unless you want to like, mandate that teachers don’t get paid or something, or that some other sector of labor does not get any benefit lmao lmao

If you require kids to go to school by law, they shouldn’t have to pay for anything at all to be able to go there. They shouldn’t need to pay for food, books, a laptop, anything that the school gives you. If a child has to pay in any way to attend school, it’s a failure of our government to provide proper funding

[econofox]

callout post for @feather-mother and @a-simple-bowl-of-rice . they reblog each other ANDd reblog their own material so every week i get 4 copies of the same post every time. they have conspired to astral project me straight into the groundhog day movie every time i visit this website BET

[econofox]

keep goin

the economy isn’t broken, it doesn’t need fixing… this is exactly its intended condition money isn’t real, interest and debt isn’t real. this is the biggest scam in human history. our whole economy has been set up to steal. the illusion that these debts can be served by more using money which creates more debt is….a fraud, its a way of maintaining division and slavery

[econofox]

A few things should be clarified before we jump the gun on moral exasperation.

Collecting rainwater is not generally illegal, but it is regulated by states. The main reason is to protect farmlands and other places that rely on runoff water for crops. So for example, some states don’t let you just build large artificial lakes/dams for recreational purposes unless you have a permit. So even if you did want to collect gigantic quantities of water, you could do it legally.

In Colorado, a lot of runoff rainwater and water from the Colorado river ends up going to California, which as you may know in recent history, has had a prolonged drought. Desertification due to environmental changes can exacerbate these problems. All the more reason why it can be a good safeguard for the government to use environmental regulation to help people.

This is obviously a simplified explanation of things, but if you want to talk about collecting water in large volumes, consider this. Bottled water nowadays can be very expensive, if not more expensive per ounce than gasoline. Are these partly the consequences of large entities privatizing rights to vast amounts of water? Does a market efficiently allocate water rights, or is there a social externality not accounted for? Arguably, you could make the case that there isn’t enough regulation on collecting rainwater/natural resources and claiming it as your own.

Presumably the people in the above posts probably are more worried about individual rights to water collection than corporate rights to water collection. But that doesn’t change the case that maybe both should be regulated.

This article is an interesting supplemental reading:

http://www.newsweek.com/race-buy-worlds-water-73893

me standing in a rainstorm: What the fuck is this…… communist water… with free handouts from the sky how will anyone have the incentive to work

[econofox]

what’s a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse

Can a horse become king?

[econofox]

[econofox]

(pic is from monstrous metaphysics memes)

masterpost

[econofox]

me: today i will play backlogged game brain: you can’t, remember that other game that came out recently you’re supposed to be prioritizing? me: true, today i will play nothing

[econofox]

false etymologies LUL

news is a plural form of new, used as a noun, from french

It took me until now to realize ‘news’ stood for notable events, weather and sports.

[econofox]

hey y’all hear about comey being fired

oops wrong pic but u get the idea