Right Wing Discussion Thread XV: A New Hoppe

[Novus America]

Because those religious scholars say what they countries are doing is Islamic.
You might disagree. They disagree with you.

This also does not answer my question at all. Can you prove that the Grand Mufti and/or RuHullah Khomeini have said that corruption, turning one's back on fellow Muslims, not enforcing full Shari'ah, and/or committing war crimes is Halal?

Those countries do those things while claiming what they are doing is Halal.
Of course they simply claim they are not doing those things.

Sure many Islamic scholars are completely corrupt.

And certainly many will openly say killing people for apostasy and homosexuality is totally Halal.

[El-Amin Caliphate]

This also does not answer my question at all. Can you prove that the Grand Mufti and/or RuHullah Khomeini have said that corruption, turning one's back on fellow Muslims, not enforcing full Shari'ah, and/or committing war crimes is Halal?

Those countries do those things while claiming what they are doing is Halal.
Of course they simply claim they are not doing those things.

Sure many Islamic scholars are completely corrupt.

And certainly many will openly say killing people for apostasy and homosexuality is totally Halal.

I asked you this questions 3 times and you haven't backed this up. No links at all.

[Novus America]

Those countries do those things while claiming what they are doing is Halal.
Of course they simply claim they are not doing those things.

Sure many Islamic scholars are completely corrupt.

And certainly many will openly say killing people for apostasy and homosexuality is totally Halal.

I asked you this questions 3 times and you haven't backed this up. No links at all.

I know they do not openly say those things are Halal.
That is not the point.

[El-Amin Caliphate]

I asked you this questions 3 times and you haven't backed this up. No links at all.

I know they do not openly say those things are Halal.
That is not the point.

So you're saying stuff

[Hanafuridake]

Here’s a likely one: I shoot a deer or eat a small animal. Cruel or not? Does it matter the situation?

A deer or a squirrel experience pain and terror when being shot, so yes, it is cruel to kill them. In the situation that someone is poor or starving, then that is much different from the modern meat industry which is mostly a luxury nowadays in First World countries where healthier and more humane alternatives exist.

How are nonhumans so valuable yet Christians are not?

I am not Feylands.

I’m against excessive animal harm, but where must I draw the line?

Killing something is the ultimate harm. Humane animal slaughter is a slogan that makes it easier for people to sleep at night and pretend that the meat in the burger they ate didn't suffer when it was slaughtered. Which hint: it did.

Maybe when other species are considered similar to humans? Or when people are removed from their jobs, their very lifestyles for producing food?

Regardless of whether or not society embraces vegetarianism, there is going to be a need for a massive scaling back of the meat industry because of climate change. This is going to result in people losing their jobs whether they like it or not. This is the future that private companies chose with their irresponsible environmental policies.

What will be done to the countless meat eaters, including me? How would you even ban meat with all the dissent? Are human rights not more important than other species?

Calves are killed for veal, but nah man, not getting chicken nuggets is the real struggle.

[Novus America]

I know they do not openly say those things are Halal.
That is not the point.

So you're saying stuff

Well yes, I am saying stuff.
See the particular issue is over the application.

Sure they might say corruption is wrong, but not agree with you on what constitutes corruption.
Muslim scholars disagree on both substantive AND procedural matters.

[Yusseria]

Here’s a likely one: I shoot a deer or eat a small animal. Cruel or not? Does it matter the situation?

A deer or a squirrel experience pain and terror when being shot, so yes, it is cruel to kill them. In the situation that someone is poor or starving, then that is much different from the modern meat industry which is mostly a luxury nowadays in First World countries where healthier and more humane alternatives exist.

How are nonhumans so valuable yet Christians are not?

I am not Feylands.

I’m against excessive animal harm, but where must I draw the line?

Killing something is the ultimate harm. Humane animal slaughter is a slogan that makes it easier for people to sleep at night and pretend that the meat in the burger they ate didn't suffer when it was slaughtered. Which hint: it did.

Maybe when other species are considered similar to humans? Or when people are removed from their jobs, their very lifestyles for producing food?

Regardless of whether or not society embraces vegetarianism, there is going to be a need for a massive scaling back of the meat industry because of climate change. This is going to result in people losing their jobs whether they like it or not. This is the future that private companies chose with their irresponsible environmental policies.

What will be done to the countless meat eaters, including me? How would you even ban meat with all the dissent? Are human rights not more important than other species?

Calves are killed for veal, but nah man, not getting chicken nuggets is the real struggle.

How, exactly, would you know an animal suffered? Methods exist nowadays to kill animals instantaneously. If an animal was killed instantly then it did not suffer. You're spouting nonsense.

[Bear Stearns]

11 years ago today (or I guess yesterday depending your time zone), the venerable institution, The Bear Stearns Companies, went down.

Pour one out fellas, for today we (and by that I mean myself) mourn the loss of the most traditionalist firm on Wall Street.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

11 years ago today (or I guess yesterday depending your time zone), the venerable institution, The Bear Stearns Companies, went down.

Pour one out fellas, for today we (and by that I mean myself) mourn the loss of the most traditionalist firm on Wall Street.

(Image)
(Image)

Please forgive me if I’m mistaken, but didn’t Bear Stearns (the financial institution, not the NS user) contribute to the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing global financial crisis of 2007-2009?

[Western Vale Confederacy]

My take on animal slaughter?

Obviously it needs to be as humane as possible, but you’d have to walk over my cold, dead corpse before banning my chicken.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

Hot Take: We'll all be eating nutrient-enriched algae paste in 50 years anyway.

[Nea Byzantia]

You have to have some kind of ethical system and if your ethical system finds something horrible, it can't really be justified. Whether that moral value comes from religion or not, moral values are the foundation of society.

Morals are a random set of rules that are not right in themselves. I could say that computers are immoral, are they wrong now? Ethics are unique to each person, only the general consensus can even start to define which ones are true.

You're refuting yourself in your own statement. How can you say in a morally objective way that "there are no objective morals" if morals are not objective?

[Bear Stearns]

11 years ago today (or I guess yesterday depending your time zone), the venerable institution, The Bear Stearns Companies, went down.

Pour one out fellas, for today we (and by that I mean myself) mourn the loss of the most traditionalist firm on Wall Street.

(Image)
(Image)

Please forgive me if I’m mistaken, but didn’t Bear Stearns (the financial institution, not the NS user) contribute to the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing global financial crisis of 2007-2009?

Sort of. By 2007, most of the firm's exposure to toxic assets was through two of its hedge funds. However, Bear Stearn's overexposure was nowhere near as bad as Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch's. The reason why the Fed let Bear (and also Lehman) die while bailing out Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and forcibly wedding Merrill to Bank of America was largely political.

A banker by profession, I've never had a high opinion of the trading desks and the fund managers.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

Please forgive me if I’m mistaken, but didn’t Bear Stearns (the financial institution, not the NS user) contribute to the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing global financial crisis of 2007-2009?

Sort of. By 2007, most of the firm's exposure to toxic assets was through two of its hedge funds. However, Bear Stearn's overexposure was nowhere near as bad as Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch's. The reason why the Fed let Bear (and also Lehman) die while bailing out Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and forcibly wedding Merrill to Bank of America was largely political.

A banker by profession, I've never had a high opinion of the trading desks and the fund managers.

Could you explain the subprime mortgage crisis in a bit more detail? I'm curious as to your perspective, seeing as how you're a banker.

[The Feylands]

How are nonhumans so valuable yet Christians are not?

I am not Feylands.

I've never suggested that either. I've got nothing against X-tians or other Abrahamites as individuals in the general sense.. just because I don't agree with the religion(s) or the entity they proclaim as god.

I’d might honestly feel better if it was the other way around.

But this isn't despicable?

I don't know if believe in universal “rights” per se (that all living beings need to have dignity in life is another matter...). I feel that killing animals is wrong when it can be avoided, since animals are innocent by their nature. Humans are not (babies and young children may be an exception). Killing a human who is say a murderer, a rapist, a psychopath etc. I'd feel would be more justified than killing some animal (or letting one suffer by animal experiments/in a circus/zoo etc.) in a manner that is not self-defence. It's a form of unnecessary suffering that can and should be avoided.

I'd appreciate it if you stopped insulting us and stopped lumping us all together.

However, in this case, I don't think its much of a generalization or an accusation/insult to suggest that antopocentricism is an abrahamic trait. YHWH is said to have created men in his own image. One might make the observation that only humans can worship YHWH, and being worshipped seems the thing that matters above all else for him.

Enlightenment liberals later took this idea and morphed it into the silly notion that people are “rational” and therefore have some kind of supernatural “rights”, even though the same liberals often don't believe in anything supernatural. This has also led to some funny complications – including that the RCC used to view “human rights” as heresy (see – not everything abrahamites think is necessarily bad) but now we have Grandpa Frankie mixing those beliefs together in a manner that makes him popular with liberals and such – despite the fact that Catholicism supposedly doesn't change.

I wonder if part of the structural problems couldn't be the enlightenment values that America was founded upon

I mean, can you actually prove this? Or are you pulling the Glenn Beck crap of "I'm just asking questions."[/quote]

I think the US. has proven itself to be unable to deal with the downsides of its own individualism on numerous occasions. Just look at how the Scientologists managed to legally harass the IRS into giving them tax exempt status, to ruin peoples lives with, for example. And if “free speech” and “freedom of religion” is gonna reign free – how are you gonna prevent say radical jihadists, nazi terrorists or the antifa or any other extremist groups of folks – to utilize those in a technically “non-violent way” to spread violence and such through the internet and in other places. This idea that people are simply “rational” emotionless computers and that words can't hurt people... it simply goes against human nature.. Humans are social beings. According to modern psychology, those who are otherwise espouse “antisocial behaviour” etc.

The fiscal cliff is also an obvious problem of America's inability to control its own overblown war industry (protip: just slash military spending and you have budget balance) and other corporate interests who does not have the survival of the country as their top priority. And it's not like I'm living in some better place – in fact, my own country is likely gonna go down badly before the US due our own dumb collective cultural/ideological traits. -.-

****

Btw... have to say one of the reasons why I'm not entirely on the boat with the European right – btw – is the fact that most peasants will get even more redundant than they already are soon... when we can grow meat like plants thanks to scientific advances. Of course – everything from the EU to the entire “labour market” being a big Ponzi scheme overproducing stuff, with agricultural subsidies at the centre, it's not likely to change anything anytime soon. No matter how many protest lists “woke” antropocentric so-called environmentalists sign.

I'm not sure I wanna empower the peasant caste in the west, the same folks who in different eras started pogroms and witch hunts and such. I've dealt with such people on the Swedish part of internet (talking about so called “grass roots”, not politicians etc.) and the ignorance and simple mindedness they display is astonishing. Anything that goes outside their box is “communism”, “cultural marxism”, “politically correct” etc. I've been accused of all those things despite being a card carrying member of a right wing political party. But these people just cannot be nuanced. It's just like the “safe spaces” of the regressive left. Complete idiots can make money of these silly peasants by simply whining on the internet.

And this relates to the issue of growing meat. How does such folk react to such suggestions? By all sorts of dumb suggestions about it turning us into glowing two-headed aliens etc. And the usual rants about vegetarianism making people dumb and environmentalists being dumb hippies.

This is not something unique to Sweden of course. And I've thought.. maybe this is come kind of universal thing that occurs among all the peoples? Perhaps there's always gonna be a bunch of people that are simply not suited to think the big thoughts. We need someone to plough the fields.. after all. But perhaps those folks shouldn't be given more responsibility than they can handle?

The only folks I've thought could be an exception would perhaps be the Jewish people? I can't say I've ever met a person of Jewish descent that has struck me as a dumb person. And I've met plenty. But its not just “intelligence” (which doesn't do much on its own – a complete lunatic may be brilliant solver of equations etc.) - it's more about nuanced thinking, that somehow seems to me like a typically Jewish cultural trait? Maybe those are the only that survived after everything the Jewish nation had to go through in X-tian Europe?

[Bear Stearns]

Sort of. By 2007, most of the firm's exposure to toxic assets was through two of its hedge funds. However, Bear Stearn's overexposure was nowhere near as bad as Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch's. The reason why the Fed let Bear (and also Lehman) die while bailing out Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and forcibly wedding Merrill to Bank of America was largely political.

A banker by profession, I've never had a high opinion of the trading desks and the fund managers.

Could you explain the subprime mortgage crisis in a bit more detail? I'm curious as to your perspective, seeing as how you're a banker.

Sure. Bankers weren't really involved too much in it.

Here is the cliff notes version.

In the 1970s, mortgage-backed securities were created. These are where mortgage loans are bundled into a single investment vehicle whose value is derived from the value of the underlying loans and the ability to collect on each loan. These were considered safe investments because typically only high-quality borrowers (i.e. people with good credit) took out mortgages and it was commonly understood that people typically pay their mortgage.

Then in the early 2000s, the government decided that every American should be able to own a home, and wanted mortgage-lenders (who were mostly community banks) to give mortgages to people who otherwise wouldn't qualify (i.e. people with bad credit). To ensure that lenders would take on these risks, the government agreed to guarantee the loans.

So all of a sudden, mortgages are a lot easier to come by. People who normally wouldn't be buying homes were now buying them with this new credit. This caused housing prices to rise, and lenders deduced that even if they couldn't collect on one of these subprime mortgages, they could place a lien on the underlying house which was expected to increase in value anyways. People start speculating on homes and take out multiple mortgages, thinking all their houses will rise in value and they could just sell the home off and pay back their mortgage within a short-time span (basically buy a house on margin, have it appreciate to a value to where the house is worth more than mortgage, sell the house, pay off the mortgage, and what's left is your profit).

With this knowledge, security underwriters (the big banks) started securitizing these. However, a bundle of mortgage-backed securities where most of the mortgages were subprime was going to be hard to market to investors as many would've deemed them too risky. Here's where things stray into moral failures. Bond ratings agencies (whether of their own volition or due to pressure from underwriters, depends on who you ask) essentially lied about the quality of these products, saying that the mortgage-backed securities were mostly composed of low-risk, high-quality mortgages (they really weren't). Thinking these were safe investments, investors loaded up on these by the billions, and through the derivatives market, it went up to the trillions.

Then, there's an economic slowdown. There's some layoffs, but nothing unusual, just end of the business-cycle slowdown that is common every eight years or so. However, suddenly, these poor people with mortgages they would've otherwise never afforded can't finance their homes anymore because they don't have jobs. This begins to prompt a mass sell-off of homes, causing housing prices to begin to crash. As housing prices crash, speculators begin selling their homes for a loss. Debtors can't pay their mortgages and people begin defaulting. This destroys the underlying value of mortgage-backed securities and their derivative products. Because investors thought these were safe investments, very few hedged against them, and thus didn't consider billions of dollars in exposure to really be all that alarming. Then the value of these investments tanks, and investors (largely banks, pension funds, corporations, etc.) realize how fucked they are and other markets begin reacting. Stock market sell-offs and asset-write downs decimate many financial institutions. Community banks and mortgage lenders are particularly affected (lord know show many shut their doors during this time period). This leads to bank runs as people become unsure of how safe they money is and prompts an overall drop in consumer spending, which leads to a worse economic slowdown as corporate profits decline and hiring stops, sending unemployment rising.

There were other factors as well, such as issues with other derivatives products and the European sovereign debt crisis, but from an American perspective, that is basically the layman's version.

Forgive me if there are typos, I did this on my phone.

[Nea Byzantia]

11 years ago today (or I guess yesterday depending your time zone), the venerable institution, The Bear Stearns Companies, went down.

Pour one out fellas, for today we (and by that I mean myself) mourn the loss of the most traditionalist firm on Wall Street.

(Image)
(Image)

I think its too bad more Fat Cat Wall Street scum didn't go down in 2008...we'd all be better off for it, today. Our Governments and Corporations certainly wouldn't be stuffed to the gills with debt. Believe me, we will pay for the sins of bailing out those Banks and Firms that should've gone down in '08.

[Bear Stearns]

11 years ago today (or I guess yesterday depending your time zone), the venerable institution, The Bear Stearns Companies, went down.

Pour one out fellas, for today we (and by that I mean myself) mourn the loss of the most traditionalist firm on Wall Street.

(Image)
(Image)

I think its too bad more Fat Cat Wall Street scum didn't go down in 2008...we'd all be better off for it, today. Our Governments and Corporations certainly wouldn't be stuffed to the gills with debt. Believe me, we will pay for the sins of bailing out those Banks and Firms that should've gone down in '08.

Please tell me how "Wall Street fat cats" "stuff" the government with debt.

[Nea Byzantia]

I think its too bad more Fat Cat Wall Street scum didn't go down in 2008...we'd all be better off for it, today. Our Governments and Corporations certainly wouldn't be stuffed to the gills with debt. Believe me, we will pay for the sins of bailing out those Banks and Firms that should've gone down in '08.

Please tell me how "Wall Street fat cats" "stuff" the government with debt.

I'm just saying we shouldn't have bailed them out. We should have let Market Forces do what they needed to do.

[Benuty]

(Image)

Anarchists and theocrats are both wrong.

They aren't though.

[Benuty]

Humans have done a host of wrong things, what are you talking about? Also you haven't answered this question:

Are Muslims, Christians, and Jews all bad now?

I own a dog and we generally shouldn’t be going around eating normal pets. Vegetarianism isn’t as nonsensical as state-enforced vegetarianism.

Vegetarianism is all right, and good so long as humanity doesn't have to rely on opportunistic diets. As for forcing people to eat one way or the other this will never work as black markets are a thing when something is in absence. In the case of Cuba, for example, there are black markets for basic goods that are more than cheap here in the states.

[El-Amin Caliphate]

YHWH is said to have created men in his own image.

Again stop generalizing us. Christianity isn't the only Abrahamic religion out there.

One might make the observation that only humans can worship YHWH, and being worshipped seems the thing that matters above all else for him.

Excepting appreciation for creating literally everything isn't unusual.

[Sirocca]

Look:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=461586&sid=1e9724fe537e0bb1ea4094ac72e5c58b#p35455826

[Genivaria]

I am not Feylands.

I've never suggested that either. I've got nothing against X-tians or other Abrahamites as individuals in the general sense.. just because I don't agree with the religion(s) or the entity they proclaim as god.

But this isn't despicable?

I don't know if believe in universal “rights” per se (that all living beings need to have dignity in life is another matter...). I feel that killing animals is wrong when it can be avoided, since animals are innocent by their nature. Humans are not (babies and young children may be an exception). Killing a human who is say a murderer, a rapist, a psychopath etc. I'd feel would be more justified than killing some animal (or letting one suffer by animal experiments/in a circus/zoo etc.) in a manner that is not self-defence. It's a form of unnecessary suffering that can and should be avoided.

I'd appreciate it if you stopped insulting us and stopped lumping us all together.

However, in this case, I don't think its much of a generalization or an accusation/insult to suggest that antopocentricism is an abrahamic trait. YHWH is said to have created men in his own image. One might make the observation that only humans can worship YHWH, and being worshipped seems the thing that matters above all else for him.

Enlightenment liberals later took this idea and morphed it into the silly notion that people are “rational” and therefore have some kind of supernatural “rights”, even though the same liberals often don't believe in anything supernatural. This has also led to some funny complications – including that the RCC used to view “human rights” as heresy (see – not everything abrahamites think is necessarily bad) but now we have Grandpa Frankie mixing those beliefs together in a manner that makes him popular with liberals and such – despite the fact that Catholicism supposedly doesn't change.

I wonder if part of the structural problems couldn't be the enlightenment values that America was founded upon

I mean, can you actually prove this? Or are you pulling the Glenn Beck crap of "I'm just asking questions."

I think the US. has proven itself to be unable to deal with the downsides of its own individualism on numerous occasions. Just look at how the Scientologists managed to legally harass the IRS into giving them tax exempt status, to ruin peoples lives with, for example. And if “free speech” and “freedom of religion” is gonna reign free – how are you gonna prevent say radical jihadists, nazi terrorists or the antifa or any other extremist groups of folks – to utilize those in a technically “non-violent way” to spread violence and such through the internet and in other places. This idea that people are simply “rational” emotionless computers and that words can't hurt people... it simply goes against human nature.. Humans are social beings. According to modern psychology, those who are otherwise espouse “antisocial behaviour” etc.

The fiscal cliff is also an obvious problem of America's inability to control its own overblown war industry (protip: just slash military spending and you have budget balance) and other corporate interests who does not have the survival of the country as their top priority. And it's not like I'm living in some better place – in fact, my own country is likely gonna go down badly before the US due our own dumb collective cultural/ideological traits. -.-

****

Btw... have to say one of the reasons why I'm not entirely on the boat with the European right – btw – is the fact that most peasants will get even more redundant than they already are soon... when we can grow meat like plants thanks to scientific advances. Of course – everything from the EU to the entire “labour market” being a big Ponzi scheme overproducing stuff, with agricultural subsidies at the centre, it's not likely to change anything anytime soon. No matter how many protest lists “woke” antropocentric so-called environmentalists sign.

I'm not sure I wanna empower the peasant caste in the west, the same folks who in different eras started pogroms and witch hunts and such. I've dealt with such people on the Swedish part of internet (talking about so called “grass roots”, not politicians etc.) and the ignorance and simple mindedness they display is astonishing. Anything that goes outside their box is “communism”, “cultural marxism”, “politically correct” etc. I've been accused of all those things despite being a card carrying member of a right wing political party. But these people just cannot be nuanced. It's just like the “safe spaces” of the regressive left. Complete idiots can make money of these silly peasants by simply whining on the internet.

And this relates to the issue of growing meat. How does such folk react to such suggestions? By all sorts of dumb suggestions about it turning us into glowing two-headed aliens etc. And the usual rants about vegetarianism making people dumb and environmentalists being dumb hippies.

This is not something unique to Sweden of course. And I've thought.. maybe this is come kind of universal thing that occurs among all the peoples? Perhaps there's always gonna be a bunch of people that are simply not suited to think the big thoughts. We need someone to plough the fields.. after all. But perhaps those folks shouldn't be given more responsibility than they can handle?

The only folks I've thought could be an exception would perhaps be the Jewish people? I can't say I've ever met a person of Jewish descent that has struck me as a dumb person. And I've met plenty. But its not just “intelligence” (which doesn't do much on its own – a complete lunatic may be brilliant solver of equations etc.) - it's more about nuanced thinking, that somehow seems to me like a typically Jewish cultural trait? Maybe those are the only that survived after everything the Jewish nation had to go through in X-tian Europe? [/quote]

I think the US. has proven itself to be unable to deal with the downsides of its own individualism on numerous occasions.

I'm asking YOU to prove what you say, can you do that or can you not?

[Bear Stearns]

Please tell me how "Wall Street fat cats" "stuff" the government with debt.

I'm just saying we shouldn't have bailed them out. We should have let Market Forces do what they needed to do.

I agree with that...but that has little impact on government debt.