Right Wing Discussion Thread XV: A New Hoppe

[Novus America]

So what do people here think of magic and all?
I am sure Dugin would have gotten a very WARM welcome from the Inquisition

So RWDT, is magic the way we defeat evil modernity with its machines?
(I think there was a Final Fantasy game or two with the whole machine society of scientists fighting mages and that stuff).

Is it just delusion because it has no scientific or logical basis?

Or is it straight toasty heresy?

I think it's real, but not something that the vast majority of people would be able to do today.

The “mind-lord” is the mind-king. Because it does not remain stuck in existence and nonexistence, the mind is without impediments, and the wondrous deeds that it performs are accomplished at will. Therefore it says, “the mind-lord being absolutely free.”

Having been one, you become many; having been many, you become one; you appear and vanish; you go unhindered through a wall, through a rampart, through a mountain as though through space; you dive in and out of the earth as though it were water; you walk on water without sinking as though it were earth; seated cross-legged, you travel in space like a bird; with your hand you touch and stroke the moon and sun so powerful and mighty; you exercise mastery with the body as far as the brahma world.

But the mind is an electrochemical construct. How can it do such things beyond deluding itself into believing it can do such things? If only you see yourself waking through walls, is it not more like you are not actually doing so?

Just because someone says you can do it does not offer an explanation as to how you can do it.

And why then do you have such a negative view of Dugin and Evola?
What about Crowley?
Because they are in your view doing it wrong?

[Diopolis]

So what do people here think of magic and all?
I am sure Dugin would have gotten a very WARM welcome from the Inquisition

So RWDT, is magic the way we defeat evil modernity with its machines?
(I think there was a Final Fantasy game or two with the whole machine society of scientists fighting mages and that stuff).

Is it just delusion because it has no scientific or logical basis?

Or is it straight toasty heresy?

I go with the middle option. If it makes you feel better okay, but I can easily see where people could slip into delusion and mental issues actually believing it.

While there is almost certainly such a thing as Magic, and it's incredibly dangerous, the majority of so-called magic is rank charlatanism.

[Proctopeo]

So what do people here think of magic and all?
I am sure Dugin would have gotten a very WARM welcome from the Inquisition

So RWDT, is magic the way we defeat evil modernity with its machines?
(I think there was a Final Fantasy game or two with the whole machine society of scientists fighting mages and that stuff).

Is it just delusion because it has no scientific or logical basis?

Or is it straight toasty heresy?

I go with the middle option. If it makes you feel better okay, but I can easily see where people could slip into delusion and mental issues actually believing it.

Play with Magic, you end-up needing Magical Girls to clean up your messes when you turn into a Witch.

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

[Northern Davincia]

Play with Magic, you end-up needing Magical Girls to clean up your messes when you turn into a Witch.

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

[Proctopeo]

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

I'm more partial to Akko, but really they're all great.

[Socialist Workers Combine]

While there is almost certainly such a thing as Magic, and it's incredibly dangerous.

I can attest to this.

[Northern Davincia]

I'm more partial to Akko, but really they're all great.

>choosing the protagonist

You're a bold man.

[Senkaku]

I see Estado Novo getting praised, I...

... well, talk is cheap, sleep costly.

Work is priceless. And through 34 years of labor the estado novo pulled Portugual out of the 19th century into the 20th: by the carnation revolution, portugual had a strong domestic and colonial economy, rapidly rising literacy and education rates, pensions for rural workers, expanded and modern infrastructure, one of the most free presses in Europe, a stable colonial empire - all while be governed by anti liberal conservative catholic principles.

... and then fredumb came...

a stable colonial empire indeed lmfao

[Proctopeo]

I'm more partial to Akko, but really they're all great.

>choosing the protagonist

You're a bold man.

Bold is my MO.

[Hanafuridake]

Just because someone says you can do it does not offer an explanation as to how you can do it.

You asked me for my opinion on a subject and I provided my belief based on the Buddhist canon. I was not agreeing to a full blown discussion about religion, neuroscience, and a host of other subjects in the process.

And why then do you have such a negative view of Dugin and Evola?
What about Crowley?
Because they are in your view doing it wrong?

Because they were (or are, in Dugin's case) bad people who dreamed about genocide of ethnicities they considered inferior? I don't understand the question.

I find Crowley entertaining as a person. Not sure what he really was.

[Novus America]

I'm more partial to Akko, but really they're all great.

How old are these girls supposed to be? Or is even asking that going down a dark road?

[Proctopeo]

I'm more partial to Akko, but really they're all great.

How old are these girls supposed to be? Or is even asking that going down a dark road?

All the main ones are 16.

[Novus America]

Just because someone says you can do it does not offer an explanation as to how you can do it.

You asked me for my opinion on a subject and I provided my belief based on the Buddhist canon. I was not agreeing to a full blown discussion about religion, neuroscience, and a host of other subjects in the process.

And why then do you have such a negative view of Dugin and Evola?
What about Crowley?
Because they are in your view doing it wrong?

Because they were (or are, in Dugin's case) bad people who dreamed about genocide of ethnicities they considered inferior? I don't understand the question.

I find Crowley entertaining as a person. Not sure what he really was.

Okay, so it is not because they are into esoteric magic, but because you think they want to use it for evil? Does this mean Dugin would actually be extremely dangerous? Or that he cannot actually implements it?

Crowley is an odd bird because it is not clear if he is trolling or not.
Or something in between.

[Novus America]

How old are these girls supposed to be? Or is even asking that going down a dark road?

All the main ones are 16.

Okay, well at least that is legal many places.
Anime gets rather uncomfortable sometimes...
But I guess we are not supposed to talk about that.

[Northern Davincia]

All the main ones are 16.

Okay, well at least that is legal many places.
Anime gets rather uncomfortable sometimes...
But I guess we are not supposed to talk about that.

It slips my mind in anime, much of the time.

[Hanafuridake]

You asked me for my opinion on a subject and I provided my belief based on the Buddhist canon. I was not agreeing to a full blown discussion about religion, neuroscience, and a host of other subjects in the process.


Because they were (or are, in Dugin's case) bad people who dreamed about genocide of ethnicities they considered inferior? I don't understand the question.

I find Crowley entertaining as a person. Not sure what he really was.

Okay, so it is not because they are into esoteric magic, but because you think they want to use it for evil? Does this mean Dugin would actually be extremely dangerous? Or that he cannot actually implements it?

Crowley is an odd bird because it is not clear if he is trolling or not.
Or something in between.

There's been a misunderstanding which is my fault: I don't think they can actually use magic. It's only possible to gain psychic powers (siddhis) through purifying one's mind of defilements, which if you're advocating for genocide, is inherently impossible. The siddhis are listed by the Buddha as “the fruits of the contemplative life.” something obtained by hermits, monks, and bodhisattva rather than genocidal wehraboos.

[Luminesa]

Play with Magic, you end-up needing Magical Girls to clean up your messes when you turn into a Witch.

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

That's not how this works Dio.

[Proctopeo]

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

That's not how this works Dio.

my Trick Room is the solution for this

[Totally Not OEP]

I think that just clamping down on the predatory practices done by a lot of colleges and price gouging would perhaps be better than a federally funded tuition plan.

Capitalism in the US has provided us with all the wealth and resources we could ever need - it's just that a greater and more equitable share needs to be had among the common working Americans, and not cloistered among an elite few - this, I believe, is were the state should intervene.

Post-Secondary Education is the next topic I was going to address.

U.S. Student Loan debt recently surpassed $1.5 Trillion, of which round $1 Trillion of this is owned by the Federal Government through their Loan Program managed by the Department of Education. Despite this, the Federal Government derives very little from this debt, only about 0.1 percent or $1.5 billion a year and the program on the whole is actually projected to cost taxpayers $170 Billion over the next decade. This is because 46% of the loans currently held by the Federal Government are not in repayment and this is starting to affect the wider economy, with all that entails. Clearly, this isn't a situation that should persist and I think easy solutions exist.

The first step to fixing the system must be to address the aforementioned issue of student debt. Some on the Left have proposed outright forgiving the debt, but this is an inherently regressive position as most of the student debt is actually held by the wealthy. To this end, the Student Security Act of 2017, introduced Republican Congressman Tom Garrett, is a proposal that is actually fair:

The Student Security Program would offer student debtors the option of eliminating portions of their debt in exchange for delaying the age at which they will qualify for Social Security benefits. It would use immediate debt relief to cut mandatory spending in the future, and would create significant net savings over the lifetime of the program. Specifically, it would give $550 in student-loan forgiveness for each month a debtor was willing to raise his full retirement age, or $6,600 per year. For comparison, the average Social Security beneficiary receives $16,000 annually. Cosigners (parents, grandparents, etc.) could also participate, thereby resulting in earlier net savings for the program.

The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Chief Actuary estimates this program would save $726 billion over a 75-year window. This is a static score, meaning it does not account for the economic benefits of debt relief, and it represents roughly 11 percent of what is required to make Social Security fully solvent for the next 75 years in its current form.

On the whole, I find this to be an excellent solution as it both addresses the Student Loan issue in a fair manner while at the same time helping, to some extent, in fixing the looming issue of Social Security. It should also be paired, however, with a reform in bankruptcy rules to complement it. Currently, Federal Student Loans cannot be discharged during bankruptcy proceedings, which is one of the things that would be changed under the proposed reforms. Likewise, the Trump Administration's proposed consolidation of all current repayment plans into a single Income-Based Repayment program is another worthy proposal to help tackle the overall problem.

While this serves to eliminate the Student Loan issue as a matter for current debt holders, what of future students? Kevin Williamson at National Review just last week wrote an excellent article on the subject:

Here is a three-part plan for something practical the federal government could do to relieve college-loan debt. Step 1: The federal government should stop making college loans itself and cease guaranteeing any such loans. Step 2: It should prohibit educational lending by federally regulated financial institutions or, if that seems too heavy-handed, require the application of ordinary credit standards in any private educational lending, treating the student himself as the main credit risk in all cases, including those of secured or unsecured loans taken out by parents or other third parties for that student’s educational expenses. And 3: It should make student-loan debt dischargeable in ordinary bankruptcy procedures.

The most likely end result of this would be the effective abolition of government- and bank-based financing of college education in all but the most narrowly defined circumstances. Good riddance. That leaves about $1.5 trillion in existing debt on the table, a very large number from which the federal government derives very little income, about 0.1 percent a year, or $1.5 billion — a fact that should enter into our calculations about whether we attempt to collect every nickel of that money or, perhaps, slowly forgive some of that debt for students who keep up with their payments and are otherwise good citizens, maybe at a rate of 2 percent of the principal a year.
It is time to shut down the Bank of Uncle Stupid.

Colleges will have two choices: Bring their tuitions down to a more reasonable rate or, if they are so inclined, work out financing arrangements of their own. This would not present too much trouble to splendidly endowed schools such as Harvard and Princeton, or to public schools with substantial resources at their disposal. A senior official of my alma mater, the University of Texas, once caused a stir by confessing — in public — that UT Austin doesn’t need to charge tuition at all but does so mainly as a population-control mechanism. The problem, he said, wasn’t money as such but the fact that the state would not let him raise admissions standards. Admittedly, UT has become a little more selective in recent years.

I have a theory about why there has been so much tuition inflation: inflation.

When we talk about “inflation,” we generally mean to denote a general rise in consumer prices; but, properly understood, that is the result of inflation, not inflation itself. Inflation itself is an increase in the money supply, and its effects need not necessarily be general. You can inflate the money supply by printing money, but you can also do it by expanding credit. Our friends at the National Association of Realtors and other charter members of the Committee to Reinflate the Housing Bubble, for example, have a keen understanding of the relationship between loosey-goosey mortgage-lending standards and brisk sales in the face of rising housing prices (and rising commissions). Your local new- or used-car dealer knows that he can charge higher prices for vehicles that are to be financed by people who care more about their monthly payment than about the total cost. There are some critics of the federal response to the 2008–09 financial crisis who believe that the recent run-up in the stock markets and the prices of other assets is fundamentally the result of inflation through quantitative easing and other measures. (You don’t have to believe that that was a necessarily bad policy to believe that this is true, incidentally.) Easy credit contributes to higher prices.

If you make a few gazillion dollars available to finance tuition payments with underwriting standards a little bit lower than those of the average pawn shop, you create a lot of potential tuition inflation. Another way of saying this is that if Uncle Stupid puts a trillion bucks on the table, there are enough smart people at Harvard to figure out a way to pick it up.

We managed to provide college educations to those wanting them for many generations without creating a body of debt larger than all of the credit-card bills in the nation combined. Our colleges have become faintly ridiculous places, in terms of their modest academic ambitions (lookin’ at you, journalism majors, women’s-studies departments, undergraduate programs in business administration), their top-heavy administrative structures (the number of administrators per student has exploded along with college debt, suggesting that colleges are being treated as full-employment programs for the politically connected classes), their resort-style amenities, etc. We accept more students but educate far fewer of them — at much greater expense.

The best way to impose a little discipline on that mess is to make students, their families, and, most important, the institutions themselves carry their own water. The current system is exploitative: The students essentially function as a conveyor belt carrying government money into the universities, leaving borrowers instead of taxpayers on the hook because it looks better from an accounting point of view: If we just gave the universities money, that would show up on the books as an expenditure; lending it to students allows us to pretend that we have created an asset when all we have actually created is a great deal of debt and horses**t.

And, hard as it is to believe, it’s even worse in the so-called trade schools and “professional” programs advertised in subways and buses from coast to coast. If you want to know how much money has been transferred to the nation’s bartending academies, the Professional Golfers Career College, or the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building under the guise of student lending, look here.
70

So, let’s cut the Gordian knot here. Don’t reform student lending, don’t try to lower the interest rates or create special debt subsidies for college graduates who follow careers of which the people with political power approve. Just get rid of it. With a meat ax.

There are lots of smart people at the universities. Or so we’re told. If they can’t figure out how to teach the liberal arts or accounting without dipping into the Bank of Uncle Stupid with both hands and all available snouts, then maybe somebody else should give it a try.

As stated earlier, this makes great economic sense as the Federal Government already sees little financial benefit from the Loan program while at the same time it indebts far too many students. It also has been proven that expansions of student aid programs result in colleges jacking up prices, in a confirmation of the Bennett Hypothesis. Abuse of FAFSA is also rampant, and has been used to swell college administration costs by hiring superfluous personnel and to increase salaries of the upper administrations. However, I should now clarify that the vast majority of this waste comes about from private institutions, with one Senate investigation finding that the for-profit sector consumed 25 percent of all federal aid dollars. To this end, I think it's obvious we need to cut private universities off from Federal funding.

What that in mind, we turn to public universities, which already educate 75% of undergraduates. In 2016, the Federal Government provided $125 Billion in aid, overwhelmingly through the Student Loan program at ~$95 Billion and ~$30 Billion more through the FAFSA and Work Study programs. To put this into perspective, public two, four, and less than two year institutions only collected ~$73 Billion in institutions and fees in the 2016-2017 school year. What I therefore propose is that the Federal Government combine all of these aid programs into a single grant fund to make tuition free education available at public institutions; in order to prevent abuse the DOE will limit tuition increases to rates deemed necessary as a result of inflation as well as needed to maintain pay and maintenance of the universities. I'd imagine this will cost about $80 Billion, to cover the current tuition rates as well as to prepare for the likely switching of students from private universities into public ones as well as expand opportunities and funding for Trade Education at the relevant schools. A further $30 Billion (The current cost of the FAFSA program) will be made available on a means-tested basis to help with books and housing/meal plans, as well as in continued work study positions.

All told, to do this should cost about $110 Billion, which is still $15 Billion less than we currently expend on education. With the hypothetical extra savings, I'd propose we'd use said funding to instead support Nuclear Fusion research efforts.

[Duhon]

So what do people here think of magic and all?
I am sure Dugin would have gotten a very WARM welcome from the Inquisition

So RWDT, is magic the way we defeat evil modernity with its machines?
(I think there was a Final Fantasy game or two with the whole machine society of scientists fighting mages and that stuff).

Is it just delusion because it has no scientific or logical basis?

Or is it straight toasty heresy?

I go with the middle option. If it makes you feel better okay, but I can easily see where people could slip into delusion and mental issues actually believing it.

Option 2, and thankful that shit ain't real, with the same realness as nuclear weapons or (because we can't not be fucking idiots) insufficiently sapient but sufficiently resourceful AI.

[Totally Not OEP]

Work is priceless. And through 34 years of labor the estado novo pulled Portugual out of the 19th century into the 20th: by the carnation revolution, portugual had a strong domestic and colonial economy, rapidly rising literacy and education rates, pensions for rural workers, expanded and modern infrastructure, one of the most free presses in Europe, a stable colonial empire - all while be governed by anti liberal conservative catholic principles.

... and then fredumb came...

a stable colonial empire indeed lmfao

It was. Angola and Mozambique had effectively been won by the time of the Carnation Revolution, while the expected oil profits from Cabinda would've more than covered the defense costs of the entirety of the Portuguese Empire.

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

How old are these girls supposed to be? Or is even asking that going down a dark road?

All the main ones are 16.

People always meme about right libertarians saying “It’s not pedophilia if they’re 16” and I’d love to say that is not true but I find it suspicious that the libertarians are obsessing over fictional characters that are supposed to be under 18.

[Diopolis]

I reject your reality and substitute Little Witch Academia

That's not how this works Dio.

What? What do I have to do with that?

[Northern Davincia]

All the main ones are 16.

People always meme about right libertarians saying “It’s not pedophilia if they’re 16” and I’d love to say that is not true but I find it suspicious that the libertarians are obsessing over fictional characters that are supposed to be under 18.

In this case, it's not exclusive to libertarians. Anime fans, either knowingly or unknowingly, can be rather fond of characters who happen to be under 18. The line between admiration and obsession can be thin.
This isn't even taking Japanese culture into consideration.

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

In this case, it's not exclusive to libertarians. Anime fans, either knowingly or unknowingly, can be rather fond of characters who happen to be under 18. The line between admiration and obsession can be thin.
This isn't even taking Japanese culture into consideration.

Anime should be highly regulated because a large amount of it is a disgusting subversion of humanity and an example of peak human degeneracy. Not all of it just be eliminated, but it's disgusting that much of it still exists.