Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "MentisWave" channel.

"a slippery slope and would end up including things like pedophilia and bestiality" Are those somehow more common today? I'm skeptical.
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@Aneko_Tomo It's not clear to me that they're accepted more than before either and I don't think that's something most LGBT advocates support.
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@Aneko_Tomo They have existed before Twitter (and the Internet). It's not clear to me that they have become more common than they have been.
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@Aneko_Tomo Yeah, you can see some of that. I just wanted to say that I don't see the slippery slope mentioned by OP as being real in this case.
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"the moment that trump mentions camps for gays or deporting US citizens he disagrees with, we would join the left in fighting against that" I can believe you would do that but there's a significant fraction of Trumpists (though I'm not saying they're a majority) that would consider that kind of thing "based".
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4:00 I think Kazakhstan was hit even harder than Ukraine.
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@cappybara6866 "that doesn't mean that more government action is the soluition" It's not more government action but different government action. The designing of low-density car-dependent suburbs is not market forces responding to demand. It's a government decision mandating low density etc. through zoning.
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12:15 "If you really want your walkable spaces, why not get into hiking and then just take a walk through the woods sometimes. It's what I do and I've never had this nagging feeling that life would somehow magically become better if the urban areas just had more walkable spaces. Oh and guess what, to get to most good hiking locations you need a car." This is such a stupid argument (and doesn't your last sentence provide a counter argument to your own "why not get into hiking" argument?). If you need a car to be able to walk your environment is just badly designed. In and urban/suburban environment you should be able to walk to e.g. a grocery store etc. Making a purposeful trip to somewhere (with a car) just to walk is a completely different thing.
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@wrongthinker843 Hmm, are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? It's not clear to me what you're trying to say.
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Since a major part of this video was about holding one's own side accountable, I think it would've been better if you would have, as an example, called out someone who's (at least very loosely speaking) on the same side as you for this kind of behaviour.
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Why not?
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@xXx_Regulus_xXx If you must know, I have been donating to Against Malaria Foundation and GiveWell. In any case, it quite natural that a country would primarily focus on its own citizens but I also think it's good to spend a little bit on foreign aid too. One reason is that several places in the world have people who are much worse off and can be helped very cost-effectively. Also, combating the spread of HIV may help the whole world including the US. I don't know what's the appropriate level of foreign aid, that's a difficult question, but I maintain that it should be greater than zero.
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@firstnamelastname9237 It is small compared to the size of the US. I think the (seemingly incorrect) claim about "condoms for Gaza" was $50 million. That would basically be a rounding error in the US budget if it were correct. "The good it does could do MORE good here or just left in tax payers hands." That seems unlikely. In several very poor places lives can be saved much more cost effectively than in a rich country like the US where most of the cheap stuff has already been done. Even if you value American lives, say, 10x more than those in sub-Saharan Africa, it's still probably cost-effective to spend at least a little bit on places like Mozambique. Also, reducing the spread of HIV worldwide can have positive spillover effects for the US as well if less cases are introduced by people travelling to the US.
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@epj0211 Why?
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@epj0211 It's a very minor sum of money for the effect it can have. Why cut it? (As a sidenote, it's a little unclear to me whether the Gaza, Mozambique is correct either or just theorizing but the original claim was certainly BS.)
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@xXx_Regulus_xXx Because there exist opportunities to do significant good with comparatively small amounts of money. Also, helping to contain the spread of HIV worldwide can also benefit the US. US foreign aid is something like 0.2% of GDP. It's tiny compared to domestic spending and not excessive at all.
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@xXx_Regulus_xXx This is an absolutely tiny part of your money.
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@firstnamelastname9237 "This is a problem that is resolved purely by self restraint." Well, until the day such a resolution occurs, that kind of spending is effective. "And when you’re in debt, any amount of money over that debt should be considered a failure." That's ridiculous. It's like saying you couldn't give a quarter to a poor person or a child because you have a mortgage or a student loan or credit card debt. The US can easily afford to spend a little bit on things like that. "50 million is a lot of money to waste..." No, it's not a lot nor is it waste (or it probably wouldn't be waste but the whole thing may be completely made up).
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@firstnamelastname9237 It's not a waste of money. People in some such places are much poorer than the poor in the US which makes them more cost-effective to help. "GIVE IT TO POOR PEOPLE IN THE US" The US government already spends much more on poor people domestically than it spends on foreign aid (as one would expect). If you want to advocate increasing that, by all means do that (I can't say what the appropriate level for that spending is), but focusing on the fairly small foreign aid spending is mostly a red herring. $50 million is like $0.15 per US resident. You're not gonna budge the rate of US poverty with that. "I'm not giving a condom to a homeless person, I'm going to give money or a meal. If you're going to take money at least use it on something that makes sense." It's not clear to me whether that condoms thing was entirely made up or whether it was merely the place (or amount) that was wrong. But, in any case, condoms can certainly make a lot of sense in a place where the prevalence of HIV is something like 10%. Of course, you'd probably not help a poor American person that way but that's a different matter.
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@firstnamelastname9237 "If it’s something solved by such little self restraint, yes, it’s a waste." Until the day such a solution occurs, it's not a waste. "Not making sure people who no self control get to keep having no self control." I don't see any indication that this kind of spending would lower anyone's self control. "It should be focused on insuring the safety of us citizens." I disagree. Not every last penny needs to be spent that way. It makes sense to spend a little bit on foreign aid. And, like I said, the amount of spent on foreign aid is quite small. Any domestic problems have almost nothing to do with that. "sending it to other countries when ours is in debt is inherently a harm to both us and their future" First of all, how does it harm their future? That claim makes no sense. As for your future, the effect is minimally small and the good done abroad can be much greater.
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@opadrip You're misunderstanding. I haven't shifted my position here. Firstly, I've seen Gaza, Mozambique given as speculation but I haven't seen that as confirmed info. I just wanted to mention the caveat that I'm not sure if that condom spending is real at all. I'm not saying it's not happening, just that I'm not sure. Secondly, I've consistently said that spending on condoms in Gaza, Mozambique sounds like a reasonable way (and $50 million a reasonable amount) to spend whether that's happening or not. And yes, a spending item of that size doesn't sound like a big deal and even the whole USAID budget isn't that big for a country the size of the US.
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@firstnamelastname9237 "it does have a solution. They just refuse to use it." But meanwhile this other solution can do a lot to help. Condoms are cheap, at least for rich countries. "it's NOT small, especially given it's not the only wasteful spending" I disagree about it being wasteful and, like I said earlier, US foreign aid is only something like 0.2% of GDP. That's not a lot on the scale of a national budget and has very little to do with the amount of national debt. "it's doing zero good basically" Really? What are you basing that claim on? Like I said earlier, it's unclear to me if this spending on condoms is real even in Gaza, Mozambique, but it stands to reason that a very cheap remedy like condoms could help in a region with 10% HIV prevalence. "If that was the entirety of foreign aid, maybe I wouldn't care." Well, maybe I wouldn't care so much if it was just one program like this being cut. But it seems there's a more wholesale cutting going not which is quite bad. They seemed intent on cutting also far, far more effective programs like PEPFAR. That cut was apparently at least partially cancelled but the program has probably still suffered. PEPFAR has likely saved millions of lives (not hyperbole).
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@firstnamelastname9237 "Our budget is inflated because of nonsense like this in part, but also, that's actually still a lot. 0.2% of an entire countries GDP...on *that*. Yes that's a lot." No, the size of the budget is mostly not due to foreign aid. You can compare it to e.g. Social Security which has outlays equaling to a bit over 5% of GDP so something like 25x the foreign aid. "So it's not really a help." Of course it's help if it e.g. reduces the prevalence of HIV. "if it's so cheap, I ask again, why do we have to be the ones to pay for it" The US is far from the only one doing foreign aid. Most other high-income countries (most of which are less rich than the US) spend a higher percentage of GDP on foreign aid. Just to be clear, I'm not complaining that the US isn't spending enough; I don't know what the appropriate amount is. I'm just saying that all rich countries should spend some amount and the amount the US currently spends is comparatively small and easily affordable so there's little reason to not do it. If you mean why the extremely poor countries and people in e.g. Africa don't pay it themselves, well the phrase "extremely poor" should already provide a lot of the answer. Also, people in these places might lack the knowledge about infection prevention or there can be issues with availability.
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@firstnamelastname9237 "This is an example of wasted money." I think that's an unjustified claim. I've not seen an effectiveness assessment (or even confirmation whether this $50 million spending was real) but if it reduces HIV cases enough, it's not waste. "instead of one or two signs warning about HIV?" I would venture to guess that programs like this also warn about HIV.
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@firstnamelastname9237 "it's 50 millions dollars more than what it costs to fix, so yeah, it's wasted" Until your $0 fix actually occurs it likely saves lives so it's probably not wasted.
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@cricker1998 In this kind of case limiting the global spread of HIV could potentially help all countries including the US. But more generally, I think it's good to also care about the welfare of foreigners a bit even if there isn't a benefit to oneself. Spending 0.2% on foreign aid is quite reasonable IMHO as it's small enough to not be much of a sacrifice.
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@cricker1998 "Why was this spent without consent?" The US isn't anarcho-capitalist.
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@cricker1998 Maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was that all taxation and spending is like that. It's not like you need the consent of every tax-payer for every item in the budget. Similarly, e.g. military spending is done without consent. That's always the case unless you're imagining some kind of hypothetical 0% tax ancap system.
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@mankosan6737 If you're worried about oversight or transparency, you could implement those without a wholesale dismantling of USAID. That's the same kind of kneejerk reaction like e.g. "defund the police".
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