Lucía > Recent Status Updates

Algunos, envalentonados por la violencia de esos días, detenían a los hombres con pelo largo o con barba, signos inequívocos de su espíritu rebelde, y paraban en la calle a las mujeres que andaban con pantalones para cortárselos a tijeretazos, porque se sentían responsables de imponer el orden, la moral y la decencia.

When marriage vows are no longer truly binding, couples seem to become less confident in their relationships.

The European Union as a whole has 36% less income than the United States, and yet beats the US not only on life expectancy but on virtually every other indicator of human welfare.

La economía, dado que es una de las principales bases de transformación y control social, siempre ha estado sujeta a las batallas culturales y a las narrativas, ideológicas y de poder, de cada época, y eso es imposible reflejarlo en fórmulas exactas que nunca fallen.

Cuanto más entendía la economía y más conocía cómo funciona el mundo más allá de los libros de texto universitarios, mejor entendía cómo era utilizada para seguir perpetuando las desigualdades y los privilegios de unos pocos.

it’s all about distribution. And what matters most of all is investment in universal public goods.

Once you permit the idea that people can be products, everything is corroded.

If we accept that sex is merely a service that can be freely bought and sold, then we have no arguments left to make against the incels who want to ‘redistribute’ it or the army officials who want to offer their troops ‘convenient arrangements’.

Sex workers can act as sources of sex advice only if we understand sex to be a skillset that must be learned and refined across different partners, with good sex a result not of intimacy but of good technique. In this framing, sex becomes something that one does to another person, not with another person. All of the emotion is drained away, leaving the logic of the punter triumphant.

(...)
If the scientific revolution disenchanted the world, a la Weber, the sexual revolution disenchanted sex in the process of deregulating it.»
Aaron Sibarium

«Where past sexual regimes constrained who could have sex with whom, and for what ends, today’s attacks such constraints as benighted and domineering –promising, like classical liberalism, to let individuals do as they please. A marriage, a one-night stand, a ‘throuple,’ a hook-up, a brothel: these are all equally valid means of getting sex, which has no inherent value beyond what consenting adults assign to it.(...)

the brothels of Bangkok that cater for tourists are filled with sex buyers from Europe, Australia and North America. The buyers tend to have lighter coloured skins than the sellers because sex is sold in only one direction along the economic gradient.

The relationship between GDP and human welfare plays out on a saturation curve, with sharply diminishing returns: after a certain point, which high-income nations have long surpassed, more GDP adds little if anything to human flourishing.

Of course, things like universal healthcare, sanitation, education and decent wages require financial resources. Economic growth can absolutely help towards that end, and in poor countries it is even necessary. But – and here’s the crucial bit – the interventions that really matter when it comes to improving human welfare do not require high levels of GDP.

Progress in human welfare has been driven by progressive political movements and governments that have managed to harness economic resources to deliver robust public goods and fair wages.

«Proposing policies that will cost you as a member of the upper class less than they would cost me serve the same function.»
Henderson

«The affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs … The logic is akin to conspicuous consumption – if you’re a student who has a large subsidy from your parents and I do not, you can afford to waste $900 and I can’t, so wearing a Canada Goose jacket is a good way of advertising your superior wealth and status.»
Henderson

psychologist Rob Henderson coined the term ‘luxury beliefs’ to describe ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost while taking a toll on the poor. These are a form of Veblen good (after sociologist Thorstein Veblen): products that do not obey the usual rules of supply and demand but instead are desired by consumers because they are expensive, rather than in spite of this fact.

Prostitution has never been a matter of personal choice or female empowerment. Rather, the role of ‘buyer’ versus ‘seller’ has always been determined not only by sex but also by race, nationality and – above all – class.

Any man who can maintain an erection while beating up his partner is a man to steer well clear of (…)
The problem is that, while masochistic women may want to play at being raped, they do not want to actually be raped. And yet seeking out a man who is turned on by violence may well result in exactly this outcome.

the liberal feminist faith in consent relies on a fundamentally false premise: that who we are in the bedroom is different from who we are outside of it.

The increasing popularity and success of the ‘rough sex defence’ internationally seems to be a result of the fact that courts are increasingly willing to believe that women not only consent to, but actually seek out, the kind of violence that can prove lethal. The phenomenon thus provides compelling evidence of the large-scale consequences of the normalisation of BDSM.

The increasing popularity and success of the ‘rough sex defence’ internationally seems to be a result of the fact that courts are increasingly willing to believe that women not only consent to, but actually seek out, the kind of violence that can prove lethal. The phenomenon thus provides compelling evidence of the large-scale consequences of the normalisation of BDSM.

within the last two decades, courts have become much more willing to believe defendants when they claim that their victims died because they literally ‘asked for it’.

BDSM is good for abusive men and good for capital. It subverts nothing.

conspiraban con los militares para hacer un golpe de Estado, porque preferían ver la democracia muerta, antes que gobernada por él.

los camioneros en huelga recibían cincuenta dólares diarios del extranjero para mantener el país parado.

unos pocos médicos más, que seguían ejerciendo a pesar de la orden del Colegio Médico de no trabajar para sabotear al gobierno.

Estaban convencidos de que si habían llegado al poder por la vía legal y democrática, nadie se lo podía quitar, al menos hasta unas próximas elecciones presidenciales.

El pueblo se encontró por primera vez con suficiente dinero para cubrir sus necesidades básicas y comprar algunas cosas que siempre deseó, pero no podía hacerlo, porque los almacenes estaban casi vacíos. Había comenzado el desabastecimiento, que llegó a ser una pesadilla colectiva.