[HN Gopher] Is everything falling apart?
___________________________________________________________________
Is everything falling apart?
Author : tejohnso
Score : 364 points
Date : 2022-04-29 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nonzero.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nonzero.substack.com)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| shigawire wrote:
| Alex Jones spits on people and tells them it's raining.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| flappyeagle wrote:
| He's been wrong 100x more than he's been correct. He spends
| the entire day spouting random garbage, and you can cherry-
| pick the 10 pieces of garbage that happened to be true.
| redmen wrote:
| Yes. Seems like people remember when he's right because
| he's like their prophet or something.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| You made up statistic to criticize someone on accuracy?
| Clearly lots of people find value in listening to him.
| redmen wrote:
| LOL you realize Alex Jones just says obvious shit and takes
| credit right?
|
| When has he ever said anything profound that turned out to
| be correct?
| [deleted]
| Bud wrote:
| Predicting it while himself being one of the main causes of it,
| you mean.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Maybe that's why you have an insanely distorted view of
| what's going on in the US?
| jaqalopes wrote:
| I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you
| had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar
| career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think
| you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from
| a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those
| things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running
| down the tracks but at this point the train is picking up speed
| so your odds aren't too good. Obviously this is a young single
| person's perspective but I think we're by far feeling the shifts
| in society and the economy the most right now.
|
| Alternative, darker analogy: everyone is on the Titanic. It's
| currently breaking in half and about to sink, but people like the
| author of this blog post are on the upper half looking down.
| basisword wrote:
| While I agree that buying property has become very difficult,
| what has changed in 2022 that prevents you from getting a
| stable white collar job or finding a partner? If you have the
| requisite skillset (which can be acquired more easily than ever
| thanks to the internet) getting a stable white collar job is
| very possible. And in the age of dating apps, so much friction
| has been removed when it comes to finding a partner (although
| it might not feel like it at times).
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The
| 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of
| 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and,
| apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting
| vacuum.
|
| As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part
| of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want
| to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do.
| Stable job is doable then, but I don't know if it is easy.
|
| And that does not even touch the simple fact that not
| everyone is built for that.
| basisword wrote:
| >> Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The
| 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of
| 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and,
| apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting
| vacuum.
|
| Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm
| stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's
| the same as the past as far as I can see.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| While I know you inteded this as a direct question, I'm
| actually going to give a meta-response. It seems to me that
| you think that the problem I'm outlining in my "train"
| analogy is that I personally am not on the train. To the
| contrary, the problem is that there is a train at all. Even
| if/when I manage to climb safely aboard, I'll have left
| behind an entire class of people who weren't so lucky. Smart,
| capable people who just wanted to do something respectable
| and beneficial for the world, like teaching or journalism or
| home health aide. I understand that all those people could
| just give up on what they're doing and "learn 2 code" but I
| think it should be obvious that (a) not everyone wants to
| code (or can do it to a high level), and (2) a society made
| up entirely of coders is not desirable.
|
| More broadly though, I suspect you and I just have totally
| different worldviews. You correctly point out that there are
| straightforward steps to escape the crushing hopelessness of
| life in the modern underclass. What I'm saying is that it
| should be made possible and in fact easy for people to carry
| on a dignified, non-hopeless existence without being coerced
| into chasing the absolute highest-paying job available. I
| suspect this comes down to personality. If you're satisfied
| living "defensively," putting aside what you most crave or
| are actually best at in favor of the thing that will keep you
| protected while the rest of society atrophies, well that's
| lucky for you. But not everyone is wired that way. If we
| were, I doubt things like good food or art or music would
| exist.
|
| As for the dating thing, if you're not on the dating market
| right now you might not be aware that COVID massively messed
| things up. People now (myself included) are weirder than
| pre-2020. Human connection is harder. In fact, I'm going on
| IRL dates from apps most weekends now, but it's still a
| struggle compared to how things used to be, for me at least.
|
| I doubt anyone is still reading by this point but I will say
| this: my original post was not about how _my_ life is falling
| apart. I suspect I 'll be fine; I'm doing more or less
| exactly what I want to do, all day, every day. The issue is,
| net net, lots of people are struggling. If people pulling
| themselves up by their bootstraps was a viable solution, we'd
| live in a utopia by now.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Having the skill set to _do_ a job is vastly different from
| having the skill set (or connections) to _get_ the job.
| basisword wrote:
| Yes, but how is this more difficult in 2022?
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Or you can just wait for the next stop and get on there.
| the_other wrote:
| How do you get to the next stop?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| You wait for the market to cycle again - crash, boom, then
| crash, etc. Parent poster might have been in their 20s/30s
| though and implying that waiting for the next cycle would
| waste prime years of their life.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > waste prime years of their life.
|
| I'm not sure that life is wasted, but I'd suggest
| financial opportunity is wasted.
|
| You just can't reach the level of financial security that
| the previous generation could if that previous generation
| had a drastically lower cost of living relative to income
| for the first X years of their adult life. Especially as
| X approaches the length of your entire career.
| User23 wrote:
| Or you hope that your boomer parents don't reverse
| mortgage the house to fund the Margarita-ville lifestyle
| at some compound in Florida.
|
| For many young people today inheriting a house is the
| only plausible way they're going to get one.
| bradlys wrote:
| That'll happen at far too late of an age for it to matter
| though. Parents aren't dying at 60 when they had kids at
| 30. They're dying at 80 and the kids will be 50+ when
| they finally get anything. By then - it's far too late.
| aaronax wrote:
| Anyone can move to my town and get an $18/hour starting
| wage job and buy a $150,000 house. Hard to imagine that
| this is unique. Look outside the cities...
| rtkwe wrote:
| That depends heavily on your job and savings not being
| decimated by the crash part of that cycle.
| woodweb wrote:
| As someone born in and has all my family in BC, Canada; I
| barely lucked out securing a house in 2020. This was thanks
| to a white collar career and financially literate partner.
|
| There is no next stop. Look at Canada's housing crisis if you
| want to see where the United States is headed.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| I appreciate extending the analogy but I don't understand
| what this actually looks like in real life. You only go to
| college one, have your first job out of college once, etc. If
| you don't maximize ROI on those (not just financially but
| socially) you're playing catchup forever. Success is
| absolutely still possible but it will take hard work and luck
| compared to if I had just followed the prescribed path like
| so many people I know.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| On a burning station? That's not safe. Is a train even going
| to stop at a burning station?
| rtkwe wrote:
| I think the 'train' is also on fire just more insulated from
| the burning and it'll be a bit more comfortable until your car
| is engulfed and disconnected. IMO the beginning of Walkaway or
| maybe After the Revolution is a reasonable picture of what the
| future will look like economically with the gap between the
| rich and the rest of the world continuing to widen and life
| outside of that becoming increasingly tenuous. I'm not bullish
| on major changes happening that manage to address the causes of
| that. How well things stay glued together like in Walkaway or
| we get an explosive fracturing like After the Revolution is
| anyone's guess.
| imtringued wrote:
| There is a movie about this called snowpiercer.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Except there's a mob outside with pitchforks, and the conductor
| and engineer are part of it[1], and everybody in it has the
| same look on their face, "You really thought you could get
| away?" as the air brakes hiss into their fail-state, and
| everyone on board the train realizes the red herring of the
| burning station didn't work out.
|
| [1]: https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-
| attendance-p...
| thaway2839 wrote:
| White collar careers outside of tech are not as stable as
| you're indicating.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| That's definitely possible, I'm only going from people I know
| personally. Lots of insurance and finance and consulting
| types whose lives seem obscenely easy with their regular
| raises and functioning health insurance (grass is of course
| always greener). And as for tech, while the industry isn't
| going anywhere I think any single tech job is not necessarily
| super stable either. I guess by white collar jobs I was
| specifically thinking of jobs at Fortune 500 companies.
| lampshades wrote:
| As someone securely on the train, this feels apt.
| [deleted]
| daviross wrote:
| This is a good way of putting it. Having graduated high school
| in 2008, it's felt my entire adult life like I've been reaching
| for brass rings just within reach (for me), barely clinging on,
| but still doing better than so many people who weren't even in
| position to do that.
|
| We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I
| want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at
| crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling
| the flames lapping at my neck.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Crap. One of three for me. I'd have had a house by now if it
| weren't for the fact I had to pay back $120k in student loans.
| Heavy drain on my finances for years. Finally paid the damn
| things off earlier this year. In some ways I did the stupid
| thing by moving to an area where the property costs were beyond
| me, but it's where the people I know live. I was so very alone
| where I was before.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Curious - you say you are a young single person - do you count
| yourself as on the train (or at least able to run fast enough
| to get on?).
| jaqalopes wrote:
| I'm currently running to catch up. Feels like there's a non-
| trivial chance of failure, but I have enough privilege that I
| think I'll get on all right in the end. I could have been on
| the train from day 1 if I had made some different choices but
| there's no helping that now.
| 21723 wrote:
| Answer: Maybe.
|
| What we are experiencing is acceleration. Left-wing
| accelerationists want to bring on capitalism's end-stage
| calamities in order to foster a revolution that will overthrow
| the bourgeoisie. Right-wing accelerationists think that worsening
| economic conditions will trigger some sort of white-nationalist
| boogaloo garbage. I'm not an accelerationist, for my part, but
| it's pretty clear to me that acceleration is happening.
| Capitalism has been in objective decline for decades, but now the
| decline is happening faster than most of us ever imagined.
|
| There's an inevitable sequence to this sort of thing. Capitalism
| becomes corporate capitalism ("Stage 2") due to business
| consolidation. This requires the proliferation of middle
| management positions, both to curtail inefficiency and to prop up
| a middle class (preventing overthrow) while small businesses die,
| so what you get is an evolution into managerial capitalism.
| ("Stage 3") At this point, bureaucratic diversions make it hard
| to know what is happening, and few people--least of all the
| overpaid boneheads on top, who can't tell when they're being lied
| to--know if their managers (or consultants) are any good, so this
| leads to reputation capitalism ("Stage 4") in which there is no
| such thing as truth--there is only what people say, and power
| resides in the ability to control what others say. (In other
| words, might makes right.) This leads to widespread, deliberate
| misinformation that proliferates; the system begins to shake, but
| the nature of post-truth capitalism ("Stage 5") allows it to
| preserve its own stability, for a little while longer, if it can
| convince a large number of people that they're either already
| winning (bourgeois false consciousness) or destined to win
| (fascist fuckery). This isn't hard at all, in a world where
| nothing means anything, and in which the convincing telling of
| lies is the surest path to prestigious jobs and high incomes.
|
| We now live in a world where having a national reputation is
| necessary just to get an average job--hence the pathological
| obsession of the young with fame and "influencers"-- and in which
| admission to the most prestigious universities is as competitive
| as it has ever been but the product is the worst it's ever been.
| We have the right wing using fascism to win; we have the left
| wing diverted into callout-culture identity politics and virtue
| signaling instead of actual change. The dysfunction of capitalism
| can no longer be contained. We have stagflation now and will see
| worldwide food riots in a year or two. Read up on the Russian
| 1990s if you want to know what the capitalistic world (which is
| now the entire world) is in for.
|
| Is everything falling apart? It's hard to say. It'll get a lot
| worse in the short term, but humans and human civilization are
| resilient.
| taylodl wrote:
| The constant theme since the dawn of civilization threaded
| through all of history is that everything is falling apart.
| Change is continual. History is more like the seasons. Nations
| rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt. Sometimes there's
| peace. There's a continual game of King of the Mountain being
| played at all levels.
|
| So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up!
|
| Enjoy this phenomenon called life. You only get one.
| civilized wrote:
| I understand taking historical perspective, but I'm not a fan
| of complete equanimity about change. Lots of bad stuff is
| "happening all the time", like murder and cancer. It'd be nice
| to acknowledge when the things that are happening seem to be
| good or bad.
| leereeves wrote:
| > Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace.
|
| In short: sometimes things _aren 't_ falling apart.
|
| For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace
| and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I
| wish it could last a while longer.
| pojzon wrote:
| Issue right now is that our fall might mean complete fall of
| human civilisation in next 100 years or so.
|
| When Rome fell apart -> nothing much happened.
|
| When Bizzantium fell -> nothing much happened.
|
| When Nazi Germany fell -> millions of ppl died.
|
| When Earth stops sustaining human life in quite a few areas
| -> billions of ppl will die.
|
| Previously we had no big impact on Earth, now we do.
| techdragon wrote:
| Unless you lived in the parts of the world that didn't have
| that peace or that prosperity... it's important to remember
| peace and prosperity are regional phenomena that are not
| shared around the globe equally.
| leereeves wrote:
| Certainly there have been some parts of the world that
| didn't have that peace or that prosperity, but it was
| widespread.
|
| Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes. Most of the
| "developing world" developed. Marginalized groups gained
| new civil rights. China and India rose to become great
| powers even as their former colonial masters, though
| declining, still enjoyed peace and prosperity.
|
| Recognizing that there is still a lot of injustice and
| inequality in the world doesn't require denying all the
| progress that has been made.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > Recognizing that there is still a lot of injustice and
| inequality in the world doesn't require denying all the
| progress that has been made
|
| And recognizing that we've made process shouldn't make us
| believe that we've done enough. Recognize what we've (or
| they've) achieved, be proud about it but never loose
| focus on making "it" even better.
|
| (I'm just adding to your comment, not disagreeing)
| jl6 wrote:
| > Certainly there have been some parts of the world that
| didn't have that peace or that prosperity, but it was
| widespread.
|
| > Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes.
|
| While I don't disagree that decolonization was progress,
| it ironically came at the cost of the peace that had been
| imposed on the colonies by their former colonial masters.
| Many of the world's most conflict-stricken areas today
| are ex-colonies still in the process of stabilization.
|
| The dirty secret of peace is that it is often imposed by
| a dominant power. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax
| Americana. These were peaceful times because of intense
| power asymmetry.
| ansible wrote:
| > _While I don't disagree that decolonization was
| progress, it ironically came at the cost of the peace
| that had been imposed on the colonies by their former
| colonial masters._
|
| What is this "peace" you speak of? I think you want to
| take a closer look at the oppression that was endemic to
| colonization and occupation of foreign lands. One of the
| worse examples is Belgium's colonization of the Congo:
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/feb5/belgian-
| king...
|
| If an African laborer didn't produce rubber (for
| example), it was common to chop off a hand (his own or a
| family member's) to encourage him to work harder.
|
| Congo may be on the worse end of the spectrum of
| colonization, but it is hardly a singular example.
| jl6 wrote:
| Yes, I know this. This is why I view decolonization as
| progress. I am distinguishing such oppression from war.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _dirty secret of peace is that it is often imposed by a
| dominant power. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax
| Americana._
|
| If it's literally in the name it's not a secret.
| Competition for monopolies on violence are bloody. When
| we can sidestep that contest, we get a lasting peace.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes...
|
| Hard times make strong men
|
| Strong men make good times
|
| Good times make weak men
|
| And weak men make hard times.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I've always thought that saying is pretty weak, not only
| because of the bias that anyone believes it will tend to
| characterise themselves as one of the "strong men", but
| also because what one side characterises as good times,
| another side will characterise as bad. The end of WW2 was a
| good time for the allies, pretty devastating for Germany,
| and yet we don't see Germany in current times as on a
| completely different trajectory than the rest of us, its
| actually probably the most average of the former allied
| countries.
|
| Also the political perspective, what the left would
| characterise as good times the right would probably
| characterise as bad, and visa versa. At that point its no
| longer strong and weak men, but men of one camp and men of
| another.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty sure whoever wrote that saw police
| enforcement and brutality as the only reasonable solution
| to stability and what makes "a real man".
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| "Strong men" make fascism, not good times.
|
| It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional
| paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his
| own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism"
| and "respect."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, "a strong man" makes fascism. This happens when the
| rest of the men are weak, so they seek a strong leader to
| make up for their own weakness. Strong men don't follow a
| fascist leader; strong men can't be led like that. It's
| weak men who are the fertile ground for fascism, not
| strong men.
| boredumb wrote:
| The definition of fascism is the merger of state and
| corporate power. Patriotism and respect, while they may
| be against your ideology, have nothing to do with it.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Though that may be, it is in fact not how the word is
| used, and likely once the concept was pressed to the fore
| and came into relevance beyond the pale of the esoteric,
| never more was used with that definition in mind.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I hope you realize that strong men (of old times) have
| nothing in common with delusional paternalistic idiots?
| rank0 wrote:
| I can't understand what you're trying to convey.
|
| The terms fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning
| nowadays...at least to the far left.
| noisymemories wrote:
| Good god, enough with this "fascist and nazi seem to have
| lost all meaning" nonsense. Let's call it the "No true
| fascist fallacy". I could bring the corpse of Himmler
| here and some people would regurgitate the same "Bu-bu-
| but that's not actually fascist enough!". OP was
| basically quoting the definition of Ur-fascism by Umberto
| Eco. Is that historically accurate enough for you? Or
| should we check beforehand if whoever he was referring to
| has ever took part in the Salo republic, before we commit
| the grave sin of not being taxonomically accurate?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| The reason people focus on definitions like "oh, it's
| _really_ about toxic masculinity!" is because admitting
| the truth would make them look bad:
|
| Fascism is a collectivist authoritarian system with
| regulated commerce rather than direct state control,
| often co-occurring with systemic racism.
|
| The reason people don't want to be honest about the
| definition is that it's the platform of modern Democrats,
| who are gaslighting by calling everyone else a "fascist":
|
| Democrats are collectivist authoritarian.
|
| Democrats are pushing for regulated commerce.
|
| Democrats are rebuilding systemic racism, from rationing
| healthcare [2] and government aid [1] based on race to
| attempting to repeal civil rights laws in WA [4] and CA
| [3].
|
| Democrats took to the street in acts of arson, violence,
| and murder to terrorize the public ahead of an election
| -- the modern Brownshirts. [5]
|
| Democrats are fascist.
|
| Sources:
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/06/15/farmers-upset-with-bidens-
| amer...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/race-
| based...
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal
| _Pr...
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affir
| mat...
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/everybody-down-
| wha...
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Democrats took to the street in acts of arson, violence,
| and murder to terrorize the public ahead of an election
| -- the modern Brownshirts. [5]_
|
| Your link for this sweeping generalization is a single
| shooting in seattle months before the election of someone
| not old enough to vote.
| leereeves wrote:
| > Fascism is a collectivist authoritarian system with
| regulated commerce rather than direct state control
|
| That's the clearest definition of fascism I've ever
| heard. Where's it from?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I'm paraphrasing what the fascists said their goals were.
|
| If you read about fascism, their proponents viewed it as
| "Marxism 2.0" -- where they could leverage the socialist
| ideas of collectivist authoritarianism without the
| problems encountered by the original Marxist
| revolutionaries with total state control of commerce.
|
| A unified populace where "everything in the State,
| nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
| noisymemories wrote:
| I couldn't care less what oblique definition of fascism
| came out from some american think-tank in the 80s, narrow
| enough to not anger any of their thatcherian or reaganite
| friends.
|
| I'm italian, my grandfather was drafted in the balilla
| first at 14 and the fascist army later. And his stories
| of the time were all about the violence, the machismo,
| the open contempt for the gay, the jewish, any other
| minorities. That's fascism, no matter if it doesn't match
| your clinical idea of what fascism should or shouldn't
| be.
|
| And yes, they were as silly and ridiculous as the tiki
| torches guys or the Jan 6 coup guys. Until they were
| fully in power. Then everybody stopped laughing, or
| wondering if they were really dangerous or not.
|
| And to be quite honest with you, worry not - I think
| we'll find very, very soon how close those are compared
| to US democrats to actual fascists(tm).
| 8note wrote:
| The Democrats are trying to get rid of government
| violence via getting rid of police. How is that
| authoritarian?
| rank0 wrote:
| Go reread the thread. OP said:
|
| > "Strong men" make fascism, not good times.
|
| They're not even referring to any person or distinct
| group of people. The statement is so overly broad that it
| could cover BILLIONS of people.
|
| You're making a mockery of the atrocities committed by
| actual nazis and fascists. You know what those guys did
| right?
|
| You would never tell an Auschwitz survivor:
|
| "yeah, the strong males are just like the nazis!"
|
| Imagine how fucked up that would feel from their side.
| noisymemories wrote:
| As I said in another post, I'm italian, and my
| grandparents had some direct experience on the matter.
| Their families were destroyed by nazists and fascists. My
| grandmother family was jewish, A have a few pictures of
| her relatives with a number tattoed on their arms. I
| never dared to ask where or how they got them.
|
| No idea how fucked up my gramps were, but by their direct
| account, yes that "strong males" attitude we're talking
| about was quite a fascist trait.
| rank0 wrote:
| You're not really addressing my point.
|
| Wtf does "strong man" even mean? Is every blue collar
| worker, athlete, law enforcement, first responder,
| military personnel...etc a fascist to you?
|
| Why not go a step further and just say all men are
| fascist? Are all the food eaters fascist too? I mean all
| the fascist ate food after all!
| redsid wrote:
| Ur-fascism essay needs to be a "required" reading - every
| year in high school and get it debated
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Well yes, the Goodwin point is now crossed very casually,
| just like people are using superlatives for the mundane
| things, such as "I ate the most amazing fries yesterday".
|
| This makes for poor debates, where there is little
| nuance, fuzzy scales and hardly meaningful communication.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Actually... unless it is from the fascio region of Italy,
| you can't call it fascism. Otherwise it is just sparkling
| authoritarianism.
| goodpoint wrote:
| On the contrary, historic fascism was obsessed with
| masculinity, strength, nationalism and created an
| environment of narcissism and cynicism.
|
| It's well documented by historians.
|
| TheOtherHobbes is using the term correctly.
|
| To the naysayers: I recommend you travel and visit
| museums.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| It's the nationalism, totalitarianism and dictatorial
| control that make fascism. The obsessions are a means to
| an end or just quirks by example and do not necessarily
| fascism make.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| They were also drinking water every day.
|
| That doesn't make water bad.
|
| I wish for people to be strong, just like I wish them
| good health, because it's a quality that makes for a
| happier life.
|
| If one has the strength of character not to be pressured
| to do bad things, you get less fascists, not more.
| rank0 wrote:
| Really? Did you read the thread?
|
| Original comment says:
|
| > "Strong men" make fascism, not good times.
|
| You've brainwashed yourself if you believe "Strong man" =
| Fascist.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| When the far left calls Trumpists fascist they are
| generally referring to the far right's current objective
| of overruling elections and installing a theocratic
| theocracy under Trump where white males are in charge
| across the board.
| moduspol wrote:
| The left was calling him a fascist pretty regularly long
| before 2020.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I think you are the one infected with a very
| paternalistic vision of strength.
|
| Strength is the ability to apply force, it's the quality
| of solidity, the potential for resistance, etc.
|
| E.G: it takes strength to not act on fear and hate.
| Gandhi is considered a man of great strength.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| this saying is often used to demean men that don't fit a
| very narrow definition of "strong"
| nkingsy wrote:
| Y'all are taking it way too literally.
|
| I take it as hard times make it clear what's important
| and inspire people to work towards that.
|
| In good times people forget.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Perhaps the language has evolved to the point that the
| work needs some translation. Because it strikes me as
| vague enough to be harmful with folks like Putin aspiring
| to embody "strong men".
| Izkata wrote:
| > aspiring to embody
|
| Take note of your own phrasing: it automatically excludes
| him from that group.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| The point is I was trying to be neutral. Because
| depending on who you ask Putin is the definition of true
| "strong men" or he's a tyrant desecrating the phrase.
| rank0 wrote:
| It's a comment about the cyclical nature of prosperity.
| It's not an attack on the non masculine.
| juanani wrote:
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I'm saying that right-wing authoritarians often use it as
| an attack on people they deem as not traditionally
| masculine, despite the original intention. It's used
| frequently enough that some people might mistake
| association.
|
| Search for this saying on twitter, for example. It's been
| co-opted as fascist propaganda.
| javajosh wrote:
| If you find yourself in good times, then the key is to make
| them harder for yourself. Self sabotage by being an
| outspoken iconoclast, and be hated by everyone! Whee!
| bee_rider wrote:
| There are places that have been great to live for multiple
| generations, and places that have been troubled for just as
| long, I don't think this model has much predictive power.
| msla wrote:
| This is utter nonsense. Strong men make bad times, as
| anyone who's lived under a strongman can tell you, and
| strongman regimes are extremely weak in terms of human
| development, technological progress, and military power, as
| evidenced by the utter failures of North Korea and Nazi
| Germany and the USSR. Whining about how they did _some_
| notable things is missing the point: They couldn 't
| sustain, they had no staying power, they achieved some
| victories and then either got pounded into nothing or
| stagnated while the rest of the world moved on.
|
| You can see in modern Russia what decades of strongman
| rule, first in the USSR and then under Putin, looks like:
| Idiot conscripts hyped up on moronic propaganda getting
| blasted by _an actual military_ fielded by a so-called
| "decadent" Western nation, with their ships being sunk by
| _land-based weapons_ (and if you don 't get why that's
| pathetic, you're not worth talking to) and their economy
| being destroyed by those "decadent" nations deciding to not
| buy from them anymore.
|
| Strongmen create good times? Briefly, maybe, but get out
| before the piper demands to be paid, if anyone will have
| you.
| swid wrote:
| I mean, even in your own post, you spell strong man
| different from strongman. Here's a definition of the word
| strong for you: "possessing skills and qualities that
| create a likelihood of success." Obviously this meaning
| is divorced from the definition of strongman you provide,
| so why be obtuse about it?
| msla wrote:
| "Strong man" and "strongman" are identified in the meme.
| I'm just making that explicit.
| Mindstormy wrote:
| This is one of the most factually incorrect things I see
| repeated over and over. I know it is quite a long read but
| it's explained pretty well here
| https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-fremen-mirage/
| ativzzz wrote:
| Makes sense. Strength is useless during peace times, so
| strong men find themselves out of a job with nothing to
| channel their strength into. "Weakness" which in this case
| means classically feminine traits are useless during war
| times but are far preferred during peace times.
|
| We don't need strong men during good times and we don't
| need weak men during bad times.
|
| Although now we are in neither a good nor bad time. What
| kind of men do we need?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Still strong. But in character and not necessarily
| muscles.
| javert wrote:
| The quote is about moral strength and virtue, not
| muscles.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Virtue is not what survives hard times, it's grit and
| brutality. Raw strength. Morals and virtues are what
| arise during good times once we've secured survival.
| [deleted]
| kbelder wrote:
| I'd argue that virtue is a strong survival trait, and
| vice is a sign of weakness. But we may be considering
| different things, different aspects of life.
| goodpoint wrote:
| ...and the saying is BS.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Good point. Wait, no I disagree and I think history
| probably does as well. If you'd like to engage in some
| unmitigated pedantry regarding this topic, check out
| https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-
| mirage-... which refers to this exact cycle.
| cwillu wrote:
| The post specifically calls out the saying as "the modern
| version of this idea has deep roots in Romanticism (c.
| 1800-1850), a reaction against the reason of the
| Enlightenment - which makes it more than a touch ironic
| that this brain-dead meme is so frequently presented as
| clear logic."
| DaltonCoffee wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| goodpoint wrote:
| The quote is similar to "what does not kills you makes
| you stronger", easily disproven by polio. [For the
| nitpickers: I know, the statement depends on the context]
|
| But let's move on: what do you mean with "strong men"?
|
| If you mean some sociopath/callous/ruthless emperor or
| dictator capable of starting massive wars - it hardly
| constitute creating good times.
|
| If you mean men that are successful in current society...
| then very very few billionaires came from a childhood of
| hardship and poverty.
|
| If you mean men that are capable of taking good decisions
| while facing difficulties and the stakes are high... then
| you are describing good education and good mental health,
| which are does in now way comes from "hard times".
|
| All modern pedagogy and psychology sciences indicate that
| hardships create a lot of broken people and a few
| hardened narcissists.
|
| If you mean that affluent and decadent societies become
| self absorbed and weaken as a whole - then I would tend
| to agree... but the term "strong men" would be profoundly
| misleading.
| bladegash wrote:
| > All modern pedagogy and psychology sciences indicate
| that hardships create a lot of broken people and a few
| hardened narcissists.
|
| Really depends on who you ask in the field of psychology.
| There have been several perspectives contrary to what
| suggest (e.g., humanistic psychology, positive
| psychology, post traumatic growth, etc) and I don't agree
| that "all modern pedagogy and psychology sciences"
| suggests that hardships yield nothing but broken people
| and narcissists.
|
| However, I generally agree with the idea that sayings
| like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" are a bit
| silly (they ignore the fact that what doesn't kill you
| can severely weaken you for life).
|
| I just don't think it's particularly helpful to take
| things to the other extreme either.
| Tomte wrote:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-
| mirage-...
| DaltonCoffee wrote:
| Strange because I've always seen the saurdukhar/fremen as
| a literary interpretation of a real aspect of human
| nature - the ability (of some) to perserverve and excel
| in stressful/difficult situations.
|
| Some real life examples I've pointed too are the ghurkas
| in WW2 or Russian hackers.
| Izkata wrote:
| It's the meme version of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat...
|
| The "Defining a generation" section is fairly short and
| describes the theory, and the "Timing of generations and
| turnings" section maps the theory onto the past ~500
| years.
|
| (Edit: got the indentation wrong, I thought the comment I
| was replying to was on the quote, not the "it's BS"
| reply. I don't think this is BS, at least not
| completely.)
| paulpauper wrote:
| nah, strong but insane men make hard times.
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm not familiar with that saying but it's so true!
| paulpauper wrote:
| _For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of
| peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end
| eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer._
|
| You mean Ukraine? I would hardly say that the current
| situation threatens the post-ww2 peace. Compare now to ww2
| and the differences are huge. ww2 claimed vastly more lives,
| in addition to Stalin and Hitler.
| [deleted]
| sircastor wrote:
| > Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt.
|
| I think the concern at hand (at least in the US) is that we're
| on the eve of that fall or revolt, and whatever is born out of
| that, for good or ill, probably means a couple of really hard
| decades.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one
| will be correct.
| gaoshan wrote:
| Eventually one will cause it (at least, our world).
| goatlover wrote:
| Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe
| which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even
| billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of
| centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and
| possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last
| generation?
| dnate wrote:
| At some point, the heat death of the universe [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
| scollet wrote:
| Dad said I could stay up late!
| dwighttk wrote:
| 2nd law of thermodynamics
| hotpotamus wrote:
| The fact that no one has figured it out in over 13 billion
| years kinda suggests not, doesn't it? That's pretty much
| the Fermi Paradox, and perhaps the answer.
| [deleted]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This gets straight into realms of like eschatology and the
| sources of and constraints on life, areas in which I hold
| deeply unpopular beliefs compared to the norm here.
|
| The most neutral way I can phrase this is that I think life
| is a planetary expression, more or less fundamentally
| inseparable from the planet on which it emerges. We may
| eventually be able to break those bonds but I don't think
| we're anywhere near as close to that as we think we are,
| nor do I think we should even try.
| machinevision wrote:
| Why do you feel we should not try? (genuinely curious in
| your PoV)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I can't see that there's a moral way for people exit the
| solar system boundary out "into the stars." No one making
| that choice can arrive there, or even experience an
| appreciable part of the trip in one life. It's committing
| generations to be born, live and die for no purpose
| except to exist and to breed for some future goal of some
| past people. I believe this to be wicked.
|
| People have always migrated into the unknown in the hope
| of something better for the people who will call them
| ancestors. But they've also always been able to make
| certain promises: that the sun will shine on them as it
| does on us, that crops will grow even if they aren't the
| crops we know, that the air is safe to breathe, that god
| will hear them there. Some of those people have been
| wrong about some of those things, but they always had
| good reason to trust in them.
|
| We don't have reason to believe any of that about
| anywhere other than here. It's possible to imagine a
| future so grim that the best chance for our offspring is
| for us to force them to risk these unknowns. It's our
| responsibility to prevent that choice being necessary.
|
| We can imagine things that could change this calculation.
| FTL, centuries-long human cryogenics, cross-lightyear
| microbiology. These are fantasies. If these powers are
| ever in anyone's grasp, that people will be fundamentally
| different from what we are, even if they came from us. I
| don't know what will be right for them and I have no
| claims on what they do.
|
| Focusing on those far off fantasies of another people is
| a failure to appreciate our place here, the cosmic gift
| we've been given with our solar system. It is an
| understandable weakness but we should fight it. We have
| enough future in front of us as ourselves, we should
| leave the unrecognizable far depths of it to the
| unrecognizable people who will inhabit it.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's novel _Aurora_ ,
| an exploration of precisely these concepts written in the
| fascinating perspective of a generation ship's AI
| instructed to narrate its journey.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The idea of going multiplanetary is not to abandon Earth
| out of necessity, but out of precaution. When you make a
| backup of your hard disk, it's usually not because you
| intend to go use your other one for target practice.
| Waiting to leave Earth when problems become clearly
| insurmountable is akin to waiting to backup your HDD
| until you notice it's failing. Indeed the very first
| thing we should start doing once we begin colonizing our
| second planet is planning to colonize the third.
|
| There are countless ways human civilization, if not the
| human species, can come to a rather abrupt end:
| supervolcano explosion blotting out the sky, directed
| gamma ray burst destroying the atmosphere ( hypothesized
| as one of the reasons for the great ordovician extinction
| ), comet impact acting similar to the supervolcano,
| random evolution creating a supervirus, and so on. And
| the countless ways we might manage to kill ourselves go
| without saying: nuclear war, nukes, deploying weaponized
| viruses, even far more innocuous things like fertility <
| 2.5 for too long.
|
| Many of these causes can, have, and will happen abruptly.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Human lives aren't data to be stored against future need.
| These "backups" aren't redundant; they will have worth,
| and demands, and dreams, and rights of their own. Are we
| adequately accounting for that when we imagine this
| interstellar future? Are we able to meet our
| responsibility to them with the dignity they deserve? I
| strongly do not think we are.
|
| It's chilling but correct that so much of the language
| around this concept talks of colonies, because that is
| what we're discussing. Other lives, kept far away, for
| some benefit to ourselves, but not to them.
|
| Until we can present a plausible vision for "the good
| life" in space, away from the earth that birthed us, we
| should not be pursuing this goal. If we end then so be
| it. We have many other means to reduce that possibility,
| much more accessible, that we're refusing to use right
| now. Let's pick up that shovel and see how far we can get
| first.
| [deleted]
| Avicebron wrote:
| I don't necessarily agree with giraffe_lady, but I can
| see the argument where leaving the planet fundamentally
| changes what we currently consider "human" society to a
| point where it no longer can be a considered a
| continuation of the general earthly society. Evolution
| maybe, but less star trek and more belters from the
| expanse but taken to an absolutely extreme extent. Maybe
| closer to something like Seven Eves.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I can't speak of all civilizations, but I do think that
| there can't be any human civilizations that last
| indefinitely -- human nature will prevent it.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| There definitely can be human civilizations that last
| indefinitely, so long as we stop keeping all our eggs in
| one basket, planet-wise.
|
| Once we get humans living far enough apart that
| information about pandemics travels faster than pandemics
| do, then we should be largely invincible, barring suicide
| from ennui.
|
| The larger our sub-galactic civilization, the more
| resilient it becomes to things like total war, total
| political revolution, etc.
|
| It's really hard to be a galactic emperor at multi light-
| year distances. By the time you wipe out half the
| population of the empire, the other half will have
| doubled.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| So as long as we do what no society has ever done,
| society can last forever?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| We currently do what no society has ever done every day,
| and in larger terms every decade.
|
| It's easily conceivable that 100 decades from now we
| could do this too.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| It's also easily conceivable that in less than 100
| decades from now, global unrest or war will make us
| regress 100 decades. Climate change in particular is
| going to cause a lot of problems with feeding people.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Maybe so, but that would be straying from the point.
|
| GP said "there can't be any human civilizations that last
| indefinitely" and in response I gave an easily
| conceivable version of how human civilizations can last
| indefinitely.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The psychological tension that is inherent to capitalism
| (indefinite exponential growth is required, unbounded
| exponential growth is impossible) requires that the system be
| under plausible existential threat at all times.
| pjscott wrote:
| In what sense does capitalism require indefinite
| exponential growth? I recall, for example, that Japan did
| not collapse during their Lost Decade.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Eh, there have been institutions with almost absurd longevity
| in history. The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for
| the 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II. Ancient
| Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed
| aristocrats in Athens.
|
| It's very easy to forget that the revolutions of Britain,
| France, America, Russia; it happened just a few generations
| ago, and upended most of the political landscape (even in
| countries that didn't see actual revolutions). I think what is
| happening is most of our modern institutions are all of roughly
| the same age, and after initial idealism and momentum have
| roughly at the same time begun to ossify and show cracks as
| people have started taking them for granted.
|
| This is the first time anyone has attempted democracy on this
| sort of scale. Looking back we've had republics with longevity,
| we've had autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy?
| Besides Athens, which had a very different shape of political
| system, this is really a first. It's a huge political
| experiment, the long-term viability of which is being
| determined here and now by our ability to keep our shit
| together.
| whakim wrote:
| > It's a huge political experiment
|
| Perhaps with regards to "scale" this may be true, but in most
| ways I disagree. There were hundreds of democracies in the
| ancient world - particularly in Greece - and they all tended
| to break down along similar lines. The Greeks even had a term
| for this - _stasis_ - which there 's a body of literature
| about. In _stasis_ , the norms of democratic government are
| slowly eroded through an escalating series of power plays
| (each justified by previous excesses). This in turn erodes
| the public trust in institutions required for society to
| function. Which usually ends in violence. So I think it's a
| mistake to assume our situation is unique.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Based on this study https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/defau
| lt/files/mgilens/fi... I would say our "Democracy" is a
| farce/sham.
| bombcar wrote:
| The other thing to remember is that even those long-standing
| institutions had internal change _that was a huge deal at the
| time_ but is now hardly remembered at all, or considered
| minor.
|
| You can even see this right now, where countries do _not_
| consider themselves to be as old as the current government 's
| age, but much older. For example, most Italians will not
| consider Italy to be "started" at the Republic in '46, or
| even the Unification in 1861, but that the country is much,
| much older.
| jimz wrote:
| Italy as a polity, regardless of how real the polity
| actually existed as a coherent and cohesive governing
| state, pretty much existed continuously from Rome until
| entirely left out by the Congress of Vienna in 1805 though.
| By the time 1848 rolled around most people alive were
| perfectly aware of the concept of Italy in living memory,
| and even those who didn't actually live in what was
| considered Italy - in particular those living in the south
| from Naples down to Calabria and Sicily, if they were
| educated and literate, were still aware of the notion of
| Italy as a distinct political entity. There might not have
| been much of a centralized government based in Italian
| territories that represented the polity for long periods of
| history, but ruling regimes/dynasties come and go but
| political entities tend to last longer.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600
| odd years
|
| You have a _very_ flexible definition of "unchanged" then.
| The Catholic Church pre-Charlemagne is going to be very
| different from Saeculum Obscurum-era, itself different from
| Investiture Crisis-era, itself different from the one
| familiar in the Late Medieval, different from Counter
| Reformation-era one. It's absurd to me that you think the
| first time it changes significantly is Vatican II!
|
| > Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when
| Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens.
|
| My knowledge of Ancient Egyptian history is extremely poor,
| but what little I do know strongly suggests that considering
| it as a single stable form of government for thousands of
| years is even worse an error than claiming the Catholic
| Church was so stable and unchanging. Perhaps akin to saying
| that the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire, the Weimar
| Republic, the Third Reich, and modern Germany are all one
| single country that has lasted for 1200 years (because
| they're all called Germany).
| jimz wrote:
| It's not 100% undisputed but most historians would agree
| that until conquered by the Persians in 525 BC, Egyptian
| history consists of 26 dynastic changes and 8 major
| distinct periods. Each dynasty of course usually had more
| than one ruler. Since we're talking about Socrates, then
| the slightly extended timeline of 33 dynastic changes
| (including 2 Persian, and 2 Greek), across 9 major and
| distinct periods, would represent pretty much the
| mainstream view that is supported by the available
| evidence, ending in its incorporation into the Roman
| Republic in 30 BC.
|
| If anything, Egypt is one hell of a counter example of
| institutional stability. I would also make the pedantic
| quibble that the HRE never called itself "Germany" until
| the term was incorporated into part of its much longer
| official title in the late 1400s. English usage started in
| the 1500s. It's not to say that the concept of "Germany" or
| "Deutschland" didn't exist, but pre-Westphalia it's
| difficult to make truly apt comparisons to
| conceptualizations of states today, and the term equivalent
| to Germany was used, intermittently at that, from
| Charlemagne's death for the next 700 years somewhat like
| the status of Scotland or Wales within the UK today, as in,
| it coexisted with the HRE as an part but not considered to
| have referred to the whole until the HRE lost its non-
| German territories an that was pretty much all that was
| left.
| nine_k wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not entirely convinced.
|
| Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of
| Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises,
| falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
|
| Britain had the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Magna Carta
| which amounts to a major revolution was enacted in 1215, and
| the Norman conquest happened in 1066. All these major events
| hardly occurred "a few generations ago".
|
| I'm afraid that the idea of things largely unchanging in the
| past comes from our poor knowledge of history, compared to
| recent events.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The British revolution, which is the first revolution, is
| still fairly recent on a historical timescale (and the
| later revolutions would arguably reshape Britain more than
| the British one ever did). My point is exactly that 2-300
| years is not a particularly long time.
|
| > Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of
| Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises,
| falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
|
| There were some dynastic changes and bumps along the road,
| absolutely, but my point is the overall shape of Egypt was
| remarkably stable even through the Persian conquest.
|
| Nothing comparable to modernity.
| blix wrote:
| Ancient Egypt's "bumps along the road" were several
| periods of almost total anarchy and state disintegration
| that each lasted for many decades.
|
| You're right that there's nothing comparable to the
| modern era: the modern era hasn't existed long enough to
| have collapses that total. I think you are not applying
| the same level of scrutiny to ancient societies as you
| are to modern ones.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| The republic has enemies and their battle cry is "Democracy!"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the
| 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II.
|
| No, it really didn't.
|
| > Looking back we've had republics with longevity, we've had
| autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy? Besides
| Athens, which had a very different shape of political system,
| this is really a first.
|
| Modern democracies are almost entirely representative
| democracies, more like historical republics (and in fact,
| many of them are explicitly republics, though some are
| technically limited monarchies) than classical democracies.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What historical examples of long-lived, stable republics do
| we have?
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the
| 1600 odd years_
|
| That's a bit of a myth, thrown around a lot but not quite
| true. It has existed in some form, but by no means remained
| changeless. The doctrine is substantially similar but then we
| can say the same thing about Judaism. Here, we're really
| talking about the organization, which has many issues:
|
| -The East-West schism in 1054 tore the Catholic Church in
| half.
|
| -Then there was another schism about 500 years later when
| Martin Luther & subsequent Reformation really splintered
| things, sparking many violent conflicts over the centuries.
| I'm sure many Catholics felt like things were falling apart
| then.
|
| In lesser events that still made people feel things were
| falling apart:
|
| -Rome was taken & Pope Pius was imprisoned in the Vatican
| during the Italian Reunification in 1870 there was probably a
| similar feeling.
|
| -After Vatican II from 1962-1965 I know from my own relatives
| that they felt (and still feel) that the catholic church
| began to fall apart.
|
| -The last few decades with countless child abuse scandals.
| [deleted]
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I did stipulate _until Vatican II_ , and my point is rather
| how little the preceding millenium of reformations and
| Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church. It
| undeniably had _some_ impact, like the reformation created
| a need for educating priests to be able to actually argue
| their case. But the shape of the organization was largely
| the same through all of this.
| nemo wrote:
| Vatican II was a trivial change compared to vast numbers
| of other changes in the Church - the Church of the
| 3rd-7th c. and its hierarchy were dramatically different
| than the Church once they'd broken from Constantinople
| and Eastern Rome had lost Ravenna and it's control over
| the Vatican. The Papacy and institutions that formed
| after the 700s/800s once Italy was independent of the
| Byzantines are where the pope transitions to a king
| lording over the Papal States which was a massive change.
| Those Papal States are gone now, another dramatic change
| that fundamentally redefined the Church. There were other
| revolutionary changes throughout the church's history
| like the Avignon Papacy which changed not only where the
| Church was centered but reformed the Papacy dramatically
| to put it under the thumb of the French kings. The
| schisms after that changed the Church brought the
| relatively late invention of the College of Cardinals and
| significant reforms and changes in hierarchy. The
| developments of various monastic orders and knightly
| orders also brought major changes and reforms. The Church
| after the Protestants sacked Rome and Pope Clement VII
| fled into hiding and was reduced to a figurehead
| controlled the Holy Roman Emperor was a massive break as
| well. The reforms of the Counter-Reformation were
| dramatic as well. The church has always claimed to be a
| stable perpetuation of tradition, while the reality has
| been a dynamic institution that's changed significantly
| not only in hierarchy and structure but _doctrine_. There
| always were popes, cardinals, and bishops, but their
| roles, powers, and relations changed constantly.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I did stipulate until Vatican II, and my point is
| rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations
| and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church
|
| Clearly, that was your point. It's just completely wrong
| given things like the Gregorian Reform.
|
| You'd have a _better_ argument that the Catholic Church
| has been largely unchanged in the nearly 1000 years since
| the Gregorian reform (or, even better, the 700+ years
| after the series of reforms starting there and running
| through the 13th century councils) than the 1600 years
| between Constantine and Vatican II. It'd still be making
| the qualifier "largely" do an unreasonable amount of
| work, though.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The reformation didn't just change the educational needs
| for priests, it split off a significant portion of it's
| population out of the church.
|
| I don't think we can cite 1600 years of stability for the
| organization at all. We may do so, somewhat, for
| doctrine, which is an achievement, but it's also equalled
| or exceeded by a few other religions.
| tyingq wrote:
| I have noticed a pretty strong trend of "falling apart" in
| specific niche. It seems related to the combination of inflation
| and people being fed up with low wages. It's hard to get workers
| for low paying jobs, and the things those places are selling have
| gotten more expensive.
|
| So we're paying quite a lot more for services and goods, but the
| quality of those things are declining at the same time. Declining
| quality both due to the providers buying lower quality supplies
| and due to the workers willing to take the lousy jobs not giving
| a shit.
|
| I see it pretty strongly in areas like restaurants and retail.
| kbelder wrote:
| {I'll be savaged for this comment} but I think that'll be fixed
| by the free market, if we let it. The trouble is that it
| doesn't happen instantly; there'll be a lot of reluctance to
| raise wages, a lot of reluctance to value unpleasant jobs more,
| it'll take a while for the wage gain/inflation feedback loop to
| settle down... and in the mean time, there's a lot of
| suffering.
|
| To make things worse, attempts to shortcut the process, or
| temporarily alleviate the suffering, can have detrimental
| unintended consequences.
| imtringued wrote:
| That sounds like a non-solution. Especially the reference to
| "the" free market, such a thing does not exist. You can't
| just take whatever market we have, with all its imperfections
| and then slap the label "free market" on it, it doesn't work
| that way.
|
| If something is unfair, you shouldn't call it fair because of
| ideology.
|
| For example, my primary objection to the idea that we have a
| free market is that we are mortal and are born with basic
| needs that must partially be acquired from the last
| generation. If people need land to live on, and land is owned
| by old people, then the young must appeal to the old to be
| allowed to exist on this planet. At that point, any attempt
| to call the market we have "free" becomes completely absurd
| because the term "free" now refers to the freedom of letting
| someone else take your freedom away.
|
| In fact, most "free market" attempts are entirely about
| sweeping the problem under the rug and pretending it doesn't
| exist, which only makes it worse due to negligence. Just drop
| the damn "free", in Germany people just talk about the
| "market" in general. They just say "market economy". In fact
| one of the most common sarcastic phrases is "Der Markt regelt
| das", "the market is going to fix that" when talking about
| market failures.
|
| In theory I agree that a free(=freedom) market would be good
| for everyone, but the amount of people that want a
| free(=freedom) market is incredibly small. Capitalists don't
| want a free(=freedom) market for example, because that would
| be the end of capitalism. They want a free(=without cost to
| capitalists) market, which is inherently against the idea of
| maximizing freedom and self determination.
|
| Take Say's Law for example. If we postulate that Say's Law is
| correct and involuntary unemployment is impossible, then for
| our market to be "free(=freedom)", we should make it
| impossible to let the economy reach states that make
| involuntary unemployment possible. That means the ability to
| indefinitely defer spending shouldn't exist beyond the point
| that people agree to let someone defer spending. That would
| immediately break the idea of endless capital accumulation.
| Capital accumulation would have to stop at some point and
| that means the end of capitalism.
|
| Who here is ready for the end of capitalism? Does anyone want
| to live in a market economy that isn't capitalism? Just a
| regular market? I doubt anyone is.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Yes
| xwowsersx wrote:
| > The framing begins with appreciating how closely intertwined
| the divisive and unifying effects of information technology can
| be.
|
| The author speaks as if "unifying", as opposed to dividing, is
| the redemptive quality of information technology. I don't see it
| as an unmitigated good and, somewhat ironically, the story of the
| tower of Babel is about how their single-purposedness (?) was the
| source of the problem altogether. Genesis 11:6: "And the Lord
| said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language,
| and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be
| withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?"
| rob74 wrote:
| If you ask me, humanity could really use some unifying
| influence right about now, for example to help tackle the issue
| of climate change...
| fristechill wrote:
| The issue of climate change, among other issues, is being
| _used_ to promote unity and one world government. But it
| doesn 't follow that this approach is best to climate change
| or anything else. We need _variation_ in policies and
| technologies in order to _select_ the best approach (and not
| get locked in to a sub-optimal approach).
|
| One world government is bad because it will attract evil
| elements who use it to place all peoples under their
| control/taxation/exploitation, with no recourse or escape.
| All in the name of helping people and fighting for <insert
| your favourite political cause>.
|
| By analogy, it might seem more _efficient_ if families were
| to live in communal dormitories instead of their separate
| houses. In reality it would create stultification and at
| worst mass suffering when individuals took control over all
| aspects of other families ' lives.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| My toddler has learned how to use a stool, and it has given me
| a new deep and profound sympathy for G-d in the story.
| bombcar wrote:
| Toddlers make it exceptionally clear why God is continually
| referred to as a _father_ and the people as _children_.
| Jotra7 wrote:
| timeon wrote:
| > somewhat ironically, the story of the tower of Babel is about
|
| Yes this is problem when using analogy: it usually goes both
| ways.
| dwighttk wrote:
| No
| ravenstine wrote:
| Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may
| be falling apart.
|
| In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its
| own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like
| journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago
| that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but
| now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because
| that caters to public sentiment. People who I would consider
| "normies" even don't trust law enforcement and the FBI anymore
| (not that they ever should have). Even the education system from
| K12 to college is increasingly being seen as a joke and an
| outright racket. We also went from the President being a more
| respected position to one deserving of relentless tabloid gossip.
| Even if one's "guy" is in office, I don't think we feel the same
| about it the way we did even as recent as Obama, and his
| administration was when we really began to see the social cracks
| forming.
|
| Civilization ebbs and flows, but I think the current sentiment is
| unprecedented in my lifetime. This is not a high point by any
| stretch of the imagination, and while I see "everything is
| collapsing" to be hyperbolic, it seems inevitable that many
| things we thought were rock solid are in a transition period
| where either they will reform or one day be replaced with force
| of some kind.
| oicU00 wrote:
| Oh yeah no doubt; I collate trends into reports for rich
| investors. Lately they have been focused on youth trends, and
| some numbers are wacky.
|
| <50% believe in God/higher being, down from 80%+ in early 00s.
|
| 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s
| as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share
| appeared.
|
| Youth participation in sports, especially full contact sports,
| had been going down since before covid which just accelerated
| it, leading to forecasts of a major contraction in commercial
| sports.
|
| "Essential workers" are pretty fucking pissed millions sat on
| their ass with no clue how to feed or care for themselves,
| while being paid minimum wage. They are not showing the same
| allegiance to shit jobs and moving on.
|
| We engineered away stability for JIT, covid came along and
| proved to many we live in a Banana Republic exporting memes of
| exceptionalism, while most people can't grow a potato for
| themselves.
|
| Given sentiment nurses, teachers, "essential" workers just
| experienced from their neighbors during covid, why not tell the
| so called gritty masses who melted down over hair cuts to find
| new solutions.
|
| People who are not alive yet have no obligation to carry our
| sensibilities forward after we die.
| Melatonic wrote:
| A lot of those very much do not sound like "things are
| falling apart" to me
| oicU00 wrote:
| Reality is not unzipping in that the speed of light is
| different. A lot of inner monologues, sense of belonging,
| hope for the future, as something like covid makes the
| masses see a minority who do none of the "real work" as
| dependents who somehow have far more comfortable lives.
|
| Tech oligarchs who were all "Disrupt!" are now all "Wait
| not me! I'm a rent seeker now!"
|
| It's a predictable circle of life given the common and
| fundamentally unchanged from any past iteration over the
| last thousands of years, human condition.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Not a wealthy investor but would be interested in your
| newsletter if it's reasonably priced.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's interesting, even if you don't believe in a higher
| power, people that believe in God have far lower rates of
| depression and suicide, so if you try to optimize your life
| for happiness and mental robustness, it's then logical to
| believe in a higher power.
|
| This is an interesting manifestation of the incompleteness
| theorem. :)
| jhbadger wrote:
| The happiest country in the world is Finland [1]. And
| two-thirds of them are atheists[2]. On the other hand,
| the most religious places in the world [3] are not on the
| happy list and most of them are desperately poor and
| miserable places.
|
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/happiest-... [2]
| https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-
| news/domestic/2... [3]
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-religious-
| countries...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/finland
| -is...
|
| " In one comparison made by the World Health
| Organization, the per capita prevalence of unipolar
| depressive disorders is highest in the world in the
| United States. Among Western countries, Finland is number
| two."
| judahmeek wrote:
| I don't consider basing my worldview on emotion-based
| fantasies mentally robust.
|
| Is it possible that believing a lie increases ones
| chances of being happy & less depressed?
|
| Sure, but that doesn't make it worthwhile.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " but that doesn't make it worthwhile "
|
| From where cometh this objective truth? :)
| lampshades wrote:
| Or maybe it's not a lie and believers are genuinely
| happier and less depressed.
| judahmeek wrote:
| Every religion states that the other religions are lies,
| which means that, at the very least, the majority of
| religious people believe a lie as a fundamental aspect of
| their worldview.
|
| Thus, you apparently can be genuinely happier if your
| worldview is based on a lie.
|
| Still not worth it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " Every religion states that the other religions are lies
| "
|
| Almost no religions state this, it might be an
| interesting thought experiment to steel-man your
| arguments :)
| [deleted]
| BEEdwards wrote:
| Yeah, that's why they are constantly trying to kill each
| other...
| lampshades wrote:
| > Every religion states that the other religions are
| lies, which means that, at the very least, the majority
| of religious people believe a lie as a fundamental aspect
| of their worldview.
|
| I don't think I've ever heard of a religion that is so
| airtight that it blocked any ability to reason on how the
| others might not be a lie also.
| 22122 wrote:
| Corelation does not imply causation. Maybe its that
| people who are prone to depression have some factors that
| make them less likely to believe in religion.
| drugstorecowboy wrote:
| > "Essential workers" are pretty fucking pissed millions sat
| on their ass with no clue how to feed or care for themselves.
| They are not showing the same allegiance to shit jobs and
| moving on.
|
| They never had allegiance, they didn't leave shit jobs
| because of fear and the fact that moving between 2 minimum
| wage jobs likely wouldn't improve their circumstances. People
| are switching jobs because its an option now where it wasn't
| before and it's a good way to make more money. Do you
| honestly believe that pre-covid people worked at McDonalds
| because of their desire to provide food to people?
|
| > We engineered away stability for JIT, covid came along and
| proved to many we live in a Banana Republic exporting memes
| of exceptionalism, while most people can't grow a potato.
|
| This is progress. Do you believe a world where everyone grows
| their own crops to feed themselves is an improvement? People
| don't grow potatoes because it is a waste of their time when
| you can buy a giant bag of them for next to nothing.
| Something only possible because of the modern JIT economy.
| What you call stability is actually inefficiency and waste in
| disguise.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| This isn't progress, it's exporting the work that has to be
| done, someone has to grow potatoes. We have exported that
| hard work to poor people across the globe at horrible cost.
| Cost to the environment, cost to stability, cost to geo-
| political safety. Someone has to have their hands in the
| dirt, we act like it's progress because it's cheap and
| fragile because we don't have to do the work. Is it
| progress to pay artificially low prices on beef or bananas
| because poor people in the global south are destroying the
| rain forests to raise crops? Cause that's the only way the
| modern JIT system works right now.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Eh, first world countries produce a lot of food. Farming
| is generally heavily mechanized. Nobody needs to have
| their 'hands in the dirt'.
|
| In fact, I expect most potatoes will not be touched by a
| single human hand until they reach the person who
| actually cooks and eats it.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| That's a huge part of the problem, farming shouldn't be
| heavily mechanized in the way we do it. Monocrops,
| pesticides, fungicides, and huge feed lots all have
| terrible environmental costs. Even aside of Climate
| Change, soil erosion is a massive problem.
| briffle wrote:
| Its not progress. Your car plant now needs a truck worth of
| car bumpers every day, when they take 4 weeks to ship from
| overseas. Any disruption means that your whole plant is now
| idle. But because of accounting rules, it made companies
| look much better off if they got 2 trucks of bumpers every
| day, rather than have 28 trucks worth of bumpers sitting in
| a warehouse. Much more risk, but sure does help up that
| earnings per share to help the CEO with his bonus based on
| stock price.
|
| Remember how hospitals didn't have PPE, because they could
| always get more shipped in 2-3 days? Works great. Until it
| doesn't.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Inefficiency/waste" and "slack" are very different things.
|
| "Waste" is running an O(n^2) algorithm on a task that
| already has O(n logn) solutions suitable for the same
| dataset.
|
| "Slack" is having 100 USD cash in your pocket even if you
| do not immediately plan to spend them.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Your 2nd point is complete nonsense. Something can be
| stable, inefficient and wasteful all at the same time.
|
| Just because YOU think 'progress' is making something more
| efficient & less wasteful at the cost of stability does not
| make it fact. I, and probably many other people, would
| consider it a foolish approach. Progress, to me, would be
| making the food industry less fragile (i.e. more stable).
| oicU00 wrote:
| People are not concepts. There's a real difference in QOL
| between an office worker and a retail worker.
|
| You can ramble off the memes etched into your meat based
| tape recorder all day long; others do not owe putting
| agency into routines you prefer to avoid.
|
| Such sentiment approaches thought policing. You are still
| one of seven billion to those other meat bases tape
| recorders.
|
| One cannot wave away reality for philosophy.
| rabuse wrote:
| "Waste of their time". Is binging a Netflix series more
| important than having survival skills?
| heartbreak wrote:
| Surviving a societal meltdown is not a goal of mine, so
| yes.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The last two years have shown younger generations that JIT
| is not resilient. Some level of self sufficiency is a
| requirement for stability and resiliency. Past generations
| learned this lesson with some portion of the population
| starving. There aren't any farms within 500 miles of where
| I live. If we can't get shipments from outside people are
| going to starve. This realization of supply chain fragility
| is what many people have come to after seeing some items
| absolutely unavailable at stores. Each community must grow
| some amount of food locally or their continued survival is
| reliant on there being enough food to make it profitable to
| ship food thousands of miles.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Efficiency is always at odds with robustness, it's
| unfortunate that people forget...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It seems obvious, but I'll accept disagreements as a way to
| learn. While we aspire to build anti-fragile systems, there
| are real sort term incentives to building efficient fragile
| systems. Capitalistic incentives exactly like evolutionary
| pressures, have no responsibility to provide solutions
| which match our views on how the way the world should work,
| what's fair, and what's just. I find it personally
| difficult to assume that a business owner when faced with
| the a series of micro-choices each of which impacts profit
| could not choose to maximize profit the majority of the
| time even at the expense of robustness or anti-fragility.
| It's this garden path optimization that leads to
| catastrophic outcomes like supply chain paralysis or
| bankruptcy.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >We engineered away stability for JIT, covid came along and
| proved to many we live in a Banana Republic exporting memes
| of exceptionalism, while most people can't grow a potato for
| themselves.
|
| This is hyperbolic. The US is not a banana republic. Why
| would you expect the average person to need to know how to
| grow a potato?
| oicU00 wrote:
| The average person actually exists. They should have
| reality based skills and knowledge in self sufficiency.
|
| Low effort consumerism, freedom to, takes freedom from
| others.
|
| Freedom to be yourself cannot cost others freedom from the
| same. We're a caste system that uses concepts like net
| worth as the measure instead of religious sigils and
| totems.
|
| Freedom to sit at home on a laptop takes freedom from
| others in measurable ways; making less for work laptoppers
| want to avoid but need is kind of a joke system.
|
| Remember millions of real people are being pinched harder
| and harder. That's never ended well in human history. You
| can't simply point at a philosophy and demand well
| understood biology to deal with it forever.
|
| What's hyperbolic is a defense squishy meat bags very much
| like passed squishy meat bags aren't just larping the same
| old. That somehow magically it's all different.
|
| Keeping stats in the right place just makes truism out of
| political bias.
| asdff wrote:
| Replace potato with any old piece of handy info, like home
| or car maintenance. A lot of younger Americans (myself
| included) have little practical knowledge, so everything
| needing knowhow in this generation must be outsourced.
|
| Compare this to my grandfather's generation, he knew how to
| frame houses, plumb, electric work, auto work, gardening,
| etc, and he was not alone. If he needed something done
| you'd get four of your buddies and work on the project for
| the weekend instead of hiring a contractor. In my dads
| generation fewer people knew these things but still, a lot
| of people learned from their dads. In my generation otoh it
| seems like no one knows any of this, and therefore any
| issue around the home or the car becomes this catastrophic
| repair since you have to hire a specialist who charges
| hundreds an hour because you haven't learned very much
| that's actually practically useful for your life.
| jacobolus wrote:
| If you go a few generations further back, your ancestors
| lived in crushing rural poverty but literally hand-made
| most of the things in their own house, with the rest
| produced by local craftspeople; grew/raised or
| gathered/hunted most of their own food; made their own
| clothing starting from raw materials; etc.
|
| Your buddies today have _dramatically_ greater material
| wealth due to worldwide supply chains and mass
| production, but don't know how to turn an unshorn sheep
| into a blanket or sweater or build walls out of mud and
| sticks. Today it's no longer worth even fixing most stuff
| because the labor costs to do anything as a one-off are
| prohibitive compared to buying a new one from a
| streamlined (capital and energy intensive) factory.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You can still learn these skills. In fact, the wide
| access to knowledge should give you enough to learn these
| skills without ever having to ask someone else. The
| larger reality is a lot of these people don't _need_ to
| learn these skills, so they won 't, for various specific
| reasons.
|
| Same way you can ask a ton of people gen X and higher how
| to open a Word document, many of them don't know. They
| don't even know where to get the information besides
| asking family and friends, because that's their modus
| operandi. Tons of human support still has a job only
| because these people can't figure things out without
| another person helping them.
|
| Every generation currently alive has a large degree of
| learned helplessness. The areas where they are helpless
| just vary.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The other limiting constraint is the capital needed to
| engage in some activities that were comparatively
| inexpensive a generation or two ago.
| mrexroad wrote:
| I dunno. I'm early millennial and, due largely to money
| reasons, I've done the following myself in past 12
| months:
|
| - re-graded slope of dirt in back yard (by hand, oof),
| trenched and added irrigation (to code), and seeded a
| successful lawn
|
| - rebuilt upper valve train on my minivan (5 failed
| hydronic lifters)
|
| - reframed my garage, which had massive termite damage
| and wall was 1.5" out of plumb, roof sagging badly
|
| - wired new 60A circuit for EV charger (to code)
|
| - excavated (by hand) and replaced 10'+ section of sewer
| lateral
|
| - rebuilt washing machine pump, added dynamat sound
| deadening so quiet when on calls in garage
|
| - re-heeled my wife's shoes
|
| - designed / built custom bunk/loft/desk for my sons'
| shared room (Baltic birch, flat packable, surprisingly
| beautiful)
|
| - re-roofed and reflashed chimney to fix leak (then re-
| drywalled 1/5 living room ceiling, skip trowel texture)
|
| - abs so on...
|
| Not trying to humble brag, but I hadn't done a single of
| those tasks before (except framing, drywall, electrical,
| plumbing, which I taught myself in last decade). Push
| comes to shove, people can get a book from the library.
| nvr22aat wrote:
| This sounds a little rose tinted to me. I personally
| think for simpler tasks, much more information is
| available these days compared to older times. There's
| many resources on how to grow a potato (and other things)
| on the Internet.
|
| For other tasks, some things have simply become a lot
| more complicated to work on. Electronics were a lot
| simpler in older times, for instance; swapping out a
| surface mount quad flat package will require a lot more
| "finesse" than swapping out a 1960s capacitor. Cars too
| have gotten more electronics and software. Despite this,
| there are definitely still people that have the skills to
| repair modern electronics and cars. (I will say that
| these types are often hampered by manufacturers that seem
| hostile to the idea of users being able to practically
| repair devices, hence the "right to repair" movement
| being a thing these days.)
| asdff wrote:
| I'm convinced there's more noise but I'm not sure how
| much of it is really more signal. Consider growing a
| potato and searching for that term on Google. I'm betting
| a lot of articles are going to be somewhat junky SEO spam
| that's repeating the same few pieces of info. Whereas if
| you were to go to a garden center or library, and find a
| book or pamphlet on growing a potato, that's probably
| going to be great information and very comprehensive, and
| covers a lot more than those short articles ever do. This
| generation wasn't without good information. They were
| consulting things like the Haynes manual for their cars
| the same as your mechanic does today, or reading on the
| pros and cons of different truss designs from books
| available in the hardware store.
| korse wrote:
| Information about 'how to grow a potato' and a season or
| two of experience working out the kinks of growing a
| small crop of potatoes on available land near you are two
| very different things.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Because someone has to know how to grow the potato or raise
| the cow or plant the corn. Right now we (modern first world
| countries) export that to fragile processes far away.
| Generally at great cost, environmentally and to the
| people/countries we export form. See the Amazon rainforest,
| slave labor in China or Africa, or un-controlled
| overfishing.
| alar44 wrote:
| You sure? I'm in the Midwest and absolutely surrounded by
| farms. Do you really think your beef, grains, and potatos
| don't come from the heartland? How in the world would
| that make sense?
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Yes the US supplies the majority of it's food. I was
| talking about the first world countries in general.
| Second the monoculture farming system the US is using
| creates HUGE environmental costs, it's not just about
| import/export. Beef feed lots with thousands of cattle
| packed together, chicken and pork farm pollution,
| monoculture (corn and soy beans) destroying soil,
| pesticides polluting and killing river ecosystems, and up
| to 40% food waste. All products of the JIT food systems.
| The rest of the western countries (except Canada which is
| similar to the US) are mostly food importers generally
| from the Global south (with Russia and the Ukraine also
| supplying quite a lot). I grew up in the midwest in a
| family of farmers and my wife grew up on a working small
| cattle farm. There are MAJOR issues with the US system,
| generally it's not the import/export part though. That's
| more of an issue in European countries (the Netherlands
| seems to be the major exception here). Palm oil is also a
| major factor in rain forest de-forestation, which is a
| major import in many countries:
|
| https://www.worldstopexports.com/palm-oil-imports-by-
| country...
|
| In general a food system that is industrial in scale has
| terrible costs, just not usually economic costs.
| paganel wrote:
| This [1] is worse than a banana republic, is society
| collapsing onto itself. Supposedly, inside a banana
| republic the family as an institution still holds some
| value, close friends and relatives still act like a de-
| facto safety net if the need arises. The people from that
| video have none of that.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOBoDT-3oM0
| scollet wrote:
| You don't even need to know how to grow to a potato, you
| just need to be able to learn how to grow one.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Your observations about minimum wage work and globalized JIT
| supply chains are, I think, pretty valid.
|
| _> <50% believe in God/higher being, down from 80%+ in early
| 00s._
|
| Source? The only recent poll I could find on this was a 2020
| poll from Pew, and in that poll the number is still over 80%
| [1]: "more than eight-in-ten American adolescents say they
| believe in God or a universal spirit."
|
| _> most people can't grow a potato for themselves._
|
| Not new, especially if meant literally, but also even as an
| abstraction. Non-farm employment has been WAY below 50
| percent for most of our country's history. The inflection
| point was in the mid 1800s.
|
| Incidentally, I know how to grow potatoes thanks to rocky
| west virginia soil.
|
| I'm not sure why I would, though. Spending a lots of time and
| an acre of land on a personal vegetable/fruit/spice garden
| makes tons of sense in terms of quality and price. Growing
| your own potatoes is just silly in every way unless you
| either LOVE potatoes or have land that's not productive for
| anything else. But even then there are probably better
| options.
|
| _> Youth participation in sports, especially full contact
| sports, had been going down since before covid which just
| accelerated it_
|
| This reeks of "Bowling Alone".
|
| Contact sports are in decline because we learned a lot about
| concussions. Just like bowling leagues died because we
| learned a lot about smoking and drinking in a previous
| generation. People aren't "bowling alone"; they stopped
| bowling because they stopped drinking and smoking, and for
| most people bowling was a thing to do while drinking/smoking
| during the winter months. People didn't stop socializing,
| they just stopped spending their free time in the town's
| primary smoke+alcohol+child friendly indoor space. Lanes were
| replaced with places like coffee shops and gyms.
|
| _> leading to forecasts of a major contraction in commercial
| sports._
|
| Maybe. But there's also way more televised
| skiing/climbing/dirt biking/etc. than there was in the 90s.
| The MBA/NFL/NBA cartels aren't _owed_ an audience, and
| shifting attention to other sports doesn 't necessarily
| portend a decrease in interest in commercial sports.
|
| [1]
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/religious-
| be...
| oicU00 wrote:
| The conversations I'm in are not simply focused on brain
| trauma; the resource cost of hauling around teams and gear
| is substantial. Conversations at homes on "Main Street" are
| more frequently referring to multiple reasons for a
| decision, not reducing it to one or another.
|
| Same goes for traditions like coin and paper money; they
| consume a lot of stuff and energy. That's become a repeated
| talking point when polling people why they are interested
| in crypto, which was unexpected.
|
| The data models I'm asked to build include more than just
| opinion polls though, as it's felt by the folks I work with
| opinions are biased by media, anxiety of going against the
| grain, and frankly, lack of imagination and considering
| alternatives on the part of the public.
|
| See a quote commonly attributed to Adam Smith about extreme
| division of labor resulting in humans dumber than animals;
| there's no exploration across contexts; a farmer is a
| farmer and that's it. Proper Anglo tradition of staying in
| lanes dictated by aristocracy.
|
| Generational churn won't end reality itself, or be so
| dramatic we stop using English. It will curve agency away
| from old forms of agency to new. A lot of people freak out
| about that.
| scrubs wrote:
| I like these points:
|
| * We engineered away stability for JIT
|
| Yep. It would not kill us to recognize that globalization
| went 20% too far, and that supply chains in the US is good
| for us. We also have to deal with the fact that job loss v.
| cheaper goods has gone too far too. We need to swing back to
| a more US focused economy. Ex: I recently ordered brakes from
| a US company. They were out of stock of my model. I asked
| when it'd be back in stock. They said their suppliers didn't
| have the stuff. We're talking car parts: aluminum rotors,
| metal calipers, brake pads. We're not talking chips.
| Apparently this US brake company is just an importer and
| paper-pusher.
|
| I think we also need to recognize that almost all real gains
| since 1985 have gone to the top 5%. Seen locally or
| tactically year-on-year that's not per se the rich's fault.
| But it nevertheless needs a course correction. Cheaper
| medical, education, housing is what other 95% could use.
| Congress is a part of the problem here too being more aligned
| with corporations instead of the middle class.
| cnelsenmilt wrote:
| It's funny, because this should be a point of crossover for
| the (populist) left and the right. Basic nationalism on the
| one hand, "Buy Local" on the other. They all want the same
| thing, or close to it. The potential for alliance on
| economic topics like this is so blindingly obvious, and
| it's so frustrating that it gets derailed by "cultural"
| sideshows so that no one can talk to each other or realize
| they have the same interests ultimately.
| blindmute wrote:
| If they want the same thing, the laws will get passed.
| What actually happens is that each side proposes laws
| that are not even close to acceptable to the other side,
| proving that they don't actually want the same things.
| basisword wrote:
| >> 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the
| 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride
| share appeared.
|
| Is it urbanisation? I've noticed this trend in the suburbs in
| my country too and there seem to be a couple of reasons:
|
| 1. Driving tests have gotten progressively more difficult and
| more complex over the last 10-20 years.
|
| 2. The cost of learning to drive is insane and getting more
| expensive.
|
| Personally, I put off learning to drive and now that I'm in
| my 30's I'm finding it very hard to justify the cost and time
| investment necessary, despite wanting to get a license. Until
| I need it, I think I'll continue putting it off.
| svachalek wrote:
| Hmm, I don't know what country you are in, but this doesn't
| sound like the US at all. There's a recent spike in the
| cost of driving due to gas prices and car supply, but afaik
| driving tests here have always been fairly trivial and
| still are.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The states that I'm familiar with require a number of
| hours of supervised driving before allowing teens to get
| their licenses, along with the enrollment in certified
| driving schools. That can be both expensive and time
| consuming, especially if parents are working and don't
| have the time to do supervised driving with their kids.
|
| The skyrocketing cost of living all over the country
| means that parents must work more, sometimes multiple
| jobs, in order to make ends meet.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Not OP, but I can confirm old country made it super hard
| lately. On the other hand, IL DMV seems to give away DLs
| like they are candy.
|
| Anecdata only; if anyone has data, I will happily retract
| this statement.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| >> IL DMV seems to give away DLs like they are candy.
|
| In the USA DLs are by far and away the most common form
| of identification. Many people don't have passports, just
| DLs.
| ars wrote:
| You can get a non-drivers ID in the exact same place, in
| the same way, just without the driving test.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Yeah. I can back up the OP's claim with some anecdata as
| well. If you've ever had a license in IL, you can pretty
| much guarantee they'll give you a new one with no testing
| right now.
|
| You can still choose between the Real ID version and the
| old "insecure" version. They are checking documents and
| doing all that stuff based on your choice. But one person
| will tell you that a vision test and a written exam and a
| road driving test are all needed because your license has
| been expired so long. So you sit in the waiting room for
| a little while and then someone motions you to a
| different room, and all you do is pay the fee and get
| your new license. And if you say you don't have any
| money, they give it to you anyway.
|
| This has happened to everyone I know who has gone to get
| a new license over the past few months. Even people that
| have been out of the country for years. A drivers license
| in Hong Kong is a total joke - it's a laminated piece of
| paper without so much as a photograph or hologram or
| anything. Just a bunch of writing with a few bits of it
| in English. The IL DMV looks at it, says "seems legit",
| here's your new IL license.
| oicU00 wrote:
| I don't just use opinion polls, but the sources for the
| explanations are opinion polls.
|
| Top responses to "why not get your license" point to
| availability of public transit, ride share, viability of
| walking, or biking, all of which are not an option for
| folks beyond the suburban fringe.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Driving tests have gotten progressively more difficult
| and more complex over the last 10-20 years.
|
| If true, this is a massively good thing.
| bombcar wrote:
| Can you even get a license at 16 anymore in all states? I
| know when I was getting mine two decades ago it was already
| getting to the point where people were saying "I might as
| well wait until 18".
| paulmd wrote:
| IMO the only real downside of waiting till 18 is that
| your insurance rates are gonna be sky-high for the first
| few years regardless of your age when that happens. If
| you've held a license for 2 years with no accidents then
| your rates are gonna be cheaper, regardless of whether
| you actually drove anywhere.
|
| That's offset by teen driver education being a fucking
| racket though. The _entire_ thing is just a scheme to
| extract a grand from mommy and daddy.
|
| Wait till you're 18 and suddenly the need for that course
| and the hours of supervised driving will vanish. Pass the
| driving test and the written and boom, there's your
| license.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the
| 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride
| share appeared.
|
| We're just going to ignore the trend of states eliminating
| general licensing for that age group and replacing it with
| time-, purpose-, and passenger-restricted provisional
| licensing that happened between the 1980s and now as a driver
| of that trend?
| Tepix wrote:
| > _...and some numbers are wacky._ > _< 50% believe in
| God/higher being, down from 80%+ in early 00s._
|
| I guess teaching kids to trust in science and not in
| imaginary friends is slowly paying off.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| OP didn't say kids trust science though. It could be they
| reject everything. :-(
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Rejecting organized religion for any reason is a step in
| the right direction.
| mistermann wrote:
| Careful...delusion comes in many forms.
| coldtea wrote:
| Or that's a facile thought, that doesn't take into
| consideration second order effects and utility, only
| whether "god is true" or not...
| celticninja wrote:
| Organized religion is a different kind of societal harm,
| where personal religion can be good or bad, organized
| religion will always be a net negative.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Very interesting comment, but one thing I don't get is the
| sports one. Why would lower participation in youth sports
| lead to a contraction of commercial sports? Does low youth
| participation in making TV shows hurt the market for
| consuming them?
| lampshades wrote:
| Everyone I know that didn't grow up playing sports also
| doesn't watch them.
| usrn wrote:
| This describes how I feel about it well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlqnfU2U4Gk
| [deleted]
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >Civilization ebbs and flows, but I think the current sentiment
| is unprecedented in my lifetime
|
| I generally agree that anti-instutional sentiment is at short
| term highs, but from what I've read it doesn't seem remotely as
| bad is it was in the 60s.
|
| >People who I would consider "normies" even don't trust law
| enforcement and the FBI anymor
|
| Ehh I think this is mostly short term partisan politiking
| NationalPark wrote:
| We have some relatively recent public polling data on this
| phenomenon: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2021/08/20/republicans...
|
| For what it's worth, the decline of trust in institutions is
| primarily among "Republican/lean Republican" respondents, who
| are a minority of American voters and likely a minority of
| American non-voters as well.
| kansface wrote:
| Looking at that data, Republicans trust the institutions they
| control and Democrats trust the institutions they control,
| with the trends following the direction the institutions are
| themselves moving. Our institutions continue to polarize and
| cleave society as a consequence.
| gsibble wrote:
| Actually, there are more Republicans than Democrats.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-
| preferen...
| Geonode wrote:
| Polls are good measures of the kind of people who willingly
| talk to pollsters.
| NationalPark wrote:
| If you're willing to dismiss polling out of hand for
| selection bias reasons, then why would you put any more
| weight onto intuitive arguments that rely on an even
| smaller and less systematic sampling?
| Geonode wrote:
| Why would I trust reason over a process that collects a
| series of anecdotes from the most bat-shit members of
| society willing to talk politics with a stranger on the
| phone and then tries to correct their data through mumbo
| jumbo fake math?
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Are they still a minority?
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-
| approval-...
|
| Yes, there is a clear political tribal alignment between the
| current "out-group" and skepticism of institutions, but the
| rise of that iconoclasm on the right seems to be correlating
| with its growth as a whole.
| gsibble wrote:
| They aren't a minority. As of 2021, there are more
| Republicans than Democrats.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-
| preferen...
| NationalPark wrote:
| I think your summary is obscuring some of the nuance in
| that data. What it shows is that independent voters self-
| identify as "lean rep"/"lean dem" based on their approval
| of the current president, which is low right now.
| Historically though, self-identified independents lean
| dem more than they lean rep (data in your link). Consider
| that the last time a Republican presidential candidate
| won the popular vote was in 2004, and before that was in
| 1988. It's well known that conservatives tend to vote
| Republican, and also tend to have much higher voter
| participation rates than progressives, so if your belief
| is that there are more Republicans and Democrats, you
| would expect to see more popular vote wins in elections
| with generally high participation (relative to other
| American elections - obviously American voter
| participation is dismal overall). So what accounts for
| that discrepancy?
| andrewclunn wrote:
| You break out a poll to cast a group as fringe. Other
| people bring up other polls (more recent ones) to counter
| that argument, and then you shift to a different line of
| evidence citing "historical trends." Please, take this
| advice to heart, you are clearly trying to justify a
| conclusion with whatever evidence you can grab at hand.
| Take a step back and ask yourself if tribal loyalty is
| clouding your judgement.
|
| We are all allowed (at least in the United States) to
| change our minds on things, but we can get in our own
| way. Lots of people seem to be changing their minds these
| days based on recognizing that their trust in some
| institution, process, or brand was misplaced. That might
| be you in a little while, and if it is, don't hate who
| you once were or once believed. Here's wishing you a good
| journey on your search for truth.
| [deleted]
| gsibble wrote:
| Agreed. Also, calling conservatives a minority is
| misleading since I'd hardly call like 47% a minority.
| It's technically true, but it's awfully close to even.
| [deleted]
| NationalPark wrote:
| The original point I was making, "republicans are a
| minority", is true, and the data shows that. This isn't a
| tribalism thing, it's a question of data analysis. Also,
| I take umbrage at your patronizing tone. Personally
| attacking me does not change the data.
| gsibble wrote:
| No, it doesn't show that. You are a partisan trying to
| make a partisan point.
| gsibble wrote:
| Here, swing this one, a minority of Americans support the
| President, Democrat policies, and plan to vote for a
| Democrat in 2022. There's your minority.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Anecdotally, people who consistently vote for Republicans
| are less likely to identify themselves personally as
| Republicans than in the analogous Democrat case. (The
| media made "Republican" a dirty word, but didn't really
| change anyone's mind.)
| t-3 wrote:
| It's also worth remembering that unaffiliated is the
| largest group, and has been growing. Lots of partisans
| like to poopoo the idea that "independents" exist, and
| claim that they are just closet-partisans, but I don't
| buy it. Massive distrust of politicians and
| establishments is not something people are faking because
| they want to fake their stance on the internet.
| tenpies wrote:
| > For what it's worth, the decline of trust in institutions
| is primarily among "Republican/lean Republican" respondents,
| who are a minority of American voters and likely a minority
| of American non-voters as well.
|
| The problem with this line of thinking is that
| "Republican/lean Republican" is not a fixed trait. People can
| switch to that category instantly, overnight; so dismissing
| them just because the last time there was an election the
| other party managed to curry more votes after having every
| advantage possible - that's quite dangerous from a societal
| coherence standpoint.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it depends on exactly which institutions too. I
| would guess that law enforcement is an institution that
| more liberals distrust and more conservatives support.
| laverya wrote:
| Also depends on _which_ law enforcement! "Fuck the ATF"
| might be more common on the right than the left for
| instance.
| pojzon wrote:
| Tbh last 50 years is a constant journey towards the bottom.
|
| Institutions that were supposed to lead us - failed us. Earth
| might be uninhabitable in quite a few places in next 30-50
| years.
|
| We will have climate refugees everywhere. Civil war in
| developed countries is something to worry about.
|
| Our leaders cannot even agree on basic things to save the
| planet we live on.
|
| We are in deep shit IMHO. I dont worry for myself, I worry for
| my children.
|
| My parents and grandparents most likely are responsible for the
| hell my kids will have to live in.
|
| If scientists dont see anything positive in next years, why
| should lay ppl be happy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| One of the disadvantages to democracy that Thomas Paine
| actually highlighted in "Common Sense" is that when things are
| off the rails in a monarchy, the cause (and remedy) are
| obvious. In a democracy, far less so.
|
| When Americans elect bad leadership, they ultimately have
| nobody to blame but themselves, and that damages the public
| attitude; I suspect one of the reasons "stolen election"
| conspiracy theories are so popular right now is that the
| alternative is one must simply be skeptical of the good
| judgment of one's neighbors, and people don't _want_ to live
| like that.
|
| This, too, is a pattern we've seen before. The several
| Presidents elected prior to Lincoln were known as the "Bumbling
| Generation." When America gets scared of its own shadow, it
| tends to elect ineffectual leaders because neither side
| actually wants an empowered Presidency, lest it reward their
| opponents.
|
| (One major difference between the antebellum period and now is
| it's a little harder to see precisely what the cleave-line is
| that has America's hands around its own throat. In hindsight,
| slavery was obvious. But the battle lines here are not so
| brightly drawn... Class? Faith-based conservatism vs. modern
| cosmopolitanism? Tech savviness vs. technophobia? Possibly
| enough of all three to make a crisis).
| I-M-S wrote:
| The cleave-line IMO is very clear: the have and have-nots.
| People who live of capital (i.e. rent-seeking) VS those who
| live of their labour (or rather increasingly don't).
| diputsmonro wrote:
| >> the alternative is one must simply be skeptical of the
| good judgment of one's neighbors, and people don't want to
| live like that.
|
| People love being skeptical of their _neighbors '_ judgement,
| what they're afraid of is being skeptical of their own. They
| can't handle backing the wrong horse, so instead they declare
| that the system is wrong
| mym1990 wrote:
| Was just going to say this. We have gotten away from any
| kind of accountability as a standard, and some of that is
| driven by the fact that our leadership(no one specific,
| talking about the state of global leadership currently)
| shows no accountability either.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The system is wrong. It already has been corrupted to a
| very large degree, because, surprise, people who gained
| power, like to retain it and an average power broker is
| as willing to let go of it as an average mollusc attached
| to a rock.
|
| The problem is that workable solution within the confines
| of the system requires somewhat educated populace. Or
| maybe not educated given the state of education in US.
|
| I do see signs of hope in the form of push to 'return to
| office' mandates ( I just threw a middle finger to HR for
| denying my remote myself simply refusing to come back ).
| People seem to rediscover that the rules are really 'by
| the consent of the governed' and there is strength in
| numbers.
| imtringued wrote:
| This reminds me of negative interest rates because they
| are inherently about giving up power, or rather,
| artificially raising interest rates from the negative
| range is about maintaining power.
|
| Let's say there are sources of excess power like
| political corruption. You can gain a lot of power over a
| short period of time but you want that power to last
| long. You wouldn't want to be corrupt and become rich for
| 5 years, be voted out then be poor again, you want to be
| rich your entire life long after your political career
| has ended.
|
| That excess power needs to be stored somehow. We use land
| and money to store this excess power. In my opinion,
| corruption wouldn't be as widespread if its impact didn't
| outlive the original act of corruption.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| >I suspect one of the reasons "stolen election" conspiracy
| theories are so popular right now is that the alternative is
| one must simply be skeptical of the good judgment of one's
| neighbors, and people don't want to live like that
|
| I suspect it's because the major politicians of one of the
| two major parties overwhelmingly tell them it was. Trump says
| so, the Republicans who follow him say so, and the
| alternative is to acknowledge the guys you support are trying
| to overthrow the government, so it must be "true".
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The fact that the leadership of a major party has chosen to
| not show restraint is certainly part of it. But there is a
| reason that their message is resonating instead of the
| voters just turning away in disgust and the party replacing
| those pressing that narrative with someone else in the
| party as leadership. Instead, the party is bending towards
| that messaging because it is resonating with voters.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Is it about the messaging though?
|
| Maybe it's instead about classic American entitlement?
| [deleted]
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I'd argue the cracks really formed in the Bush era, but began
| to rise during the Obama era, and skyrocketed in the Trump era
| (Though I am a Millennial, so perhaps that biases my
| recollection of timeline).
|
| What's interesting is each reader of the above comment will
| take something different away from it, based upon their
| political alignment.
|
| What is interesting is that society hangs on by a thinner
| thread than we imagine. Chaos lurks just beyond a corner.
| Preventing it is much easier when in union.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Perhaps journalists think _everything_ is falling apart because
| journalism is falling apart.
|
| Journalism is _everything_ to _these_ journalists. It shouldn
| 't, but it seems it does.
|
| Hence, _these_ journalists think _everything_ is falling apart.
|
| But our _everything_ is much greater. And it 's not falling
| apart.
| c-smile wrote:
| > Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism...
|
| And mass media in general... Most of people I know lost any
| confidence in reliability of CNN, CBC, BBS, etc.
|
| Like report on Russian shelling shows video of results of
| Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk.
|
| I understand that they simply use better (in the sense of more
| horrible for westerners) picture but that is not a journalism
| anymore, really.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| We're in the last 50 years of industrial civilization. Anyone
| who spends enough time with systems thinking and looking at the
| big picture of industrial society inevitably comes to the same
| conclusion.
|
| I was a "doomer" back when everything seemed fine. Nothing
| since 2019 has surprised me at all.
|
| Things will continue to break down at a faster rate and more
| severely. However, one of my earliest realizations upon waking
| up to this was that as things become more obvious, people's
| denial will be not chipped away but rather strengthened.
|
| The collapse of industrial civilization (and the non-zero
| possibility of species extinction) isn't just scary for most
| people, it deeply cuts into existential crisis territory. The
| vast majority of our strategies of copping with existence and
| our deep rooted fear of our inevitable death is a system of
| meaning largely created around our hopes in the future of
| society. As society collapse we are forced to start confronting
| things that terrify us, and the natural psychological reaction
| is often to just double down on not seeing it.
|
| There are already so many things that we've normalized that
| would be shocking to someone from 2012: Global pandemic, land
| war with Russia, lake Mead on track to stop water flowing
| through the Hoover dam in 10 years, crop failures, supply chain
| crises, etc.
|
| In a very literal sense "everything is falling apart". We have
| destroyed vast portions of the biosphere, we're seriously
| looking at ecosystem devastating ocean acidification, most of
| us will live to see a blue ocean event. But people will be
| unlikely to ever recognize this, rather they will continue to
| double down on "this is fine" and the associates madness and
| extreme cognitive dissonance required to maintain this
| illusion.
| rabuse wrote:
| This coincides will my belief is the rise of self-degrading
| memes running rampant on every social platform I use. Every
| "funny" slogan, has a negative connotation, or self-degrading
| message attached to it. "When you only have $4.20 in your
| bank account", "How I look in the mirror vs tagged photo",
| etc.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| We need to be very, very hesitant about identifying trends
| we see on social platforms, because most social platforms
| are highly optimized to show us the trends we want to see.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| If you think pandemics, crop failures, "land wars with
| Russia" are new, you are very much not paying attention.
| People lump normal history in with ecological problems all
| the time for a better sense of doom and gloom.
| notpachet wrote:
| The current level of environmental degradation is
| unprecedented in history.
| fullshark wrote:
| Ultimately I think it's gonna be a good thing, as a lot of
| public naivety re: its institutions is destroyed and things
| will be rebuilt on a newly defined "social contract." The
| transition may take generations or a new threat comparable to
| global warfare for it to happen though.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I think the climate emergency[1] compares and is only going
| to get worse. Also, it is already partially responsible for
| warfare[2] (though not global, yet).
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_emergency_declarationl
|
| [2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/15030
| 2-sy...
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I mean the default assumption/mode of thought of the average
| uninformed person today seems to be a cynical one, at least
| judging from friends/family and top ranked posts from random
| people on the Internet. Given a situation in which they have
| zero knowledge, they will assume a conspiracy, cheating,
| corruption, malice, or some kind of deliberate inequality or
| unfairness in which they are the disadvantaged party.
|
| Usually the way these assertions are frame leaves anyone who
| disagrees in the position of having to prove the negative. Lack
| of evidence is no mater because "we know", while any trivial
| facts, even completely circumstantial ones, are held as proof.
|
| For example, I spent many too many hours arguing with my
| partner that Epstein wasn't "certainly murdered", that not
| having camera footage wasn't proof. While possible, we simply
| didn't have evidence, and suicide was hardly inconceivable
| given the circumstances. Yet seemingly everyone I know seems to
| not merely believe that this happened, but that they _know_
| this for certain and that there is a mass conspiracy to cover
| this up. There 's a belief that a) you have to take an absolute
| position of fact on unknowns and b) the case that attributes
| the most malice to the greatest number of the highest status
| people is always the correct one.
|
| The result is kind of interesting to me, because you end up
| where a majority of "regular people" end up sharing a common
| view of the world, even without any coordination and often when
| their ideologies are polar opposite each other.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Maybe this has something to do with the declining belief in
| god and religion that another poster mentioned. Things that
| the average Joe used to simply blame on god are now being
| blamed on the "Shadowy Elite" boogeymen, who are purportedly
| always conspiring against the public.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| I think there's something more fundamental going on in the US.
|
| First, I'd want to say that we as humans love to simplify
| complex things. There are large macroeconomic trends at play
| that are boring or hard to explain, and it's easier to blame
| immigrants, social media, or blame <X> because that gives us an
| outlet to make sense out of complexity. For politicians,
| depending on their political leanings, it gives them a way to
| avoid any form of accountability or responsibility. Regardless
| of party affiliations, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy
| Pelosi - some of the leaders across both parties have been in
| power longer than I've been alive. They can blame Facebook or
| Twitter for what's happening in the country, but in my mind,
| these "excuses" are an indictment of out of touch, entitled
| "leadership".
|
| America is facing a reality where the rest of the world is
| catching up. In chase of endless profits, we stopped producing
| things at home. And frankly, our standards of living or at
| least the expectations have risen - everyone wants <Y> now,
| without patience, and they need it delivered now or within two
| days. They want a standard of living that requires
| competitiveness globally, but in this country, we no longer
| want to work for it. On one hand, we have homelessness, housing
| shortages, issues with getting access to healthcare. On the
| other hand, we've sold the promise of America and glamorized it
| so strongly that so many people want to come here, when we
| cannot even take care of folks that are already here.
|
| We're getting lazier, more entitled, and under delusions of a
| God complex. In every Hollywood film, we continue to be the
| good guys that save the world. On one hand, we have zero trust
| in our politicians. On the other hand, the notion that perhaps
| we're not really "good" guys in some international conflict -
| that it's not so black and white - is simply incomprehensible.
|
| The last part of my rant is on the rising intolerance. There is
| now only one opinion, it is the truth, and anyone willing to
| step outside this narrow circle is a racist, bigot, etc. Worst
| of all, the people pushing this narrative are the loudest
| voices in the room, and our corporate interests are happy to
| assist and provide these people the megaphones they need, on
| their quest for endless profits and infinite growth.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > They want a standard of living that requires
| competitiveness globally, but in this country, we no longer
| want to work for it.
|
| That's not what I see at all. Most working people in the
| current generation are working more hours, at more skilled
| jobs, with more education than their parents, and yet the
| lifestyle they can afford (aside from tech gadgets) is worse
| and less secure than their parents.
|
| I'm pessimistic about more young people studying subjects
| that are not useful, but I think in general this generation
| has gotten a bad (financial) deal in comparison.
| Aunche wrote:
| > Most working people in the current generation are working
| more hours
|
| This is just completely false. Both average working hours
| (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG) and
| labor force participation
| (https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-
| lab...) has been trending downwards. I think more revealing
| than our hours of work is our attitudes towards work. Watch
| American Factory and observe the difference between Chinese
| and American workers. The Chinese workers simply care a lot
| more about getting their jobs done. I do think it's a good
| thing that we can afford to have higher standards for
| ourselves, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking
| this doesn't come with any downsides.
| rabuse wrote:
| This just doesn't seem to be the case with the peers I
| know, and covid made everything worse for morale. Nobody
| really wants to work anymore, service speed has fallen off
| a cliff in my area (South Florida), staff shortages are
| still in effect, nobody wants to have kids/get married,
| etc.
| weakfish wrote:
| Nobody wants to work because no human feels that the
| abuse service workers receive is worth a wage
| fundamentally too low to live on.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Morale falls off a cliff when hard work isn't properly
| rewarded or if the customers are too uppity.
| shagie wrote:
| > Nobody really wants to work anymore
|
| In many parts of jobs that have public facing people, the
| perceived increase in the lack of civility has made those
| jobs _much_ more difficult to accept for any length of
| time.
|
| The combination of job loss, retraining for jobs that
| don't deal with the public, and acceptance of austerity
| (including moving back in with one's parents in some
| cases) to have an extended duration of no income means
| that you don't need to accept a job that pays poorly or
| deals with uncivil people.
|
| I'm going to point to
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-
| rate that shows the unemployment rate equal to what it
| was in December 2019.
|
| People want to work and _are_ working - they 've just
| changed what they're working.
|
| If one wants to place blame on the "no one wants to work"
| I would suggest reading
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-
| boom... and https://wapo.st/39vvXxP
|
| > service speed has fallen off a cliff
|
| This has resulted in a reduction of capacity in many
| parts of the service industry.
|
| > staff shortages are still in effect
|
| A lot of people upskilled in the past two years and those
| staff shortages will remain until a new cohort of workers
| exists in that area that lack the skills to get the
| better paying jobs that don't interact with the public.
|
| > nobody wants to have kids/get married
|
| While the marriage rate has dropped precariously, I'll
| point to
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/195951/marriage-rate-
| in-... and point out that the chart _ends_ in 2020 and
| that weddings weren 't things that were easily held in
| the past two years either. However, the trend that is
| shown in that graph is one that has lasted for three
| decades - not three years.
|
| However,
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/183663/number-of-
| married... also shows an interesting chart where the
| number of married people has _increased_ fairly
| consistently though the recessions are evident in there -
| I suspect we 'll see another one.
|
| The "no one wants to have kids" needs to also be put into
| context of the percent of the cost of raising a child
| against the income and wealth for the generational
| cohort.
|
| https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/in
| dex... shows a substantial increase in cost in the 2000
| to 2010 timeframe.
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-cost-of-child-
| care-... puts it in a different light.
|
| Still, if one is paying off their own college loans it is
| difficult to think of adding to that putting away money
| for a child's college costs. If a household is living
| pretty much paycheck to paycheck or has significant debt
| that they're paying down for whatever reason, having a
| child with an _additional_ amount of cost would be
| considered to be unwise for people who have a fiscally
| responsible mind.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| I'd like to make a meta response to your post not about
| specific points you raised but how you made your point.
|
| I've been a fairly progressive or at least liberal my
| whole life. I also like to look at what the data tells
| us.
|
| I'm not certain that looking at "data" means we have real
| facts. At best, we have some quantitative representation
| that fits the narrative being pushed by its creators.
|
| Within progressive circles, I've seen data showing that
| the new generations are placing family on hold because
| they can hardly afford things, despite having "well paid"
| jobs. Other data shows that these millennials are all
| living with their parents. But then there's another study
| saying something completely different. People slice and
| dice whatever information they have to fit whatever
| narrative.
|
| I've personally become less willing to engage in
| conversation or debate when someone comes in and claims
| to have the data refuting what everyone is seeing with
| their own eyes and living day to day.
|
| It's like in Seattle. We have homicides, shootings about
| every week. A woman was recently beaten with a baseball
| bat at a transit station. But then the local government
| and its outsourced "activist" advisors say we cannot and
| should not lock up the suspect (who confessed) because
| he's a minority, and minorities have faced systemic
| racism, etc etc. and the real solution is to increase
| taxes on billionaires. "I have some data, therefore I
| know more and I'm right and everyone else is wrong." No
| thanks.
| judahmeek wrote:
| All you're saying is that you like your narrative & you
| intend to stick to it despite any contradicting evidence
| that may be presented.
|
| It's true that data must be judged for relevance &
| validity, but to just discard it in preference of your
| opinion is really egotistical.
|
| Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only
| presents a broader perspective than one's collection of
| anecdotes.
|
| So your example of Seattle choosing what you consider to
| be the wrong solution is not a very persuasive argument
| against collecting & using data itself.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This idea of higher hour and higher skill jobs doesn't
| necessarily conflict with the claim about not working (or
| being lazy). Workforce participation rates are historically
| low in the US.
|
| So the people who work tend to work hard. But a large
| number of people choose not to work or even seek work (for
| a variety of reasons, so lazy might be a little too catch-
| all).
| giantg2 wrote:
| "There are large macroeconomic trends at play that are boring
| or hard to explain, and it's easier to blame immigrants,
| social media, or blame <X> because that gives us an outlet to
| make sense out of complexity."
|
| Very true. So many people rate the president based on how the
| economy or market is doing, yet they have very little
| influence over it.
|
| "we no longer want to work for it. ... The last part of my
| rant is on the rising intolerance."
|
| If we're not busy working or "building" something, then the
| other thing people tend to engage in is tearing things down.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Well, the US is a nation of some 330 million individuals.
| It's the 3rd most populous nation after China and India. The
| US is also the 4th largest country by land mass. It's
| actually tied with China in that regard.
|
| Why is that important? Because at those scales, a population
| isn't remotely homogeneous. On the contrary. The US is a
| massively complex nation with many complex histories,
| cultures, economies, politics and belief systems. Languages
| spoken in the US are a massive topic in their own regard.
| American linguistics is a huge field.
|
| The thing is that all that complexity gets hidden by a few
| dominant narratives. Noam Chomsky has been instrumental in
| pointing that out through his career. [1] Even so, the role
| of the media is just the top of the iceberg. Far more
| interesting is digging into deeply ingrained belief systems
| and the formation of identities throughout the history of the
| US from when settlers first arrived until the present day.
| One can never really fully escape one's own past, and this
| rings very true for collective histories.
|
| I wouldn't characterize the US population as collectively
| having become "lazier" or "more entitled". I think that's
| short selling a national identity. However, one narrative is
| that the US fully became a global empire after World War II.
| The effects of those 5 years, and the preceding decades, from
| 1918 onwards, have profoundly transformed not only the US but
| also the world as a whole. Global economic prosperity up to
| the 1970s (in France, they are called the "Thirty Glorious
| Years") and it's subsequent decline over the past 50 years
| are ripples of a turbulent first half of the 20th century.
|
| The fact of the matter is that the US - just like the rest of
| the world - is facing a new, challenging future with many
| new, potential and real, fault lines that might give rise to
| conflict and tension. Many of which still being rooted in
| historical differences.
|
| It's easy to see how that breeds uncertainty and a sense of
| "everything is falling apart". Old certainties, dynamics and
| beliefs that have dominated the thinking of billions for the
| past 80 to 100 years are now being challenged. The question
| is how the US, this complex nation such as it is, is going to
| rise towards the occasion.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and
| _pr...
| shrimpx wrote:
| I always thought that the open ability to perform damaging
| speech against institutions and public figures in the west was
| "cool" -- a major distinguishing factor between free countries
| and non-free ones. But I was also always a little skeptical of
| that ability. It seemed ok in small doses, just to prove we can
| do it.
|
| Now we're grappling with the full import of nonstop destructive
| speech coming from all sides and being amplified and mass-
| distributed. Nonstop shit talking and denigrating of our
| systems is what's causing this drastic loss of confidence in
| them. Any imperfection will be amplified to where it looks like
| a total failure.
| [deleted]
| heurist wrote:
| I think it's a temporary phase introduced by the hyper-
| reflective nature of the internet. Younger generations will
| handle it better because they grew up in the new environment.
| Older generations are struggling to adapt.
| I-M-S wrote:
| It not the small doses that makes it ok, it's the fact the
| speaker is small. If however, the speaker gains a following
| and the systems starts to perceive it as a threat rather than
| a nuisance, the reaction is much different.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Old institutions cannot compete with Elon Musk, YouTube,
| podcasts such as Rogan, and the dopamine of social media. The
| CDC changing minds on masks hurt confidence, for example.
| Someone like Musk is viewed as decisive .
| stirfish wrote:
| I think I get what you're trying to say - that we haven't yet
| found a way to put our important ideas into a medium that's
| entertaining for us to understand, so we fall back on simpler
| things like sound bites and internet memes. Like, virology is
| hard and confusing and scary, but Elon Musk smoked weed once
| on camera so we'll pay attention to that instead.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Hot_and_cool_.
| ..
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| While Musk is certainly more entertaining - which coincides
| with your point about dopamine - I would not call him more
| decisive. The argument that the "CDC flipflops but Musk does
| not" doesn't really hold water.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776
| RubberMullet wrote:
| What concerns me more than the collapse of many of our
| intuitions is the fact that the Neocons have emerged from the
| rubble. Regardless of party or political leanings there was a
| time when Neocons were universally reviled. Watching people
| like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and The Lincoln Project get so
| much press and attention makes my blood boil. Heck, they even
| brought out Dick Cheney(!!!) for the J6 anniversary.
| Clubber wrote:
| I would guess it's because both parties are neoliberals since
| Reagan, and the D or the R is just culture war distraction.
| Sadly, the economic policy is all the same.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
| lampshades wrote:
| I don't think the neocons will survive. It really feels like
| a last ditch effort to me. I'd say upwards of 90% of
| Republicans have turned on neoconservativism and the
| remaining 10% are more likely to vote Democrat where neocons
| are only welcomed as cheerleaders.
|
| I think regardless of if he gets elected again, even if he
| only even serves one term, 50 years from now Trump's name is
| going to be plastered in more history books than any modern
| President before him (and possibly after). He truly did
| radically alter the party to an amount that will define
| different eras in political history.
| pianoben wrote:
| > Even if one's "guy" is in office, I don't think we feel the
| same about it the way we did even as recent as Obama, and his
| administration was when we really began to see the social
| cracks forming.
|
| I really don't see it that way - this isn't at all a new
| phenomenon. What feels different to me is the _intensity_ and
| _pervasiveness_ of division, but then again that could be
| attributed to being more generally _aware_ of things thanks to
| the Internet.
|
| I'm 39 and have lived in America all my life. In my childhood,
| I dimly recall bitter rows over whatever Regan was doing - my
| parents lost friends over their opposition to him. In the 90s,
| Clinton scandals were all people could talk about for a good
| while. George W, of course, took social division to new heights
| - or, at least, I was finally old enough to appreciate just how
| far-ranging the dividing effects of ideology can be.
|
| I remember in my first job in the mid-2000s, my team was
| already socially-clustered based on political/religious
| identity - "Libs" weren't invited to some parties, and vice-
| versa.
|
| Of course, Obama's election really triggered a _certain section
| of society_ , there's no denying that, but all that is to say
| that none of this is really _new_. In my view, our "tribes"
| broadly descend from pro- vs. anti-slavery camps, and the
| different geographic targets of migration from different parts
| of England and Europe. (I highly recommend the book Albion's
| Seed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed), which
| explores the influence of regional cultures of 18th-century
| Britain on American cultures).
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| > In my view, our "tribes" broadly descend from pro- vs.
| anti-slavery camps
|
| Fact: George Floyd wouldn't have died if he didn't resist
| arrest.
|
| I'm certainly not pro-slavery, and agree people can be
| racist, but there is certainly something wrong if people
| can't openly discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a
| racist themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| So in your "not pro-slavery" view police are allowed to
| summarily execute people on the street?
|
| That's what your stated "taboo truth" amounts too, it's
| fine for police to kill people as long as you have judged
| them worthy of death.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| Unless he dies from the OD on the way to jail in the back
| of the cruiser or at the jail.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > there is certainly something wrong if people can't openly
| discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a racist
| themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.
|
| There are things that are true and impactful and worth
| talking about, and some of those conversations get shut
| down because they make people feel uncomfortable. Your
| statement is not in that group.
|
| There are statements that, while technically true, are
| misleading. They do not illuminate. They are so _obviously_
| cherry-picked from the range of all possible statements
| that they reveal the bias of the person presenting them.
| Your statement is in this group.
|
| Personally, I'm fine with people who reveal themselves to
| be racists to be labelled as racists. I'm fine with this
| category of statements being utterly dismissed. I'm fine
| with these statements being "censored", as in people
| choosing not to publish them.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| The debate wasn't about that fact, it was about rather a
| white man would have died resisting or if him resisting in
| the way he did justified his death. The data shows that
| minorities are killed by cops at much higher rate[1]. He
| was accused of writing bad checks, that doesn't carry a
| death sentence nor should it. The reason people that
| express that opinion are often called racist is that it
| seems obtuse to bring up in the discussion. I'm NOT calling
| you of racist, I don't think people that state that are by
| default. Many are just siding with the police for various
| reasons.
|
| 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-
| shootings...
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| Yes but there really wasn't a debate. You either agreed
| or were racist, and that's the issue in a nutshell.
|
| Even just scratching the surface of this point, the data
| you shared fails to include details of whether the
| victims resisted arrest or not.
|
| There have been dire national consequences of how the
| public views enforcing the law since Floyd. And Claiming
| racism when a point seems obtuse to you is hardly
| productive.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I guess Philando Castile wouldn't have been murdered if he
| didn't interfere with police target practice either?
| pianoben wrote:
| I'm not certain how that bears on what I wrote, and won't
| comment on it except to say that the American "pro-slavery
| camp" is not merely a synonym for "racially bigoted" -
| there's a whole world-view there in which groups of humans
| are inherently and fundamentally unequal, and in which
| might makes right, to a certain degree.
|
| On your topic of "taboo truths", personally I agree that we
| ought to be able to discuss things with civility and
| assuming good faith. It's not always or even often possible
| these days.
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| I'm trying to illustrate that using racism as a baseline
| to divide camps of thought is the root cause of the
| fracturing of society.
|
| For example, I don't understand how you expect a civil
| and good faith discussion by first labeling the opposing
| viewpoint as 'pro slavery' at the onset.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think of it as a forest. In constant growth and decay.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| That is a good way to think about a lot of aspects of
| society. For the forest to remain healthy old trees need to
| die to make room for the new trees just waiting for enough
| sun to sprout from seed. After a tree falls, the patch of new
| trees compete to be the next old tree to fill the space. As
| the years go on hundreds of saplings become dozens and
| eventually one as the slow growers get shaded out.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Exactly. A forest is always growing and dying
| simultaneously. On average a healthy forest will grow more
| than die or be in equilibrium. A forest in decline will die
| more than it grows. There is also the cleansing effect of
| fire from time to time. It's a good analogy
| danjac wrote:
| Empires can suffer military defeats, economic collapses, even
| civil wars (they were pretty much a national sport for the
| Romans) but what kills them off for good are crises of
| legitimacy. When people no longer believe in the unifying ethos
| of the empire, it's game over.
|
| For example, when people stopped believing in Communism and the
| institutions of the Party, the USSR was done. All the nuclear
| weapons and KGB goons couldn't keep it together. When Roman
| citizens figured out that the legions would no longer protect
| them and they were better off paying tithes to a local feudal
| lord rather than taxes to Rome, the Roman Empire was done. And
| in the US, if nobody believes in the democratic system of
| government and the only way to keep their party in power is
| through insurrection or voter suppression, then the US as we
| know it will be over as well.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism
|
| I've spent a lot of time looking into that kind of skepticism.
| It turns out, the vast majority of people who say they are
| "skeptical" of journalism adhere to far right, conspiracy-laden
| fringe news sites that create fake news and cast doubt on
| science. It's safe to say that the entire "skeptical of
| journalism" meme can be traced to a handful of billionaires who
| have used dark money networks to go after journalists who have
| dared to investigate and publicize their malfeasance. These
| billionaires use the far right blogosphere and fringe news
| sites to encourage public mistrust of journalists for this
| reason. Sites known to do this include the Gateway Pundit,
| Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart, Fox, and most notably, the
| NaturalNews disinformation and propaganda network run by Mike
| Adams.
| [deleted]
| dpweb wrote:
| I do think we are stuck in this cycle, where our
| government/politicians appeal to our basest impulses and urges.
| Outrage, sympathy, jingoism.
|
| This is rewarded with political support, viewers, clicks on the
| headline. Even this article "Is everything falling apart".
| Alarmist clickbait.
|
| So if you're society consists of too many people who simply act
| on impulse, instead of thoughtful consideration, how do you
| deal with that?
|
| I'd argue less vitriol would help, but you're incentivized in
| the opposite direction. Both the person who feels helpless
| expressing your outrage in the comments, or the media outlet
| trying to get viewers and clicks.
| jahewson wrote:
| > but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship
| because that caters to public sentiment.
|
| No it's because it caters to the employees and owners of
| traditional journalism who have been dethroned by Silicon
| Valley.
| dv_dt wrote:
| If you look at life expectancy in the America, it has been flat
| to reversing. Understandably with added pressure from Covid,
| but at a rate higher even with Covid higher than all other well
| resourced major nations. This not because we are unable, but
| because those with the power are unwilling to engage
| fundamental issues. Covid is not the only issue for which this
| is the case - it was happening before covid.
|
| Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root causes
| are simply being ignored as stability and promises of improved
| prosperity provided by civilization is going backwards. This is
| meets my definition of falling apart.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root
| causes are simply being ignored"
|
| Such as?
|
| "but because those with the power are unwilling to engage
| fundamental issues."
|
| It's possible that some issues they are unable to address
| because there are legal or practical hurdles. For example,
| obesity is a massive issue that is dependent on individual
| buy-in. Things like addiction and crime could use
| improvement, but they are both highly complex issues and not
| easy to solve. Of course most systemic issues are difficult
| to solve in a democracy simply because they need a lot of
| support to have any momentum, especially if individual and
| states' rights/liberties heavily protected in the democracy
| constitution.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| As obesity reaches 50% and higher, it's not surprising that
| life expectancy would decrease.
|
| If people want to choose to live shorter and less healthy
| lives, is there anything we can really do?
| imtringued wrote:
| What if that is the only choice they are being offered?
| When you go into a supermarket you are already being
| surrounded by awful food. The only good food there is the
| food you cook from scratch.
|
| It's like the food industry is "conspiring" against you.
| Obviously they are not, they just deliver crap quality to
| make more money.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yes, education is definitely part of it. It's possible to
| eat one meal a day (intermittent fasting), it's a choice
| many aren't educated about (hunger pain goes away after a
| few minutes, esp. if there is enough water intake).
| acuozzo wrote:
| Framing obesity as a choice is at least as useless as
| framing any other drug addiction as a choice.
|
| I don't understand why the discourse on this topic so
| rarely focuses on its root cause: food addiction.
|
| Is it just easier to think of fat and obese people as weak-
| willed rather than addicted?
|
| Is the goal to shame them rather than help them?
| basisword wrote:
| >> If you look at life expectancy in the America, it has been
| flat to reversing.
|
| >> Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root
| causes are simply being ignored as stability and promises of
| improved prosperity provided by civilization is going
| backwards.
|
| How much of this can be explained by the fact that one third
| of adults in the US are obese as opposed to major scientific
| and economic issues?
| dv_dt wrote:
| IMHO, falling life expectancy is a macro measure of
| multiple failing institutions, not a singular cause.
|
| Obesity is driven by systemic commercialization and
| sugaring of our food supply, combined with inequality of
| too low a pay, too many hours, to little vacation. Even
| funding of highway and road infrastructure over other areas
| is a contributor here.
|
| Another large part of it is because we elect to keep both
| private health insurance policy which ends up being
| racially and economically biased, and what little social
| safety we provide is riddled with self-imposed rules of
| means testing and other red tape cutting the effectiveness
| of even the meager allocation of resources. Many very
| easily and economically preventable illnesses and deaths
| keep happening and that is a decline to me. e.g.
| https://www.propublica.org/article/black-diabetics-lose-
| limb...
| somenameforme wrote:
| Let us imagine that starting tomorrow every single
| American is granted infinite endless and free access to
| anything available at any restaurant or grocery store or
| other food service. Do you think that in 10 years the
| obesity epidemic would be: better, same, worse?
|
| I have trouble imagining that it would be better. Look at
| people who come into access with large sums of money for
| reasons outside primarily mental achievement - athletes
| after leaving pro sports, musicians after they stop
| performing, actors after they stop acting, lottery
| winners, and so on. Some quick searching turned up
| articles like this [1]:
|
| "The researchers found that the athletes' weight held
| steady for over 100 years, with the majority of them
| weighing in at what is considered "normal," -- i.e., with
| a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 24.9. However,
| around 1991 the average player's BMI began to rise, and
| over the last 25 years nearly 80 percent of players fall
| into the overweight or obese category with a BMI above
| 25. "
|
| There's a strong correlation between socioeconomic status
| and obesity, but that doesn't mean it's causal. Obesity
| is primarily driven by a lack of impulse control. If you
| force yourself not to over-eat, you could live off of
| even McDonalds without becoming obese.
|
| [1] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/16093
| 0085937.h...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It would be an accelerant for sure, but maybe there would
| be a self-selecting correction: people with no self-
| control over food intake would just die out over the
| centuries (assuming there are genetic and cultural
| factors involved in food intake south control).
| lg wrote:
| This is misleading for athletes and the article is clear
| that the BMI increase could be due to sports nutrition
| and new training methods.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Other leading economic nations have increasing obesity
| alongside increasing life expectancy.
| krageon wrote:
| Folks in the US are on average very fat and very ignorant,
| not a great combination if you would prefer to have people
| that are healthy and/or capable of improving their own
| life.
| pojzon wrote:
| Well politicians in US grew very fat and very ignorant
| ppl, so ppl are ignorant and fat.
|
| In other countries where politicians care about citizens
| -> situation is completely different.
|
| It all depends on agenda and food you sell to ppl.
| nradov wrote:
| The obesity rate is up to 42% now and still climbing.
|
| https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2020/
|
| This is closely correlated with the COVID-19 death rate.
|
| https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-
| says-9-of-10-c...
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| And why is obesity rising so quickly in nearly all first
| world countries but particularly in the US? Most of the
| research points at three reasons:
|
| 1. Modern food systems - fast food, frozen boxed food, and
| a severe lack of access to healthy whole foods
|
| 2. Income inequality - Obesity rates are far higher in
| lower income people and healthy food is far more expensive
|
| 3. Work culture - We work far more hours and far less
| physical jobs. Less hours to exercise and more cost to
| exercise.
|
| Sure individuals can find ways around all these issues but
| the more roadblocks we as a society put in people's way the
| more that will fail. Which is is exactly what the OP is
| talking about, major scientific and economic issues cause
| far worse health outcomes.
| mrits wrote:
| I have a much different experience. I have a dozen family
| members that were part of the auto industry in Michigan. They
| were on top of the world for decades. It ended with most of
| them thinking society has collapsed in the 80s and doubting
| they'd actually get their pension.
|
| My grandfather spent the last 30 years of his life in
| retirement collecting a pay check that he thought might be his
| last.
| nradov wrote:
| This is why defined benefit pension plans are so risky for
| retirees, employers, and taxpayers. We need to completely
| eliminate them and use defined contribution plans such as
| 401(k) instead. That way retirees actually _own_ the assets
| in individual named accounts and those can 't be taken away
| if the employer is sold or goes bankrupt.
| dwater wrote:
| Pensions do have risk, but you act as if 401(k) style plans
| don't. Imagine how difficult it would be to plan
| fastidiously for your retirement and then have the stock
| market collapse and wipe out 1/4 or 1/2 of your savings.
| Yes, you should diversify your investments to reduce your
| exposure, but in this instance the risk and responsibility
| is on you the individual. Isn't it strange how two
| different systems that on paper have totally different risk
| profiles both have a huge risk of low and middle net worth
| individuals getting wiped out?
| nradov wrote:
| In practice there is no risk of defined contribution
| plans getting wiped out unless the account holder does
| something exceptionally stupid. Most plans default to
| using target date mutual funds which automatically
| rebalance to reduce stock exposure every year. If there's
| a major stock market crash then older employees will have
| very little exposure and younger employees have plenty of
| time to financially recover.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Exactly, target date funds and broad market index funds
| with 0.03% fees have automated away the entire job of the
| pension fund. And the Feds will bail out the public
| markets, so retirement funds invested in the market are
| effectively insured by the best insurer possible at all
| times.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?
| giantg2 wrote:
| My grandfather worked for the steel mills. Some workers
| didn't get anything for their pensions. He was one of the
| lucky ones and got something, like 10 cents on the dollar.
| I think they even stopped sending them before he died
| (remember him saying something about that was the last
| check and complaining about the company).
| refurb wrote:
| Pensions are all insured in the US
| fullstop wrote:
| It got complicated when the steel mills went bankrupt and
| the pensions were taken over by federal agencies. The
| bankrupt company, in this case, was paying more for
| pensioners than what the federal agencies paid.
|
| I'm not entirely clear on why this was, but it may have
| been that they were not fully insured or that promises
| made by the steel mills were not backed by anything. In
| these cases, some pensioners actually had to give money
| back [1].
|
| This happened to my grandfather, who worked in the steel
| mills in western Pennsylvania. If you ever wanted to see
| him red-faced mad, this was the topic to discuss.
|
| 1. https://www.mcall.com/news/all-retirees1118-story.html
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you have a source? I wonder if that covers all
| pensions or just public pensions? Or if that requirement
| is newer and didn't exist when the companies went under
| 50 or so years ago.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Even taxpayer funded DB pension recipients have had to
| accept benefit cuts, such as former employees of Detroit
| and Rhode Island.
|
| If the entity that owes you does not have the power to
| print money, then there is always a risk of non payment.
| And how much of a bailout you get depends on your
| political weight.
| chucksmash wrote:
| That doesn't mean you will get what you were promised if
| the pension was underfunded[1]:
|
| > If you look at multiemployer plans, those people worked
| in coal mines, driving trucks, in bakeries -- typically
| physical, difficult jobs, and they certainly earned the
| pension they were promised by their union. Now, some of
| them are 70-years-old and in retirement and have the
| terrible prospect of having their pension cut.
|
| > There's a government backstop for private pensions, but
| _the government backstop for multiemployer plans is very
| modest_
|
| [1]: https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/underfunded-
| pensions
| foundart wrote:
| Pensions are insured but not at 100% of what was promised
| by the employer's pension plan. Thus, getting only 10
| cents on the dollar is certainly possible. https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corpo...
| TMWNN wrote:
| And this is why forcing USPS in 2006 to prepay pensions
| for the next 70 years is a _good_ thing, as opposed to a
| "GOP conspiracy to privatize the post office". Why it was
| passed almost unanimously by Congress.
|
| USPS's primary business, delivering letters, was by 2006
| clearly in terminal decline, with no guarantee that
| parcel volume would increase to compensate. Many, many
| employees of newspapers--the other industry that in 2006
| was facing similar danger--wish that Congress had
| mandated something like this for their pensions.
| bsder wrote:
| 1) Except that _NO OTHER COMPANY_ needs to prepay
| pensions for 70 years. I have no problem with the fact
| that companies must prepay pensions. Then make it the law
| for _everybody_ --not just the USPS.
|
| 2) The USPS is _supposed_ to be unprofitable--it 's
| supposed to service _everyone_. If you are going to hound
| the USPS about profitability, then they should be allowed
| to drop service in rural areas. The easiest way to
| decrease pension obligations is to permananetly drop a
| whole bunch of workers from unprofitable areas, no?
|
| The problem is that the arguments around the USPS aren't
| made in good faith. The goal is to bankrupt the USPS so
| that they have to sell off the extremely valuable real
| estate that many USPS facilities sit on.
| dehrmann wrote:
| In the last few years, there's been some nostalgia in the
| US over pensions, but people tend to forget that they're
| tied to employers, so people feel tied to jobs because
| they're building up a pension, and the pension is often
| managed by _and dependent_ on the employer 's business in
| some way.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| A large number of folks think the world already ended, and
| we're just waiting on the collapse. That now both on the
| right and left.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I used to work in film, and every once in a while I get a
| script to read, passed around because it is "too good to
| be made". One such script I read about 2 years ago had
| the premise of an archeological discovery, rapidly
| verified and with duplicates found all over the world
| proving "the rapture" happened back in the year 1000 AD.
| The modern world realizes we're in the 2nd century of the
| 10,000 year reign of Satan. All hell breaks loose, of
| course.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| That's a great premise, and I say this with years of
| being pentecostal.
| I-M-S wrote:
| You probably meant 2nd millennium (VS century). Is this
| script available on the Black List?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Not all pensions are well managed; some have needed bailing
| out from public coffers. Other companies have shuttered
| completely, and the lack of incoming money to the pension
| funds made them insolvent (again, not especially well
| managed).
| guessbest wrote:
| Its doesn't have to be public bailouts. There is
| something for Americans where the pension funds have been
| seized by the federal government to be managed. I worked
| for a company where the executives were using pension
| funds to give themselves annual bonuses until the federal
| government stepped in around 2009. There wasn't much
| money left over, so I'll be receiving very little, but at
| least the executives could raid the funds anymore.
|
| > Welcome to PBGC! Since 1974, we've protected retirement
| security and the retirement incomes of over 33 million
| American workers, retirees, and their families in private
| sector defined benefit pension plans.
|
| https://www.pbgc.gov/
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's a shame that you got screwed out of what you'd been
| promised. I'm guessing yours wasn't in the $86 billion
| bailout (maybe because it only went to multi-employer
| union plans?)
|
| > https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-
| gives-86-b...
|
| Unfortunately, it's not just the private sector pensions
| that have been mismanaged (or raided, as you pointed out)
| which are in dire straits. California, in particular, has
| a lot of public pension headaches that will be coming to
| a head (and in some cases already have):
|
| https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-
| davis-...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/19/
| why...
| guessbest wrote:
| No, this was a telecom company where the Canadian
| executives were siphoning money from the American work
| force, which was net profitable. The Canadian side was
| losing money by the billions. The pensions were down to a
| mid sixty percent reduction before the American
| government stepped in to stop the transfers. It was in
| all the papers.
| mushbino wrote:
| So it sounds like you're saying things have just been getting
| progressively worse. That doesn't sound like much of a
| different perspective. There was a time when people were
| optimistic about the future, but granted that was a long time
| ago.
| goodpoint wrote:
| I recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Look_Up - a
| more up to date version of Idiocracy.
| niviksha wrote:
| This is an interesting response to the original article. My TL;DR
| for this is something like 'Yes, information tech has _always_
| resulted in social upheaval, so notwithstanding the scale and
| speed of the current iteration, this isn 't new. Also, it can
| result in international social cohesion (aka Nazis of the world
| unite). The thing is, it feels like the author is telling us not
| to worry because all of this has happened before (with horrific
| consequences to those caught in the churn, to borrow my favorite
| phrase from The Expanse). That is a weak rationalization at best
| - 'same shit, different day, (albeit global scale, speed of
| light) so don't worry' isn't as reassuring as it should sound
| kipchak wrote:
| I think it's worth considering the scale of change is different
| as well. Things like the printing press and the translation of
| the bible into English definitely did result in upheaval and
| information being more widely available, the scale is our new
| information systems is much larger, so the potential stress on
| people and systems likely will be as well.
|
| I think practically the best strategy is to reduce your
| exposure to the churn as much as reasonably possible if it's
| something you're worried about.
| hsnewman wrote:
| I don't understand why people who clearly are traitors to the USA
| are able to get by with it. In the 1950's they would have been
| immediately arrested and tried for supporting facist countries.
| Now they are beloved.
| Minor49er wrote:
| This isn't limited to the USA. With the rise of globalism, the
| sovereignty of nations has been eroding in favor of a one-world
| government, whether those nations go with it willingly or have
| it imposed on them. Warfare is now primarily conducted from
| within, beneath the surface.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Who cares what people feel like is happening? Just look at the
| data you care about.
|
| For example, I think it's interesting that many major cultures
| are dying because they have below replacement rate demographics.
|
| The trend looks like a slow-moving Black Plague, except at the
| end of the rollercoaster you are left with old people instead of
| a bunch of young people (that survived the sickness).
|
| This is certainly a new experiment by humanity that hasn't
| happened before quite like this, so we are in for interesting
| times :)
| titzer wrote:
| It's not that things are falling apart, it's that things are not
| being put back together. Complex societies have systems and
| mechanisms in them that require people to do a.) do their job and
| b.) hold others accountable. We're a uniquely distracted and
| lethargic generation obsessed with titillation, fantasy, and
| procrastination. Yet a lot of things require sober, deliberate
| work, and enforcing the rules. With the level of corruption in
| the US government--the level of open shirking of duties and
| outright lies, coupled with the seeming inability of elected
| officials to accomplish overwhelmingly popular policy changes,
| coupled with prolonged strategic malinvestment and a obvious debt
| bubble, we're in some serious hot water.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "coupled with the seeming inability of elected officials to
| accomplish overwhelmingly popular policy changes,"
|
| I feel like this is always a hot button. What are the
| overwhelming popular policy changes, and just how popular are
| they? I'm wondering if there's a list somewhere that will show
| the top ones with the percent of support.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| There are tons of them, so long as you poll for them
| carefully such that each person surveyed can imagine that
| it's the version of the proposal that they support.
| naravara wrote:
| It seems a little odd to try and reassure me that everything
| isn't falling apart by referencing the Protestant Reformation as
| the "we've been through this before and come out of it" example.
|
| The Protestant Reformation was something of a disaster.
| Everything DID fall apart. It got rebuilt again into something
| better but the transition period was an era of war and strife and
| bloodshed. It is not at all reassuring to lean on that as the
| example. (Ditto broadcast media (radio, TV, film) and its
| associations with the rise of fascism and bolshevism in the early
| 20th century.)
| thaway2839 wrote:
| I find all the comparisons to previous technological changes
| lacking for one very simple reason. Previous technological
| changes never had granular data on individuals the way today's
| technological revolution does.
|
| Since most such pieces are written by journalists, or written by
| people who think about these things but are also writers, they
| tend to focus on the idea distribution medium aspect of today's
| technology. So that would be the internet, or social media
| platforms, or chat platforms, etc. That's the most easily
| comparable part to past information technologies such as the
| printing press.
|
| But the novel danger with what we're facing today is not the fact
| that everyone is on social media, or that stuff can go viral.
| Even though these are turbocharged versions of past technologies,
| they are still versions of past technologies (being turbocharged
| can still make it meaningfully different, but for now I'll ignore
| that). The novel danger is personalized data collection. It's the
| fact that major companies can built extremely accurate and
| granular profiles of every single person on their platforms.
|
| This is completely unprecedented. Throw in even rudimentary AI,
| and I can target my message to match every individual's unique
| psychological profile. This was never possible in the past. The
| most you could do is target something based on a few broad aspect
| of someone's personality. Where they lived, what religion they
| followed, what language they spoke, etc. But there were thousands
| if not millions of people who filled that mold, and there were
| vast variations within those people, which still allowed for non
| conformity.
|
| Today, however, you can target every individual and even the same
| individual differently depending on whether it's the morning, or
| evening, or if they are working or relaxing.
|
| It's this that's truly novel and truly dangerous. You don't even
| need Social media to be involved for this to be a problem. The
| Chinese government, for example, famously has a highly intrusive
| citizenry score for its citizens based on a variety of such micro
| targeted factors. And pretty much every government across the
| world is also doing the same. Corporations have gone even further
| because they have all the data.
| [deleted]
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| It is very interesting to see this come up so much here. I,
| personally, don't feel epistemically equipped to have an opinion
| on this, but it seems a lot of people do.
|
| My main takeaway from _this_ piece and the fellow comments (but
| not Haidt 's piece, which is just Substack doomerism), is that
| you could probably roughly approximate salaries based on
| someone's stance on this, whether they are right or wrong.
|
| So many comments, especially, make this clear, if still under the
| surface. And that makes sense! If you have a business, a
| mortgage, or whatever critical long-term investments, you have to
| be at least somewhat inclined to, 1., think positively about the
| way things generally work right now, and 2., to feel confident
| that history is skewing towards progress and good things, however
| qualified.
|
| This also kind of explains how it seems generational too. Kids
| and millennials are without a lot of wealth, have little
| investments, and are most likely just in terminal debt and paying
| rent month-by-month. There isn't really the sense of a tomorrow
| for many, much less accumulates ROIs.
| jiveturkey42 wrote:
| Comments TLDR: "Yes, and it's the other side's fault"
| jmyeet wrote:
| In my experience the young tend to exaggerate highs and lows
| because they tend to have lived through one and not the other.
| This is particularly true because many people today have no
| memory of actual recession. Far fewer have any memory of war (in
| the West in general and the US in particular).
|
| The last few years have really exposed just how profoundly
| irrational and profoundly selfish a significant percentage of the
| population is.
|
| So take climate change. Yes, it's a big issue but my view is now
| fatalistic. Humanity won't even minorly inconvenience itself to
| do anything about it. So we'd better hope there is an economic
| solution, specifically an eenrgy source without greenhouse gas
| emissions that's cheaper, because nothing else will change
| behaviour. And I actually expect that will happen. Many people
| will be displaced and die in the meantime, which is obviously
| awful, but people collectively are completely fun with letting
| other people die and that's just the truth.
|
| So for many things I just don't think it's as dire as many think.
|
| But one area where I think we're in real trouble is the the
| resurgence of literal Nazism. This isn't a perjorative. We've
| come so far that the former Prime Minister of _israel_ engages in
| Holocaust revisionism to blame it on Palestinians [1]:
|
| > Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the Zionist Congress on
| Tuesday night that "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at
| the time, he wanted to expel the Jews." The prime minister said
| that the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, had protested to Hitler
| that "they'll all come here," referring to Palestine.
|
| > " 'So what should I do with them?' " Mr. Netanyahu quoted
| Hitler as asking Mr. Husseini. "He said, 'Burn them.' "
|
| We have the highest-ratest host on the #1 cable "news" network
| openly pushing Nazi propaganda [2]. Republicans are in love with
| autocrats and the examples are legion (eg Trump's praise of
| Jinping, Kim John-Un and Putin, GOP praise of Victor Orbon of
| Hungary).
|
| As much as age has given me perspective to realize most alarm is
| overstated, I can't help but think this is going to end very,
| very badly.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/world/middleeast/netanyah...
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGb748VOcYU
| arrosenberg wrote:
| America is at the end of the neoliberal political/economic cycle,
| so (somewhat obviously) neoliberal institutions are failing and
| being reformed by groups with power who want _their_ preferred
| system to prevail for the next 40-50 years. Radicals want
| socialism, reactionaries want fascism, and the wealthy on both
| sides want to consolidate their oligarchy, Its less "falling
| apart" and more that those interested parties are all happy to
| pick away at the carcass of the current system in the meantime.
| testbjjl wrote:
| It's becoming increasingly inconvenient for the minority to
| control the majority in this country. This shift has been
| discussed for decades. I would expect more "dumb" to come.
|
| Immigrants bring Covid so we need to control the border, but
| Covid is a conspiracy. My candidates won on a ballot where my
| candidate that lost on the same ballot was cheated. The
| democratic presidents showed weakness to Putin, but somehow the
| insurrection does not.
|
| Most Americans are unprepared to compete against others who view
| life objectively and earned advanced degrees and practice
| introspection. The math books are threatening. Teachers shouldn't
| teach grade schoolers subjects taken from graduate courses (CRT).
| There is no way this doesn't backfire. Too many contradictions to
| enumerate.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Technically speaking, yes [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
| whatda wrote:
| is it not the opposite, because as entropy decreases everything
| becomes stable and ordered?(as far as I know)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Well... dead planets (that harbor no life) are lower entropy
| than living planets as their surfaces change much less over
| time. Fewer possible microstates = low entropy.
|
| Hence, if you take a complex biochemical system and reduce it
| to <100 piles of atoms of specific elements, this is a lower
| entropy state. Mass extinctions, collapse of civilizations,
| that does lead to a 'more stable and ordered' state.
|
| Disorder is desirable. Let chaos reign!
| 2ion wrote:
| Well, the view that history may be in fact (perhaps not
| objectively, but to any observer cultured enough to entertain
| himself with observing it) not a time line into the future but
| cyclical, with civilizations rising and falling, is not new [1].
|
| Perhaps this time what's different is that due to our information
| age and accelerated rates of change, cultural history's process
| of change has been pushed from being viewed closer to evolution
| (the next step of the change being defined by "environment and
| chance", that is, stretched out over long periods of time and
| caused by factors not directly being under human influence) to
| being much closer to immediate, accountable, man-made history
| (the next step of the change being defined by "environment and
| choice", that is, actors making active choices causing outcomes)
| [2]. And so, because most humans, even humans of influence making
| the choices altering the life outcomes of populuations not over
| generations but even within single, half or quarter lifetimes,
| are terribly selfish and stupid and unwise, the outcomes of bad
| choices just never seem to stop coming.
|
| I'm no expert, but topics like shifting balances between global
| powers which are interested in different kinds of change (from
| hegemonic US in a post-WWII word to a very multi-polar world
| order to xyz) causing metrics like HDI to even out between global
| population groups have been "hot" since when? the 70s, 80s, 90s,
| 00s? So sure, things might keep falling apart for one population
| group but still improving for the other group(s).
|
| Another interesting take on "falling apart narrative"
| interpretations of current history might be a take on how looming
| juggernauts like climate change, migration waves and so on play
| into it. This kind of change may be good for something, but
| surely not perceived stability in the factors that make up human
| societies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West
|
| [2] "Environment and change", "environment and choice" --- words
| borrowed out of recently read "Red Mars" by Kim Robinson.
| scythe wrote:
| My impression is that optimism peaked in the '50s -- some time
| before I was alive -- and has been in decline ever since. That's
| not to say that there haven't been major achievements since then
| -- I wouldn't have a career without them -- but increasingly, we
| have seen experts throwing up their hands and saying "I don't
| know how this will ever be solved". The _most_ optimism right now
| comes from people who think major societal problems will be
| solved by machines that can solve more problems than people. That
| of course does not contradict the idea that humans are having
| more and more trouble solving our problems, even as we continue
| to move forward in the near term.
|
| We have never had a unified cultural perspective on this
| phenomenon -- it is either an artifact of regressive politics, a
| warning sign of the limits to growth, a reflection of deep
| failings in the basic structure of society, a punishment from
| Heaven for our disregard for tradition, or [choose as many as you
| like]. But as it continues to become more visible, the possible
| conclusions clash more and more. So while social media appears to
| create divisions in society, I don't think it's the only cause,
| and I don't think the only causes are things for which we can so
| easily allocate blame.
| lisper wrote:
| Things are not falling apart any more than they have in the past.
| What we are witnessing is a shift in power structure brought
| about by new communications technology. Humanity has been through
| this many times before. The invention of writing in the first
| place empowered the scribes. The printing press disempowered the
| scribes and empowered publishers . Radio disempowered publishers
| and empowered broadcasters. The internet has disempowered
| broadcasters and empowered the unwashed masses. Every time this
| has happened there has been accompanying social upheaval. We will
| probably figure this out. But until we do (and it could take a
| while) things will be a little chaotic.
| notpachet wrote:
| > Things are not falling apart any more than they have in the
| past.
|
| Depends on which window you're looking through, I suppose.
| Environmentalists would disagree.
| lisper wrote:
| Oh yes, absolutely. Climate change is a whole 'nuther kettle
| o' fish, and it is very, very serious. Nuclear war is also a
| very real danger. But that's not what TFA was talking about.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Doesn't this get brought up every few years and the answer is
| neither yes or no but instead everything is changing. When
| companies disrupt others they put them out of business but it
| doesn't mean they do a complete replacement . When Google and
| Facebook disrupted text advertisement local reporting
| disappeared. The Internet made companies that can have services
| anywhere but the people who make them work moved to the coastal
| cities which unemployed many people. Just in time manufacturing
| shifted it to other places and the rise of computers made
| manufacturing in the US much less than it was before.
| Taikonerd wrote:
| I think if the debate is "everything is pretty bad" vs
| "everything is kinda bad, but..." then it's not going to go
| anywhere.
|
| I wish that Wright had focused more on Haidt's _concrete
| suggestions_ in his article. For example, towards the end of his
| article, Haidt writes,
|
| "Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists
| and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in
| their district. One example of such a reform is to end closed
| party primaries, replacing them with a single, nonpartisan, open
| primary from which the top several candidates advance to a
| general election that also uses ranked-choice voting. A version
| of this voting system has already been implemented in Alaska, and
| it seems to have given Senator Lisa Murkowski more latitude to
| oppose former President Trump, whose favored candidate would be a
| threat to Murkowski in a closed Republican primary but is not in
| an open one."
|
| And that's an idea that may have pros and cons! But it focuses
| the debate on specific proposals to improve the situation, rather
| than just a general referendum on "How Bad Are Things?"
| david927 wrote:
| I think there are two intersecting issues. The first is the
| dwindling of easy resources. The second half of the 20th century
| was so easy it was wasteful, and we don't want to give that up --
| that abundance of resources, readily available and on the cheap.
|
| But the bigger issue right now is the end of the US/NATO empire.
| It matches with the end of other empires like Rome: the spending,
| the inflation, the corruption and the splintering/partisanship,
| where groups hate other groups because they blame them for what's
| going on. They say, "if it wasn't for this group, or if only they
| would agree with our side, we'd be fine again," but in the end
| nothing was going to stop it. What goes up must come down.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| This is not what the article is about at all.
| david927 wrote:
| The article seems to be blaming the division of society on
| the Like button. I'm saying it was going to happen with or
| without that for the reasons I listed.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yes... the article that this article was responding to is
| the kind of thing you get when you rule out an analysis of
| material conditions and focus exclusively on the
| ideological superstructure.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >if only they would agree with our side, we'd be fine again
|
| I'd argue a lot of problems today would be solved if people
| stopped buying into the massive intra-class war propaganda
| pushed onto the working class and had a little more empathy for
| one another.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I sort of agree. A lot of the normal people, like neighbors,
| tend to be more empathetic and are accepting of people who
| are more or less affluent than themselves. But the normal
| people aren't the ones that run the country.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Yeah. It's almost like everyone is being brainwashed.
|
| "The government wants everybody fighting with their
| neighbors 'Cause they know that if we get along, we'll
| probably go against 'em"
|
| "Fake news, fake woke, distract, and divide You're either
| right or you're left or you're black or you're white"
|
| "So the conflict is between us and never with the system"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCBNwGHPZ2M
| hemreldop wrote:
| incomingpain wrote:
| Yesterday I made the comment "everything is collapsing
| underneath" though there's context etc. I think the better way to
| say it. "Is everything falling apart for the USA?" Yes indeed.
| Most other countries have problems.
|
| Sure Sri Lanka has the same problems. Sure the middle east just
| went through the same problems and some states are still enduring
| civil war. Though from what I can tell it's mostly the USA in
| this 'falling apart' situation. Canada is certainly not far
| behind.
|
| >"The story of Babel," Haidt writes, "is the best metaphor I have
| found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the
| fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong,
| very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same
| language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one
| another and from the past."
|
| Damn that's a good analogy!
|
| Elon tweeted this yesterday:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144
|
| The political polarization starting pre-existed social media.
| This started late 90s or for sure early 2000s with GWBush. Bush
| knew something from his father's reign. He could play identity as
| a victim. So he would pretend to be a yokel and when the elites
| would make fun... it told every yokel that Bush was the only
| option. Obviously he never passed laws or tried to 'fix'
| something for yokels. It was shallow identity politics but
| identity politics breeds more identity politics.
|
| The democrats then needed identity politics of obama. It's an
| inevitable scenario, 'first black president' will eventually
| happen in history and inevitably it would be toxic with identity
| politics. The rest is history, Trump is a symptom. Biden is a
| symptom.
|
| >By "here" I mean a time when a big change in information
| technology has implications for social structure too dramatic to
| play out without turbulence. In Nonzero I discussed a number of
| such thresholds, including the invention of writing and the
| invention of the printing press.
|
| Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social
| media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart
| is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon
| is planning to do with twitter.
|
| He's a billionaire and will be the world's first trillionaire,
| ONLY if the USA doesn't fall apart. He has a vested
| incentive/interest to help make this not happen.
|
| >One grievance that drove support for Donald Trump in 2016 was
| that American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in
| other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland.
|
| Which is for sure true. The reality is that they are still the
| same team. You can enjoy F1 over Nascar. You have to still
| realize you're on the same team. When the left-wing attacks the
| right-wing. You can't take actions that harms your own team.
| Eventually that team breaks and here we are.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Elon tweeted this yesterday ... He has a vested
| incentive/interest to help make this not happen.
|
| Then why is he Tweeting nonsense cartoons that only serve to
| divide people?
|
| I mean, the right has stood still for the past 13 years? This
| perception is part of the problem. Notwithstanding actual
| studies (tweeted in reply to that comment) show the _exact
| opposite_ has happened -- that the left has moved leftward
| slightly while the right has lurched further to the right 4x
| further, we know the right has moved far right since 2008
| because of January 6 2021. That 's proof positive that a
| problem exists with right-wing extremists, and to just pretend
| otherwise strikes me as dishonest on Musk's part.
|
| The far right went from tea party curiosity in 2008 to full
| blown anti-democratic, paramilitary, conspiracy lunacy in 2022.
| We had an unbroken track record of 44 peaceful transfers of
| power until 2021, when the former president and his party
| plotted to overthrow the newly elected government by force. We
| are now learning as texts are being leaked, they spent the
| entirety of Nov-Dec 2020 texting each other illegal strategies
| to prevent Biden from assuming office on 1/20/21, and then
| tried very hard to implement those strategies, including going
| so far as having constructed bogus legal theories and a faux-
| constitutional process to attempt to legitimize their efforts.
| And of course, purposefully fomenting an insurrection and
| gleefully watching as it unfolded.
|
| And you can't even say it's the fringe because that wing of the
| party has literally taken over the GOP. If you don't believe
| me, ask any of the conservatives who have left the GOP citing
| how far right it's moved. People will cite AOC as the most
| radical leftist they can think of, and even her Green New Deal
| is fundamentally grounded in the ideals of capitalism. Not very
| radical leftist if you ask me. Where are the _actual_ radical
| leftists in Congress, espousing an end to American democracy,
| the monetary system, and capitalism? You can 't find them
| because they're not there.
|
| So given all that, for the new owner of Twitter to tweet that
| conservatives have moved absolutely nowhere in the past 13
| years, shows just how completely out of touch he is with the
| political climate.
|
| (for anyone looking to reply that the left has move left, I
| will not contest that, but the point of the cartoon is that the
| left has exclusively moved left while everyone else has stayed
| the same. This is objectively not true.)
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| The point is not mostly about economic axis, but the cultural
| one.
|
| In the economic axis, you could argue that at least a certain
| part of the Republicans has moved to the left. The emergence
| of the New Right [1][2] speaks to that. Or Trump's shtick of
| being against "unfair" free-trade deals. Or that Republicans
| are now the party of the working class.
|
| [1]: https://scholars-stage.org/the-problem-of-the-new-right/
|
| [2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-
| right...
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > People will cite AOC as the most radical leftist they can
| think of, and even her Green New Deal is fundamentally
| grounded in the ideals of capitalism. Not very radical
| leftist if you ask me.
|
| That's what I think is strange. Same thing happens in my
| country, some people say that our country is turning into a
| far-leftist woke-nation. Even though center-right parties are
| in majority and most elected on the left aren't even really
| far-left, just Social Democrats or Greens.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| The GND is not about being green, it's about redistributing
| wealth and laundering taxpayer money.
|
| It's about spending trillions more, causing more inflation,
| and things falling further apart.
|
| AOC is a radical, and honestly she has no idea what she's
| promoting, like most of her followers.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Redistributing wealth and laundering taxpayer money is
| standard politics, not radical at all. The point is
| making is that she's not a radical leftist. Insofar as
| you consider the GND to be redistributive it's not doing
| so in a way that actual radical leftists would support.
| So how is she a radical leftist then?
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > The GND is not about being green, it's about
| redistributing wealth
|
| No idea what the GND does and what they proclaim, the
| Greens I mentioned are the ones in my country, which
| isn't the US. As far as I understand nothing else than
| Reps and Dems matter anyways.
|
| > AOC is a radical
|
| I don't think so, but that could also be due to me not
| being from the US.
|
| Lots of things my country does would be wrongfully
| labeled as socialist, communist or radical in the US.
|
| So its no susprise to me that AOC gets labeled as radical
| in the US, even though she still seems pretty tame to me.
|
| I do welcome that she's more left than what I usually
| hear from Democrats.
|
| EDIT: In order for you to understand me a bit better - If
| I'd be able to vote in the US, I would've voted for
| Bernie Sanders.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > In order for you to understand me a bit better - If I'd
| be able to vote in the US, I would've voted for Bernie
| Sanders.
|
| You'll have to clarify specific policies because saying
| you support Bernie Sanders just makes it even murkier.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| No joke, I agree on the vast majority of things he says.
| I say vast majority because I assume there are things he
| thinks that I don't know and see different. Else,
| everything I hear from him is basically what I think,
| give or take some small adjustments.
|
| You could call me a Socialist, and I would be fine with
| it. However, I would never support an authoritarian or
| non-democratic system. In my opinion my country has the
| best political system which currently exists, so I feel
| fortunate for that. Still, I don't find it to be perfect.
| Too much lobby-ism, aka. corruption. Too much influence
| by industries. At least everyone has a vote and everyone
| can _technically_ start a process to bring change.
|
| Healthcare, critical infrastructure, essentials and maybe
| more should belong to the people of a country. The US
| seems to be a country belonging to those who own the most
| of it. Businessmen, politicians and so on. Markets have
| to be regulated and controlled. Tax avoidance is no
| different to me than tax evasion. Yada yada, feel free to
| ask more questions about my opinions, but I guess this is
| a good start.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| > This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
|
| The only things Elon is planning to do with twitter is to
| silence his critics, become a Rupert Murdoch style figure, and
| keep manipulating stock prices.
| bitwize wrote:
| If it makes anyone feel any better, Musk's Twitter
| acquisition reminds me of Buffett's acquisition of Berkshire
| Hathaway -- he did it because he was assmad and is likely to
| take a bath on it.
| DougN7 wrote:
| I'm not convinced social media will fix things. IF we could
| have conversations with each other, and discuss nuance, it
| would help. However, it's turned into a tool to just shout
| knee-jerk memes at each other and demonify the other side. I
| don't see any honest real discussions happening among people
| who disagree. It's just fanning the flames that will burn us
| all.
| throwawayN0W wrote:
| You are missing bias.
|
| Elons "graph" only shows the left moving away, like they were
| running away from the globalists lovin satanist-migrants. Or
| maybe just climate scientists?
|
| This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form
| the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Well, the big reason I'm skeptical is that the group of
| people who don't like "wokeism" seem to have pretty diverse
| identities. It's hard for me to see many similarities between
| irreligious business magnate Elon Musk, vaguely Catholic
| political blogger Andrew Sullivan, and my full time Baptist
| preacher cousin-in-law - I'm not sure I could identify _any_
| other policy question they all agree on.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| I think, you are contrasting your peers to a propagandistic
| caricature.
|
| Or how easy can you fit in that image "moderate" leftists
| like bernie sanders or noam chomsky?
|
| What is the difference between woke and left?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's fundamentally a difference about the economy and the
| value of material change vs. cultural change. The left
| proper wants liberation for all oppressed groups,
| including the largest, the working class. Leftists
| recognize that groups that are more marginalized under
| capitalism/imperialism (national/ethnic minorities, etc.)
| will benefit disproportionately, but want a rising tide
| for everyone (except the bourgeoisie). That is to say,
| leftists have a commitment to intersectionality and the
| liberation of those with marginalized identities, but the
| fundamental, sine-qua-non thing that makes one a leftist
| is anti-capitalism.
|
| The woke "left" is different; it's largely a phenomenon
| of the petit bourgeoisie, and is not opposed to
| capitalism, or oppression more generally; the woke
| instead want representative members of generally
| marginalized groups to be proportionally represented in
| the existing power structures, without any significant
| change to those power structures. The reason the woke
| come off as so strident and belligerent is that
| membership in the professional-managerial class (PMC) is
| increasingly precarious, and US educational/cultural
| institutions overproduce people with the qualifications
| for entry into/maintenance of that class position,
| relative to the dwindling size of that class.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't want to necessarily defend "woke" as a term, but
| if you pinned me down, I'd say the difference between
| woke and left is that Noam Chomsky isn't woke. He thinks
| free speech is very important and signed onto a famous
| letter on the topic of "cancel culture" and why it's bad.
| I don't think he has or would identify as anti-woke, but
| the general phenomenon of ideological capture in mass
| communications is something he's always talked about and
| opposed at length.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| So you agree with me, that left and woke is not the same
| thing.
|
| Whats odd thou is, (1) there is no clear definition of
| wokeism, like its an arbitrary stereotype used by
| demagogues and (2), that woke is often displayed on the
| other side of right/conservative. This makes it a strong
| indicator of propaganda. A surface, people can project
| their negative emotions to, which is another red flag in
| terms of populism. Even you used it indirectly, to refer
| to your peers "not liking woke", which is why i asked.
|
| I am not defending wokeism too. One core value of the
| left is equality and solidarity. When you define wokeism
| as some LGBTQ-stuff, it would be just a subset of these
| values. So being woke does not make you left.
|
| This is my answer to, what is the difference between woke
| and left.
| krapp wrote:
| "woke" has a clear definition and origin in black
| activism. Like a lot of concepts from black activism, it
| became co-opted by well meaning white liberals,
| encompassing many other forms of progressive activism and
| eventually became more about virtue signalling than
| productive activism, much less black allyship.
|
| Then, like so many other progressive and left-activist
| terms, it got co-opted again and inverted by the right
| into a general pejorative, indicating nothing other than
| mockery and caricature of the left. But it definitely
| came from somewhere and it at least used to mean
| something.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| On one level, sure, I'm definitely with you. The term
| "woke" is vague, subject to toxic stereotyping, and it'd
| be nice if people didn't use it.
|
| But I don't think we can overlook the pressures that push
| people towards it. The problem is that a lot of movements
| that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with
| vacuously positive labels that can't be negated. If I go
| around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going
| to think I mean "racism is good", and they're not going
| to believe me when I clarify that I'm referring to
| specific policy ideas promoted in books such as Ibram X.
| Kendi's famous _How to Be an Antiracist_. Unless you 're
| talking to people who are so politically engaged you can
| name-drop specific authors to start with, I'm not sure
| what term other than "woke" you could use.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| I was about to write "The Problem we both have is
| mislabeling" but then i realized that we dont have the
| same problem.
|
| From my perspective, conservatives/rights often stand out
| with blatant and harmful falsehoods. Even in your last
| post is a central self contradiction.
|
| >movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify
| with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated
|
| >If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad",
| they're going to think I mean "racism is good"
|
| Looks like your "anti-racism is bad" statement is not
| meant to be negated. I think, what you meant is "racism
| is bad but what you are doing is too", which, from my
| perspective, is not equivalent to "anti-racism is bad".
| Your mistake here is, that you use their "racism"-label
| and invert it, to make it suit you. By doing so, you
| reduce the conversation to labels and discard
| similarities between you (which is actually the most
| harmful part).
|
| A slight difference in phrasing is deciding if i agree or
| disagree with you. Is it my fault or yours?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "Anti-racism is bad" is meant to be negated. It would be
| totally reasonable for someone to respond by saying
| "well, I actually think anti-racism is good, and here's
| why".
|
| There's a risk of labels getting in the way, no doubt.
| But there's a lot of things that seem straightforwardly
| impossible to reason about without labels. How could we
| discuss what the abstract principles of race relations in
| the US should be without identifying and naming the major
| strains of thought on that topic?
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| Black people were discriminated in the US from the
| beginning. This discrimination continued long after civil
| rights reforms in public and private institutions.
|
| Even if you could magically eliminate racism in every
| human brain on earth with a snap of your fingers, the
| socio-econimic factors, inherited from the beginning
| would continue to be disadvantageous for blacks. So the
| racism back then, even when not present in minds today,
| would persist. This is called systemic racism, because we
| discriminate indirectly, not by skin color but by
| education, vocabulary, human capital in general. And on
| top, racism will of course prevail in minds.
|
| From that, you can easily advocate for some sort of
| compensation, some kind of counter discrimination, anti-
| racism.
|
| I find that term troublesome too, because you actually
| asking for support for all poor people, not just blacks,
| but i would never call it a ideological label and bad,
| because i can see the reason behind it. Using it as a
| label and associating it with (group) identity is
| unfortunate but not my mistake.
| [deleted]
| tmnvix wrote:
| > What is the difference between woke and left?
|
| 'left' to me has always been associated with class
| politics and 'woke' with identity politics.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Elons "graph" only shows the left moving away,
|
| Which has been objectively measured.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-
| po...
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-
| politic...
|
| >This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism
| form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
|
| I never blamed wokeism.
| [deleted]
| mikkergp wrote:
| > Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social
| media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart
| is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what
| Elon is planning to do with twitter.
|
| I'm skeptical that he can fundamentally change the incentives
| that make social media amplify extremist views over moderate
| views. "The other side is terrible" will always get more
| engagement than "we should work together", even with validated
| identities.
| [deleted]
| incomingpain wrote:
| >I'm skeptical that he can fundamentally change the
| incentives that make social media amplify extremist views
| over moderate views. "The other side is terrible" will always
| get more engagement than "we should work together", even with
| validated identities.
|
| There have been a ton of Elon doubters over the last 10
| years.
|
| I hope he is successful. We must get people back to the same
| team.
| mikkergp wrote:
| He said if he's successful, that both the far left and far
| right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of
| statement to suggest his goal is to "get people back on the
| same team"? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the
| platform, not each other.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >He said if he's successful, that both the far left and
| far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind
| of statement to suggest his goal is to "get people back
| on the same team"? I.E. his goal is to get people to
| trust the platform, not each other.
|
| Basically what he just said is that he won't be allowing
| violence or calls to violence.
|
| When you boil down or remove the perjorativeness of
| 'extremism'. You can have a borderline extreme opinion on
| abortion. Either on right the right side that no abortion
| should be allowed or on the left side of 'abortion should
| be allowed even after birth' Neither of these are
| extremist positions though.
|
| Extremism comes down to not being willing to entertain
| the other side and the requirement of using violence to
| solve the political divide. Those are far extreme
| positions.
|
| I think we can all agree that violence isn't the answer
| and if some violent extremist from either side has been
| censored. Nobody will actually care.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can
| all agree that violence isn't the answer". Because I
| think there are more and more people who think it is the
| answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority
| rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's
| not meant to be).
|
| Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet
| says that you were joking? I do not think there is not
| agreement on what a violent extremist is.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can
| all agree that violence isn't the answer".
|
| Survivors always universally agree violence isn't the
| answer. I'm not saying literally 100% of people are
| opposed to violence. Will Smith just ruined his
| reputation and ended his career with violence.
|
| > Because I think there are more and more people who
| think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the
| vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds
| pedantic but it's not meant to be).
|
| The federal government has many responsibilities but 2 of
| the fundamental ones.
|
| 1. Military and police to prevent all violence.
| Government gets full monopoly over violence.
|
| 2. Borders to define where violence isn't allowed.
|
| Fundamentally the government who represents everyone is
| the 'all'. Obviously it's more complicated than that
| because violence is allowed in some examples. Boxing ->
| MMA for example, but my understanding is that it's well
| regulated.
|
| Even more complicated yet, there will always be a portion
| of every society who wants to kill. It's an evolutionary
| thing that Joe Rogan likes to call Chimp Brain. For
| whatever reason they are wired to the point they need to
| kill. Imagine the helicopter scene from full metal
| jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI
|
| Those people exist. Even in Ukraine right now. There are
| Russian soldiers who are doing this. Everyone is the
| enemy and needs to be killed. Stupid ukraine for whatever
| they did to force me to be there. I'm going to punish
| ukrainians equally, they all need dying.
|
| These people are going to push toward violence. You have
| to proactive to avoid this.
|
| >Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet
| says that you were joking? I do not think there is not
| agreement on what a violent extremist is.
|
| Great question, and what is the 'correct' solution? I
| dont care about the next tweet but perhaps you are banned
| until you delete the tweet? Commonly that's what twitter
| already does.
|
| Unfortunately there is a disagreement over calls for
| violence. It's difficult to find examples of calls for
| violence from the right wing. Obviously that is well
| censored. Yet there's lots of examples from the left-wing
| that go unpunished. The entire 'punch a nazi' thing from
| the left is insidious and bad.
|
| Here is a verified checkmark on the left calling for
| violence as an example:
| https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1086707229137485825
|
| The context is that this is an off-the-cuff comment
| during the early part of the Maga kid Nick sandman story.
| The truth hadn't come out yet. That is to say that nick
| sandman was completely innocent and now rich after
| multiple settlements by media who smeared him. Obviously
| a ton more verified checkmarks called for violence toward
| the maga kid. Lets not even mention the number of non-
| checkmarks who never had their call to violence ever
| censored.
|
| That maga hat represented much more than the situation
| really did.
| krapp wrote:
| >I'm skeptical that he can fundamentally change the
| incentives that make social media amplify extremist views
| over moderate views.
|
| I'm skeptical that someone who unironically uses the phrase
| "woke mindvirus" has any such intent. There's a reason right-
| wing accounts are flooding the platform now and everyone else
| is running for the hills, and it isn't because Elon makes
| both sides equally welcome or unwelcome. He's clearly picked
| a side.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'd really encourage you to take a step back and think
| about how deeply the attitude of extreme-vs-extreme
| conflict pervades this comment. You say "everyone else is
| running for the hills", but I don't think you'd claim that
| 100% or even 25% of left-wing Twitter users have left the
| platform today. Is it true that the "wokeness" debate is
| such a big issue you can't use a social media platform run
| by someone who doesn't agree with your stance, or have the
| incentives of social media tricked you into seeing it as a
| totalizing conflict where nobody can agree to disagree?
| krapp wrote:
| >You say "everyone else is running for the hills", but I
| don't think you'd claim that 100% or even 25% of left-
| wing Twitter users have left the platform today.
|
| Sorry, I forgot where I was posting for a second. It was
| an idiom, not an attempt at a mathematical proof.
|
| The point is that only one side suddenly feels unwelcome
| and the other suddenly feels very welcome.
|
| >Is it true that the "wokeness" debate is such a big
| issue you can't use a social media platform run by
| someone who doesn't agree with your stance,
|
| No. I just don't look forward to the flood of edgelord
| Nazi shitposters, bots and harassment I predict Elon
| (and, Trump's probable reinstatement) will draw to the
| platform, nor do I particularly want to use a platform
| whose owner considers my views to be akin to a plague. I
| will, as long as it remains feasible to block accounts I
| have no interest in.
|
| >or have the incentives of social media tricked you into
| seeing it as a totalizing conflict where nobody can agree
| to disagree?
|
| I didn't take over Twitter because I felt it needed to be
| liberated from the "woke mindvirus." Elon is bringing the
| totalizing conflict, I just want to read my feed in
| peace.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Why is it that liberals run from a platform full of
| conservatives, but conservatives don't run from a platform
| full of liberals?
| krapp wrote:
| What do you think Voat, Gab, Parler, Rumble, WeMe, Truth
| Social, Gettr and numerous other "alternative" platforms
| formed in the last few years were all about? Conservative
| safe spaces are a whole market segment now.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I will grant you it must be difficult trying to voice
| your opinion as a conservative in a liberal space, but
| there are countless examples of conservative safe spaces
| and running away from those platforms, or they just never
| join them in the first place.
| shagie wrote:
| (as the twitter picture is getting a bit of thought)
|
| The depiction of the right remaining where it is from 2008 to
| 2021 is misguided at best. The party of George Bush, John
| McCain, and Mitt Romney is the same as the GOP today is
| incorrect.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-20/geo...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/27/politics/mitt-romney-gop-ukra...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/john-mccain-donald-t...
|
| ---
|
| I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a
| different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer to
| Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the extreme
| that the comic portrays.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted to
| the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political
| compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and
| the increased power of corporations.
|
| If you draw a line from where Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton and
| Barack Obama on https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
| and put Elon on that line... then ok. 2008 make sense. Then you
| draw it again on 2012
| https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012 and it makes
| sense. And again 2020 -
| https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 it makes sense
| (note the change of where Biden was in 2008 to 2020 though this
| is hardly scientific measurements).
|
| However, that _completely_ ignores the shift of the the
| majority of the _rest_ of the Republican Party to the top right
| corner.
|
| This chart only makes sense for Elon if the right end is held
| constant at the libertarian and the left end changes, but
| ignores the rise of the authoritarian right along with any of
| his changes.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >The depiction of the right remaining where it is from 2008
| to 2021 is misguided at best.
|
| As I mention here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31206510 it has been
| objectively measured. There have been quite a number of
| leftist political commentators who recently have been
| offended that they are labelled right-wing now. Bill Maher or
| Russel Brand for examples.
|
| Carlos Maza before his disgrace wrote on the subject @vox and
| he basically argued that obama and truman were the same
| politically. That's rather insane, sure they did start a
| bunch of wars and bomb countless civilians. I on the
| otherhand don't recall Obama threatening to draft the people
| in a union on strike into the war. I also suspect truman and
| obama's stances on immigration are slightly different LOL.
|
| Dont get me wrong. I can certainly see both parties moving
| left. LGBT rights are a key example. There's nothing wrong
| with moving left.
|
| >The party of George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney is
| the same as the GOP today is incorrect.
|
| I would agree.
|
| George W Bush for example actively voted against gay
| marriage. Even planned to make a constitutional amendment to
| protect marriage from homosexuals. He banned homosexuals from
| boy scout. I can just imagine how horrified Bush is about it
| being Scouts now. Even was of the opinion that it's not
| possible to commit a hate crime toward a gay.
|
| Flipside, Trump went around the world promoting LGBT rights
| and brought the fight to the middle east and russia to
| decriminalize being LGBT.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-
| adm...
|
| Do you feel this new republican party is going the right
| direction of LGBT rights? I think so. I applaud Trump here.
|
| >I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a
| different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer
| to Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the
| extreme that the comic portrays.
|
| I think that's kind of the point. Objectively the far right
| hasn't changed much at all. In fact the common argument is
| that the far right has moved slightly left since that time.
| Which on 1 issue I clearly show the shift. Not the other way
| around like you suggest.
|
| >It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted
| to the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political
| compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and
| the increased power of corporations.
|
| Bill Maher I believe made this point. That the left has gone
| so far left that everything to the right of them look right
| wing. You can identify this by seeing democrats like you say
| here.
|
| >https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
|
| Political compass was questionable for some time, but it's
| interesting to see it here. They are offensively wrong for
| canadian politics.
|
| If you see your entire political spectrum as right-wing
| authoritarian. That's a problem with the graph. If you're
| going to produce a poor graph like this you have to justify
| it. They dont.
|
| >https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
|
| The failure largely speaking is that the left vs right false
| dichotomy. But political compass is also self-biasing from a
| far left position.
|
| Hawkins in left libertarian should be bottom left corner. The
| graph is biased by that much.
|
| In a way the political polarization is visible in those
| graphs. It's also interesting to see why. They do the
| analysis by finding answers to questions. "What is your
| stance on abortion, gun rights, etc." and then plot.
|
| But if you self-biased based on your own political beliefs by
| only asking certain questions. Then you end up showing your
| bias and not the political plot of politicians.
|
| >However, that completely ignores the shift of the the
| majority of the rest of the Republican Party to the top right
| corner.
|
| Elon very clearly understands what is wrong. I would put
| money on a bet that he understand better than I do.
|
| The censorship and failure in communication have produced
| echo chambers which artificially pushed the left-wing toward
| the far left. Afterall what happens if the left-wing only
| talks to the left wing? Of course their discourse without
| dissent will shift left. We haven't measured it, but right-
| wing echo chambers would do the same thing.
|
| What do you think the consequences will be when the right-
| wing shifts far right? Elon wants to fix the problem before
| this happens.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There have been quite a number of leftist political
| commentators who recently have been offended that they are
| labelled right-wing now. Bill Maher
|
| Was never a leftist, or a political commentator with any
| coherent ideology at all. AFAICT, he was only ever painted
| by some as a leftist because of the Right painting everyone
| who wasn't in lockstep with the racist war fury of the
| early 00s as "leftist", and because being a comedian when
| the Republican Party was at a local maximum of control, for
| a while all the easy targets for his contrarian humor were
| in the Right.
|
| And he's evolved on the positions that got him perceived as
| leaning left then, becoming more positive retrospectively
| on the Iraq War, more Islamophobic over time, etc., more
| openly supportive of foreign dictatorships in general.
|
| Brand I've not paid much attention to, but he never struck
| me as particularly leftist, either.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Was never a leftist, or a political commentator with any
| coherent ideology at all.
|
| He labels himself a leftist. His views are commonly left
| of center. He lives in leftyville california. He went to
| Cornell which doesn't produce republicans. I watched him
| on politically incorrect, but I only see the odd show
| here and there since he went to real time on hbo. I would
| say he's a lefty. I very much doubt there's any air of
| caricature in his public persona. I do believe he has
| been legitimate in his beliefs. Better yet makes tons of
| funny jokes.
|
| If on the subject of political polarization of the left-
| wing has you saying Bill Maher is right wing. I rest my
| case.
|
| >Brand I've not paid much attention to, but he never
| struck me as particularly leftist, either.
|
| Like I know Bill Maher is left of center. Brand is left
| of him.
|
| He even recently made a video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4e8lSQy64c
|
| Lets not forget the bernie bros who are suddenly right
| wing as well, joe rogan, jimmy dore, kenosha shooter guy.
|
| The point to take away. If you think "the right" are
| racist war fury and islamaphobic. You should leave your
| country. There's somewhere else that is better for you.
| "the right" are your fellow countrymen, they are on your
| team. Do you know of lots of your country people that you
| like are moving somewhere? Europe, Japan/Korea?
| Australia? Germany? Perhaps you should reach out to them.
| See if it's really better?
| rob74 wrote:
| > _The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open
| discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to
| do with twitter._
|
| Nice, now you just have to convince the MAGA Republican and the
| BLM Democrat to have an open discussion, when each of them
| prefers to listen to their own social bubble. Good luck with
| that...
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Nice, now you just have to convince the MAGA Republican and
| the BLM Democrat to have an open discussion, when each of
| them prefers to listen to their own social bubble. Good luck
| with that...
|
| A russian cosmonaut spit on Elon when he suggested he was
| going to build a rocket that can be recovered and refueled.
| Called him insane and it can't be done. Well... don't know if
| you're keeping a score card...
|
| How many short sellers of tesla lost an awful lot of money?
| Elon is quite the force to reckon with.
|
| While I am not MAGA, republican, BLM, nor democrat. I have
| had conversations with all of those. They are all reasonable
| people who will listen to what you have to say.
|
| I think there's certainly some conversations that are
| possible even now but so many off limits topics that are what
| need to be discussed. That's an easy first fix.
| dudul wrote:
| Or you need people to realize that MAGAs and BLMs are a small
| minority of the general population. You need the media to
| behave like adults and stop pitting one side against the
| other for clicks/views. You need companies to stop caving to
| outraged people on Twitter.
|
| Yeah, I guess we're done.
| cheschire wrote:
| > social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA
| falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps.
|
| I feel like cancel culture may be your blind spot.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other
| countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland
|
| >When the left-wing attacks the right-wing
|
| This is part of the problem. When you casually define the left
| as "coastal elites who are out of touch" and the right as
| "Americans in the heartland who are uncared for", you are
| taking a real problem and reframing it as "all left-wingers vs
| all right-wingers". You are making people feel attacked who are
| not in the group you are trying to criticize. People (on both
| sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been
| since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US
| lately).
| incomingpain wrote:
| That's a good point. That first part was a copy and paste
| from the article.
|
| In defense of nozero or haidt, statistically that is
| accurate. The red vs blue is certainly concentrated rural vs
| urban.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-
| political-...
|
| It's interesting the consequences of this as well. There are
| policies being changed without a mindset of urban vs rural.
| Where a policy that makes sense in a urban point of view is
| catastrophic to rural communities. "If you think the world is
| overpopulated, leave the city."
|
| Political policies like carbon tax for example
| disproportionately harm rural people. Some dude living in
| downtown toronto taking the subway is basically getting a pay
| cheque from the government at the expense of rural folks who
| must drive a low mpg pickup truck. What you think farming can
| be done in a econobox? https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-
| disgrace-cops-find-cow-...
|
| In fact, if you know a bloc of people support your policies
| and another doesn't. Figuring out of a system which transfers
| wealth to your supporters at the expense of your political
| opponents is an ideal system.
|
| The problem though is that we in a country are the same team.
| Attacking 1 side is never beneficial. Urban folks attacking
| farmers with carbon taxes? Ok well how's that food inflation
| working out? Attacking oil workers with carbon taxes? How
| about the gas prices?
|
| >People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly
| (though they have been since prehistory - it's just
| particularly bad in the US lately).
|
| It's interesting as well to imagine how to solve this in the
| USA. Lets say Elon fails or even makes this worse and he
| deletes twitter. It just doesnt exist anymore.
|
| How do you bring both sides back together without blood being
| shed?
|
| You cant do nothing, it's actively becoming worse right now.
| Act now or else.
|
| It's certainly not going to be solved by more censorship and
| removing free speech. In fact, censorship is a new thing.
| Free speech has been around for plenty long to know it's not
| causing it. My hypothetical also assumes reduction in
| censorship by elon failed.
|
| So as president happytoexplain of the independent party. How
| do you bridge the divide? How do you bring people back
| together?
|
| You might try to go nationalism. Tell everyone they are Team
| America, that the fight isnt with each other. Build some
| foreign enemy for people to rail against. At the same time go
| around ending all the wars the USA involved in. End wars that
| the USA arent even involved in. Reduce tension, reduce war
| exhaustion. Make sure people's economic situation is as good
| as possible because of high correlation between violence and
| economic situation. Reduce the poor mindset in general,
| tackle it directly.
|
| Who did I just describe?
| juskrey wrote:
| Why no one says it is transparency which is increasing, not
| things falling apart
| Zigurd wrote:
| There is a specific danger that will form the context for
| evaluating the destructive power of social media: The invasion of
| Ukraine will have costs. Innocent people will die. Obviously in
| Ukraine, but people who ate the grain produced in Ukraine and
| Russia may die of starvation because Ukraine's ability to plant
| an harvest large areas has been destroyed. Prices for the
| available grain in the world will go up.
|
| Starvation and price rises will provide new opportunities to
| fearmonger and divide. Social media is ill equipped to stop
| Russia and others from using it to manipulate fearful people.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| When men can get "pregnant" you know the end is nigh.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| So for you Trans-People are a sign that the end is near? If
| that's your biggest worry I'd really like to be in your
| situation.
| kderbyma wrote:
| what is your biggest worry for society? Also...what does
| society mean to you, and would you consider in the context of
| your reply that there may be different perspectives and
| possibly multiple societies simultaneously so perhaps
| clarifying your scope of society and it's impacts.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > what is your biggest worry for society?
|
| Climate change, wealth gaps, and both combined. (Richer
| people can escape the effects of climate change more
| easily). I fear that wealth will become even more
| important, furthering the gap between classes even more.
|
| > what does society mean to you
|
| Depends on what context. Of course for my direct political
| environment, people living in the same country as I are the
| biggest society I can lump together. But I'm not very
| nationalistic so I try to think about what's best for
| people globally. I think the most important society to me
| is all humans on earth. Else, every nation or group just
| looks after themselves.
|
| > would you consider in the context of your reply that
| there may be different perspectives
|
| Yes, but - I fail to see what group of people
| transsexuality would be the biggest danger to. Even when it
| goes against your world-view or religion, there is no harm
| done at all when someone is transsexual. It just goes
| against ones opinions.
|
| That's why I disagree heavily with the sentiment that "when
| men turn into women, that is a sign that the end is near".
| If transsexuality is more dangerous to a person than
| climate change, social injustice or other big topics, it
| really just does feel like fear-mongering and blaming
| arbitrary boogeymen for what's going wrong at the moment.
| pelasaco wrote:
| I know nothing about this topic, and I never looked into this
| topic, but for some specialists, yes https://www.reddit.com/r
| /AskHistorians/comments/5mjz54/does_...
|
| Note: No, reddit isn't a good source, but It was the first
| one that i found. Searching for Camille Paglia and
| transgender you will find more information about it..
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| No, gender dysphoria has existed since like forever. But it's
| certainly not a good sign when our institutions try to
| indoctrinate us with gender ideology. [1]
|
| The day it really becomes "the science" is the day I will
| lose hope in the rest of the apparatus. Lysenkoism [2] be
| damned.
|
| [1]: And by that I mean believing that we should behave as if
| there are no differences between biological females and MTF,
| or that it's all just a "social construct", or that we have a
| moral duty to "deconstruct" all social constructs which
| interfere with some ideology.
|
| [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
| mikkergp wrote:
| What's it like to have such strong feelings about gender?
|
| I don't have that, the idea that it's all just a social
| construct is so embedded in the way I see the world, I just
| don't see how anything about sexuality or biology are
| immutably connected to gender identity. To me the two are
| completely divorced from each other.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| Interesting, doesn't that Lia Thomas photo [1] make you
| laugh (or make you angry if you care about college
| swimming)? [2]
|
| > To me the two are completely divorced from each other.
|
| Some of it certainly could be. But insisting that it's
| all just a social construct makes it hard to explain
| things which are prevalent and similar across different
| cultures. (e.g. females growing their hair, or them being
| generally "cleaner", or intonation differences, etc.)
|
| Or even more broadly, the fact that males and females of
| different cultures can be attracted to each other, even
| though the exact gender expressions might be different.
|
| [1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOHlDIxWQAAaJwX?format=j
| pg&name=...
|
| [2]: It certainly does for many people, to the extent
| that the scene could come from a South Park episode: http
| s://www.vgr.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2022_03/FB_IMG_164.
| ..
| mikkergp wrote:
| I can observe that Gender is one of the strongest social
| constructs that we have. But I think most of the ideas
| around them; Men shouldn't cry, women are better
| caretakers; are not inherent, they're a function of
| inertia. You can probably find more examples of people
| who don't fit the mold in one way or the other than
| people who do.
|
| Also, women not being "woman enough" for sports has been
| an issue prior to the idea of transition. See Surya
| Bonaly and Caster Semenya
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| You lost me at "we have been there before..."
| Animats wrote:
| Those aren't the big problems. _These_ are the big problems the
| US faces:
|
| * Putin wants to conquer Eastern Europe. It's been over 75 years
| since a major nation in Europe had comparable territorial
| ambitions, and that didn't end well. Nuclear war at some scale is
| a very real possibility, especially if Russia starts losing in a
| big way.
|
| * Coronavirus. It's not over. 988,690 US deaths to date. Case
| rates are headed up again.
|
| * Global warming. It's just getting started.
|
| * Supply insecurity. Between troubles with Russia and China, and
| coronavirus, there are far more shortages.
| jdkee wrote:
| " As I emphasized in Nonzero, the digital revolution--even before
| the internet age dawned, and certainly after that--did what the
| printing press did: It made promulgating information cheaper and
| easier."
|
| The author clearly underestimates how many orders of magnitude
| greater the Internet's impact is over printed words.
|
| EDIT: for clarity.
| rotexo wrote:
| Hits close to home. Several years ago, people from one end of the
| political spectrum mistook me for another person on the opposite
| end of the political spectrum and doxxed me. I haven't been able
| to correct the record to any real extent, and I basically live in
| fear that the whole situation will flare up again, and all it
| will take is for one crazy person with a lethal weapon to find me
| and make me pay, and that'll be it.
|
| Which is just to say that I experience these self-reinforcing
| divisions at a visceral and existential level, which I suppose is
| the case for everyone. It only leads me to want to withdraw. I
| would like to try to explain who I actually am to people who
| think I'm the devil, but i think that would just backfire. So the
| solution at an individual level is to pull back my online
| presence and, I don't know, buy a gun. Which clearly doesn't help
| at the macro level.
|
| Edit: typo
|
| Further edit: I guess the second paragraph there illustrates how
| the prisoner's dilemma comes into play to reinforce the mass
| psychology of tribalism. I long for the days of my youth, when I
| could still talk with my ideologically-different family about
| issues, but extending that to others on the internet feels
| fraught with danger, leaving me more exposed. It feels like the
| best strategy is to stay in my bubble and armor it up--safety in
| numbers, and all that. Which must be the same on the other side.
| The better solution is cooperation, but given the unknowns,
| everyone has to act suspicious and fortify instead.
| YATA1 wrote:
| And some people laugh at the notion of staying anonymous
| online.
| rotexo wrote:
| Bingo. Like many in my generation, I used to not worry about
| it at all. Now I am a bit obsessive--constantly checking my
| name, number, and address on people finder sites and sending
| takedown requests when they pop back up, and currently trying
| to transition all my online accounts to use e-mail addresses
| provided by Hide My E-mail on iCloud (which is quite the
| project). Seems like changing my e-mail on different accounts
| could be useful, since people would be less likely to connect
| those different accounts. I keep reporting the links to the
| doxxed info on pastebin, Twitter, and google (pro-tip: you
| can ask google to remove doxxed information from their search
| results). I know I will never be able to ask the actual
| extremists to take down my name when I am mid-identified as
| that other person, which sucks. And it still feels like there
| might be some other exposure that's just waiting to blow up
| in my face. Open to suggestions on the subject if anyone has
| any.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Can't you sue these people? This situation sounds pretty
| ridiculous.
| rotexo wrote:
| I was advised by multiple sources not to try. The initial
| people took down the info pretty immediately, but now it
| persists over a lot of forums, blog posts, etc., so I
| imagine it would be a game of whack-a-mole that would
| require significant legal resources, and it would draw a
| lot of attention, which would be unpleasant.
| [deleted]
| chemmail wrote:
| It is still my hope Elon will just dismantle Twitter and that is
| his first step in killing social media.
| axutio wrote:
| The argument that things will work out in the end is not
| particularly reassuring when it still rests on the idea that I
| will have to spend most of my adult life in turbulent times.
|
| Just as I wouldn't have liked to live through the Protestant
| Reformation and the wars of religion, I'd much rather have spent
| my adult life in the peace and prosperity of the late 1900s than
| on the trajectory people agree the world is headed for now.
| steve76 wrote:
| freebuju wrote:
| I concur with everything the author says here. If you want to
| visualize this for yourself, just take yourself back to the whole
| science/anti-vaxx debate we've had the past 2 years. That was a
| pretty accurate picture of the biblical tower of babel. Social
| media as a tool keeps sowing more division than ever because
| that's the growth incentive and we are too afraid to kill the
| golden goose. Once the metaverse becomes a thing, we will have
| better bricks to build the tower even higher.
|
| China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony.
| This disruption will have devastating effects. The accelerated
| move to the 4th Industrial Revolution will be even more
| disruptive, unlike anything we as humans have ever known. We keep
| on ignoring the global warming threat because we think our
| survival will be under threat if we go cold turkey on fossil
| energy and the creature comforts necessary to forestall the
| climate disaster. The covid pandemic gave us all a unique
| opportunity to recalibrate our collective lives. Today, we go
| about our daily lives as if the past 3 years was just a bad
| dream. I very much doubt we can make it through another global
| pandemic on a scale as or bigger than covid was in the near
| future.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony.
|
| I don't think this is guaranteed. I think the world should be
| prepared for it, be resilient against it, and (ideally)
| undermine it if possible.
|
| Six months ago, I don't think many would have guessed that all
| of Europe, including Germany, would unite in ending their
| relationship with Russian fuel. Perhaps at some point, the free
| world will unite in diversifying or ending their relationship
| with Chinese manufacturing.
|
| The rest of your analysis I agree with - the automation/"AI"
| process marches on. Ownership of production and capital
| continues to concentrate, and population grows while employment
| needs will shrink for non- and semi-skilled workers. Oh, and
| climate.
| freebuju wrote:
| > >China is soon going to overtake the US as the world
| hegemony.
|
| >I don't think this is guaranteed
|
| This is very much assured. Only a matter of when. It may take
| 2-3 decades to realize but it's gonna happen if China's
| growth rate [0] continues as US GDP [1] steadily declines.
| Though with the current geopolitics around the Russia/Ukraine
| war, maybe China may threaten to invade Taiwan and speed up
| this process of dethroning US as the top super power.
|
| [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/263616/gross-domestic-
| pr...
|
| [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/188165/annual-gdp-
| growth...
| aldarion wrote:
| Nothing lasts forever, and we have been on the downturn of the
| civilization for the last hundred years or so. This is merely the
| time when we started running out of the reserves that our
| ancestors had secured us, and thus problems started becoming
| apparent.
| Arainach wrote:
| The last hundred years? So electrifying rural areas, civil
| rights, vaccines, space exploration, Medicare (US), public
| medicine (first world countries), and more are all the
| downturn?
| throwawayN0W wrote:
| I thnik he just wanted to throw "ancestros" somewhere in
| there without specifying what that former glory exectly is.
| goatlover wrote:
| Nothing lasts forever, but some things last a really long time.
| Like life on this planet (several billion years). Or possibly
| advanced alien civilizations out there. Question would be why
| can't humans find a way to last a really long time?
| taylodl wrote:
| I think we're at a transition point. People talk about our
| entering a post-scarcity economy but what you don't hear so
| much about is exactly how would that happen? Human nature being
| what it is those at the top who are accustomed to consuming the
| most civilization has to offer are still playing by that same
| old playbook - but in a post-scarcity economy that consumption
| is obscene and it's becoming clearer to more and more people
| that the old playbook needs to be thrown out. But that "old
| playbook" has been around for 6,000 years (actually more)!
|
| I remember the old Police song having the line "there is no
| political solution for our troubled evolution." They say we
| live in the Anthropocene epoch, an epoch dominated by man. The
| problem is that's not the world we evolved in and for humans
| evolution isn't just a matter of physical adaptation but social
| adaptation as well. Our social structures we've built over the
| millennia no longer work the same in this new world we've
| built. We have to evolve, but social evolution typically
| involves violence and upheaval and would appear that everything
| is falling apart.
| TimPC wrote:
| I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is
| economic rather than political. We've built our society on two
| near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first
| is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay
| out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on
| population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that
| more people pay into them then take out from them at any one
| time. This literally meets the definition of a ponzi scheme and
| it will be heartbreaking when it comes due.
|
| The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In my city
| of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average
| income in 1972 to 16x average income today. To continue growing
| at this pace they'd have to reach 128x average income by 2072.
| Those prices are absurd enough that it's clear there will be a
| slowdown in real estate prices before then. But much of our
| society is built on real estate growth and we aggressively
| encourage people to own real estate assets worth more than the
| entirety of their net worth. When these assets stop going up, or
| even worse start going down there will be major complications for
| society. I'm not talking about the adverse effects of a temporary
| market correction, I'm talking about a new normal in which real
| estate is flat or downward trending. When real estate is no
| longer an incredible investment opportunity it will have
| significant adverse effects on society. For instance, homes are
| currently a large part of people's retirement plans and selling a
| home is often used to pay for an extended stay in a nursing home
| (which is quite expensive). For many people the home represents
| over 60% of a retirement plan. In my parents lifetime, their home
| value increased to roughly 10x what it was worth. If my home
| increases 4x instead this is a substantial adverse impact. If my
| child's home increases 0x this is disastrous.
|
| The things we fundamentally depend on to provide things as
| important in society as retirement are breaking badly. Meanwhile
| we're so obsessed with political differences that we barely talk
| about or work towards solving the slow economic crisis we are
| facing.
| RspecMAuthortah wrote:
| > In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone
| from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. To
| continue growing at this pace they'd have to reach 128x average
| income by 2072.
|
| Places like Toronto are generally an outlier. Part of it is due
| to high skilled worker immigration (to read it differently:
| more well off people emigrating to Canada) and high
| concentration of jobs in cities like Toronto.
|
| I agree with your thesis although I think it has more to do
| with CAD losing its value compared to hard assets and a
| consequence of a decade with bad monetary policy.
| TimPC wrote:
| I think it's hard to classify Toronto as an Outlier,
| especially if you mean the GTA. There are 38 million
| Canadians according to the 2021 census. According to the same
| data source 6.7 million of them live in the GTA. This
| "outlier" is 17.63% of the data set which to me is closer to
| a quartile of your data than an outlier.
| karpierz wrote:
| > Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid
| shortfalls.
|
| Pension funds inherently depend on increases in production.
| Population growth is one factor, but technological development
| can also increase production.
|
| > The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In my
| city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x
| average income in 1972 to 16x average income today.
|
| Hello from a Vancouverite! I broadly agree with this point, and
| I'm not sure how to work our way out of a housing bubble beyond
| popping it and dealing with the aftermath. Too many people are
| invested in the status quo, so any politician who tries to pop
| it will be crucified for destroying the savings of a large
| portion of the population.
| 2ion wrote:
| >> Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to
| avoid shortfalls. > >Pension funds inherently depend on
| increases in production. Population growth is one factor, but
| technological development can also increase production.
|
| Interestingly, capital returns and population growth are
| (unquestionably?) on exponential curves. So, are production
| factors too slow to evolve along with the exponentials? Maybe
| they are, because of waste, lack of recycling, raw resources
| decline and environmental damage.
|
| >> The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In
| my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from
| 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. >
| >Hello from a Vancouverite! I broadly agree with this point,
| and I'm not sure how to work our way out of a housing bubble
| beyond popping it and dealing with the aftermath. Too many
| people are invested in the status quo, so any politician who
| tries to pop it will be crucified for destroying the savings
| of a large portion of the population.
|
| You could argue that in the same time frame, world population
| has more than doubled, and because the cost of capital is a
| lot cheaper elsewhere than in Canada, pressure on attractive
| living space in peaceful and stable countries has increased
| exponentially. At this point, the "liberal" view on capital
| flows and capital control, the fuel of foreign direct
| investments of Western countries into overseas properties
| since WWII, came back to bite the originators of the idea in
| the ass.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Economic and biological growth curves look exponential
| right up until they don't. Both are limited by energy
| consumption, and nothing with limits can exceed the growth
| rate of its constraint.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, and if the study of populations has shown us
| anything, exponentials can also turn quickly into
| gaussians when a tipping point is passed. Not all of them
| end up as nice (if you are not afraid of the end of
| growth anyway) logistic curves.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Pension funds depend on increased in production, but are run
| on common management strategies locking them into broadly
| supporting large corporations - which actually run less
| efficiently overall in improving production than small to
| medium sized companies. Also imho, the public stock markets
| have decoupled from having a good effect on being able to
| promote good fundamental value creation behavior on public
| companies.
| asah wrote:
| You sure about that claim re SMB vs enterprise? There's
| millions of local businesses that engage in very slow
| innovation, including restaurants, laundromats, etc.
|
| Meanwhile the SP500 have all gotten religion about
| innovation as a driver for productivity increases.
|
| (Not arguing just asking)
| dv_dt wrote:
| I had read a set of clearer papers on this, but I didn't
| keep a link to them (of course there are many economic
| views this is just mine). However a couple of large scale
| effects may indirectly capture it. First there are fewer
| and fewer new business starts, meaning surviving firms
| are getting larger and older, and second the overall
| gross productivity has been dropping.
|
| Maybe it's just correlation and not causation. I'll post
| again if i can find the more direct paper on the
| anticorrelation between very large corporations and
| productivity.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/declining-business-
| dynami...
|
| https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-
| producti...
| TimPC wrote:
| I haven't worked out all the details but I think the right
| thing to do is some form of gradual transition to a Georgist
| taxation system (perhaps with compensation from the
| government for those who suffer sufficient adverse effects).
|
| Reducing the value of property to the structures on them by
| having heavy taxation rates on unimproved land is fairer than
| the current system and makes access to property far easier.
| It reduces speculation in real estate which also improves
| access.
|
| I also agree with the Georgist moral perspective that we have
| equal entitlements to all land and natural resources. From
| there, distributing land that is undertaxed seems to give
| certain individuals and companies unfair advantages. An added
| benefit is that income taxes and capital gains taxes have
| always from my perspective been on morally shaky ground as I
| struggle to find a good moral perspective that justifies them
| compared to other forms of taxation that seem morally just.
|
| Doing a transition like that will be just as difficult as
| popping a housing bubble (if not more so) but I think it will
| be of great benefit to society.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Building taller, denser housing doesn't pop the real-estate
| bubble. As cities grow denser, the land gets more expensive
| because land is finite. The solution to housing shortages is
| to build more, denser housing. The existing homeowners aren't
| getting a bad deal - they'll still be able to sell their
| houses at an immense gain. It's just that the same plot of
| land would occupy more units of housing.
|
| This is largely how dense cities like Tokyo manage to keep
| housing affordable [1]. When population increases you keep
| housing affordable by building more houses per unit of area.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w
| TimPC wrote:
| Density is not a panacea though. Density reduces revenue
| per capita as you end up with property tax from the cheaper
| housing so as you build it you see declines in services.
| Most notably education, if you ever wondered why suburbs
| tend to have much better schools than urban areas a big
| factor in any jurisdiction where schools are paid for in
| part through property tax is that the suburbs have more
| property tax per student.
|
| Roads are also an issue as it is seldom viable to build
| more of them and there is limited ability to widen the ones
| we do have. The net result is a substantial worsening of
| transit infrastructure to levels far worse than ever
| intended for those neighbourhoods.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Property taxes can be raised, if higher density makes it
| so that existing taxes are too low. Furthermore,
| education is more strongly correlated with parental
| education and involvement than with spending per pupil.
| Wealthier, more educated people tend to live in suburbs,
| that's why schools do better there.
|
| Higher density makes mass transit systems like subways
| more viable, opening up alternatives to automobiles.
| Furthermore, greater density means more revenue to spend
| on infrastructure projects.
|
| When a metro area experiences growth, higher density is
| inevitable. It's more a question of _how_ that density
| will be accommodated. Construct no housing and it will
| take the form of ever-increasing home costs, and higher
| rents for increasingly subdivided apartments. Construct
| denser housing and people will be able to live
| comfortable and affordably.
| imtringued wrote:
| You know, the problem with both is actually the same. The home
| owner and pensioner both rely on a young population that will
| take care of them. Owning a home only reduces the need to build
| one, which is better than nothing but it does not reduce the
| need to farm food for example.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Have you compared your parents return of their down payment if
| they had invested for the same duration in the stock market?
| I've seen a few cases where it all comes out in the wash...
| TimPC wrote:
| It might come out in the wash if you ignore the fact that you
| have to live somewhere. Property taxes and upkeep on a house
| tend to work out cheaper than skyrocketing rents over the
| long run. Home upgrades return value on the property. Having
| freedom to develop the place you live into something you like
| is incredibly valuable as well.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| I agree there value in the freedom. My point is simply on
| paper, housing is as expensive as every other asset (well,
| maybe not art). Of course, the real question is if housing
| should even be considered an asset in the first place.
| TimPC wrote:
| The Georgist answer is that the structures on the
| property should be assets and that taxes should reduce
| the land value to $0 and be updated regularly to capture
| the gains in the land value. That's the theory I ascribe
| to although I think transitioning from our current
| society to a Georgist one is incredibly difficult.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| On the flip side, a collapse in real estate prices would be an
| excellent entry to the property ladder for people who
| previously couldn't afford it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At the expense of all current property owners. Maybe a net
| win, maybe not.
| TimPC wrote:
| If that collapse is accompanied by real estate no longer
| being a property ladder then the entry might be less relevant
| or desired.
| tasuki wrote:
| > The first is pension funds which are paid into by current
| workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently
| depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls.
|
| This is fundamentally a demographic problem, rather than a
| problem with the pensions system.
|
| If pension funds worked by people saving their own money for
| themselves, it wouldn't actually be all that different. At any
| point in time, there's the productive part of the population,
| and the unproductive. If the productive part is too small to
| support the unproductive, there is going to be a worsening of
| the situation, probably especially so for the unproductive.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| This is a bad diagnosis.
|
| Remember, the "stocks" here, are all fiction. production at
| time t pays for retiree consumption at time t. Likewise housing
| prices are a waste of time when we should all rent, and there
| should be a land view tax (rent-turtles all the way down).
|
| "Pay as you go" pensions scheme is good for the same reasons as
| LVT is good.
|
| I believe society could function with a shorter work-week so I
| sure as hell am not worried about needing to raise the
| retirement age cause people are living longer.
|
| If we need more productivity, abolish suburbia.
| justin66 wrote:
| > This literally meets the definition of a ponzi scheme
|
| It absolutely does not. Investors in a Ponzi scheme do not have
| the information needed to allow them to be aware of the fraud
| involved. In contrast, at any given point in time you can
| extrapolate when the Social Security system (for example - the
| same principle applies to any pension that isn't literally
| cooking the books) will need to start drawing on the general
| fund, or fail, if it continues operating as it is operating
| today.
|
| It is a bad mistake to just characterize every non-sustainable
| investment scheme as a Ponzi scheme. For starters, you'd be
| awfully confused about what is legal and what is illegal...
| TimPC wrote:
| This is splitting hairs. You are forcibly invested in social
| security so you have to pay it even if the numbers indicate
| you won't be able to get anything back out from it. If the
| distinction between this and a Ponzi scheme is having the
| information it's a mighty fine distinction when you have zero
| ability to act on the information you have.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Economy and politics always go together.
|
| Optimizing the economy for the retirements funds (creating
| favorable conditions for existing big companies) has eliminated
| the paths to prosperity for the new generations (you cannot run
| your own shop to outcompete Loblaws or Walmart, and a cashier
| job there will never afford you anything more than bare
| survival). This is discouraging people from starting families
| and having kids, so the government began outsourcing population
| growth by importing people from other cultures with lower
| standard of living. This ignites political division in the
| society where the far left sees anything beside a shared room a
| privilege and the far right wants to deport anyone who isn't a
| 3rd-generation local.
|
| Keeping the real estate bubble from popping has served somewhat
| well the real estate investors, but made property ownership
| impossible for many people. The political response is
| unsurprising: many question the whole concept of owning real
| estate, it's becoming increasingly hard to evict a bad faith
| tenant, and aggressive homeless people actively disrupting the
| life of nearby real estate owners are seen as victims and not
| malefactors.
|
| The corporate media is doing their best to steer the discussion
| away and people are buying it. "Fair" isn't somehow when the
| median salary can reasonably afford a single-income household
| comfortable to raise 2+ children. It's now about how your
| fellow minimum-wagers should use the pronouns and how
| promotions from toilet scrubber to shelf stocker should be
| granted based on the skin color and historical oppression
| points, while the actual oppression of the former middle class
| by the corporations is happening right now.
| TimPC wrote:
| Most economic discussions are inherently political but it's
| not the case that most political discussions are inherently
| economical. I argued that we are avoiding dealing with our
| economic challenges and are focusing on non-economic
| political problems.
| john_moscow wrote:
| >I argued that we are avoiding dealing with our economic
| challenges and are focusing on non-economic political
| problems.
|
| Well, yeah, since all major media companies and social
| networks are owned by the entities directly benefiting from
| the "economic challenges" of the former middle class.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Optimizing the economy for the retirements funds (creating
| favorable conditions for existing big companies) has
| eliminated the paths to prosperity for the new generations
| (you cannot run your own shop to outcompete Loblaws or
| Walmart, and a cashier job there will never afford you
| anything more than bare survival).
|
| Technology, efficiencies of scaling, and automation make it
| difficult for less efficient businesses to compete.
| Retirement funds have nothing to do with it.
| epolanski wrote:
| > But much of our society is built on real estate growth
|
| As an italian, I don't get that.
|
| I bought a 240k euros home for 25k in advance and 550 EURs
| month of mortgage for the next 30 years. And in 30 years I will
| pay nothing, neither rent nor mortgage. That's why I did that.
|
| Real estate growth wasn't even in the back of my mind. I bought
| a home to have MY place, and to stop paying 750EUR plus rent to
| some landlord. Rent will also go up with inflation, mortgage
| payment will get smaller and smaller meanwhile thanks to
| inflation.
|
| I just don't understand the whole estate growth thing at all.
| TimPC wrote:
| The idea in North America is that homes are mostly
| investments. The real estate market grows and the home
| accrues additional value. At some point in retirement,
| typically when stairs become too difficult you might downsize
| to a condo, cashing in a fraction of the value.
| Alternatively, if you need a nursing home you sell the house
| to pay the exorbitant costs associated with that.
|
| The motivation for homes to be investments is that we are
| taking out the largest loan we will ever have and allocating
| more than 100% of everything we own into an asset. Having
| done so it's natural to want that asset to generate returns.
| epolanski wrote:
| This is so alien to me. It's a place to live, it has walls,
| it has a resell value but it's not the main purpose of it.
| And all investments are risky by definition.
|
| One should buy a house because one wants to save money,
| compared to renting, and have its own place, if you are
| buying for a price increase it's called speculation. If it
| is speculation, then you should not depend on it for your
| future and should put little money into it not decades of
| mortgage.
|
| This is so linear to me. The idea that things keeps getting
| value forever is flawed and a house is too important and
| expensive for this kind of speculation.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Most of the folks I know in their 20s here in the NYC metro
| area assume they'll never be able to afford real estate.
| almost_usual wrote:
| US real estate has gone up significantly in _desirable_
| markets. There are plenty of cities in the rust belt where
| neighborhoods are in decay, you can buy a home for 20k if you
| wanted.
|
| What we're going to see is either govts incentivize people move
| back to these places. Or more housing in desirable locations. I
| think the former will happen more than the later.
| TimPC wrote:
| Agreed. And we've seen crises in the neighbourhoods in decay
| and significant adverse effects for those who don't get the
| housing investment gains that much of society is built on.
| The numbers seem to indicate that will be something of the
| new normal for everyone rather than just the unlucky few in
| the wrong place at the wrong time.
| shafoshaf wrote:
| Incentives are already here. Tulsa offers $10K to move there.
| juve1996 wrote:
| A lot of "undesirable" markets have become desirable. The
| remaining ones, the market has decided has too many external
| cost to make such low prices worth it.
| zanny wrote:
| Theres a generational rift that will stop a lot of decaying
| areas from seeing repopulatin from newer generations.
|
| My wife and I saving to house shop soonish, but one of the
| primary requirements of our residency will be transit access.
| We don't like driving, don't like having to own a car, and
| definitely do not want to have to drive up and down the east
| coast to visit friends and family. Amtrak access is thus
| basically required, and anywhere we can avoid buying a car to
| live is valued dramatically higher than alternatives.
|
| Its a growing sentiment the younger you get, where the veneer
| of the 50s American dream is more and more eroded and we are
| realizing humans in the 21st century should be living denser,
| with public transit, and walkable access to day to day needs,
| than to live in gated communities without a sidewalk or any
| human contact.
|
| And 99.9% of US real estate is built up totally in antithesis
| of this, largely on racist fundamentals dating to the early
| 20th century.
|
| Like we legit were looking at areas and when talking about
| just over the DC border into MD the conversation always
| immediately goes to "yes the properties are a third cheaper,
| but theres no metro access" and its just off the radar.
| Pittsburgh is our joke city since it has no usable Amtrak
| routes out of it (and yes, I know its urban core is nice, but
| its also tiny and unable to grow).
|
| None of these decaying places can afford the capital
| investment to redevelop to be walkable and sustainably dense.
| They already are burdened to maintain a million acres of
| suburbia that is all tax negative. And nobody wants a "top
| down" solution that involves displacing millions to redevelop
| cities so the demographic trends going forward want to live
| there.
|
| For anyone looking, Philly is actually pretty affordable. Its
| combined income tax is 6% in the state, the sales tax isn't
| outrageous, and property costs are a fraction of NYC or DC.
| Its definitely near the top of our list considering how
| unaffordable the parts of Portland, Seattle, and Baltimore
| with transit are.
| soulnothing wrote:
| I medically can't drive, and my other half doesn't want to
| drive. I see this as well, a number of my circle also want
| walkable/transit areas. In the states it's NYC, Philly,
| Boston, Chicago, San Fran, Seattle and a bit more. I feel
| like I need to leave just to get a sane metro area.
|
| I'm in NYC now, but keep circling back to Philly. We're
| renting for ~3200 now a one bedroom 650sqft in NYC, both
| work from home. To get the ideal separation we want, not
| have our joint offices in the living room, we would need to
| go to between $5,500 and $6,500. While in Philly we could
| get a trinity, small town house three floors plus basement,
| about 900sqft, in downtown for ~2200.
|
| I wouldn't buy in Philly, I just don't trust the city
| planning at this point. They're trying, but it's an uphill
| battle. The tax situation as a self-employed was much more
| complex in Philly. Safety is not something to just shy
| away. I lived in Old City, two years back, and there were
| still shootings near my apartment. It's a problem in a lot
| of cities as we gut social spending and relief programs.
| Philly did open a safe injection site, and is making head
| way.
|
| I really like Philly, close to NYC Megabus was 15$ a seat,
| and about 3 hours. Amtrak is even quicker. Great music and
| food scene, Reading is great for food / produce.
|
| The biggest issue I've found is the job market. Locally, a
| lot shifted out to office parks, requiring regional rail,
| and walking along multi-lane roads. If you're working
| remote, I got cost of living adjusted like crazy. The
| quotes I got were 80% pay cut over my NYC rate. While local
| jobs, were only a 10% cut. The local tech scene is a bit
| behind, more legacy.
|
| Comcast has a great VC program as well for startups. The
| city also has tax programs to help get startups in the
| area.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I'm in NYC now, but keep circling back to Philly. We're
| renting for ~3200 now a one bedroom 650sqft in NYC, both
| work from home. ... While in Philly we could get a
| trinity, small town house three floors plus basement,
| about 900sqft, in downtown for ~2200.
|
| Where in NYC are you and how does it compare to downtown
| philly? $3500 NYC rent means you're living in a
| hip/gentrified neighborhood. You can certainly find
| cheaper apartments if you are willing to go deeper into
| Queens. Whole houses? They exist but are in the 4-6k
| range as well ( friends aunt rents a home in belle harbor
| for something like 4-5k/month). By me (ozone park) the
| rent is not that high (~1600+)and we have plenty of
| busses and the A train. Further north is woodhaven with
| busses and J&Z train. You can go further east but you are
| now past most subways.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| If you make the assumption that PI is 3.14, that's going to
| work for a good while. But eventually you are going to need to
| build a circle that's bigger, and 3 significant digits will not
| cut it, and errors will start showing up. Our economies work in
| the exact same way. Capitalism started out improving on what
| came before it, but it has now grown to the level that errors
| are appearing more and more. We need to be more precise.
|
| You've outlined very clearly one of those errors - housing. We
| know that housing values can not both be an investment and
| affordable long-term - those things are inherently at
| opposition. Therefore the best price for land is zero. The way
| to do that is to increase the tax on the market value of a
| house until the market value of the house is equal to the cost
| of the parts and labor needed to build that house. When you do
| this, you have what we call a 100% land value tax. It fixes all
| sorts of incentives, turns NIMBY's into YIMBY's, incentivizes
| the best use for the land. A land value tax is not just
| increasing the equivalent of PI from 3.14 to 3.14159, it's
| setting the correct value for land exactly equal to PI.
|
| One of the amazing side effects of the land value tax is that
| now that you don't need a continually increasing housing
| values, the amount of debt in the world is going to start
| growing less quickly, as a large percentage of debt comes from
| mortgages. When you zoom in on how that works, and why it
| works, what you find out is that you want debt to only increase
| when real productivity increases. The flipside of that is also
| true - you want the currency to increase equal to productivity,
| this is why Bitcoin is fundamentally unstable long-term and why
| the gold standard collapsed. The reason the land debt is bad is
| because land is zero-sum. It can not be created or destroyed.
| Any debt that is created to buy a zero-sum good will eventually
| turn the economy into a Ponzi scheme. So while a LVT will fix a
| large portion of the problem, eventually some other zero-sum
| asset will arrive, and that too will need to be fixed. When all
| zero-sum debt no longer increases the money supply, the
| problems that you outline will be resolved.
|
| Once you have a money supply that increases equal to
| productivity, suddenly retirees will be able to save their
| money and retire on it without threat of inflation. We used to
| have this in the middle ages, but that's only because we had a
| flat population with no productivity increases, so a stable
| currency was sufficient.
| TimPC wrote:
| I argued for a gradual implementation of Georgist Tax
| Policies elsewhere in the thread so we are in agreement. I
| think transitioning to a LVT is a very hard problem that
| requires a great deal of thought and care. I'm convinced such
| a transition needs to be gradual because instantaneous is far
| too destructive. I'm also leaning towards government needing
| to compensate at least some of those who lose significantly
| in the transition. I'm open to being proven wrong about
| either point but the proposals I've seen from Georgists
| advocating instantaneous change seem woefully ill informed or
| quite naive about consequences.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of instantaneous change, as it instantly
| sets the incentives, but am willing to have a large
| transition period.
|
| If we were to do an instant change, the best way to do that
| is to give everyone a tax credit equal to the value of
| their existing land, with retirees and others who need
| public support having a few more options to convert those
| tax credits to cash.
| TimPC wrote:
| Instantaneous change with compensation is extremely
| expensive. I noted in another thread that it's quite
| possible for the costs of compensating affected parties
| to reach $30.5 trillion, the current size of the US
| national debt. This assumed compensation had a needs
| component to it and only half of the US property market
| was compensated.
|
| The basic issue is the current US property market is
| estimated at $33.6 trillion. If you assume 80% of that is
| land value you end up needing to compensate 26.88
| trillion. On the other side of the market you have
| mortgages you put under water that people will walk away
| from. The mortgage market in the US is $17.6 trillion. If
| you assume 80% of mortgages are walked away from and the
| mortgages end up 70% underwater you end up having to
| compensate $9.856 trillion dollars. So solving the
| residential portion of compensation potentially costs
| $36.736 trillion dollars. If you have compensation in the
| commercial and industrial land markets as well that makes
| things even more expensive.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Right, so you could see that 30 trillion + commercial
| number as a loan that the federal government is taking
| out that they only need to pay the interest on as it
| accrues(as people spend their land tax credits). This is
| something the federal government can handle, as the
| system will more than pay for itself over the lifetime of
| the tax credits.
|
| A tax credit that gets subtracted when the homeowner
| defaults equal to the value of the default would resolve
| the walk-away problem.
| TimPC wrote:
| The issue is the gains in efficiency from the
| introduction of the Georgian tax system get traded off
| against the loss in efficiency from more than doubling
| the national debt. I don't have enough economic skill to
| model all of this to know whether we end up ahead or
| behind but my intuition is the effect sizes may be
| similar in a number of key dimensions.
|
| I agree you can modify how the tax credits work to
| potentially transfer the mortgage loss credits from the
| homeowner to the mortgage holder when the homeowner walks
| away. If you do this effectively you can reduce the cost
| by nearly $10 trillion but still have around $25 trillion
| in residential costs.
| blauditore wrote:
| > They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then
| take out from them at any one time.
|
| This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if
| population size is stable, if people on average work longer
| than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive,
| all things equal. A problem here has been that people get
| increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their
| life being retired, making the ratio of payers vs. receivers
| worse. The most obvious solution to this is raising the age of
| retirement, but that's always politically difficult and somehow
| seen as cruel.
| TimPC wrote:
| The ponzi part of it is that current payers pay for current
| retirees. If the pension worked on a forced investment model
| where you paid into your own retirement and the money was
| invested for you that would be different. It would even be
| viable to say the money from those who died prematurely would
| be distributed to other users and it's possible to have the
| system generate more overall money for retirees than just
| what they put in and gain from investment.
|
| However, the current system is quite far from that. The money
| you pay in goes nearly immediately to existing retirees with
| a moderate reserve of capital that is slowly decreasing as
| more money exits the system than enters it. This system
| cannot pay current retirees without the investment from new
| users, and that's what makes it a ponzi.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Pensions paid directly by current workers are not really so
| different from pensions paid out of investments. The thing
| that one "owns" in most of today's public equities is not
| physical capital (plants and equipment) but the "nexus of
| contracts" that allows you to make money from other
| peoples' labor. In other words, you are still living on
| backs of the working generation, same as Social Security or
| similar schemes.
|
| Until we invent self-replicating physical capital (i.e. a
| Santa Claus machine that can make other Santa Claus
| machines), this will always be true.
| bluGill wrote:
| All models are a ponzi that depend on a future generation
| doing labor. Retirement is ultimately a promise that
| someone will grow food and the other things you need/want.
| SS depends on the next generation being willing to pay,
| while stocks depend on the next generation willing to buy
| those stocks (or dividends because the company because the
| next generation bought things from it). Funds in a mattress
| depend on people wanting your cash.
| kergonath wrote:
| > All models are a ponzi
|
| No, they are not. "A ponzi" is a fraud. Some of the
| schemes you mention are not sustainable under certain
| hypotheses, but none of them have the deceptive and
| fraudulent aspects of Ponzi schemes, _which is
| important_. These are strategies, that might work out or
| that might not, but in any case they are not tools for
| personal enrichment through deception.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The most obvious solution to this is raising the age of
| retirement, but that's always politically difficult and
| somehow seen as cruel.
|
| There is another problem: many people go into decline as they
| get older. My company retires some people at 40 with a full
| pension because most people physically cannot do the job
| anymore (I'm not sure if they are able to do much else after
| that). Airpline pilots are required to retire at 60 (I don't
| remember the exact age) because we are sure none are very far
| into mental decline even though a few could work for 30 more
| years.
| Clubber wrote:
| The biggest issue with social security funding is there is a
| cap on it. Once you put in so much a year, you don't have to
| put in anymore. It's essentially a regressive system. A guy
| who makes a million bucks a year only has to pay social
| security as if he made $147K. For example, in 2022, everyone
| only pays social security tax on their first $147K.
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/maxtax.html
| kmonsen wrote:
| But the output is depending on how much you put it, it's
| actually progressive. Just less so than taxation in
| general.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, it's progressive if you just consider the lower and
| middle class. Actually I think if you get what you put
| into it, it's neither progressive or regressive. If you
| include the upper earners, it's regressive. It's as if
| they capped income tax to your first $100K. Great for one
| group of people, not for the majority other.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I don't have to pay more for my house insurance if I make
| more money either.
|
| So what?
| TimPC wrote:
| There is a cap but I think a large part of that is to
| prevent people from complaining about the size of pensions
| paid out by the government. What you get back from the
| program is a function of what you put in and if you allowed
| people to put in the portion from $1 Million of income you
| might owe them $200K pensions after 40 years. I don't think
| the public has appetite for that.
| liketochill wrote:
| Raising the retirement age I think is not fair. Asking guys
| in their 60's to do the same work as guys in their 40's is
| not fair if the job is at all a hands on doing job. Anything
| as simple as a big flight of stairs can become a major
| obstacle. If all you do is go up and down elevators, talk,
| and use a computer then you can go as long as your mind stays
| sharp and you have the drive. Not everyone loves their job
| after doing it for 30+ years and would like to slow down just
| to appreciate the people and world around them for their
| remaining time.
| jen20 wrote:
| In the UK the retirement age of 65 (for men) was set when
| life expectancy was 64. Now life expectancy is 81, and the
| retirement age is only 66.
|
| Completely untenable when the generation retiring has also
| taken the lions share of property wealth, imposed student
| debt upon and consistently voted against the interests of
| the generation paying for their retirement.
| TimPC wrote:
| These figures are highly misleading though because life
| expectancy includes significant outliers dragging the
| number down from infant mortality rates which declined
| over the same period. It is not the case that your life
| expectancy given reaching age 60 has increased by
| anywhere near as much as 17 years over the same time
| period.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| America hasn't always been the 1950s. We'll survive a bit longer.
| There is polarization but it's not as much as the far left and
| far right would like you to think (that basically the world is
| burning down). Although Putin may burn it all down for us if he
| has a terminal illness like some people are proposing. That's the
| only significant threat I see to American and civilization
| itself. I mean it's a strange game. We can't cave to him but if
| we don't he may be the suicidal dictator with nukes that we were
| always worried about.
| lazyier wrote:
| The tower of Babel is a story of how man tried to create their
| own salvation through technology and was punished by God. The
| punishment was the fracturing of language.
|
| The fracturing isn't the subject or metaphor. The metaphor is
| people attempting to create their own salvation in a very
| ignorant and shallow way and being punished for it.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Everything is falling apart but we are falling slowly upwards in
| terms of things getting better.
|
| I recommend this book for data that supports this if folks
| haven't read it already:
|
| https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/
| victorclf wrote:
| That daily "the end is near" post. It would be interesting if we
| could find a way to curb the negative news bias at least here.
| subsubzero wrote:
| During the course of history every period post pandemic has
| brought drastic change, what makes this one so different[1]?
| Institutions that have not fared well are the media,
| colleges(dropping attendance due to high paying jobs everywhere).
| Urban cities have also seen record numbers of residents leaving,
| SF lost 6.7% of its population in a year and a half. For some
| that are connected to those places/institutions things are really
| falling apart. For everyone else things are slowly getting back
| to normal.
|
| 1 - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
| economics/2021/04/29/w...
| fullshark wrote:
| "Everything is falling apart" if you are someone who contributes
| information to the public sector in the form of analysis,
| scientific studies, news reporting, etc and your audience was
| built solely on your credentials, or the organization you belong
| to being respected. Those credentials and institutions are
| collapsing and they need to rebuild public trust by providing
| legitimate value instead of spending the next 10 years whining
| about how the commoners just don't get how valuable they are.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The printing press story always seems to focus on the Protestant-
| vs-Catholic conflict, but let's also recall it fostered an
| explosion of scientific and mathematical knowledge across the
| continent. For example, the print runs of Isaac Newton's
| _Principia_ :
|
| https://www.livescience.com/200-more-copies-newton-principia...
|
| I'm not sure if social media has contributed in any similar way
| to the spread of useful scientific and technical information...
| there's an argument that it has of course, but this is a very
| small fraction of the total content. The Internet overall has
| (long live sci-hub!), however.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I think in this analogy, the Internet is the printing press.
|
| Social media is maybe the gutter press. But note that the
| gutter press is only possible where enough people are literate,
| which is definitely a good thing.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Along these lines, I'm curious what impact science/academia
| Twitter has had on scientific advancements and discoveries.
|
| Anyone with more knowledge on this?
| mk81 wrote:
| andrewla wrote:
| I think there's a bit of the Copernican fallacy at play here; the
| assumption that things are getting worse is pretty dramatic but
| it's not clear that it's supported in any real way.
|
| We point to the riots last summer, and while there are debates
| about how severe they are, we willfully ignore that there have
| been riots in the past, even much more pervasive and deadly ones,
| even with a significantly lower population and population density
| than we have now.
|
| There's political divisiveness, but students aren't getting shot
| at Kent State, and the Weather Underground isn't blowing up bombs
| in Manhattan, and there are no open wars being fought between
| private armies, militias, and government forces in West Virginia.
| Maybe once upon a time people were as passionate about George
| McGovern as people are now about Hillary Clinton, but passions
| fade and people forget.
|
| There will be implications for the direction of history based on
| social networks and open information exchange, but likely we
| won't recognize them until far in the future. I'm sure there were
| dozens of upstart anti-Catholic movements that preceded Martin
| Luther and had the advantage of the printing press but fizzled
| out into nothing are are forgotten to history before the
| circumstances led to his success, but we can't see the invisible
| failures, only the visible successes, so we try to take lessons
| there.
| sazz wrote:
| Humans just tends to repeat themselves every 50 to 100 years. But
| the good thing is - with each iteration we are learning. It's
| just a bit but maybe in a thousand years we will come out of our
| puberty.
|
| And no - the world won't go down due to climate change. It won't
| go down because of some silly war either. It's not a simple graph
| showing where we are heading to. Especially not an exponential
| graph.
|
| And we are still repeating history because we haven't learned the
| simple lesson which Leo Tolstoi already knew: Everybody wants to
| change the world but nobody themselves.
|
| But this is where the real change starts. And do not believe all
| those angst people out there.
|
| Life is way too complex and beautiful that we will ever
| understand it's secrets and twists it's capable of.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > the world won't go down due to climate change. It won't go
| down because of some silly war either.
|
| When most collapse-aware persons write about "the end of the
| world" they mean "the end of complex human civilization", not
| the total destruction of the planet or even the end of
| humanity.
|
| > It's just a bit but maybe in a thousand years we will come
| out of our puberty.
|
| You're asserting that we'll solve the phosphorus problem (among
| others) in the next 50-100 years, then?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus
| slackfan wrote:
| In start contrast to the general law of headlines - the answer is
| yes.
|
| On a cosmic scale.
|
| Ain't entropy grand?
| mbg721 wrote:
| It's easy to lament polarization, but the reason it's not going
| away is that there are important differences in how people view
| the world, and calls for unity are really closer to "It would be
| so peaceful if we could eliminate the opposing viewpoint once and
| for all".
| macintux wrote:
| I'd just be happy if we could agree on basic facts. I don't
| expect everyone to agree on the right way to solve a problem,
| but it seems increasingly difficult to even come to a common
| understanding of what's true and what's not.
| SubuSS wrote:
| What if the facts or basic-ness of them are disputed?
|
| You can see this clearly in pro-choice/life debate for
| example.
|
| One side is saying it is murder and the other side is saying
| everything from it is not a murder to society doesn't support
| the born kids, so this should be allowed.
|
| What are the 'basic facts' here?
| mbg721 wrote:
| What ends up happening in that case is that people disagree
| in defining "What is a human?". That's not about facts,
| it's about values and conclusions. That becomes
| uncomfortable very quickly, because we've seen what happens
| when a society excludes some people from their definition
| of humanity.
| cma wrote:
| The side that believes it is murder also trusts the bible,
| just point them to the ordeal of the bitter water:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_bitter_water
|
| Though hopefully they won't get ideas to make it
| involuntary again.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you have an example of that? I haven't seen a lot of
| debate about the data (facts), but usually it's about the
| information (how it was formed from the data). Of course
| there are a small group of leaders (and/or crackpots) on
| either side spreading blatantly false info, but I feel that's
| rather small and receives outsized coverage.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I think one of the most basic facts that we can't agree on
| is what constitutes a man or a woman. It's a very simple
| problem that a 5 year old can point out, yet we somehow
| lost sight of this very basic fact.
| confidantlake wrote:
| To me this is a category problem, which are very complex.
| Because man and women are concepts like a chair is a
| concept. Ask a hundred people to define a chair and you
| are going to get a hundred different answers.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I suppose that's a perfect example of what I was talking
| about. The only reason it's controversial is due to the
| ways we apply them. The man-made contexts can convolute
| the meaning of man or woman.
|
| For example, are we talking about sex, gender, or
| something else? In the context of reproduction, sports,
| or something else?
|
| Most people agree that the various labels exist. It all
| depends on how we want to define them.
|
| It can get even more complicated because we have this
| artificial tautology of man or woman, but in fact there
| are naturally occuring intersex individuals who fall in
| between and are mostly forced to choose.
|
| So in closing, I feel the facts are not at issue here (xx
| vs xy vs intersex). It's how we are utilizing them and
| applying them to our social constructs which do not
| necessarily follow nature. If we are are talking about
| gender, then we take it a step farther into artificial
| labels and buckets built purely on one's preference (no
| way to factually check claims). The facts of the subject
| are simple and agreeable, yet the way we apply them make
| for controversy around _our policies_.
| umvi wrote:
| You would think cold hard data would be lead everyone to the
| same truth of a situation, but the problem is that in
| reality, data can be tortured to confess to anything. Data is
| constantly weaponized by everyone to push the narrative they
| want to believe, whether the data is about guns, violence,
| education, covid, racism, drugs, etc, data can be tortured to
| tell nearly any story by people wanting a specific narrative.
|
| How often do people see a graph or something on twitter, and
| the data seems to go against what they believe, so they
| examine it and conclude that the graph is misleading and that
| actually the data says the opposite? Nearly every graph
| posted on twitter experiences this phenomenon.
| mikkergp wrote:
| But data can't encapsulate values. My friend sent me a
| chart asking why were pushing vaccines for kids when only
| .001% of kids were dying from COVID. I looked at the chart
| and saw that 1000 kids had died from COVID and thought 1000
| kids have died from COVID!?! There's no objective way to
| agree on whether a number is high or low. A lot of values
| transcend the underlying data, even when "the science is on
| your side". I can't imagine any data that would change my
| values around abortion access or gay marriage.
| umvi wrote:
| > There's no objective way to agree on whether a number
| is high or low
|
| But emotional responses to absolute numbers aren't a good
| mechanism to inform policy making either. That's why
| absolute numbers are usually normalized to a "per capita"
| figure. If 1000 kids die in modern India (pop > 1
| billion), that is less cause for concern than 1000 kids
| dying in a rural town in Pennsylvania (pop < 10000). But
| just looking at the raw number "1000" can't tell you
| that, you need to give it context. Yeah, 1000 kids died
| either way, but in the Pennsylvania case something very
| bad is clearly happening (poisoning, disease, etc),
| whereas in India a freak one in a million accident could
| have happened 1000 times.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I don't think we're really disagreeing here, I think my
| point was just that in addition to your point about
| people misreading data, some people read it correctly and
| come to different conclusions. Not to mention the issues
| we have no data on like people believing who believe in
| vaccine shedding. I think people believe in this stuff
| precisely because there is no data and you can come to
| whatever conclusion you want.
|
| The even stranger thing is that I'm not sure we even all
| agree on what knowledge is. I think some believe more
| that knowledge is about what you can argue, sort of a
| rhetorical/debate centered argument vs a scientific
| observational/data centered argument.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree. It seems "compromise" is increasingly used as "What
| I'm proposing should be considered the compromise and you
| should listen to me". There's no real debate. Nobody tries to
| address the other side's concerns. And then we do have, as you
| say, some fundamental differences in world views and
| experiences that sometimes form an impasse.
| floren wrote:
| As someone who follows gun laws, "compromise" often takes
| this form:
|
| Lawmakers: "We intend to outlaw all semi-automatic rifles
| with scary black stocks"
|
| Gun owners: "Please don't do that."
|
| Lawmakers: "Ok, let's compromise, we'll only outlaw scary
| rifles with collapsing stocks and vertical handgrips on the
| front."
|
| (time passes)
|
| Lawmakers: "There is a terrible loophole in our gun
| regulations..."
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Has it not occurred to you that we actually need tighter
| gun laws if we want fewer dead children?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/guns-became-leading-
| killer-...
| mbg721 wrote:
| I've heard that the definition of "assault rifle" is mainly
| cosmetic; to what extent is that true?
| floren wrote:
| Per Wikipedia, the US army defines an assault rifle as:
| "short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a
| cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun
| and rifle cartridges."
|
| Selective-fire means it's not just semi-automatic (one
| shot per trigger pull), it can also be set to fully auto
| (shoots as long as you pull the trigger) or burst (shoots
| a few rounds when you hold the trigger, then stops).
| These are essentially unavailable to the average
| civilian.
|
| In popular usage, though, "assault rifle" means a short
| semi-automatic rifle with a plastic stock--anything that
| looks like a modern military rifle. Heck, I bet if you
| chopped down grandpa's bolt-action .30-06 deer rifle and
| put it in a black plastic stock, somebody would call it
| an assault rifle.
|
| Personally, I think the AR-15 pattern rifle is a deeply
| boring and unattractive firearm. It's also become a
| symbol in a culture war: a terrifying "weapon of war" to
| some, a statement of rebellion and "owning the libs" to
| others. At the end of the day, though, there's just not a
| hell of a lot of difference between an AR-15 civilian
| rifle and, say, the Ruger Mini-14, except that the latter
| has a less scary wood stock.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 'Per Wikipedia, the US army defines an assault rifle as:
| "short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a
| cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun
| and rifle cartridges."'
|
| The etymology supports this as well, going back to the
| first ones during WW2.
|
| One thing to note, is that the law can define terms
| however they want. So places are applying their own novel
| definitions, largely involving cosmetic features or
| make/model.
|
| Of course one other thing to point out is that the
| assault rifle bans are mostly a red herring given the
| relatively low contribution to homicides.
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't know much about weapons, I'm European and we
| don't have much of them, but regardless of the
| definitions a gun is meant to kill people it has no other
| uses other than hunting. I find it very effective how in
| US the discourse can be shifted to which tools to kill
| should be limited more or less, rather than considering
| if society wouldn't be better off without them.
|
| US police is violent, but how terrifying it can be when
| every car you pull for a routine control may contain a
| person who may shoot you?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "US police is violent, but how terrifying it can be when
| every car you pull for a routine control may contain a
| person who may shoot you?"
|
| Arguably any car pulled over in any country has the
| potential for an occupant to shoot (or otherwise kill)
| you, even if guns are illegal and uncommon (as are
| murders). The likelihood just varies. In general, an
| officer should not be "terrified" of being shot on a
| routine stop. There are many technologies and procedures
| designed to minimize risk. Once you are no longer a
| rookie, the practice is routine. Being shot or shooting
| someone is fairly rare. I believe the lifetime chance of
| firing your weapon on duty was 2% or so, which is
| relatively low. Likewise, I remember non-violent
| fatalities were larger overall percentage (car accidents,
| drowning, suicide, illness, etc). Yet most officers are
| not terrified of covid nor car accidents. Situational
| context is a huge factor.
|
| "I find it very effective how in US the discourse can be
| shifted to which tools to kill should be limited more or
| less, rather than considering if society wouldn't be
| better off without them."
|
| Sporting purposes include target shooting in addition to
| hunting (see the Olympics, etc). The needs and ideals in
| one country are not necessarily the same as in other
| countries. It certainly does come up about repealing the
| second amendment and banning guns almost entirely. Some
| of the counter points are that much of the US is rural,
| where police response can take hours or even days (remote
| Alaska), and many of those residents require a firearm
| for various rural purposes, like protecting livestock
| from other animals.
|
| On top of all that, it's a fairly large minority that
| owns guns. Many do not want to be burdened by additional
| regulations. It's similar to any other issue in a
| democracy - people vote for their own interests and
| benefits.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| That's because -- by design -- the culture war issues do not
| have a compromise position. The compromise on abortion was
| Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" -- and it didn't solve the
| problem. The compromise on guns was a ban on assault weapons,
| background checks and letting states regulate guns. It didn't
| solve the problem.
|
| These issues were cultivated by right-wing think tanks over
| decade with the sole purpose of making it impossible for
| voters to even think of doing anything but electing
| Republicans.
|
| I'm not excusing the idiocy of the Democrats here, but you
| can't both-sides the fundamentals of the culture war -- it's
| not a symmetrical problem.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Everybody has internalized the idea that if you ask for twice
| what you really want, meeting in the middle will give you the
| thing you actually wanted. So if you notice that the other
| side is doing the same thing, you double it again...
| giantg2 wrote:
| They never read _Never Split The Difference_. Negotiations
| are supposed to be value based and each side should listen
| to the true concerns of the other.
|
| That said, I don't think the political sides are really
| asking for twice what they want. It seems very clear on
| most subjects that they really do want all that they are
| asking for, but will occasionally accept less and
| continuing to press for the rest in the long run.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Thinking about it, I think you're right that the
| political sides aren't doing that. The Culture-War wedge
| issues that are the most polarizing don't really have a
| halfway; we've seen that with abortion, for example, for
| decades. All the halfway positions are unsatisfying to
| everyone, and the issue is still there.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I think this is a great article, which doesn't say "everything is
| fine" but analyzes underlying root cause, and that the problems
| are older than we think. But also, wars have been fought due to
| the kinds of changes we are experiencing. I am truly concerned
| for the fate of Democracy in America.
|
| This has a similar to e to Jon Meacham's "The Soul of America"
| which looks back through times of great division and bitterness
| brought about by rapid societal changes. It is well worth a read
| if you like US history and think this was a good article.
| pelasaco wrote:
| "The story of Babel," Haidt writes, "is the best metaphor I have
| found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the
| fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong,
| very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same
| language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one
| another and from the past.".. it could be Germany from 2015 and
| beyond..
| lvass wrote:
| How devoid of intelligence it is to consider this manufactured
| divide as the reason things may fall apart. The group of mass
| media big-shots is extremely cohesive, as per this author's own
| perception of integration. Yet they fuel both sides without a
| single care about whether this may cause things to fall apart,
| and they're not wrong, which becomes clear if you actually look
| at the world and try to understand it instead of just absorbing
| mass media without practicing intellectual self-defense.
|
| Our eyes are being averted from the actual problem, because it's
| believed that the more we look at it, the worse it becomes. I
| reject this anti-intellectualism, therefore present you why
| everything is actually falling apart.
|
| The more humanity advances, the more we lack eros (loosely love
| for things we do not have) and the eros we have becomes weirder
| or outright bizarre. As this happens, we lose hope, that's the
| fatal hit. For example, access to porn has demonstrably been
| extremely detrimental to sex. For every passion we lose, we lose
| hope or replace it with a fetish. When we lose a healthy passion
| for clothes, we stop caring about what we wear or (more common in
| the west) become fetishized with bizarrely priced brands. When we
| lose passion for work, we stop caring about the future entirely
| (common in the third world) or become parasitical bureaucrats. It
| all adds up and often materializes into drug abuse. For an
| extreme example, look up the catalytic converter gangs in
| Kinshasa [0]. This loss of hope is monotonically increasing
| globally, and the manufactured divide has nothing to do with it.
| In fact our elites believe a little infighting and polarization
| may be good, as extremists are generally hopeful when they see
| things going their way, and more traditional solutions like
| education don't seem to be working these days. I don't think this
| theory has a name yet.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210927195719/https://nypost.co...
| gambler wrote:
| I think this kind of framing of the question is very close to
| being a sly form of gaslighting.
|
| What people want to know is not whether the current state of
| things is "normal". After all, death, sickness, war, hunger,
| disease and crime are all perfectly normal. Everyone gets that at
| some level. What most people want to know is what the fuck
| happened with the metanarrative that we were fed for the last
| several decades. Is it defunct and debunked? If it is, that has
| obvious implications in terms of who we should trust and who we
| should empower.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This is a bit of an oversimplification of the argument.
| Technology is argued to be a wedge, but this is in the context of
| well documented social division. In recent memory we were
| significantly less divided and the most consumed media sources
| served as moderators. Brushing this off as just another
| prognostication and everything is always messed up is missing the
| seriousness of this.
|
| It is perhaps fortunate that the Ukraine situation is
| demonstrating once again that just about the only time America
| can function in a coordinated manner is when there is an agreed
| upon external threat. Perhaps the next external threat will be
| carbon climate cancer? Or will our internal divisions prevent us
| from effectively dealing with that. It is going to be a rough
| ride one way or the other. The current war will be our first
| experience with global famines since the so called green
| revolution.
| goodoldneon wrote:
| > Perhaps the next external threat will be carbon climate
| cancer?
|
| Americans rarely unite against something that's partially
| and/or possibly our fault.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Also that will prove costly to the existing economic order,
| companies will resist every change that threatens their
| bottom line unless and until they find a way to benefit
| themselves. Look at oil now "energy" companies like Shell
| that knew climate change was a looming cliff but were so
| heavily invested in oil they buried the issue in confusion
| and flak until they figured out how to make money off of
| green energy.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's a lot more _political_ polarization, no doubt, but I 'm
| actually not sure it's true that there's more social division.
| A few decades ago, basic questions like "is it OK for different
| races to get married" and "should women participate fully in
| society" remained unresolved, with a ton of people wielding
| substantial power sitting on the "no" side. (The Handmaid's
| Tale wasn't meant to be some crazy impossible premise; Margaret
| Atwood genuinely believed that she was describing a real trend
| that might happen if we're not careful.)
| bradlys wrote:
| I'd read Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone or The Upswing.
| (Or just watch him talk about it on YouTube)
|
| Social division is definitely higher than it's ever been in
| decades.
|
| Racism and sexism is less prevalent but social division is
| actually higher than ever.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I hate to make both of us feel ancient, but Bowling Alone
| was written in the "decades ago" period I'm talking about.
| While the trend of social atomization has definitely
| continued, I don't think _division_ as such has gotten
| worse since then.
|
| (Seconding the recommendation though, it is a good book.)
| bradlys wrote:
| He has follow up books like the one I suggested. It
| hasn't gotten better. Division is stronger at
| socioeconomic lines than ever afaict. We replaced race
| and sex division with class.
| reciprocity wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation.
| asdff wrote:
| People are only measuring social division in the online
| discourse imo. Look at the world. People are lining up
| politely in the grocery store and smiling when you cross
| paths on the street. I'm guessing you will also note there
| is no social division in your neighborhood either when you
| go out walking around.
|
| Meanwhile, in the 1960s people were burning their draft
| cards, starving themselves to be underweight for the draft,
| or fleeing to canada. Returning soldiers at the airport
| would be spat on by protesters. Black people regularly had
| stones thrown at them or worse and no one made any news
| article about it. Activist groups were actually armed, and
| serious situations occured with that. Teenage girls were
| congregating in a canyon outside of los angeles to join a
| serial killers sex cult. Groups of people were travelling
| the country in a school bus turning square people on to
| acid and mushrooms. That was the peak of social disorder.
|
| We are all in line now, despite what the narratives in the
| media make us think. People hold opinions strongly, but
| they are of a limited set of prescribed opinions from the
| media. Find any thread online about a given topic you've
| read about online before, and the comments will all be the
| same and predictable. We aren't exposed to as much
| unorthodox thought as our population used to be back before
| global media had total influence on how we sourced our
| information about the world.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's still time for that backslide to happen we're already
| seeing conservative reactionary groups pushing for returns to
| before those questions were 'resolved' in more and less
| direct terms.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I wouldn't claim that a backslide is impossible, but it's
| important to understand that these weren't just
| conservative reactionary issues at the time. I have an
| uncle who got interracially married in the 1990s, and his
| wife's family were concerned about it _because_ of gender
| rights - they thought that he as a Hispanic man was going
| to expect her to be "barefoot and pregnant".
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I remember watching the universal disdain Americans shared for
| high finance after 2008 and even movements like Occupy Wall
| Street resonated with a lot more people than one would have
| predicted. Then, all of the sudden, a whole new field of social
| engineering algorithms are unleashed on the populace, convincing
| everyone that their neighbor is the true enemy.
| lampshades wrote:
| And now we're even teaching children which "group" they belong
| in, from the time they're in kindergarten, to further divide
| the populace so that we can be at war with each other instead
| of them.
| rcpt wrote:
| Why do you think that OWS was killed by new "social engineering
| algorithms"?
|
| The US has had a strong anti-protest culture for decades. March
| in the street, for anything, and the response is near universal
| cynicism and derision of the "hippies". With OWS this was
| apparent with traditional news coverage that constantly focused
| on the most ridiculous looking protestors
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| OWS isn't the main point of my comment.
| JamesAdir wrote:
| The media want you to show that the world is falling apart for
| all kind of reasons. The social media shows you posts about the
| world falling apart for same kind of reasons - it generate views
| and sells ads. The world hasn't been falling apart for the last
| decade as far as I can tell. Not in the US and not in many other
| parts of the world.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I feel generally that everything is falling apart. I also have an
| article still pulled up from earlier this week titled _Why
| Pessimism Sounds Smart_. It seems pessimists are sometimes wrong!
| But sometimes they are right too - especially in the last couple
| of years I have observed incompetence seemingly everywhere I go.
| But is this the changing world, or my changing perspective? It 's
| really difficult to pin down. At the same time, I read books that
| were published before I was born that allude to many of the same
| problems that seem so prominent in our society today, reinforcing
| the idea that _We Didn 't Start the Fire_.
|
| Still, the decline in quality of goods and services seems to be
| backed up by data as well as anecdote. I go to schools, churches,
| businesses. I see lightbulbs out. Things that are broken that
| could be repaired if only someone would put in 10 minutes of
| effort. My opinion: Everything is maybe falling apart in America
| specifically. I hope I'm wrong, for my childrens' sake.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I think the question shouldn't necessarily be who started the
| fire, but if it is a good idea to just let the fire burn, even
| though you weren't the one igniting it.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Yes, that is how I think about it. Billy Joel's generation
| didn't start the fire, but they also sure as hell didn't put
| it out. Don't get me wrong. Some people are carrying buckets
| of water towards the fire, but there are other people poking
| holes in the buckets, or shoving them so that they spill the
| water, or whatever other metaphor you would like to use here.
| And also some people standing around and telling the people
| carrying the water that it's not the correct way to put out
| fires.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Yes, exactly. And to add to your list, there are also
| people who are not carrying buckets, because "I didn't
| start the fire, others are making it worse, so what's the
| point in even trying to carry a bucket."
|
| The worst thing is feeling defeated, even though you could
| actually be helping. Doesn't even matter if you're carrying
| a shot glass or a whole barrel full of water, at least
| you're doing the best you can.
| notpachet wrote:
| > whatever other metaphor you would like to use here
|
| Selling NFT's of the buckets.
| thaway2839 wrote:
| The incompetence could also be a result of the fact that a lot
| of shit is happening at the same time.
|
| I suspect that the world after WW1, where they also faced many
| similar situations at the same time (pandemic, financial crash,
| etc), also looked pretty incompetent to everyone.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The US is a culture of authoritarian narcissism, and while it
| feels good - to some people - it's simply not sustainable.
|
| In the US it's more important to be rich than to be moral or
| right.
|
| But you can't deny mutuality, interdependence, and rational
| modelling of collective consequences without getting into some
| very broken places and bad outcomes.
| msla wrote:
| You think Native Americans are inherently lesser than
| Europeans?
|
| I did not think I'd see such blatant racism on this website.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I like the cut of your jib. Do you have a newsletter?
| nikanj wrote:
| Unfortunately said someone has been made redundant, and the
| parts wouldn't be available anyway because all of the planets
| microchip factories are building bitcoin rigs
| asdff wrote:
| Maintenance worker can't just pull over on a lark with a
| screwdriver and fix a wobbly thing anymore. someone needs to
| submit a ticket. we've processified everything to the point
| where it stops making sense.
| FredPret wrote:
| The answer to a headline is usually "No". Some things are falling
| apart, as always, but civilization marches ahead exponentially
| through war and famine and plague, again as always
| specialist wrote:
| > _By that I don't just mean that I see social media, and the
| internet broadly, sustaining a trend we've seen at earlier
| technological thresholds, such as the print revolution--a trend
| toward more tribes, often narrower tribes, and sometimes more
| intensely combative tribes._
|
| I keep expecting some kind of system of phyles. Like "pick your
| own adventure", but for real life.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Phyles
|
| Instead, bad people weaponized k-means clustering to lock-in us-
| vs-them.
|
| > _The inexorable march of information technology, combined with
| the psychology of tribalism, has heightened turbulence, loathing,
| and delusion before, and it's doing that now._
|
| Yes and: Decreasing costs seems to accelerate winner-takes-all
| outcomes.
|
| We technoptimists thought that improved production, distribution,
| discovery, and consumption would lead to a better signal-to-
| noise. We were wrong. Sure, we got a lot more content. But now
| anti-information dominates.
|
| Why? Some scattered notions:
|
| I guess we didn't anticipate the attention economy, how an over
| abundance in content (opinions) would create a scarcity of
| attention (deliberation).
|
| I definitely didn not anticipate automating the hate machine with
| recommenders. (Parisi's filter bubble thesis was a near miss.)
|
| And I was totally ignorant about rent seeking, financialization,
| and usury. How our economy's transition from manufacturing to
| services would accelerate inequity. The resulting anxiety is a
| huge part of our current hysteria.
|
| h/t Clay Shirky's obervation about power laws, Chomsky's theory
| of the 5 filters, Brandolini's law, Marshal McLuhan's
| Understanding Media.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Hacker News is a positive counterexample. The people, the
| community, the platform.
|
| Let's apply the methods that have made this work so well also
| elsewhere.
|
| A few ideas. Professional moderation. Crowd moderation with
| downvoting and flagging. Guidelines. Culture of restraint.
| lesgobrandon wrote:
| juanani wrote:
| qiskit wrote:
| > "... We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or
| recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and
| from the past."
|
| Since when did we ever "speak the same language or recognize the
| same truth". We've always been cut off from one another.
| Racially, regionally, econonically, etc. The civil war being the
| obvious one. America is a country of many nations. America, the
| empire, is an empire of many countries.
|
| > It's a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and
| blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within
| universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and
| even families...
|
| This is just silliness from the media. This snapshot that the
| media portrays doesn't really exist in the real world. People
| just live their lives. Go outside and see for yourself. And even
| if it did, it doesn't matter. The red/blue, left/right, etc
| doesn't matter.
|
| Things fall apart when the elites are divided. And the two
| dominant forces in american life (political, media, economic,
| cultural, geopolitical, etc ) are imperialism and zionism. I
| don't see any division amongst the elites on that. Left/right,
| red/blue, up/down, flat earther/round earther, etc. So I don't
| think anything is falling apart as there are no signs of
| fracture.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We were getting close to a fairly positive future.
|
| There are three basic constraints to material and non-material
| goods:
|
| - capital - labour - energy
|
| There are other raw materials, but they aren't limiting factors.
| For example, processed Lithium is in short supply right now, but
| it's not raw Lithium that's the constraint. We don't have enough
| Lithium mines and processing facilities. capital/labour/energy,
| in other words.
|
| We had a glorious period in the post-WW2 era where the price of
| energy & capital was dropping dramatically so the world was
| labour constrained. Wages skyrocketed, and the middle class
| emerged and prospered.
|
| Then the 70s halted cheap energy and the 80s halted cheap capital
| and the world has stagnated since.
|
| In 2019, things were looking up again. Capital was cheap, and
| green energy prices were dropping in their own version of Moore's
| law so it became crystal clear that energy would be very cheap
| soon.
|
| But we can't have the proles regain the power they had in the
| 60's. Low unemployment, cheap energy and cheap capital means that
| power will shift from the rich to the middle class. So a crisis
| was invented. Let's pretend that the inflation caused by a supply
| crisis and a war in Ukraine is actually caused by cheap capital.
| That way we can get rid of cheap capital and throw a ton of
| people out of work so the rich and powerful can maintain control.
| While we're at it, we'll use the war as an excuse to stay on the
| petro-economy.
|
| Luckily, it's not too late. I expect inflation to quickly turn
| negative as bottlenecks free up and high interest rates throw the
| economy into a recession forcing the fed to reverse the interest
| rate hikes.
| imtringued wrote:
| >But we can't have the proles regain the power they had in the
| 60's. Low unemployment, cheap energy and cheap capital means
| that power will shift from the rich to the middle class. So a
| crisis was invented. Let's pretend that the inflation caused by
| a supply crisis and a war in Ukraine is actually caused by
| cheap capital. That way we can get rid of cheap capital and
| throw a ton of people out of work so the rich and powerful can
| maintain control. While we're at it, we'll use the war as an
| excuse to stay on the petro-economy.
|
| That's basically Keynes general theory of employment, interest
| and money. The moment the marginal efficiency of capital falls
| below interest paid on money(=capital is cheap), capital is
| abandoned in favor of money. My entire stance is based around
| the concept of lowering the interest rate all the way down to
| the marginal efficiency of capital.
|
| For example, during the great depression people couldn't afford
| food due to a lack of jobs, at the same time farmers did not
| harvest their crops because it was unprofitable, they let them
| rot on the field:
| http://exhibits.lib.usu.edu/exhibits/show/foodwaste/timeline...
|
| A lot of military spending is simply motivated in using that
| cheap capital for _something_. After all, the military will
| give you a job and make your country "great" again. At worst
| you get to plunder a country which is highly profitable because
| you didn't have to create all that value yourself.
|
| What boggles my mind however, is the fact that we have this
| climate change thing. If you want to keep this farce up, just
| invest in green tech. It's just a matter of changing the tax
| code. Excess energy/capital can be used for capturing CO2.
| [deleted]
| aisengard wrote:
| > So a crisis was invented.
|
| Are you saying that the millions upon millions who died (not to
| mention the untold millions who are suffering long-term health
| problems), didn't actually die? Or that what they died from (a
| highly contagious and infectious novel virus) was engineered?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| It's a proven fact that COVID was bio-engineered, is it not?
| [deleted]
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| A piddling price to pay to regain control of the proles.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The crisis that was invented is the perception that it was
| government stimulus that caused the inflation. The pretension
| that millions of deaths didn't cause the economic problems,
| it was the stimulus that caused the economic problems.
| mellavora wrote:
| I like your framework, but I do question your dismissal of raw
| materials.
|
| The 'green revolution' broke a barrier in our ability to grow
| food (amount per acre), but it isn't clear if that increase can
| be sustained for the next 100 years-- the massive amounts of
| chemicals we put on the land are killing the soil.
|
| That's before we get to climate-change threats to food
| production.
|
| Or species diversity threats to food production.
|
| Or the elimination of 80% of insect biomass in developed
| countries, with concordant impact on food production.
| imtringued wrote:
| There is this agrotech thing called no till farming and
| combined with proper crop rotation and carefully selected
| cover crops and soil management your soil will improve every
| single year instead of degrading.
|
| I have seen a lot of hackernews comments that think they can
| just chemically or genetically engineer their way out of
| this. Just spray compound X and Y on crop Z and you are ready
| to go. It may look technologically impressive but that is
| actually the lazy solution.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We could easily grow a lot more food in less space if we had
| to. To give an extreme example: greenhouses grow about 1000x
| as much food per acre as conventional farming does, but the
| resulting food costs about 10x as much.
|
| We use all our land to grow food not because we have to, but
| because that's the cheapest way of doing so. We could grow
| food more intensively, but then the price of food would go
| up.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| If the democracy is actually working and elections not fortified,
| why do so many US politicians predate the collapse of the Soviet
| Union. Things seem like they are falling apart because these
| people have been holding on to power for generations.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| I've had some thoughts lately that these issues are closely
| linked with physical borders.
|
| In the old days, people with similar ideals would gather in
| physical proximity. Eventually, their common values would form
| nations.
|
| In today's world, it is trivial to find people who share similar
| values - but they might be on the opposite side of the world.
|
| We are doing nation building in a virtual space, but we are
| unable to realize them because we reside within physical borders
| that we did not draw, cannot change, with mismatched governance.
|
| The values of everyone around us have changed - and we are stuck
| in some type of twisted hell of a prison where we can't escape
| those we don't share values with. Your neighbours are now on the
| Internet. Some of those people might be your physical neighbour,
| but many aren't.
| quesera wrote:
| > In the old days, people with similar ideals would gather in
| physical proximity. Eventually, their common values would form
| nations.
|
| I can't think of any nation in history which was formed by such
| a rational and reasonable process, but I'd love to be informed
| otherwise.
|
| In my estimation, nations were formed by force, usually by
| individuals with a functional balance of ruthlessness and
| charisma. Sometimes by confederations of people with the same
| qualities.
| phoehne wrote:
| With 500+ comments I doubt anyone will read this - and please
| don't - but "it happened before and we survived, so it's going to
| be okay" doesn't really resonate with me. We survived perhaps the
| bloodiest period of European history, where people set about to
| exterminate each other based on religion. Catholics in England
| weren't really given their full rights back until after the
| 1920s. And the schism in Christianity was like the Tower of
| Babel. So I'm not any more sanguine about the future after a the
| author brings up what became about 300 to 400 years of very
| bloody and repressive sectarian violence as a ... as a way to say
| it's going to be okay? Holy shit! If it's anything like the
| protestant-catholic sectarian fighting in Europe, it's going to
| be hell.
| antisinguIarity wrote:
| Possibly. History may remember our response to Covid as the last
| great and destructive folly of a dying civilisation.
| pphysch wrote:
| Modern America is thoroughly a product of capitalism -- the
| belief that economic growth is a) the solution to all problems
| and b) easy to achieve (just deregulate and let the market figure
| things out!)
|
| Neither of those are true anymore. So yeah, things are falling
| apart because their foundation is rotten.
| tehchromic wrote:
| what is collapsing is the planetary ecosystem, thanks to
| industrial practice. Especially in North America suburban sprawl
| and industrial agriculture and waste have eaten into and degraded
| what was very recent a deep well of ecological wealth. I would
| call this a major impact on the American culture which built it's
| identity around that seemingly boundless wilderness, and as well
| our basic human psyche and culture for which (many argue)
| proximity to deep ecological process is a fundamental need.
|
| The consumer culture and consequent wealth of things, especially
| images and meditated simulcra, really only echo the naive
| American soul in a wasteland of it's own making. All cultural
| realities are fundamentally ecological. We fill our lives with
| artificial realities so liberally because we are born into a
| culture that took massive wealth of natural resources and the
| experiences they provide for granted. As they vanish, we fill the
| gap with artificial things and experiences.
|
| It's a dangerous game with potentially grave and unexpected
| consequences, and we have played it before many times on a much
| smaller scale: hunting food sources to extinction, turning rich
| farmland into desert, etc.
|
| It seems that the collective human psyche it's unable to reflect
| accurately on the consequences of it's own actions with respect
| to our fundamental biogenic foundation.
|
| Take for example the flooding of our nights with artificial blue
| spectrum light pollution. In evolutionary terms, this is a new
| event. For billions of years nights have been uniformly mostly
| dark with a regularly variating moon glow. Suddenly we change all
| that and dark nights are a thing of the past. Nevermind the
| massive affect on a whole ecosystems, nevermind studies that show
| a severe affect on the human psychological health, status quo
| says lighting up the night is normal, good, and safe.
|
| And there are shootings at schools and terrible crime and massive
| loss of insect life and songbirds dying off and these quite
| extraordinary changes to the continuity of our bio systems and
| our lifestyles, and yet we don't see the connection. We blame the
| media or Donald Trump or the 1%. We don't see the problem as
| something we have direct control over. We blame our institutions
| or leaders or gods or what have you, anything but ourselves, and
| anything to avoid changing our lifestyles and behaviors.
|
| So imo things really are falling apart, just not the things we
| think.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| America is having a Pluto return. Traditionally this is a period
| of time when nations are dissolved or at minimum completely
| transformed in their nature.
|
| It's currently turning retrograde and will scrape back across the
| US natal Pluto on July 12th, and will be conjunct again December
| 28th for the beginning of its next 246 year cycle. If it matters
| by that point.
| schroeding wrote:
| Are those english idioms? Or do you mean the actual planet,
| it's position in orbit, in a astrological way?
| pjmorris wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment that 'it's always been like this.'
|
| That said, I am of the view that the mindset of optimizing for
| efficiency and the tools we've acquired over the last 50-100
| years for doing so may, in addition to the benefits, have
| unintended consequences on a large scale. A couple of examples;
| in yesterday's discussion of nurses want to leave the profession,
| it was observed that the buyers of EMRs are optimizing for
| different things than the nurses that use them, to the detriment
| of nurses and patients. And, Boeing's products may be less safe
| now that it is optimized for capital rather than engineering.
|
| To vastly oversimplify, it seems to me that optimizing for
| efficiency will eventually remove all margin for error, and so
| errors will be more frequent. The larger the span of influence of
| the optimization, the more these errors will accumulate in all
| kinds of places and all kinds of ways. So, my running joke is
| that the spreadsheet may be the death of Western civilization,
| and it remains less funny to me as time goes on.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > To vastly oversimplify, it seems to me that optimizing for
| efficiency will eventually remove all margin for error, and so
| errors will be more frequent. The larger the span of influence
| of the optimization, the more these errors will accumulate in
| all kinds of places and all kinds of ways. So, my running joke
| is that the spreadsheet may be the death of Western
| civilization, and it remains less funny to me as time goes on.
|
| That may be a problem that can be addressed though. Neglecting
| resilience to over-optimize for efficiency seems like it's
| symptom of _stability_. People, as a whole, seem to lack the
| wisdom to not fool themselves that they can ignore long term
| risks while the short term is good, especially when we 're
| talking about spans greater than generation.
|
| However, a lot of that stability is getting disrupted right
| now: the pandemic, a big land war in Europe, supply chains are
| fucked, etc. The war especially has blown up a lot of naive
| assumptions that had been taken for granted until a couple
| months ago. I think here's a decent chance that for the next
| few decades, Western civilization will value resilience far
| more than it has over the last few.
| captainbland wrote:
| Well if Malthusian scientists are to be believed then we only
| really have another couple of decades at best before the global
| population level causes society to collapse. So you could
| interpret recent events to be the first warning signs of that.
|
| Personally I remain unconvinced of that, though. Or at least, it
| seems to me that humans have the unique benefit of being able to
| problem solve their way out of the issues related to population
| growth, at least for a while. We don't have to be gazelles
| grazing themselves to death or to act merely on selfish instinct.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Somehow we are simultaneously doomed because of both too little
| and too much population growth
| captainbland wrote:
| I think that's actually less contradictory than it sounds. In
| one case you're doomed in the way where too big a population
| uses too many resources leading to a crash. In the other case
| what you're actually doomed by is a historical population
| boom that requires a large younger population under it to
| sustain it, and in the absence of new young people, maybe
| that older generation cannot be sustained, potentially
| leading to catastrophe.
|
| In fact I'm pretty sure there's a potential middle ground
| with large enough historical population boom where both of
| these issues could hypothetically be realised
| simultaneously...
|
| But, you know I think we should really focus on just making
| agriculture and energy production more efficient/cleaner,
| reducing waste and making care work a decent living or
| something.
| cosmic_shame wrote:
| Nobody said that threading the needle was easy.
| ajross wrote:
| ianbutler wrote:
| I'd like to see numbers backing it up either way. I'm center
| left leaning and I largely distrust journalism these days. I
| don't consistently read any news source and assume
| appropriately relevant and significant information will filter
| it's way to me from my network. It's worked well so far and
| I've managed to keep my biases moderate. It also let's me more
| easily filter out bs since I'm not consistently immersed in it.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm very center, perhaps slightly left. But aside
| from Rachel Maddow, I don't trust what I hear.
| drugstorecowboy wrote:
| "Slightly Left" but the only journalist you trust is Rachel
| Maddow? That is a very interesting take, I have never heard
| Maddow described as anything remotely resembling slightly
| left, only as a caricature of the extreme left.
| jen20 wrote:
| Every time I read one of these threads I'm reminded that
| the American "far" Left is broadly equivalent to the
| European centre-right.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's pretty funny. On many topics, the whole spectrum
| of acceptable political thought has been compressed in
| the US (and much of the west) so that you're either a
| little bit pro-business ("extreme left") or very pro
| business ("extreme right"); a little bit pro military
| ("extreme left") or very pro military ("extreme right").
| Radical ideas are allowed to exist only as long as they
| don't stop the flow of money. Hence the current focus on
| culture war over anything else.
| lukeholder wrote:
| >But aside from Rachel Maddow
|
| Ha, is that a joke? One person?
| RubberMullet wrote:
| What would you consider good journalism these days? And is the
| right wing news industry bigger or smaller than the left wing
| side of things?
| kergonath wrote:
| There isn't much of a lobby on the radical left that can
| compete with the Murdoch empire. Yeah, you can pick some
| communist newspaper with strange views, but nothing close to
| Fox in the US or the Mail or the Daily Express in the UK.
| ajross wrote:
| I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't
| that much of an argument. "Mainstream media" makes mistakes.
| It has perspectives that leak through into interpretation. It
| has blindspots in coverage. But mainstream journalists almost
| to a fault genuinely view their job as bringing important
| facts to their audience, and they care about getting things
| right. That's just not true of the partisan press on the
| right, and you know it as well as I do. Let's actually
| measure:
|
| Here are the biggest three headlines I see at nytimes.com
| right now: "West's Resolve to Block Russia
| Grows Amid Fears of a Protracted War" "Likelihood of
| Trump Indictment in Manhattan Fades as Grand Jury Wraps Up"
| "Piles of Garbage, No Showers: What Lockdown in China Looks
| Like"
|
| All seem eminently plausible, reasonably descriptive of the
| content in the article, and (except arguably the China
| article) not written from an argumentative perspective. I'd
| happily read any three of these articles and "trust" their
| content (I did read the Ukraine one).
|
| Here are the three biggest headlines at foxnews.com, fetched
| within a few seconds of the list above:
| "President Biden's close relationship with Hunter associate
| who led company with China ties exposed" "Liberals lose
| it after Elon Musk's tweets about the Democratic Party"
| "GOP rep grills Biden's secretary of state over Ukraine
| 'lies'"
|
| Every single one is written from a decidedly partisan
| perspective. One contains a value judgement ("lose it"), one
| uses deceptive quotes to be able to call something a "lie"
| without evidence (someone else called it a lie, Fox
| technically didn't), the other is a guilt by association
| fallacy.
|
| I don't trust a single one of those things to give me the
| whole story, and I'd be shocked if even partisan republicans
| did. If I want to know what's "really" happening on any of
| those issues I know a-priori that I need to find more
| sources, because this one isn't giving me the whole truth.
| Giving you the whole truth, essentially, isn't what Fox views
| as its "job" in the same way that the Times does.
| RubberMullet wrote:
| >But mainstream journalists almost to a fault genuinely
| view their job as bringing important facts to their
| audience, and they care about getting things right.
|
| What you call "mainstream media" I call "corporate media".
| And some journalists may feel that way however clicks,
| eyeballs, and stickiness take priority over their views.
| There's too much competition for traditional media outlets
| to survive without adopting techniques that were once
| unthinkable. Corrections are rarely issued these days and
| edits are done in an almost stealthy manner. I had to stop
| following the Twitter accounts that tracked these changes
| because it became an endless stream of tweets.
|
| The days of Tim Russert, David Broder, Jim Lehrer, Ted
| Koppel etc. are long gone. I would consider Matt Taibbi[1]
| one of the last journalists that followed in their
| footsteps but he is definitely not corporate and barely
| mainstream. Taibbi left Rolling Stone and uses Substack
| which has been attacked by the NYT, and others, as alt-
| right and misinformation which I find ironic coming from
| the paper that published Judith Miller's WMDs propaganda.
| Even Jason Calacanis referred to Taibbi as a "right guy" on
| one of the recent All-In podcasts even though Matt is an
| ardent Sanders supporter. The Blob doesn't like it when you
| don't toe the line.
|
| Corporate media is dead to me even though the vast majority
| of it is "Left".
|
| >I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't
| that much of an argument.
|
| Really? I don't watch Fox News or any corporate media and
| you assumed I did. You might be shocked to learn that I
| worked in the Clinton administration and voted for Obama!
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlHnhnmB1A
| ajross wrote:
| I don't understand the bit about Taibbi. While he has
| some background as a general journalist, the
| _overwhelming_ majority of what he writes these days is
| opinion work. More or less by definition, he has a
| perspective that colors his interpretation, and he wants
| to convince you that he 's right.
|
| When you say you "trust" a broad news organization I
| generally expect you mean that you take what they report
| to be a reasonable representation of the truth and that
| they aren't hiding things from you or otherwise spinning
| the interpreation.
|
| When you say you "trust" an opinion journalist, really
| all you mean is that you agree with them[1]. Taibbi
| doesn't give you the whole story on anything! He gives
| you his perspective. This is what he wrote yesterday, for
| example: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/savor-the-great-
| musk-panic?s=r Now, sure, you might agree with that take.
| But you wouldn't hand this to your grandpa if he asked
| what all this stuff he was hearing about The Twitter was
| about.
|
| [1] Personally I find that brand of anti-anti-right
| leftist journalism really tiring. Taibbi takes shots
| against the center left that draw eyeballs from people
| who want to see those libs suffer and in broad service to
| entities (yes, including the Russian government) that
| oppose them. I can't think of the last time I saw him
| write about a problem that I, personally, would like to
| see solved. Instead he writes about the other problems
| (some of them legitimate) with people who are trying to
| solve the problems I do care about. Where is Taibbi on
| climate regulation? Where is Taibbi on income inequality?
| Where is Taibbi on police violence? Where is Taibbi on
| increasingly criminalized women's health care? Damned if
| I know either. But I know where he stands when the libs
| are upset about Twitter!
| swearwolf wrote:
| A lot of people on the left (socialists, not Democrats) are
| also very distrustful of the media and Silicon Valley.
| mojzu wrote:
| Generally for different reasons though in my (anecdotal)
| experience
|
| The left thinks silicon valley/social media has taken too
| light of a touch dealing with hate speech, racism, conspiracy
| theories, etc. and has enabled more radical/loony/violent
| people to increase their reach and support
|
| The right thinks silicon valley/social media has been taking
| moderation too far and that their speech is being censored or
| their audience artificially limited to prevent them from
| reaching more people
|
| These statements are probably a bit too generalised, but it
| does remind me of how many people in the UK see the BBC (the
| left says it's too conservative, the right say it's too
| liberal)
| kergonath wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to be distrustful of "Silicon
| Valley". No need for conspiracy theories, and being afraid of
| e.g. Facebook or Twitter is not necessarily irrational.
|
| Media are a bit complicated. I feel a couple of militant
| outlet have managed to poison the pool by putting in our
| collective consciousness something like "yeah, we are biased,
| but all media are biased and we admit it, therefore we are
| more honest than the others". That is very worrying as well.
| ilaksh wrote:
| My take is that people and technology are part of the same system
| and the details of technology and how it is deployed really do
| matter.
|
| Also I strongly recommend another Haidt book called "The
| Righteous Mind".
| kkfx wrote:
| Our society is in a big change phase so anything need to fall
| apart while the new emerge. So far we see the decline, still too
| early to see the new.
|
| Beware a thing: while things changes, an old model disappear a
| new one is gestating human needs do not change that much in
| fundamental terms. Our eating, sleeping and sexual needs are
| still the same. So not "all" fall apart but something at a time,
| something will remain, something grow, something change,
| something disappear etc.
|
| We have electrical lights since "much" time, but we still have
| stearic candles on sale. In the past they was a big industry, now
| is marginal, but it's still there. Civil construction techniques
| have changed much, but we still have the concept of construction
| companies. Dress have changed much, but not that much. We still
| have pants, skirts, jackets, hats in new shapes, different
| tissues but essentially the same since hundreds of years.
|
| What's really falling apart is the present paradigm, the economy-
| centric society of neoliberal capitalism that it's about to
| overthought itself to remain in power.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that the Industrial world wanted alot
| of people, and the post Industrial world does not. Not only in
| terms of production, but in terms of having a livable environment
| for everyone.
|
| So what happens to what are now "excess" people? The answer to
| that question is gonna define pretty much everything.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| This is dangerous bs. Easy to swallow for the uneducated
| masses.
|
| Putting all moral consideration aside, imagine you could
| totally depopulate two continents of your choosing. Why should
| any problem of modern economics be solved by that?
|
| The concept of depopulation is simple enough to fit in a single
| sentence, it leaves out the real problem and its vast
| complexity (our linear economies and lifestyles attached to
| it), conveniently some one else is to blame and with all that,
| it is compatible to xenophobia. It ticks all boxes.
|
| Of course, no problem would be fixed, the only thing you would
| buy with depopulation is time. The real problem is our
| unsustainable system, which is independent from any population
| count.
|
| >We are too many people for what?
|
| Is the question you fail to ask and answer. And going further
| this path of stupidly easy enemy stereotypes leads to all the
| societal atrocities you may have heard of.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| > The real problem is our unsustainable system, which is
| independent from any population count
|
| I mean it's just science that the planet can only sustain X
| people at Y life style (you can swap out "life style" for
| "level of consumption"). Like there is hard rules of physics
| about quantity of water, minerals, et cetra. So you can
| either lower X, lower Y, or try to side step the problem
| entirely by going to other planets/mine asteroids/magic to
| increase the resource pool.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| A system is either sustainable or not, this is independent
| of population.
|
| The sustainable level of consumption is dependent on
| population.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| What?
|
| A glass can hold X amount of water. You add X plus 1 and
| water spills out. "Guess the glass couldn't sustain X
| water!" is what you are claiming?
|
| Systems can only be sustained within certain parameters.
| There is no magical system that is always sustainable
| regardless of parameters. But it sounds like we are
| saying basically the same thing in any case.
|
| Consumption can go down and more population can be
| supported. Or consumption can continue at current levels
| but population will have to go down. (and that level it
| would have to go down might be truly horrific)
| infamouscow wrote:
| I believe the term you're looking for is "useless eaters".
| rank0 wrote:
| We can't sustain our current levels of spending without a
| growing population. The lions share of American spending goes
| to social services: social security, Medicare, Medicaid.
|
| If you're referencing to automation taking over...I fully agree
| with your point. It seems like half the people around me have
| made up jobs.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The elites that control everything dont really care about
| social security, medicare, medicaid.
|
| Automation can make all the things they would want. Why do
| they need you around again? Especially when having you around
| creates pollution that makes things worse for them....
| rank0 wrote:
| Because if shit gets bad enough for the general population,
| they go after the elites in full force.
|
| This is why we have constant revolution throughout human
| history.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Whats scary to me is that before the elites needed other
| non elites to be bodyguards/administrators/army/muscle
| for them to help avoid that, and they at least had to
| trickle down to their henchmen to keep in power. What
| happens when they have automation for that?
| rank0 wrote:
| Honestly good point idk. I like to think that a fully
| self sustaining autonomous defense system will never
| exist
| temporallobe wrote:
| No, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to obtain our status as
| a nearly Type I civilization (we are currently 0.73 on the
| Kardashev scale).
|
| But we do have a lot of what some describe as _sludge_. For
| example, in the USA, with the awful state of healthcare, where
| even with a good job and "good" benefits and being in the so-
| called 1%, it can be a struggle to obtain certain kinds of
| medication, and insurance companies will absolutely fuck with you
| to avoid paying, giving patients the runaround and making them
| waste hours and days in endless phone call black holes until you
| give up. Doctor's offices and hospitals will and do double- and
| even triple-bill you, then bully you into paying by sending you
| to collections. God forbid you should get a catastrophic illness.
| There are so many similar and related examples that we could have
| entire threads about. There was a book recently written about
| this but I cannot find it right now...will update when I do.
|
| There certainly is the sense that we are losing a lot in terms of
| core values, especially as technology evolves (we seem to be
| resembling the movie _Idiocracy_ more and more), but this has
| also been the case with other, now fallen civilizations. The
| ancient Greeks thought that books /the written word would bring
| about the destruction of their society because people would lose
| their ability to use their memories.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Daily reminder: the comedy of man survives the tragedy of man.
| nostromo wrote:
| We need to return to federalism and bring an end to activist
| politicians. ( _Good luck with that_ , I know...)
|
| The reason the American Experiment has worked so well for a few
| centuries is because we knew how to leave each other alone. If
| I'm in New York City, it's really none of my business what's
| happening in Albany, let alone Albuquerque New Mexico, so long as
| some basic standards of universal liberty are upheld.
|
| Today that's all out the window. Activists for every issue want
| every issue solved at the federal level. Well, the problem with
| that is the US is a big country and the federal government should
| do the bare minimum, not the maximum. Both parties have
| completely forgotten this and it's really heightened tensions.
| [deleted]
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| If you are a resident of NYC, what is happening in Albany (the
| capital of the state) certainly affects you.
|
| If you are a resident of New York, some of your Federal tax
| dollars[1] are going to New Mexico. Why would what they are
| doing with your money not be your business?
|
| [1] https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-
| federal...
| gedy wrote:
| Maybe that's their point - do more at state level vs so much
| tax money & power at the federal.
| boh wrote:
| Things collapsing has been a predominant sentiment in every
| modern generation. It's unprecedented because of our collective
| amnesia, that regards the familiar as a stable starting point
| rather than a random moment in a volatile reality.
|
| Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its
| conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the
| mid-twentieth century when industry concentration, Cold War
| ethics and regulation collectively reworked its incentives. The
| education system has always been in a position of scrutiny since
| universal education become the norm. Presidents have been the
| stuff of tabloid gossip since the founding fathers with the media
| mercilessly opting to promote scandal and controversy over
| respectability. Our conception of President as moral arbiter is a
| function of the reworking of journalism mentioned above.
|
| The difference in peoples attitudes reflects an increased diet of
| emotion inducing media that accelerates fears and expectations,
| rather than some great pivot in volatility. Yes there are things
| to worry about but there always are (let's remember the twentieth
| century had two world wars, the Great Depression, and an even
| worse pandemic).
| deltarholamda wrote:
| All fair points. The change, as I see it, is the speed at which
| information flows. The old saying about how a lie can circle
| the world before the truth gets its trousers on applies. Only
| now, the lie can travel at the speed of light.
|
| Narratives have a very strong early-mover bias.
|
| The OPs point about things starting to crack in the Obama years
| rings true. For all of his positive points, there is nothing in
| Obama's resume that suggests he was qualified to be President.
| He was the first President to be memed into office. The press
| loved to talk about how adept the campaign was in utilizing the
| Internet to mobilize and motivate supporters.
|
| Everybody took notice, and now the narrative battle happens
| online, at Internet speeds. This is a terrible, terrible idea.
| Unless you're some kind of otherworldly genius, taking in all
| of the input and coming to a rational opinion weighing all the
| pros and cons is impossible. So, like a black-box AI algorithm,
| people come up with opinions based on odd things like who has a
| more insulting neologism for their opponent, or whatever.
|
| The "collective amnesia" you mention also occurs at Internet
| speeds. What was major news on Tuesday is fishwrap by Thursday,
| replaced with something else. There's no value in revisiting
| it, so whatever narrative gets entrenched is it.
|
| I don't think there's a solution for any of this, short of a
| CME wiping out everything more technological than a shovel.
| papito wrote:
| With all due respect, this is not some in-the-moment
| emotionally-colored thing. Months after America has almost lost
| its democracy for good, we are just now finding out that we
| were extremely lucky that it all worked out this time.
|
| So, no, it's not just an old man opening a paper in the morning
| and claiming that "this country is going to hell". That's not
| new. THIS is.
|
| I am genuinely surprised by this take on HN, which is very
| common. Any serious historian will tell you that _this is not
| normal_.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Sources/reading?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, the 60s was far, far, far more disillusioned than this.
| boh wrote:
| The idea of mass disillusionment is pretty academic. If we
| just think about it for a moment, it's very hard to argue
| that there was some cohesive, clearly articulated illusion
| that was shared by everyone regardless of demographic, and it
| was somehow lost.
|
| The narrative of mass disillusionment is more based on the
| limits of a historical narrative that must broadly categorize
| a mass of people as having a unified reaction for the sake of
| a simplified historical account.
|
| Disillusionment is a persistent experience for people as they
| grow up. The idea that one period was "more" disillusioned
| than another isn't a real phenomenon.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I disagree with your core point entirely.
|
| Humanity is largely self-grouped by culture. Cultures
| fundamentally share mythologies, both about themselves and
| about other cultures, be they rival or friendly.
|
| What we experienced in the '60s and are experiencing right
| now is a dissolution of the predominant self-mythology in
| American culture, which was temporarily boosted to a high
| degree of uniformity first by the advent of mass media,
| then again by 9/11. That's what's causing the culture war
| we're all entrenched in, willing or not. American self-
| mythology is in a period of redefining itself.
|
| As cultural collapses go, mass media (the internet
| included) has caused these unprecedented waves of
| disillusionment happening at lightning speed compared to
| how they happened in the past. Historically it took massive
| famines to cause the degree of social unrest that modern
| war photos and videos can incite (as in the Vietnam era).
|
| The speed of communication is unprecedented; as a result,
| so is the severity of this age-old issue.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| That may have been the case among the young (coincidentally
| the boomers). But it would be difficult to make the case that
| a significant percentage of people over 30 were disillusioned
| in that era.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Everything that happened to a Baby Boomer was the most
| extreme ever. All other generations before Baby Boomers and
| since the Baby Boomers have had an easier time than the Baby
| Boomers. Their experiences are the Alpha and the Omega of
| human experience. When they die, the universe probably will
| cease to exist.
| groby_b wrote:
| That, frankly, would be a small price to pay to stop
| hearing arguments about specialness of that generation.
| elefanten wrote:
| I've never heard an argument about the "specialness" of
| that generation?
|
| I've only heard the relentless shit all the younger
| generations started talking about Boomers at some point.
|
| Which always came as a surprise to me... If we're going
| to generalize about people based on generation (bad idea,
| but...)-- I conclude that every generation since the
| Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent, in
| aggregate, than the generation before it. Definitely in
| the West, but I suspect everywhere. And no, I'm not a
| Boomer, I'm one of the younger ones.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >I've only heard the relentless shit all the younger
| generations started talking about Boomers at some point.
|
| Counterreaction, a lot of voices claiming to speak for
| boomers, or boomers themselves, have done plenty to claim
| "it's just young people messing up". Despite the obvious
| that they have been the majority voter base for decades,
| have more wealth as a collective, and because of their
| age and wealth, tend to have different incentives and
| opinions than the younger generations having problems to
| do something as simple as getting a foothold in adult
| life.
|
| NB: the obvious problem isn't "boomer / old", but the
| nature of the social game as it is (relatively or
| perceived zero-sum) and the haves voting against the have
| nots.
|
| >I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has
| been linearly weaker and less competent
|
| Weaker and less competent _how_? I assure you, for every
| argument you 'll find, you can find another argument
| which would flip the script.
| bombcar wrote:
| It doesn't help that "boomer" now apparently means
| "anyone older than me" and "millennial" "anyone younger
| than me.
|
| And I've been called both in the same day.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| ... arguments which are nothing like the ones made on
| behalf of, say, "The Greatest Generation" that
| immediately preceded Boomers.
| Adraghast wrote:
| It's apropos you forgot the Silent Generation between
| them!
| crocwrestler wrote:
| Well, they did have domestic terrorist groups going around
| setting off bombs on the regular in the 60s and 70s. I was
| quite surprised to read about it.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-
| Revol...
| uoaei wrote:
| The only interpretation of this vs the parent comment is
| that you are insinuating this is somehow extreme and
| unprecedented. Surely it is not.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| "In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972
| the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American
| soil, almost five a day."
|
| -- https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
|
| That was extreme and unprecedented for America.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And going back further there was even more of that going
| on during the labor wars of the late 19th century into
| the 1920s.
| bombcar wrote:
| Wodehose refers to bearded bounders with bombs as it was
| a pretty common occurrence in the early 1900s - enough so
| that jokes could be made from it.
|
| We've had it comparatively calm and so bombs get noticed.
| bsenftner wrote:
| And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are
| now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing
| these divisions ever wider. They are the institutions and
| they do not trust themselves, as is clear via the leadership
| stalemate and both parties destroying their best hopes in
| favor of the crumbling and ever more distant wealthy status
| quo.
| Clubber wrote:
| >And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are
| now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is
| pushing these divisions ever wider.
|
| Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a
| single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men,"
| or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers
| weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd
| think they were. Many boomers hated hippies. So which
| boomers are creating these divisions? The hippies or the
| non-hippies?
|
| >their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions
| ever wider.
|
| This would be much more targeted (and accurate) if you said
| the current generation of politicians. Last time I checked,
| I've mostly only had two bad choices for president since
| I've been voting. The third choice was, "throwing away my
| vote." Guess who came up with that one? The politicians.
| When you blame a generation of people, you don't blame the
| people who actually have the power to make the decisions
| affecting our lives.
| sleepdreamy wrote:
| Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think
| boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to
| Millennials, Gen X, etc;
|
| I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most
| benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your
| Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough
| Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing
| Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my
| generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH
| WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset
| when people generalize because it doesn't pertain to me
| as an individual. There is some truth to prejudice
|
| Boomers had an era of prosperity that we will never see
| again. My in-laws purchased their first home in 1971 for
| 60,000. That same home is worth 800,000+
|
| The only reason I can even own a home or compete in my
| late 20's is because I wasn't naive enough to think that
| any degree would pay the bills.
|
| You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and
| pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| What was your in-laws annual income when they bought the
| $60,000 house?
|
| What would be the income of someone today, looking to buy
| the house for $800K?
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Average income in 1960 (as an example year since it
| wasn't listed) $6000 or 10% of that house.
|
| Average income in 2021 $65,000, well short of the $80,000
| to equal 10% of the house. Also, there has been a large
| increase in other expenses. Most households had a single
| earner, leaving another adult to generally raise
| children. That's much rarer today. Two car households,
| higher utility bills, etc... The evidence is pretty clear
| that money doesn't go as far today.
| Clubber wrote:
| $10K in 1971, so 1/6th of the house. I suspect the people
| in this example made well more than that because buying a
| home at 6x income is not very responsible. That kinda
| skews the results because if you buy a home in an already
| well off neighborhood, I suspect the chances of it
| increasing in value are much better because the
| neighborhood has already proven to be valuable.
|
| https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1972/demo/p60
| -85...
|
| The boom in housing prices is also a temporary anomaly.
| That's only half the reason young people can't afford
| them. The other half is NAFTA and globalization and trade
| agreements, etc. Those were all done by politicians for
| corporations. It's easy to blame Boomers because you read
| an article that did that very thing (it's common in news
| to stir cross generational resentment). It also lets the
| politicians off the hook. Remember that next time they
| say the presidential candidate of whatever party you
| prefer will actually help you. Unless you are a
| corporation, that's unlikely.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a
| clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc;
|
| Baby boom generation started in what, 1946?
|
| In 1946 almost half the houses in the US didn't have full
| indoor plumbing. That's some era of prosperity to be born
| into.
|
| I'm not of that generation, but my parents were. My mom
| and her brother were driving tractors and operating other
| heavy machinery on a farm when they were still in
| elementary school. That was how a large part of the baby
| boomers grew up.
|
| You kids have no idea. Now get off my lawn.
| Clubber wrote:
| >You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and
| pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is.
|
| And what mechanism did they use to do this exactly?
|
| >I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with
| generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge
| percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to
| 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't
| get upset when people generalize because it doesn't
| pertain to me as an individual. There is some truth to
| prejudice
|
| Its an unwillingness to understand the predicament or
| situation and just blaming it on a group of people. It's
| pretty common throughout history; a weapon wielded by the
| powerful.
|
| >I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most
| benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your
| Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did.
|
| I'm not a Boomer.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Housing in almost all the west is a huge rent extraction
| scheme made possible by politicians catering to boomers
| and run by boomer savings allocated in real state +
| NIMBYism from boomers that prevent the market to adjust.
| bombcar wrote:
| Boomers created CALIFORNIA and drive everyone into the
| same cities.
|
| All hail the powerful boomers.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > And what mechanism did they use to do this exactly?
|
| NIMBYism making it difficult to build enough housing for
| everyone and inflating housing costs, for example.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jjav wrote:
| > And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's
| are now in charge
|
| No, "they" are not. The few people in the inner political
| circles of that generation are in charge, same as every
| other time in history. The normal hardworking people are
| never in charge.
|
| I remember when in middle school (Gen X here) I thought
| when our youth generation grows up and gets to be in charge
| the world will be better, because everyone I knew in school
| and out was so reasonable and so nice. Surely none of these
| people will be the corrupt politicians of tomorrow?
|
| And turns out they(we)'re not the corrupt politicians of
| today. Because none of those regular kids of then are in
| charge. Who is? The children and grandchildren of the
| corrupt politicians of back then, groomed from childhood to
| be the corrupt politicians of today. They weren't in our
| middle class school of course, so never met any of them.
|
| How to break that cycle? Ideally by voting for people not
| affiliated with the dominant two parties, but the system is
| rigged against that succeeding, so I don't know.
| imtringued wrote:
| Introduce sortition or citizen's assemblies.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its
| conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the
| mid-twentieth century
|
| And it wasn't just journalism. After WWII many veterans took
| advantage of the free education offered by the GI Bill. That
| gave us a lot of highly educated people (with no student loan
| debt to worry about!) who then went on to use that education to
| improve things. Couple this with the recent memory of fascism
| in Europe and The Civil Rights movement and we had sort of a
| golden era. We were able to live off the fumes of that era
| until right around the end of the 20th century. You could say
| that in a sense things are just returning back to a more normal
| state of affairs and this seems painful because many of us
| lived through an era that was unusually good.
| treis wrote:
| I always wonder about people that post things so divorced
| from reality. We have five times as many college grads today
| as we did in 1960:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-
| attai...
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| It isn't obvious from your link... what % of current grads
| are "business majors" who don't really know anything other
| than how to be greedy and justify it with fancy PowerPoint
| slide decks?
|
| The number of grads may have gone way up, but I think the
| education itself had slid down the slippery slope to create
| too many administrators and bureaucrats.
| noplsbecivil wrote:
| "don't really know anything other than how to be greedy"
| - this is a pretty bad faith take, and also simply not
| true. In the US at least, business grads typically take
| accounting courses, marketing courses, even statistics
| courses. All of those skills lead to jobs that can
| provide both societal and economic value.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| My personal experience says otherwise, but I'll concede
| that accounting does have value.
|
| Marketing? Well, we can disagree there -- to me marketing
| is making a science out of "parting fools with their
| money", so to speak. It's always felt fundamentally
| dishonest and a little dirty. But again, thats me and I
| am definitely biased.
| relaxing wrote:
| You're right that the business major has metastasized,
| while the education major has shrunk.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310114739/w
| hat...
| relaxing wrote:
| But the claim wasnt that there aren't more college grads
| now, and there's no need for the ad hominem first sentence.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I added the clause: "With no student loan debt to worry
| about!" above. That's an important aspect, I think. They
| could afford to get degrees in subjects that may not have
| paid all that well (teaching, for example) where as now
| people have to consider how they're going to pay back that
| debt and choose degrees in fields that will enable them to
| do so.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > They could afford to get degrees in subjects that may
| not have paid all that well (teaching, for example)
|
| I also wonder how much of that growth is from high school
| students being told to go to college above all else, and
| how this graduation increase corresponds to enrollment
| and graduation from vocational schools.
|
| I do think your point is the big one: people could go
| into college and come out with knowledge in the so-called
| soft skills, like philosophy or literature (areas that
| don't pay well but are vital for a society to understand
| itself, if nothing else). Why society doesn't value
| teaching and similar jobs as much as it does other
| industries is left as a debate for another time.
| treis wrote:
| Still more debt free graduates today than total graduates
| in the 50s/60s.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Maybe the problem now is we have too many college educated
| people and not enough high paying jobs to offset the cost
| of those people's education costs. Leading to #1 people
| working terrible jobs they were not educated for, #2
| leaving these same people with a huge boulder of student
| loan debt that is hard to be paid off due to #1. Its a
| classic problem of supply and demand. In addition people's
| degree choices do not reflect the markets needs, way too
| many people went into communication/sociology/LA stuff than
| what the market wants which are STEM.
| juanjmanfredi wrote:
| I agree with your first two paragraphs.
|
| To the extent that our present time is at all unique, I
| subscribe to Robert Putnam's thesis that much of what we see
| today can be explained by the drop in social capital in
| American life over the past several decades. Less socialization
| means less trust in other Americans or in the government, fewer
| norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness, and increased
| polarization. There are various reasons for this, television
| being a prominent example. Surprisingly, it seems as though
| these trends were firmly in place well before the internet or
| 24 hour news came along.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > There are various reasons for this, television being a
| prominent example.
|
| I tend to agree with the Putnam thesis, but I don't think you
| can lay this all on television. Until the 80s there were
| really only 3 viable TV/radio networks (CBS, NBC and later,
| ABC). If you watched the nightly news on any of those
| networks you got pretty much the same vision of reality.
| There was more variation in newspapers, but people watched a
| lot of TV in that era and for the most part they shared a
| cohesive vision.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think there is a real danger in just arguing basically
| "things have always been a shit show, empires collapse,
| pandemics rage, etc. etc." for a couple reasons:
|
| 1. While true, lets not ignore the fact that things get
| _really, really, really_ bad during those periods where empires
| do collapse, or environmental damage causes ecosystem collapse,
| etc. etc. I mean, yes, you could argue "Hey, the Black Death
| killed a 3rd of Europe" and be correct, but I'm not sure what
| comfort that's supposed to give. Even if you want to argue that
| the post-war era up until, say, the 80s was an extremely unique
| period of progress and broad-based social advancement, that
| still doesn't make me feel any better if we're now in a
| "reversion to the mean."
|
| 2. Advanced technology _does_ make "things collapsing"
| potentially much more catastrophic than in generations past.
| I'm not just talking about things like nuclear war, but things
| like the _speed_ with which modern social media (and regular
| media) can pit people against each other is very different
| than, say, the yellow journalism periods of decades past.
| boh wrote:
| Contextualizing the present with the past is less dangerous
| than feverishly articulating the uniqueness of circumstances.
| It's more helpful to be aware of current events as a
| continuation of past events since it allows a better
| understanding of the present.
|
| As an individual, it doesn't serve you well to exist in a fog
| of worry among perceived threats. Volatility should be
| understood as a common facet of life so you can shape your
| competence to deal with it, rather than assume a static
| environment that demands alarm with every variation.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Why not talk about nuclear war? It's one of several elephants
| in the room. The full collapse of a nuclear super power is
| unprecedented. Who gets the weapons?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My sentence was "I'm not _just_ talking about things like
| nuclear war ". Point being that, yes, the unique dangers of
| nuclear war seem so blatantly obvious that they're not
| likely to be ignored. Contrast that with one of the other
| "elephants in the room" that has the potential to be nearly
| as dangerous, but as these other risks don't involve, on
| the surface, metro-area obliterating fireballs, they are
| easier to downplay.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Well the USSR isn't around anymore and they had quite a few
| nukes so....
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Which is interesting to note since a majority of the
| other weapons the former Soviet Union had made their way
| into several revolutions happening in the Middle East and
| Africa via several well known international arms dealers.
|
| Not sure if it was just operationally unfeasible to move
| something like a ballistic nuclear weapon, but from what
| I can gather, it was one of the few things that wasn't
| sold off en masse after the collapse.
| robonerd wrote:
| The Soviet Union (and America) made hundreds if not
| thousands of tactical nuclear weapons. These were very
| small; you could put many of them into a single standard
| shipping container.
|
| During the 90s there were persistent rumors that some of
| these had been "lost", but as far as I know these rumors
| were never substantiated. If in fact these weapons didn't
| get stolen/sold, we probably have numerous intelligence
| agencies to thank.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| But the nukes are still around. Except Ukraine gave
| theirs up. It's not like they had a choice.
| [deleted]
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think we got lucky with that one. A special set of
| circumstances that are unlikely to repeat.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| We got lucky with that one _so far_.
| roenxi wrote:
| Western thought severely undersells the noble and
| peaceful way the USSR folded up once they couldn't handle
| the economic madness any more.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| They still have them. Even more than pretty much anyone
| else.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| They still have _most of_ them.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| USSR has fully collapsed, and the few years after its
| collapse were almost total anarchy.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| >
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You cut off a chunk of that sentence and changed its
| meaning.
|
| > the post-war era up until, say, the 80s
| Ambolia wrote:
| Furthermore, collapse doesn't happen everywhere the same, nor
| all at once. It's more like things break down slowly, and
| never get fixed rather than explosions on the street, until
| one day you are a third world country.
|
| And third world countries still have very nice neighborhoods,
| and very rich people. But everything around gets much worse.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > collapse doesn't happen everywhere the same, nor all at
| once.
|
| Frankly, I have a "living experience" of a practically
| instantaneous collapse. January 1, 1992. Prices were
| "freed", (hyper)inflation started, people life savings were
| burned to dust, monthly pensions - at once - begin to cover
| just about a week of food (and were not paid until 3 months
| later). Policemen' salaries became meaningless and the
| police - in the whole country - started to look for
| additional ways to feed their families... It all happened
| pretty fast.
|
| So "inflation" is a trigger word for me since. And you can
| imagine unease I am watching the US government printing
| shiploads of money with.
| askonomm wrote:
| USSR? Because if yes, the Baltic countries started having
| an amazing time then (I'm from Estonia).
| Shaddox wrote:
| I hope I am not being too inflammatory by saying this but it's
| ... quite amusing how sheltered Americans are in thinking that a
| little political tension is a danger to their own country.
|
| Bosnia was about to be destroyed and more recently, attempted to
| be divided by neighbors and they're still fine.
|
| Look at anywhere that's not Americas or Western Europe.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| I have never known anyone who lived in Bosnia in the 1980s, but
| I can imagine that the arguments over Yugoslavia's makeup might
| have felt like 'a little political tension' back then.
|
| It's true that the US has a lot going for it. No enemies to its
| north or south, still the largest economy, high levels of
| education, etc. At the same time, standards of living have seen
| a large drop over the last two years. This appears to be
| intensifying the arguments over social issues, and increasing
| incitement to violence. What I see when I look at places that
| are not the Americas or Western Europe is that the peace and
| wealth people take for granted can be lost so easily.
| 300bps wrote:
| _quite amusing how sheltered Americans are in thinking that a
| little political tension is a danger to their own country_
|
| As an American, allow me to be even more inflammatory.
| Americans think that everything is falling apart because we've
| _collectively_ never had a real problem in our life.
|
| The amazing thing is as an American, I can ignore TV, all
| sources of news, fights on Facebook, etc. I've done it for
| years. _Nothing bad happens_. In fact the only effect is that I
| am blissfully unaware of all the minutia that are leading
| people to believe everything is falling apart.
| greenonions wrote:
| As an American, I tend to think we have a sort of permanent
| linguistic hyperinflation. Everything here is always bigger,
| huger. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not.
|
| Part of the strength of the nation, however, is that everything
| is a big deal, all the time. This causes things to (eventually)
| get dealt with.
| orangepurple wrote:
| In the USA things appear to be big or are getting bigger but
| really they are not.
|
| Residential structures are made from ever lower quality
| materials that are thinner than ever and with shorter
| lifespan (accelerated aging, necessitating sooner
| replacement).
|
| Foods are being stuffed with ever larger quantities of
| fillers such as corn, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and
| air to make the package look big even though there is nearly
| nothing nutritious inside.
|
| It's a mirage.
| confidantlake wrote:
| I get your point, but a lot of Bosnians died in that conflict.
| I have travelled there, and have talked with a lot of Bosnians.
| A lot of them are still pretty shook about the past. A lady I
| talked to had a sniper shoot each stair below her as she walked
| up a flight of stairs to mess with her. Stuff like that sticks
| with you.
|
| Most people are still alive and life goes on but it is not a
| road you want to go down if you can avoid it.
| watwut wrote:
| Contrapoint: it is actually good for Americans to worry about
| whether democracy will be destroyed in their country.
| Complacency and ignoring issues with "there are other countries
| that got it worst" may sounds smart or "worldwide-inclusive",
| but does not help neither Bosnians nor Americans. Possibly the
| most politically apathetic nation is Russia .. and where it got
| them. Political apathy is what you get in autocracies and
| dictatorships - and what simultaneously empowers them.
|
| It is debatable whether Bosnia is fine or will be fine. It is
| in danger of new rounds of violence. For that matter, even if
| Ukraine wins, which I hope, it wont be fine. Wars do actually
| damage places where it all happens and price is paid for many
| years after.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Well look at Israel, it had so many wars(some it almost
| lost). I would argue it made it stronger, more cohesive. I
| hope the same happens to Ukraine, despite the price it is
| paying.
| danamit wrote:
| Israel is a nuclear power supported by the West, there is
| no almost losing.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| America has a history of political tensions posing a danger to
| it. For a few years it maybe wasn't one country and quite a
| significant percentage of the population died sorting that out.
| bombcar wrote:
| Americans seem to think that we're the only ones who ever had
| a Civil War and that it is a Really Big Deal, ignoring that
| there are civil conflicts occurring right now, and with
| higher body counts, too.
| [deleted]
| NoGravitas wrote:
| While that's true, I think it's worth noting that a civil
| war in the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the
| world would be Very Bad.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Yeah, way to gatekeep civil wars America.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| If you only look at your lifetime things might not look great at
| this exact moment. But this too shall pass.
|
| Expand your lense to include a few hundred or thousand years and
| you'll realize we're doing fine. Things have never been better.
| However the perception of what could be has shifted because
| memory is short.
| cleandreams wrote:
| He speaks of "the magnitude of the attendant change in social
| structure: a movement from national toward international social
| organization."
|
| This can't work because it is not associated with growing
| prosperity in developed world but rampant inequality, the decline
| of good jobs for the non college educated, and growing resentment
| about this. Particularly in America, labor has been crushed.
|
| The substitution of "international" for "national" elites has
| worsened the problem and made the resentment worse not better.
| Because there is a material basis for the discontent it is indeed
| likely that we will fall apart.
| christkv wrote:
| We are seeing the slow collapse of the globalized economy and it
| will be painful and last for a couple of years as things
| relocalize. The constant chasing after larger margins lead to
| centralization of key industries in a few countries. We are
| starting to see that unwinding as some of those countries can no
| longer be trusted to be partners.
|
| Not sure what it means long term politically but it's easy to
| imagine big block politics rearing it's head again. I am however
| unsure if the west had the will to stand on principles anymore.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| lbj wrote:
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| You do know that there is a difference between gender and sex,
| right?
|
| Trans-Men probably still visit gynecologists and Trans-Women
| get treated as men in medicinal scenarios. What you seem to
| confuse is that social genders don't matter at all, and should
| probably be abolished anyways. What's being changed are social
| genders and their norms, standards and roles, no one is trying
| to change sex or biological genders.
|
| So you're the one who seems to be confused on what a woman and
| what a man is. The smart thing to do would be to recognize this
| and start to educate yourself, instead of implying that
| everyone else is an idiot living in an idiocracy-like world.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > no one is trying to change sex or biological genders
|
| Except when they let men compete in women's sports. So if I
| have to choose between the new lefty version of gender, or
| what we had before, I'm going to choose the old way because
| it didn't result in comically ridiculous outcomes like that.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Granted, sports is a topic which we haven't really figured
| out yet. I'm also thinking about it a lot, how we could
| shape sports competitions, or if we leave the
| categorizations as they are etc. I don't have a definitive
| solution or answer to that.
|
| But - What you describe doesn't really happen that often
| and its made a bigger issue than it really is. Yes, it
| happens. Yes, some do seem to maliciously abuse it. Yes, we
| should talk about it and really chew it through. As long as
| you really mean the first word you used, 'Except', then I
| am fine about your comment. If you use sports as an
| argument or excuse not to accept trans sexuality or changes
| to gender roles, norms etc., then I fully disagree.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't even know what it means to 'accept' someones
| sexuality or not. It doesn't affect me so I don't
| consider it my business. What I am saying is that if a
| model produces a ridiculous outcome, like men competing
| in women's sports, it's probably not a good model.
| oktroomer wrote:
| It is figured out: men pretending to be women are not
| actually women, and therefore shouldn't be competing in
| women's sports. It's sex that matters, not this delusion
| of gender identity.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Granted, sports is a topic which we haven 't really
| figured out yet._
|
| We figured it out long ago, and there were no problems
| before the gender studies majors got involved. Biological
| males and biological females should compete separately
| whenever there are significant physical differences
| between the sexes that affect outcomes. "Gender identity"
| is utterly irrelevant in this context.
| csnover wrote:
| This is such a tired canard. Biological sex is an imprecise
| and discriminatory proxy for physical performance, and we
| can do better. Professional boxing already includes an
| additional objective measure--weight class--to improve
| match fairness. So not only is it possible to find a better
| discriminator, there is already one proven approach that
| can be used as a starting point today.
|
| Furthermore, using biological sex as the discriminator in
| sport doesn't just create unnecessary conflict for intersex
| and trans players, it also excludes cis-gendered people who
| are talented, love sport, but just didn't win the genetic
| lottery. Dividing leagues by metrics other than gender
| gives everybody more opportunity to participate. Again,
| going back to boxing, if the only metric were gender, most
| or all of the people outside heavyweight class wouldn't be
| participating at all.
|
| Finally, I would also argue that team sport is more
| interesting when greater varieties of people with different
| strengths and weaknesses can play together. If we designed
| video games the way we run most sport leagues, matches
| would be split up into tanks vs tanks, dps vs dps, support
| vs support. Congratulations, you've made things "more even"
| by separating everyone using superficial physical traits,
| and lost most of the interesting dynamics of pitting
| different strengths against different weaknesses.
| ttytg wrote:
| That's all very well in theory, but what classes would
| you use to replace sex in practice?
|
| For example, in a recent women's swimming competition,
| Lia Thomas, who is male, was permitted to compete on the
| basis of his gender identity claims.
|
| Do you consider gender identity to be a reasonable method
| of categorization? Because that is the specific
| problematic issue here, not whether different attributes
| than sex could be used in general.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I know I am being petty, but -
|
| "For example, in a recent women's swimming competition,
| Lia Thomas, who is MALE, was permitted to compete on the
| basis of HIS gender identity claims"
|
| At least address her with the correct pronouns, that's
| the least you could do in such a discussion.
|
| I hope my comment is not interpreted as arrogant, my
| point is that even if we are discussing biological sex
| that is no reason to strip people from their preferred
| (social!) gender.
| ttytg wrote:
| I understand the point you are making, but I feel that
| using a female pronoun while discussing Thomas being male
| would have been the more jarring linguistic choice, given
| the subject.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I know what you mean. But pronouns which relate to social
| gender can be differentiated from sex/biological gender.
|
| To rewrite your original comment, "Lia Thomas, who was
| born male, was permitted to compete on the basis of her
| gender identity claims" would be a fine and
| understandable statement, I think.
|
| When talking about the person Lia Thomas, we are talking
| about a woman. She's Lia Thomas. Yes, she was assigned
| male at birth and her biological gender is male, but the
| person is female.
|
| Again, I am maybe a bit petty, but I think this is
| exactly one of these important aspects when talking about
| transsexuality.
|
| I'm not really disagreeing with what you're essentially
| saying, just trying to make a point about transsexuality.
| lbj wrote:
| Thomas has said himself, that he does not care about
| pronouns, as long as he gets to destroy women sports, so
| I don't understand why you're so offended on his behalf.
|
| Having said that, of course he's not a woman. No doctor
| in the world would disagree with me on that. You're
| deluded by some kind of ideology which puts even
| Idiocracy to shame. Snap out of it.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Great comment, this really changed my mind and gave me
| some different perspectives about how sports could be
| handled.
|
| Especially the part where diversity makes it more
| interesting in team sports.
| throwaway602ee wrote:
| Thank you for this comment.
|
| It's so exhausting hearing constant anti-trans rhetoric from
| all sorts of places that any support at all is nice to see. I
| am so tired of being a scapegoat and it's becoming terrifying
| because it doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything, it
| seems like the world is becoming less tolerant. I frequently
| wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence
| will not be questioned regularly.
|
| (You may say: avoid social media, but... it's really
| everywhere. I don't use social media except for Hacker News.)
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Yeah, the thing which bothers me the most is that people
| don't even try to educate themselves.
|
| What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of
| trans-people as a young teenager? Of course I laughed a bit
| and wondered why people think that genders are fictional
| and why a man would ever be able to be a woman.
|
| But with time I got more curious, educated myself, thought
| about it, and I think I understand it pretty well now.
| Others just seem to hop on a bigoted bandwagon and don't
| even try to understand.
|
| I think the most important part is educating others,
| discussing this topic. But this also requires the
| uninformed person the be open to change their mind. I've
| had 2 discussions I can remember, one with my SO and the
| other with my best friend. Both in a way used the same
| arguments as a bigot would use, just in a curious and
| innocent way, if you know what I mean. After talking to
| them they seemed to get what it's about.
|
| I have yet to talk to a trans-person in real life about
| this topic, but so far I think I understand it well enough
| in a way that I can talk about it to others.
|
| ---
|
| > I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere --
| where my existence will not be questioned regularly
|
| As sad as it is to admit, I think that's not possible.
| That's not even a specific issue for you I guess, lots of
| people get questioned about their race, sexuality, class,
| even if they're generally somewhere with more acceptance.
| Focus on people who accept you, don't get pulled down too
| much by haters and be proud of yourself.
|
| > If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less
| tolerant
|
| I think a large part is that trans seems to be the new
| topic. Race and homosexuality has been talked about, of
| course still not everyone is on board or agrees, but
| everyone knows these topics and has probably made up their
| opinion. With transexuality I feel that lots of people just
| don't know what it really is, which doesn't mean that they
| wouldn't accept it if they knew it. That doesn't help you
| at all of course, and I hope that you will once feel like
| you've been accepted for who you are by our societies. But
| I think there's still a long way to go. Stick to good
| people, try to educate neutral people, ignore bad people as
| long as you can.
|
| All of this is coming from a white cis-male, so all I can
| do is try to be empathic. I wish you all the strength you
| need, don't give up!
| oktroomer wrote:
| Please educate yourself further - specifically, on
| autogynephilia. And on how most 'trans women' keep their
| penises intact, and continue to enjoy using them as a man
| would. These are men with a sexual fetish, not women.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > most 'trans women' keep their penises intact, and
| continue to enjoy using them as a man would. These are
| men with a sexual fetish, not women.
|
| Disagree, fully. Thinking that genitals define your
| social gender is exactly the wrong thing to do. If a
| Trans-Woman wants to keep her genitals as they are, then
| she should, and this doesn't have an effect on her
| gender.
|
| If she wants to undergo surgery - fine.
|
| Saying that Trans-Women who "keep their penises" are just
| men with a sexual fetish is in my opinion a very wrong
| and mean opinion to have.
| oktroomer wrote:
| Please read up on autogynephilia.
| throwaway602ee wrote:
| > Yeah, the thing which bothers me the most is that
| people don't even try to educate themselves.
|
| Nuance is really important. I mean, I even agree with
| some of the concerns from social conservatives about
| transitioning and self-identification and "social
| contagions" and such. We should try to understand as well
| as we can, and not push anything on people they may not
| have felt themselves. It's important to not _tell_
| someone they 're trans, pushing an identity onto them.
| There _are_ discussions to be had.
|
| ... At the same time, though, that 's not the whole
| story, as some social conservatives would have one
| believe, and those are not a reason to dismiss trans
| people. I remember having "gender dysphoria" feelings
| from a young age. It wasn't about dresses, or barbies, or
| whatever. I was uncomfortable taking my shirt off to go
| swimming, assuming my chest was more like my mother's or
| sister's than my father's or brother's. My genitals just
| seemed foreign to me. It got worse through puberty as
| these "male" features became more real.
|
| If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture,
| _I would 've still had gender dysphoria_.
|
| How do we make life comfortable for people who share in
| my experience? How do we make puberty less traumatic and
| do as much as we can to help them feel "normal"? These
| are questions that social conservatives dismiss as not
| real problems, but _they were real problems for me_.
|
| ---
|
| > What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard
| of trans-people as a young teenager?
|
| When I was a teenager, there was no talk of trans people,
| anywhere. It was an unheard of topic. I still had the
| feelings I did.
|
| When I first heard of them when I was a little older
| (~20), it was amazing to finally know I wasn't alone in
| the feelings I shared. I booked an appointment with a
| licensed mental health therapist the next month to talk
| about it. On the rise of awareness of trans people, I
| thought, "Good! They won't have to go through quite what
| I went through." Today, I worry they're worse off than it
| being unknown like it was for me.
|
| What ended up making me feel notably better was estrogen.
| It was strange how well it worked, although I still had
| distress over my physical features until I was fully
| transitioned. Now that I am... my gender dysphoria is
| cured. I still enjoy the same hobbies, listen to the same
| music, read the same books, play the same video games,
| and even dress in a similar style. I just don't have
| distress over my physical features anymore. Like getting
| treated for any other medical issue, the treatment made
| the issues I experienced go away. Now the only time I
| feel distress is when I hear people calling for the death
| of trans people or blaming societal ills on us.
|
| I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to
| stop here.
|
| ---
|
| > so all I can do is try to be empathic.
|
| I really appreciate it. All of us do. It means a lot.
|
| > I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
|
| Thanks!
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > concerns from social conservatives about transitioning
| and self-identification and "social contagions" and such.
| We should try to understand as well as we can, and not
| push anything on people they may not have felt
| themselves.
|
| 100%. We have to approach this topic not only by
| accepting it, but also by sincerely discussing certain
| aspects of it. No teen should undergo surgery because of
| peer-pressure. On the other hand, teens who are certain
| that they're trans should receive the help they deserve.
| Difficult to navigate, but doable.
|
| > If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no
| culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria
|
| That's something I have always wondered, and I know that
| the question is hypothetical, so its up to you to answer
| - Let's say we live in a world where gender roles and
| norms don't exist. People visit the doctor they need to
| see, but socially, people just are who they are. Would
| gender dysphoria still be a thing?
|
| > Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown
| like it was for me
|
| I know what you mean, that in a way they have a bigger
| spotlight on them. On the other hand, we have way more
| knowledge about this topic and newer generations are more
| open about it, so I don't think its that bad.
|
| > I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going
| to stop here.
|
| Was really interesting for me to read about your
| experience, but I see that a site like HN is probably not
| the best site for such deeply personal things. Would be
| really interesting to hear more about your experience.
| Maybe another time.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Are you having a conversation with yourself? Your posts
| follow an uncommon, yet identical formatting and phrasing
| throwaway602ee wrote:
| No. I copied the person I was replying to's formatting
| because I thought it improved readability, and if there
| is any similarity in phrasing, it is coincidental.
| YATA1 wrote:
| War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, her
| penis.
| oktroomer wrote:
| > _You do know that there is a difference between gender and
| sex, right?_
|
| Exactly. Gender identity is some made-up bullshit intended to
| legitimize a type of sexual fetishism, and sex is the
| biological variable that defines whether someone is a man or
| a woman.
| throwaway602ee wrote:
| Gender identity is more like an improper set of body-
| drivers in the brain. To use a comparison from computers,
| if you put AMD hardware in your computer, but install an
| nVidia driver, the video card likely will not work as
| intended since your computer is missing some of the
| information needed to use all its features.
|
| Similarly, the brains of trans people tend to have the
| wrong "drivers" for their body, which causes dysphoria.
|
| Since we don't have fine-grained control over brains, we
| cannot "reinstall" the right driver, and it's a lot easier
| to fix the hardware. E.g. just as putting in the proper
| nVidia card to match the driver will fix the problem in a
| computer; adding estrogen/testosterone and maybe some
| surgeries allows the brain-drivers to communicate with the
| body correctly.
|
| Differences in "transition completeness" make perfect sense
| in this way. If most of your drivers map to "female"
| equipment, but the "penis driver" is working properly, you
| have dysphoria about everything _but_ that.
|
| (Evidence from brain studies agree that there are
| variations in brain structure in trans people.)
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| You commented on another comment about transsexuality I
| wrote, and as with the other, I also disagree with this
| one.
|
| Saying that trans-people who don't undergo surgery are just
| people with a sexual fetish is very disrespectful, I think.
|
| Crossdressing and Transsexuality are not the same thing, as
| you sure know.
|
| There's also nothing wrong with people who crossdress, by
| the way.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I blame Steven Tyler for creating the hit song "Dude (Looks
| Like a Lady)". Before that it was all so clear.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Maybe Vince Neil shares some of the blame for being that
| dude.
| Minor49er wrote:
| It was actually John Money who formed the basis of modern so-
| called Gender Theory by his twisted experiments on twin boys
| who he abused so thoroughly that they ended up taking their
| own lives. Check out the book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy
| who was Raised as a Girl" by John Colapinto
| noloppers wrote:
| Some in the modern medical establishment appear to have
| taken his cue and ran with it, to similarly horrifying
| outcomes, e.g. https://4w.pub/tiktok-gender-doctor-per-
| breast-removal-on-13...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Idiocracy was, I feel, a prediction. An optimistic one, we wont
| need 500 years.
| lbj wrote:
| That's my feeling as well. Go Woke Go Mentally Broke.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I think we come from different directions...
| implements wrote:
| > For millennia every human has known what a woman and a man
| is, now even supreme court justices in American don't know.
|
| Oh, they do know - but it's currently politically impossible
| for anyone other than the most fearless of iconoclast to say,
| as to declare oneself critical of innate gender identity being
| both real and far more socially significant than biological sex
| is possibly the worst heresy anyone can commit on social media
| at the moment.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > For millennia every human has known what a woman and a man
| is, now even supreme court justices in American don't know.
|
| What does this mean? Are you talking about gender or sex?
| Izkata wrote:
| It's one specific justice:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BWtGzJxiONU
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwawayN0W wrote:
| Could you tell me, what gender a person with male physique and
| female brain structure has?
|
| What actually happend is the break up of over archaic role
| models and scientific progress.
|
| Some people today, have a decent answer to that question.
| oktroomer wrote:
| Could you explain precisely what you mean by a "female brain
| structure", and how you would determine that a male has such
| a brain structure?
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| From broad brain traits like sexual orientation down to
| smaller ones like spatial perception or emotional
| intelligence, a young brain has certain development windows
| in which a trait or ability can get more or less developed.
| You could even add in personality traits like
| competitevness or deference once you associate it with a
| gender role.
|
| With "female brain structure" i mean traits that are
| commonly overrepresented in what you might see as a regular
| woman. I know its inaccurate but so is the opposite, by
| saying there are only 2 genders and men are all men. Gender
| is a spectrum in many dimensions and my example of male
| physique and female brain structure is just a simple
| counter example against this.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| It's not falling apart if you make a good income, but I would say
| it's getting harder and harder to get by as a middle/working
| class person in America. It's become much more of winner take all
| economy and I think that's destructive to a society in the long
| term.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Nimrod built the Tower of Babel to challenge God. It was hubris.
| It sounds like we have many Nimrod's running around lately
| (Bezos, Musk, Buffet).
|
| Where do you get your happiness? Amazon or your tribe? You know
| that this partisanship we are experiences, sounds like people are
| talking another language sometimes, yes?
|
| For completeness:
|
| --- Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and
| contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a
| bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to
| ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were
| happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which
| procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government
| into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of
| God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power.
| He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a
| mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower
| too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge
| himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now the
| multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod,
| and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they
| built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree
| negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of
| hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one
| could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so
| strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the
| view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick,
| cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not
| be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly,
| he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not
| grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he
| caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse
| languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those
| languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The
| place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because
| of the confusion of that language which they readily understood
| before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ...
| zackmorris wrote:
| Thank you, out of all of the comments, I think yours is the
| best model for what is happening. The anti-woke sentiment
| coming from the rich is about keeping the members of the
| working class from discovering their own divinity.
| Specifically, that the miracle of creation and their own
| consciousness dwarfs any material value.
|
| That misalignment in perception is what lets people be ok with
| profiting from another's labor, or hurting people for material
| gain, or having more wealth than a thousand/million/billion
| people. Pure free will, intelligence without wisdom or empathy
| for oneself on another timeline, is the stuff of nightmares.
|
| The relevance of this is that we're doomed to keep reliving
| these timelines over and over, stuff like JKF's assassination,
| 9/11, pandemic, etc, until we wake up and realize that feeding
| our ego feeds these systems of control. Which separate us
| further from the divinity of the universe/creation/aliens/god
| or whatever name we want to assign to the source of meaning
| (love).
| motohagiography wrote:
| The disconnect is so large. What the author calls mere tribalism
| is freighted and begs the question in regard to his example of US
| coastal and european elites having more in common with each other
| than their fellow "working stiff" citizens. What I think he
| misses is that these elites aren't elite, and the popular/ist
| reaction to them is to being made subjects of technocrats who
| always seem to be working for the good of someone else far away
| but mostly self-dealing to their own benefit.
|
| The reason these elites are not in fact elite is their (our?)
| advantage is mediated by technology, and so it doesn't matter
| whether it's social media or muskets, without legitimacy, there
| is no elite, just a crumbling power vaccum sustained by the
| control of tech. The hatred we expereince is from the impostor
| syndrome that comes from the precariousness of this percieved
| elite status.
|
| People who percieve themselves as having been elevated from
| ignorance and poverty have unlimited cruelty for others who "held
| them back," and who they "left behind," and I would argue that's
| the crux, as there's almost no way to convince them they have
| been seduced and decieved as a means to unleash and harness that
| very cruelty for political ends. If you feel justified in being
| cruel to the ignorant and that they are deserving of humiliation,
| I am sorry to have to be the one to say, you are the mark.
|
| The author chalks up the social tension Haidt identifies as the
| effect of neutral and inevitable change, but to me that belief is
| a kind of affectation. The attitude of, "this is change, learn to
| cope or be left behind," is the newly bourgois version of "let
| them eat cake," and Haidt I think identifies that the
| consequences are looking similar.
|
| In general we can bet that all people will align to whatever they
| percieve to be power. The notion of change is presented as
| inevitable, and so aligning to it seems like aligning to the
| power of the universe and the prevailing forces of history. The
| notion of history as progress iterates the logic of that idea.
| But what undermines the legitimacy of the people who percieve
| each other as an elite, installed and annointed by the inevitable
| forces of historical progress, is that they exist over a
| substrate of stability, built for them, and provided to them by
| people who have invested themselves and their identities in it.
|
| There is an appealing argument to be made that the working stiffs
| whose parents invested lives to build homes, communities, and
| institutions so that their children could thrive, have a more
| persuasively legitimate claim to the fruits of that culture and
| society than those who identify as a new elite and use tech to
| deconstruct and redistribute them to the arbitrary and placeless
| coalitions they assemble to support themselves. The counter to
| this is that there is only one humanity, which even seems
| compassionate, until it clicks that a single humanity and shared
| interdependent planet reduces to a zero-sum power struggle to
| prevail in the flow of progressive history, with no truth or
| rules, and in whose pursuit all things are justified.
|
| The explanation for why things are so irreconcilable is not that
| one side is basically stupid, but this author seems to have
| fallen for that.
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