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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 25 2020 04:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
How is that fundamentally different from the claims of unskilled workers vs unskilled migrants and what they’re worried about?
It just strikes me as the same phenomenon only affecting a different strata of society?
Perhaps.
On June 25 2020 04:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
And that kind of anti-migrant sentiment seems very frowned upon here.
Depends on who you ask, really. There's a mix of pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant people here, albeit the international nature of this forum obviously creates a pro-immigrant bias. Most of the people who are aggressively in favor of immigration seem to be in favor of H1-B programs too.
On June 25 2020 04:49 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 03:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 25 2020 02:50 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On June 25 2020 02:19 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2020 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote:
I must say I’m a little confused with the support here for aspects
of this visa restriction when weighing it with the positions of others.
Is this particular type of visa ripe with abuse or something I’m not getting or is it supplanting qualified graduates and rendering degrees less valuable or what?
Not being from the States I feel I’m missing some angle on this one. Yes, that's pretty accurate. The entire program is heavily abused to create a race to the bottom for educated professionals across a wide range of fields. Many businesses claim the program is necessary because the US doesn't have sufficient talent to fill up the workforce with US nationals; said claims are controversial and often believed to be made in bad faith (with "can't find qualified employees" really meaning "using H1-B's is cheaper"). H1-B in particular is a working visa for non-nationals. Related are visas such as F1 which are student visas for university education by non-nationals. A Is the entire program created to have an excuse to race to the bottom or is whatever system created just going to be abused that way because capitalism. There are certain employers who create positions that you have to fax resumes to so they can fill it with H1B labor for cheaper, but do you really think they'd not find another way to pay less money if given the opportunity. I'm sure the program was originally created with good intentions. Looks like 1952 was its original inception, 1990 in its current form. I'm also certain that bad faith employers will always seek out new ways to game the system to drive down wages. Good to try to remove tools from their arsenal when possible, though. I just don't see H1Bs being a net bad. I'd rather the government crack down on the abusers than get rid of the program.
Based on my own experience I can't really agree. But given the goal of the original response to Wombat was to define the nature of the controversy, rather than to persuade - I don't see that disagreement as a problem, either.
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Northern Ireland24800 Posts
On June 25 2020 05:49 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 04:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
How is that fundamentally different from the claims of unskilled workers vs unskilled migrants and what they’re worried about?
It just strikes me as the same phenomenon only affecting a different strata of society? Perhaps. Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 04:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
And that kind of anti-migrant sentiment seems very frowned upon here. Depends on who you ask, really. There's a mix of pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant people here, albeit the international nature of this forum obviously creates a pro-immigrant bias. Most of the people who are aggressively in favor of immigration seem to be in favor of H1-B programs too. Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 04:49 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On June 25 2020 03:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 25 2020 02:50 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On June 25 2020 02:19 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2020 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote:
I must say I’m a little confused with the support here for aspects
of this visa restriction when weighing it with the positions of others.
Is this particular type of visa ripe with abuse or something I’m not getting or is it supplanting qualified graduates and rendering degrees less valuable or what?
Not being from the States I feel I’m missing some angle on this one. Yes, that's pretty accurate. The entire program is heavily abused to create a race to the bottom for educated professionals across a wide range of fields. Many businesses claim the program is necessary because the US doesn't have sufficient talent to fill up the workforce with US nationals; said claims are controversial and often believed to be made in bad faith (with "can't find qualified employees" really meaning "using H1-B's is cheaper"). H1-B in particular is a working visa for non-nationals. Related are visas such as F1 which are student visas for university education by non-nationals. A Is the entire program created to have an excuse to race to the bottom or is whatever system created just going to be abused that way because capitalism. There are certain employers who create positions that you have to fax resumes to so they can fill it with H1B labor for cheaper, but do you really think they'd not find another way to pay less money if given the opportunity. I'm sure the program was originally created with good intentions. Looks like 1952 was its original inception, 1990 in its current form. I'm also certain that bad faith employers will always seek out new ways to game the system to drive down wages. Good to try to remove tools from their arsenal when possible, though. I just don't see H1Bs being a net bad. I'd rather the government crack down on the abusers than get rid of the program. Based on my own experience I can't really agree. But given the goal of the original response to Wombat was to define the nature of the controversy, rather than to persuade - I don't see that disagreement as a problem, either.
Yeah cheers for clearing that up.
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On June 25 2020 06:26 Starlightsun wrote:Thank goodness.
They better convict some of those charges.
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On June 25 2020 07:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:They better convict some of those charges.
Yeah I tend not to count my chickens before they hatch on this stuff, so basically once they've exhausted any appeals and filed for any technicalities. Too often charges are used to bury the story for long enough for people to pay attention to something else.
The Charles Kinsey shooting is an example of what I'm talking about.
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Sr18, I don't agree with you assessmemt that creating more objective wealth is better at all.
Literally everything humans do is look at their own position relative to another (this is why social media is toxic for human beings).
If everyone is dirt poor we don't really mind because everyone is dirt poor. If some are rich and the rest are poor the rest feels unjustly treated for not having the same kind of resources to work with.
Diminish wealth inequality (relative poverty) and you'll see a much larger rise in happiness.
For reference, look at the very simple monkey experiment on youtube and you'll very easily be able to relate this to why people think this is relevant for humans.
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On June 25 2020 05:49 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 04:49 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On June 25 2020 03:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 25 2020 02:50 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On June 25 2020 02:19 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2020 23:27 Wombat_NI wrote:
I must say I’m a little confused with the support here for aspects
of this visa restriction when weighing it with the positions of others.
Is this particular type of visa ripe with abuse or something I’m not getting or is it supplanting qualified graduates and rendering degrees less valuable or what?
Not being from the States I feel I’m missing some angle on this one. Yes, that's pretty accurate. The entire program is heavily abused to create a race to the bottom for educated professionals across a wide range of fields. Many businesses claim the program is necessary because the US doesn't have sufficient talent to fill up the workforce with US nationals; said claims are controversial and often believed to be made in bad faith (with "can't find qualified employees" really meaning "using H1-B's is cheaper"). H1-B in particular is a working visa for non-nationals. Related are visas such as F1 which are student visas for university education by non-nationals. A Is the entire program created to have an excuse to race to the bottom or is whatever system created just going to be abused that way because capitalism. There are certain employers who create positions that you have to fax resumes to so they can fill it with H1B labor for cheaper, but do you really think they'd not find another way to pay less money if given the opportunity. I'm sure the program was originally created with good intentions. Looks like 1952 was its original inception, 1990 in its current form. I'm also certain that bad faith employers will always seek out new ways to game the system to drive down wages. Good to try to remove tools from their arsenal when possible, though. I just don't see H1Bs being a net bad. I'd rather the government crack down on the abusers than get rid of the program. Based on my own experience I can't really agree. But given the goal of the original response to Wombat was to define the nature of the controversy, rather than to persuade - I don't see that disagreement as a problem, either.
I assume you don't want to share given the wording on this, but would like an elaboration.
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On June 25 2020 01:51 Gorsameth wrote:In other news. The appeals court has ordered Judge Sullivan to let Flynn go, despite the law saying a dismissal is 'by leave of court'. With the House hearing testimonies about political influence in the sentencing of Roger Stone I wonder if this will be the end of the case against Flynn or if this will drag on further. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/michael-flynn-dismiss/index.html
A very rare event, as I understand it, for a writ of mandamus to be issued. Anyone who has given the evidence an honest look understands that Flynn was set up. I expect Durham is going to uncover some things about the operation behind the setup.
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On June 25 2020 04:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 03:45 farvacola wrote:
There’s some good historical scholarship being done on how classic understandings of feudalism and the working lives of medieval peasants do not square with the actual historical record, I’ll have to see if I can find my PDF. Regardless, the notion that people generally worked harder or for longer periods of time back then, while attractively convenient, is very much an item in controversy. Yeah, I used to use the expression "serf brain" but serfs wouldn't put up with the shit US workers do.
Maybe. But the contrary is more obviously true.
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On June 25 2020 07:12 Uldridge wrote:
Sr18, I don't agree with you assessmemt that creating more objective wealth is better at all.
Literally everything humans do is look at their own position relative to another (this is why social media is toxic for human beings).
If everyone is dirt poor we don't really mind because everyone is dirt poor. If some are rich and the rest are poor the rest feels unjustly treated for not having the same kind of resources to work with.
Diminish wealth inequality (relative poverty) and you'll see a much larger rise in happiness.
For reference, look at the very simple monkey experiment on youtube and you'll very easily be able to relate this to why people think this is relevant for humans.
Yeah, I'm sure if you polled the people living in Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, NK, Nicaragua, take your pick of African socialist countries, Mao China, USSR, etc. that they'd relate a higher happiness index than those living in liberal capitalistic societies...At some point the obvious has to stare people in the face. Yeah, everyone being dirt poor is the goal to strive for because that'll produce happiness, because hey, look, we're all the same. How is it that the people that profess diversity uber alles also promote extreme conformity at the same time? It's good that people like Musk, Ford, Gates, Bezos, etc. can elevate our existence. This idea that we're all equal in ability or that those who exceed the norm should be held down is pure envy and does far more harm than supposed good.
Caveat: rent-seekers and those who have accumulated material wealth by violating Lockean property principles are obviously fraudsters and criminals, so don't conflate legitimate wealth creation with these folks.
Of course, any time you try to make it easier for the average person to become successful by destroying regulatory barriers, licensing requirements / $$$$, etc. you're accused of the worst evils - you just want folks to die painfully, in the streets, it'll be chaos with everyone poisoning and killing each other, etc.
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On June 25 2020 09:36 Doodsmack wrote:A very rare event, as I understand it, for a writ of mandamus to be issued. Anyone who has given the evidence an honest look understands that Flynn was set up. I expect Durham is going to uncover some things about the operation behind the setup.
FISA is a joke, has been from the start. People are so eager to get the other guy (Trump, Obama, AOC, McConnell) they're willing to sleep with the devil. I'll be happy when secret courts aren't selectively held up to punish political opponents (ideally, no more FISA).
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I guess Trump has decided that coronavirus simply no longer exists
This is kind of a motif that I've seen crop up several times now so I wanted to say a few words on the subject. They are inspired by Stephen L Miller (journalist, not White House advisor) on the intersection between the coronavirus and mass protests.
+ Show Spoiler [more/background] +
I'm going to have some trouble condensing my thoughts on this, so let me start with an example of the noble lie. The most obvious one should be the advice around wearing masks. Top epidemiologists told us that masks don't work. We're talking the WHO, CDC, Surgeon General and many top experts invited onto cable TV shows and live broadcast press conferences. The (highly politicized) meme of "trust the experts" or "believe what the science says" congealed around that fact.
Not above a month later, the same experts encouraged their use, and mandated their use, and ignoring their use became the insult against "trust the experts." What changed? Some will point to increased knowledge about how it spreads, and empirical evidence that they're effective coming to light. They're true to a certain extent, but I want to focus on a third view. Here and elsewhere, the explanation became "The experts told you that because there was a PPE shortage, and they didn't want to cause a rush and stockpiling that would hurt access from those that really really needed it."+ Show Spoiler +And for sake of argument, I would say a straightforward "we don't know if they're effective" or "we'll get back to you about that" is even better than discouraging their use and saying they're ineffective (virus size etc, all the arguments rallied at that stage).
That's just toxic to faith in the neutrality and authority of public health experts and epidemiologists. The foundation of arguments revolving around what's pro- and anti-science is that there are some people dedicated to spreading dispassionate truth that will draw upon their knowledge gained over the years studying the subject. The epidemiologist tells you, to the best of their knowledge, how the disease will spread, and the public health expert tells you what steps you should take to protect yourself, your family, your local community, and your wider community. I contrast this with the thought that both experts will conceal the truth of the matter from you, because the larger societal interest is better served with a lie at this point. Maybe call this an expert in one field dabbling as an amateur in another, say logistics or social movements.
I'll call anyone at the CDC motivated to tell people to wear masks (& wash hands & stand apart) as a primary motivation. The CDC/WHO/misc experts choosing to obey their view of a higher purpose and telling people to not wear masks to prevent supply shortages is a secondary motivation, or a motivation at one level of removal from the primary one. Now let me propose a tertiary one: they should feel like it's too dangerous to saying masks are a bad idea, to diminish hoarding and shortages, but their long term goal should be to preserve public trust in what they're saying for the next time they really need societal trust to get action.
The masks are in the past, and their efficacy is not now seriously doubted. Maybe also, the confusion about what to do and what the experts were saying could be forgiven in such an emergency. The next problem involves the George Floyd protests and riots regarding police brutality coming into conflict with the personal behavior and orders from mayors and governors.
This occurs against a backdrop of governor and mayor orders to limit all parties to 10 people, many news articles declaring the danger of going to the beach, and the need for social distancing at all times. You may remember the grim reaper telling Florida beach-goers that they're endangering life. The Atlantic's tone in Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice is a good example of the atmosphere prior to film of George Floyd's dying in police custody in late May. Don't get in groups beyond small size, stay apart, survive very little human contact in hopes of brighter times.
I think Floyd was murdered and the surrounding circumstances demanded some large showing of solidarity. I'll focus on the reaction of public health experts and politicians. Public health experts signed a letter supporting the protests. To their credit, and I will be coming down harsh on them but I'll be fair, they recommend masks and make some contradictory statements about staying home and social distancing. But the message of the letter is that public health experts pass imprimatur on mass protests.
Similarly, governors like Cuomo supported the mass protests while at the same time threatening punishment against other outdoor gatherings. He stood with the protesters and threatened other street gatherings. Later, when 15,000 people protested in Brooklyn (Black Trans Lives Matter), he tweeted on that same day to hammer violations of his lockdown orders for businesses and people, and promised state action. Similarly, Michigan governor Whitmer marched with the protesters, contradicting her own social distancing orders for the state.
How do you justify health experts and political leaders extolling and demanding social distancing and small gatherings, but choosing to support and march with protesters when they deem the cause just? Is this virus really a national emergency demanding massive restrictions, or can it be postponed for a necessary movement to change the law moving forward? Is it less dangerous to outdoor protests over a just cause, than it is among attendees at a great-grandmother's funeral or a park playground? To quote David Bernstein in Reason magazineWhile the current protests are certainly well-meaning and anger over police violence and racism justified, claiming that the protests' positive effects on public health will exceed the harms from the spread of coronavirus is an assertion of faith, not science.
For several months, epidemiologists have been warning about the dangers of coronavirus spread from large gatherings, including large outdoor gatherings. Much has been made, in particular, of the cautionary example of a big war bond rally held in Philadelphia in September 1918. Philadelphia's failure to cancel that rally as the flu epidemic hit is said to be responsible for thousands of additional deaths; St. Louis, which canceled its planned rally, suffered many fewer flu deaths. The Philadelphia rally attracted some 200,000 people, far fewer than have attended the recent protests (though, to my knowledge, no individual protest rally has attracted that many people).
Yet epidemiologists and other public health gurus have been overwhelmingly reluctant to criticize the loosening of public health restrictions on public gatherings to accommodate the current large public protests. Some, including hundreds who signed a public letter to that effect, have explicitly supported them. In doing so, some of the latter group have blatantly contradicted their own prior public statements on the dangers of public gatherings.
One Ivy League epidemiologist, for example, claimed that President Trump was putting "millions" of people in danger of contracting the virus by encouraging reopening rallies. This was, purportedly, Trump's "arguably most dangerous act" in a series of corona-related actions that amounted to the equivalent of "genocide."
That was in late April. By early June, much larger outdoor protests were somehow a significantly lower public health threat, with the same epidemiologist asserting that "The new infections that may be generated by protests pale in comparison to the larger drivers of the epidemic in the U.S…." What happened to the the "millions" of people that were put at risk by reopening rallies, and encouraging such rallies being especially dangerous?
That said, everyone seems to acknowledge that the protests will cause more, perhaps many more, Covid-19 cases and deaths. Public health types, in general, believe their mission is to focus on public health above all else, so they obviously need to explain why the protests are nevertheless justified from a public health perspective, or, for more moderate figures, why they are reluctant to be critical of the failure of authorities to crack down the protests in the name of public health.
The basic rationale they have provided is that protests against racism and state violence are different from other activities they have criticized and sought to have banned in the name of public health because racism and state violence are also public health problems. On the extreme pro-protest side, public health experts have argued that the damage from racism is so great that the rallies will have a more positive effect on public health than any harm caused by the spread of coronavirus. Even more sober analysts who have been sounding alarm about (but usually without much criticizing, much less calling for a shutdown of) the protests have felt obliged to pay lip service to such concerns, acknowledging, for example, that concerns about the spread of coronavirus must be balanced against the fact that "racism and state sponsored violence are critical public health issues."
It's not that public health folks are wrong that racism and police brutality have significant public health consequences; while coronavirus has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands in a short period of time, over the long-term racism and state violence can cause even greater harm.
But here's the thing: while it's understandable that people want to take to the streets to protest racism and state violence, there is no epidemiological or other scientific evidence that such protests will have positive public health effects by spurring positive social and political change. Any scientist or public health expert who suggests otherwise is engaging in political and sociological speculation that is not only beyond their expertise, but that really beyond anyone's expertise. But it's worse when such speculation purports to be scientific, from experts whose credibility is crucial for containing the current and future pandemics.
Will the protests raise public consciousness about the pernicious effects of racism? Surely, and that will likely have positive effects. But beyond that, things are very uncertain. Will violence/rioting continue and cause a "reactionary" backlash? Will reforms advocated by protesters, such as those encompassed by the slogan "Defund the Police," actually be enacted? If enacted, will they have positive effects on public health, or will they lead to a surge in violent criminal activity, itself a huge threat to public health and wellbeing?–it wasn't that long ago that violent crime rates were triple what they are now, with tens of thousands more people killed and injured each year. What will be the effect of social disorder on the economic health of big cities in general, and the poorer neighborhoods within them in particular, and what effect will that have on public health and wellbeing?
The public health folks who are comparing the negative Covid-related health effects of the rallies to the health effects of racism and police violence are committing a fundamental methodological error. On the one side, there is a real public health problem of coronavirus, and we know, based on what the experts have been telling us since March, that large public gatherings will likely kill a large but indeterminate number of people.
Read the quote, because he makes the point better than I would.
The protests are justified, in my view, given the need for police reform and attention on the topic. Demand more of your political leaders. I also think that public health experts need to abandon support for large outdoor protests if they want to be taken seriously in the future. They have a job to do, and that is preserving trust in their field. Showing that dangerous isn't dangerous if their moral beliefs are served just means they will be ignored next time something like this comes around. Epidemics don't care about your social causes. On top of that, politicians need to show that they will relax restrictions in proportion to their own condemnations (or lack thereof) of large, outdoor gatherings. No ifs, ands, or buts. There is no happy ending to saying your petty little individual funerals for great-grandparents, or kids activities, or outdoor church gatherings don't matter in the face of more important protests. You're doing damage to what unifies Americans if mobs toppling statues don't merit much condemnation, but you direct your officials to weld and chain playgrounds shut. The pandemic is over, it's actually only somewhat important, and you are not important and only collective social change is important. I don't have much hope for the country the next time its citizens are asked to surrender personal freedoms to save lives.
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The protests are not really a breaking point for me, because I broke way before them. I suspect most people who live in cities did or were on the verge of doing so.
Why?
Because we all saw large groups of people being non-compliant with the orders the entire lockdown. In April our household would go for our evening walks and see all sorts of things. Rugby games in the park that was supposed to be closed. Houseparties at various fraternities. "Essential workers" not wearing masks, or wearing masks such that they dont cover the mouth or nose. A widely known drug dealing location kept dealing. Everyone with a brain in America knew that the lockdown would fail because the lockdown was not enforced after a certain point.
If you aren't willing to arrest and forcibly quarantine people for violating protocols, your plan cannot work in a society that contains people who don't abide by requested social norms. I suspect that is why some places have done well, everyone has the same norms. But what am I to do when I see a houseparty in a major city? Call the police? Well that is just setting up George Floyd 2.0 on a massive scale. The cops can't let any of them out of quarantine without getting back tests. They necessarily have to arrest 50+ drunk people. And that is just 1 party. Are you going to imprison thousands of people for weeks (actually probably months if even one person has C19) because they went to a party? If not, your lockdown has failed.
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The whole point of the lockdown was to buy time to implement the infrastructure to respond quickly to future outbreaks. See Victoria in Australia who is in the middle of an outbreak (40 cases) and are responding by mobilising the military and health services to test half of the people in outbreak areas. Many other countries have reopened restaurants, only that you have to write your contact details to assist in cluster tracking. There has to be a coherent plan going forwards after the lockdown but states like Texas, Florida, Arizona and California clearly didn’t prepare a good one.
The issue in America isn’t that there isn’t sufficient punishment and enforcement of rules, the issue is that there is no strategy to combat or contain the coronavirus in the first place. Instead of a unified effort led by the CDC, we have a whole bunch of states doing their own thing while the federal government spent most of the early outbreak trying to extort certain states by withholding equipment.
Keep in mind opening up the economy is extremely stupid without keeping the virus under control because the economy is never going to recover without the public being assured that they’re not going to get sick. Restaurant bookings are tanking again as the coronavirus situation is getting worse. We’re so obsessed about job losses and the economy that we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like does the NBA really want to continue with their Orlando plans when Florida is a basket case right now?
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On June 25 2020 15:23 cLutZ wrote:
The protests are not really a breaking point for me, because I broke way before them. I suspect most people who live in cities did or were on the verge of doing so.
Why?
Because we all saw large groups of people being non-compliant with the orders the entire lockdown. In April our household would go for our evening walks and see all sorts of things. Rugby games in the park that was supposed to be closed. Houseparties at various fraternities. "Essential workers" not wearing masks, or wearing masks such that they dont cover the mouth or nose. A widely known drug dealing location kept dealing. Everyone with a brain in America knew that the lockdown would fail because the lockdown was not enforced after a certain point.
If you aren't willing to arrest and forcibly quarantine people for violating protocols, your plan cannot work in a society that contains people who don't abide by requested social norms. I suspect that is why some places have done well, everyone has the same norms. But what am I to do when I see a houseparty in a major city? Call the police? Well that is just setting up George Floyd 2.0 on a massive scale. The cops can't let any of them out of quarantine without getting back tests. They necessarily have to arrest 50+ drunk people. And that is just 1 party. Are you going to imprison thousands of people for weeks (actually probably months if even one person has C19) because they went to a party? If not, your lockdown has failed.
Why are you talking about imprisoning? First you reprimand verbally (if it's a few people), then you fine. People literally disrespecting public safety counts as a legitimate form of fining (for getting some police $$$), instead of needing to get monthly traffic ticket quotas.
The corona disrespect could've been a massive boost for police actually because they could show that they care about public safety, instead of physically abusing protestors in the street.
Edit: for most people I think an interaction with an authorative figure is enough to make them fall in line.
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On June 25 2020 03:40 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 03:12 Acrofales wrote:
You missed the point. I wouldn't want to trade with a 15th century nobleman, because my "bare minimum for a comfortable life" includes holidays to exotic locations (without risking a hazardous sailing trip, although the sailing trip itself could be a fun adventure) and broadband internet, as well as modern healthcare.
The fact that even the working poor are better off now than a rich nobleman in the 15th century doesn't mean that we should just say "that's okay then, because noblemen in the 15th century were perfectly happy, so being better off than them is good enough". It means your benchmark is wrong.
I'm pretty sure you don't understand how the working poor of today live, either that or we have a vastly different definition of the term. I'm also rather confident that no nobleman would trade their medieval comforts for a lifetime washing dishes or stacking boxes somewhere 10 hours a day just so they could have the pinnacle of human entertainment, netflix and beer, in the evenings. What exactly is your definition of 'better off', anyway? If being satisfied with your life isn't it, what is? Having more crap you've ordered off Amazon?
I specifically mentioned the working poor as I cannot really imagine there being a worse situation in western democracies. Yet even the working poor live in a world with all the perks of modern science and technology that simply didn't exist in the 15th century. I am not saying a 15th century nobleman would want to trade. I am saying the other way round they would generally also not want to trade. The high infant mortality alone should be enough to scare most people off.
On June 25 2020 03:45 farvacola wrote:
There’s some good historical scholarship being done on how classic understandings of feudalism and the working lives of medieval peasants do not square with the actual historical record, I’ll have to see if I can find my PDF. Regardless, the notion that people generally worked harder or for longer periods of time back then, while attractively convenient, is very much an item in controversy.
My argument didn't rely on medieval peasant's lives being miserable, so that's good news then  But it's clear that we have made vast leaps forward in healthcare, transportation, entertainment (starting with the printing press and teaching most people to read), and more subjectively: governance and working conditions. To just name a few of the things that directly impact your life, brought to everybody, ubiquitously, by modern science and technology, in comparison to the middle ages.
On June 25 2020 03:56 Sr18 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2020 03:12 Acrofales wrote:On June 25 2020 00:48 Sr18 wrote:On June 25 2020 00:20 Acrofales wrote:On June 24 2020 23:32 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 23:16 Acrofales wrote:On June 24 2020 21:49 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 21:22 Sbrubbles wrote:On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 20:49 Sbrubbles wrote:
[quote]
No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. My goal was answering the question "How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though?". Your answer to said question was insufficient and I pointed out how. If you want to answer a different question, maybe one that wasn't asked, like "how do you maximize welfare?", you should make that clearer. I think there is a misunderstanding. I'm not saying that we must preserve wealth inequality. I'm just saying that we should focus on making the average person wealthier. Zambrah's question implies that you can only achieve this goal by reducing wealth inequality. Which is wrong. If you increase the overall wealth, you can increase the wealth of the average person without neccessarily decreasing wealth inequality. My point is that wealth inequality is only very loosely related to the wealth of the average person. Reducing wealth inequality should never be more than a means to increase the wealth of the average person. And if that goal can be better achieved without reducing (or maybe even increasing) wealth inequality, than that has my preference. So the focus should be on the goal (increasing wealth of the average person) and not on one loosely related means to get it (wealth redistribution). On June 24 2020 21:09 farvacola wrote:On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 20:49 Sbrubbles wrote:
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No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. Your own wealth is irreducibly tied to the wealth of other people, so you've created a sort of tautology here that is strikingly lacking in use aside from attacking one dimensional notions of wealth redistribution. You're going to have to account for the impact of other's people's wealth on the value of your wealth and what we do with wealth in society in order to actually say something substantive about whether inequality is or is not a problem. I don't agree with this. Let's distribute 10 marbles. You get 7, I get 3. If I can improve my situation to having 5 marbles, I'd be happy. Because 5 is more than 3. How many marbles you have in the new situation is irrelevant to me. You can have 5 as well, or 30. Either way, I'd have 2 more marbles than I had before. And I'm not talking about money by the way, in which case my wealth is obviously tied to yours. I'm talking actual wealth: goods, services etc. You having many nice houses in no way devalues the worth of my house to me. On June 24 2020 21:23 Zambrah wrote:On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 20:49 Sbrubbles wrote:
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No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. Would you care how much Bill Gates had if he was withdrawing money from your checking account once in a while? No? I would care about him withdrawing my money, not about how much money he already has. How are these things related? Okay, but if everybody has 5 marbles on average all of a sudden, rather than 3, then initially they can use that to buy some nice stuff, which creates a scarcity, and the price of the nice stuff goes up accordingly. And suddenly they can all buy with their 5 marbles what they could before buy with 3 marbles. Meanwhile the rich guy has gone from 7 to 15 marbles... he used to be able to buy 2 1/3 times the nice stuff you could, but now he can buy 3x that, which further increases scarcity of that nice stuff, so the price actually goes up even further. Moreover, the people selling you food and other basic necessities also want nice stuff, and to pay for that, they now need to sell the food at a higher price, so you actually have *less* marbles left over to buy nice stuff as compared to when you had 3 marbles. GG. You just got wrecked by inflation. Like I said, the marbles do not represent money, they represent actual wealth. So it's not using the marbles to buy some nice stuff, the marbles are the nice stuff. There is simply more nice stuff to go around. It might not be distributed evenly, but everyone has more nice stuff than they had before. That's what increasing wealth is all about. On June 24 2020 22:20 farvacola wrote:
Money and assets aren't sterilized variables qua marbles, so that's a poor comparison, and wealth does not exist in this world in a vacuum divorced from the means with which we account for it, so you're basically talking about a thing that doesn't exist in the real world, which is fine so long as you're only making a point about this imaginary world you've constructed. Assets don't have magically separable intrinsic properties of owner-adjudged value that can be used to attack indictments of wealth inequality. In other words, "value to me" is irreducibly connected with the societal and transactional notions of what value means as a general concept, and pretending otherwise doesn't change anything. It's not a point about an imaginary world. It's a point about our world. This increase in wealth has happened throughout human history. We are wealthier than our cavemen ancesters, eventhough the wealth inequality is much larger than it was then. It's also a point about our more recent history. The average westerner is wealthier than his equivalent was in the 1950s, while at the same time the wealth inequality has increased. So I'm not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. (...) In the middle ages, that would have been food on the table, a roof over your head, protection from highway men and a lord who doesn't rape your wife and daughters and take your sons off to fight in a pointless war against his neighbours (or worse yet, on a crusade). Getting sick was just part of the deal, and education was not something anybody really thought of at all. Nowadays a "bare minimum" is all of the above (except that instead of gruel and vegetables, we want strawberries in the winter, mangos and avocados, and a good cut of meat every day), 6 years of primary school, a decent healthcare system, a car, broadband internet, and the capability to travel to a nice holiday destination once or twice a year. Oh, and instead of darning socks and having a washing day, we buy new socks and have a washing machine. So yes, wealth has quite obviously increased, but so has what we expect as the bare minimum for a life with dignity. Now the smaller the margin is between "average wealth" and that minimum expectation is a far more valuable measure of where we are as a society than whether we are wealthier than 50, 100 or 5000 years ago. I don't think this is a right way to look at it. Having more than what we expect to have is much less relevant than objectively having more. Would you swap with a 1500 nobleman? I wouldn't. He would be rich for his time, but much poorer than we are now. Objective wealth is what counts, not relative wealth. On June 24 2020 23:36 Salazarz wrote:On June 24 2020 23:33 Salazarz wrote:On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 20:49 Sbrubbles wrote:On June 24 2020 20:47 Sr18 wrote:On June 24 2020 20:18 Zambrah wrote:
How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though? By creating more wealth. No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. You have a very poor understanding of economics if you think that's how it works. Wealth is a zero sum game, because resources aren't infinite and inflation is a thing. It's not a point about an imaginary world. It's a point about our world. This increase in wealth has happened throughout human history. We are wealthier than our cavemen ancesters, eventhough the wealth inequality is much larger than it was then. It's also a point about our more recent history. The average westerner is wealthier than his equivalent was in the 1950s, while at the same time the wealth inequality has increased. So I'm not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. See, this is a nice sentiment, except that the average westerner's productivity has increased significantly more than the average westerner's standard of living. In fact, over the last few decades income adjusted for inflation & cost of living has been stagnant or declining in most of the developed world. I understand. The distribution is not fair. Yet life is still undeniably better than it was. And here is where the essence of this discussion lies. If you had to choose how your descendents had to live, what would you value higher: having better lives than we have now, or living in a society where the wealth is more fairly distributed. I choose the former. You missed the point. I wouldn't want to trade with a 15th century nobleman, because my "bare minimum for a comfortable life" includes holidays to exotic locations (without risking a hazardous sailing trip, although the sailing trip itself could be a fun adventure) and broadband internet, as well as modern healthcare. The fact that even the working poor are better off now than a rich nobleman in the 15th century doesn't mean that we should just say "that's okay then, because noblemen in the 15th century were perfectly happy, so being better off than them is good enough". It means your benchmark is wrong. But it does mean that increasing wealth is more important than decreasing inequaltiy. And that was my point. People may have read more into my posts, but that's on them.
I don't think it does. Government policies have to go pretty far to stifle the creation of wealth. It isn't as if Sweden is in a bad situation because they distribute their overall wealth better. You don't need much to incentivize creation and innovation (which I agree was completely stifled by oppresive regimes such as Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba). You don't need to dangle the opportunity to become a multi-billionaire in front of the Larry Page or Jeff Bezoses of this world. And in fact, many of the most significant breakthroughs that impact our way-of-life and cause that "wealth gain" that you seem to want to compare between generations, come in university labs where professors work for a fixed wage and do it for the joy of discovery rather than humongous lumps of cash (university professors are paid a good salary, but there's no way they become billionairs off their wages and science grants).
So yes, you can easily redistribute wealth in a far more equitable fashion without running the risk of everybody losing their marbles  Wealth creation (in the forms of scientific, technological and humanistic progress) will continue unless we really screw up our government. And I don't think even GH wants to try Stalinism (although much of what he does want may end up devolving into exactly that, due to how fucked up humans are).
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