After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America • Hacker News Board

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#331

Post by tslug » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

lancewiggs wrote: post #318

occultist_throw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. I used to be a republican. Or Libertarian. Blame my parents, as I do. They're dyed-in-the-wool republicans/christians, where if you have bad happen, you must have deserved it. So they dont help because you should be able to rescue yourself. One of their most shameful mom…

Capitalism does not require a lack of empathy- quite the reverse. Good capitalists help every stakeholder, from paying everybody well to providing great, safe, products and excellent returns. The US system is sickening sometimes.

Capitalism is a an extremely old game design, an MMO created to solve the complex barter chain problem. One of the game's many exploits is that sociopaths (and anyone they train through reward to override their sense of empathy) have an unfair advantage.

The key to the exploit is at the heart of the core gameplay mechanic, which is that every transaction in capitalism is a codec that decimates the complex history and state of the values and liabilities of a good or service down to a single number- the price.

So hiding the abuses of others is one of the many exploits you can hide in the compression artifacts of this global codec. The key workarounds for the exploits in scalar money commerce come in the form of laws, regulations, and investigative journalism. These are all extremely high-latency, low-reliability workarounds.

Scalar money commerce was invented as a low-tech, distributed hack to solve the complex barter chain problem. It worked, but it always had issues, and it didn't scale well.

We need to evolve beyond this primitive system of commerce that decimates everything to a single number at each transaction to one that journals state with long vectors of information tracking millions of dimensions of value and liability, and that uses more sophisticated game design and graph algorithms to solve complex barter chain problems.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#332

Post by Frondo » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #285

nate_meurer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a strawman. Coal's present predicament has exactly nothing to do with political disfavor. Coal remains heavily subsidized [1], under-regulated [2], and enjoys entrenched support at all levels of government. And yet it still can't compete with newer more efficient alternatives. Note that the Trump administration is now pushing to give coal massive new subsidies in the form of forced extra payments to coal-fi…

There's also the factor that those coal jobs are GONE. Even with increased demand if the Trump Administration is able to really push that through, automation and changes in mining mean that all those jobs as coal miners aren't coming back, and the people who were told that they are coming back were simply lied to.

There's also the fact that there just aren't that many coal jobs to begin with.

Here's one link, you can find lots more:

www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-surprisingly-small-industries-that-employ-more-people-than-coal/

Coal gets a lot of attention because it's visible, distinctive, and I think a lot of people see it as a stand-in for any blue-collar job, i.e. the stuff that's all being automated or obsoleted out of existence.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#333

Post by alexanderstears » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #330

alexanderstears wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/smog Some states (mostly costal states) have rules that vehicles have to be inspected regularly. Some states inspect vehicles for safety reasons, other states inspect vehicles for emissions compliance, and a few states look for both. It's well intentioned, but the checks leave something to be desired. In some states, a check engine light is an automatic fail regardless of w…

I don't see at all how this makes the laws "total failures". You're asking the emissions testing people to: believe that random guy X is going to keep his car, that he's only going to use it for one short trip a day, that the check engine light only means one thing, that it's within legal limits despite the check engine light being on, and on and on and on. You're asking them to make an exemption--or somehow modify t…

There's an easier way to discourage pollution - fuel taxes.

If the law encourages someone to drive a pre-emissions car over a emissions compliant but not not emissions certified car, it encourages pollution.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#334

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #108

selimthegrim wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if my cousin/sibling was retarded/whatever the word du jour is today I think I'd give them a glass of water from inside rather then generously limit them to the garden hose.

I don't understand your metaphor.

It isn't a metaphor, read the article again.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#335

Post by nikdaheratik » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #70

Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona. When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were. WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for…

Because it's going to be an interesting counterpoint to next month when the Republicans in Congress start telling us all how badly we need tax cuts for rich people. And then talk about how we should pay for it by cutting the meager benefits we give out to people who are hard up, like those in this article.

I'm not a socialist, but the contrast between this and gold-plated Trump Tower is almost enough to make that sound appealing.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#336

Post by nikdaheratik » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 1:32 AM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #64

logfromblammo wrote: post #2

That is so depressing. No wonder suicide rates are up. You know there's a difference between "give a man a fish" and "teach a man to fish", but what do you do when the fish are just gone ? It was mentioned in the article, but not extensively discussed. I think maybe the largest distinct segment of the economy in ex-coalcountry regions is now pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal. There's the legal root and mushroom hunt…

This was indeed a depressing article. It would be interesting to see the data around this phenomenon - how many instances of this are occurring now vs. 10-20-30-40 years ago? Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living. Curious about other factors as well.

I don't think you can just pin this all on one issue. "Globalism" mainly means moving manufacturing overseas, but that's not really applicable for most rural locations. "Immigration" especially the undocumented kind, is centered around low-wage service sectors. Again, not mainly part of the rural economy.

The main issues are the collapse of coal and other higher wage resource extracting jobs, the take over of family farms by large corporations, and the fact that the majority of U.S. economic growth in the last 20+ years has been centered around very large cities. And it's pretty much impossible for people in these towns to get in on any of it since they don't have the networks, the skills, or the savings they would need to start from scratch in one of those cities.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#337

Post by nikdaheratik » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 1:43 AM UTC

marak830 wrote: post #181

(edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) I couldn't finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author. ..."went to the already-crowded Dollar Store and Dollar General and bought dog food, dog treats, Slim Jims, three six-packs of Milwaukee’s Best, pruners for digging roots and a backpack to carry it all." I have…

Your opinion is BS, because you didn't RTFA, at best you skimmed it. How about the part where the woman is a heart patient who had a quadruple bypass? And you're arguing about $20 for dog food and beer, but ignoring the fact that half her meager income is spent renting a shed?

The bottom line is that, if the people in the article were mentally and physically able to do what they needed to do to get out of poverty, they probably would have done so already. But they aren't so they're stuck trying and failing to meet very basic needs.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#338

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

amigoingtodie wrote: post #176

reaperducer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A call center will spend $700/month on toilet paper. It's no big deal.

On 24 employees?

In spite of hold times, most call centers are hundreds and hundreds of people, operating 24 hours a day. Not sure where you get 24 people.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#339

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #293

amigoingtodie wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, why would anybody want a call center in WV if bandwidth and minimum wage are more expensive than Florida, for instance? ...and all employees would pay state income tax

How do the real estate prices compare? But yes, in general the answer may be that they wouldn't put such a thing in WV.

Three seconds of Googling shows you're oh so wrong.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#340

Post by thehardsphere » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

nate_meurer wrote: post #163

thehardsphere wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democratic Party Presidential candidate in the last election openly boasted about plans to "put the coal companies out of business" after she would be elected, so it's not entirely a straw man to say that there are people who would kill coal at a rate faster than what competition would achieve.

Yes, it's a strawman. Coal's present predicament has exactly nothing to do with political disfavor. Coal remains heavily subsidized [1], under-regulated [2], and enjoys entrenched support at all levels of government. And yet it still can't compete with newer more efficient alternatives. Note that the Trump administration is now pushing to give coal massive new subsidies in the form of forced extra payments to coal-fi…

You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is happening to the coal industry.

The claim in the GP is _not_ that coal "is dying to political disfavor", the claim is that political disfavor of coal exists and is not helpful _to the people who used to mine it_, for whatever reason those people were displaced.

It really doesn't matter if coal is dying because alternatives are better or if it's the Illuminati doing it, because that doesn't change the fact that politicians are not doing anything to address the effects of it and in some cases are being explicitly callous towards people who used to be employed mining coal.