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Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

451–460 of 569 posts

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree about current events. The Merrick Garland wikipedia page was a mess immediately after he was nominated, and I've just checked and the word "unprecedented" appears 7 times, in spite of the fact that it is by-no-means unprecedented for the senate to not consider a nomination [1]. There are a lot of partisan editors that wish to astroturf for their own political convictions, and because Wikipedia art…

Unprecedented in recent history. There really should be a law that the Senate needs to start holding hearings within X days. Otherwise partisanship will creep up on either side or multiple sides if we ever move beyond two parties.

"Unprecedented" means "never done or known before", and "never" means "at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever."

"Unprecedented in recent history" is misleading sensationalism.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are at max depth but to address the perceived lack of a shred of capitalism in the USSR, I can't help but point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy which was espoused by Lenin himself and included a large component of free market capitalism. It was the efforts undertaken by Stalin in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization th…

I agree there was some capitalism, as there is components of it in every economy. Similarly, every economy has mixtures of other systems in it. The issue is how much of the various systems an economy allows. Certainly Soviet Russia was not considered a capitalist system, whereas most of Western Europe and the US were during that period. Your link provides a nice graph [1] showing that USSR and many countries that wer…

My reply was intended for the other person who replied to you. For some reason I did not see a reply button so I thought we were at max depth.

I believe that the graph does in fact support your conclusions.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#453
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide me one or two examples from this set? I found a list on Wikipedia [0] of currently non-capitalist countries and many of them sound like perfectly nice places, but I am not aware of when they all "industrialized" and what their socioeconomic climate was like at the time and it seems like drilling deeper is going to require a lot of research. So an example or two that you know about would be helpful. [0…

Not all of these countries are "non-capitalist." This is a list of parties that are anti-capitalist/communist, some with only one or two seats in their country's parliament. The introduction to the article even makes this clear: > Of the 66 states listed here, 9 of them are republics ruled by a socialist, communist or anticapitalist party, five of them are official socialist states ruled by a communist party, of them…

Like I said, much deeper research ;)

Thanks for the links, they are a much better jumping off point. I cross-referenced [0] with the tables on [1] and population data from [2] to build this list for further analysis:

    Country             *ist since          Total wealth (USD)      Mean wealth/adult (USD)     Median wealth/adult (USD) 
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China               1 October 1949      29,000 billion          26,872                      6,689
                    Pop 2017: 1.386 billion      Pop 1949: 542 million*          Pop growth/year:  12.41 million
                    
    Laos                2 December 1975     22 billion              5,662                       1,382
                    Pop 2017: 6.758 million      Pop 1975: 3.042 million         Pop growth/year:  88,476

    Vietnam             2 July 1976         358 billion             5,391                       2,235
                    Pop 2017: 95.54 million      Pop 1976: 49.81 million         Pop growth/year:  1.12 million

    Bangladesh          11 April 1971       263 billion             2,612                       1,587
                    Pop 2017: 164.67 million     Pop 1971: 66.42 million         Pop growth/year:  2.14 million

    Guyana              6 October 1980      2 billion               5,345                       2,510
                    Pop 2017: 777,859            Pop 1980: 780,153               Pop growth/year:  -62

    India               18 December 1976    4,987 billion           8,976                       4,295
                    Pop 2017: 1.339 billion      Pop 1976: 635.77 million        Pop growth/year:  17.15 million

    Nepal               20 September 2015   40 billion              2,392                       1,151
                    Pop 2017: 29.30 million      Pop 2015: 28.66 million         Pop growth/year:  320,000

    Portugal            2 April 1976        750 billion             89,437                      38,242
                    Pop 2017: 10.29 million      Pop 1976: 9.4 million           Pop growth/year:  21,707

    Sri Lanka           7 September 1978    68 billion              4,802                       2,448
                    Pop 2017: 21.44 million      Pop 1978: 14.53 million         Pop growth/year:  177,179

    Tanzania            26 April 1964       22 billion              858                         510
                    Pop 2017: 57.31 million      Pop 1964: 11.34 million         Pop growth/year:  867,358

    *https://countryeconomy.com/demography/population/china?year=1949

    Missing data for: Cuba, North Korea
Then I noticed the information at [2] could be remixed in several interesting ways. Looking at charts like [3] and [4] was illuminating. It seems like the "outcomes" of some of these countries are not unfavorable, depending, of course, on what metric you choose to measure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state#List_of_curren...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

[2] https://data.worldbank.org

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.KD?location...

[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#454
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 3000 a low enough number? There are 3000 children in concentration camps in the USA separated from their parents. Edit: yes, I have chosen the words concentration camps to evoke the sceptre of the Holocaust. Also note my grandmother is still alive and an Auschwitz survivor. We. have. seen. this. before! 1. Classification 2. Symbolization 3. Discrimination 4. Dehumanization 5. Organization 6. Polarization 7. Prepar…

not really if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them. ICE also saves the most lives on the border

> Many are not separated from parents but from strangers.

These aren't the ones that the uproar is about. The uproar is about the children who have been separated from their parents, not the children being held in foster care or holding facilities in general. The 3000 separated from parents is a number from HHS Secretary Azar. The Trump administration updated that number to 2342 children separated from 2206 parents.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#455
post #149

You really have to love Wikipedia. It's barely a week old and you already have a page with so many references and detailed information. Thank you, all the anonymous contributors.

Wikipedia is the best website for following: 1. Current events. 2. Sports tournaments. The information entropy level is quite high, with basically no ads, extremely good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased. This doesn't even mention the benefit of getting simple background information on the subjects with just a simple click (or even a hover these days) It's really a treasure.

> with basically no ads, extremely good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased.

these are qualities of a low entropy system.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#456

Awesome! I love how the global diving community came together to rescue them, it's unfortunate that Petty Officer Saman Gunan died after doing a run of oxygen tanks to the caves though. I even liked how Musk came out of left field "grab that tube, we're making a rescue pod!" and then hopped on a plane with it when it was tested and ready. While it didn't really matter I like that sort of thinking outside of the box a…

Musk was already in China to open a factory. It was a smaller detour than I had thought.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/07/10/tesla-c...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#457
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could just be correlation. India and China were doing fine until the Europeans came and subjugated them. There was some upheaval when the Europeans left and created a power vacuum. Shockingly, being conquered and ceded and the related civil unrest could also be blamed for (for example) strongman dictators that happened to come into power and cause famines, or genocide and sectarian strife. A lot of that conqueri…

India and China were not doing fine when Europeans came and subjugated them. Slavery in a feudalistic society isn't some rosey funland that the Europeans ruined. Life sucked all over the world, for 99.999% of people, who lived in nearly eternal bone crushing poverty. And how is freely trading your labor and goods for other's labor and goods an immoral system? I would call capitalism the most moral system we've ever d…

> how is freely trading your labor and goods for other's labor and goods an immoral system?

GP said "amoral" not "immoral". Morality is only a factor in capitalism in so much as it informs the decisions of the actors involved. Both truly moral activities and truly immoral activities can coexist in a capitalist system.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#458
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nop, not because of Elon Musk per se. I would have lost my judgment and go "ad-hominem" if it was another person as well. I just hate the argument "He's just helping for PR, while I seat my ass doing nothing" You conveniently cut short my phrase, when quoting, just to push the argument that I'm a Musk fanboy...

So, this is the second time you've said I don't do anything. There is no reason to be rude. My work is in scientific reesarch, and I've worked on projects that made significant improvements to drug discovery, possibly saving millions of lives.

"My work is in scientific reesarch..."

Good for you, but that wasn't what I meant. "Do nothing" in regards with the current situation, not in general.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#459
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could just be correlation. India and China were doing fine until the Europeans came and subjugated them. There was some upheaval when the Europeans left and created a power vacuum. Shockingly, being conquered and ceded and the related civil unrest could also be blamed for (for example) strongman dictators that happened to come into power and cause famines, or genocide and sectarian strife. A lot of that conqueri…

India and China were not doing fine when Europeans came and subjugated them. Slavery in a feudalistic society isn't some rosey funland that the Europeans ruined. Life sucked all over the world, for 99.999% of people, who lived in nearly eternal bone crushing poverty. And how is freely trading your labor and goods for other's labor and goods an immoral system? I would call capitalism the most moral system we've ever d…

But you're saying capitalism is what has made things better. The Europeans subjugated and killed people in the name of capitalism. Cultures were extinguished (we're talking genocide). You offer no evidence that capitalism made things better other than it being somewhat correlated with improvements of the last few dozen years. It could just as easily be the spread of liberalism or globalism. You can't really say as there are multiple factors involved. You can say it has increased market efficiency, and that increased market efficiency is generally good/useful.

Not immoral, amoral. Capitalism as a system doesn't make moral judgements. Guns, child sex-slaves and heroin follow the same principles as wheat and butter. We make moral judgements about them, but the market does not. It just weighs.

I understand the complexity issue fine. Complex markets are likely NP hard. As I said, capitalism (specifically free trade) is an okay heuristic for reaching a local optimum, but it is certainly possible that we could do greater good under a different system with a better heuristic that actually takes into account what good is.

Anyway, it doesn't deserve to be your primary compass for making the world better. Following the maxim of bettering capitalism at all costs can lead you down some decidedly twisted paths.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#460
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be so, but you're referring to pedants and historians, not common usage. It is not a euphimism; everyone knows that it refers to starvation and horrific murder and aren't using that word for the sake of masking this.

The term is a euphemism because "concentration camp" just means a camp with a high density of people. The fact that people know what they're really referring to doesn't mean that the term isn't a euphemism. After all, the whole point of a euphemism is that people know what is really meant. It's quite well known that "concentration camp" is not the correct term for the Nazi extermination camps.

Just like it's quite well known that "hacker" isn't the correct term for someone who breaks into computers.

All that remains is the small detail of convincing the public at large that they are using the word wrong.

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