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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#191

Post by rezz »

sidlls wrote: post #181
rezz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an example where an outcome (weight gain) is completely driven by an individual’s (in)action (consuming more energy than expending) is probably not the best argument for opposing a “try harder” approach to living. Yes it’s never been easier to eat like shit and have hobbies that require no movement, but the opposite is also true.

A single outcome in over a single point in time, you mean. It doesn’t address the structural issues, such as cost and availability of healthy foods, that contribute to the need to lose weight in the first place.

As someone who lost 60lbs eating subway and Taco Bell for 8 months I don’t agree with this whatsoever.

If we are talking about weight loss (which we are) “healthy” foods are not a requirement, a calorie deficit is.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#192

Post by mikedilger »

I'm in favor of building things.

But we build in response to demand. Once people need more of something (e.g. PPE), production ramps up. That effect has been in place and has worked quite well for thousands of years. It doesn't require any policy or government, or even a new social movement, it's just an emergent property of humans being free.

You might argue that we could be smarter, and that we should build excess PPE before the demand hits just in case. This is reasonable to an extent, but probably to less of an extent than you think. The problem is that there are dozens of possible scenarios we should prepare for, and we can't know ahead of time which one is going to strike next. We have to prepare for them all: nuclear bunkers, asteroid deflection, global warming mitigation, sea walls, military capacity, etc, etc. Giving the competition among possible future disasters, it is often wiser to KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY (in capitals, because that is my main point) so you can respond to any of them after they eventuate, not before. This requires that we have the capacity to ramp up production quickly. That's not always a given, so I'm in favor of governmental action to ensure we have "stragetic capacity" to ramp up anything we might desperately need. But I'm not in favor of just building lots of things that we might need.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#193

Post by m0zg »

georgespencer wrote: post #117
m0zg wrote: post #14

> New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Yeah, NY also put out a "desperate call" for "40000 ventilators" in spite of needing only 6000. So that's really not a good indicator of anything. Not to disagree with the core premise of the article, of course. We must be able to manufacture all critical equipment and supplies on US soil, with significant surge capacity. > In…

You might be right, but your tone is quite unpleasant and I think you give people an easy out to ignore you. > not a good indicator of anything One was a projection of eventual scarcity (vents), the other is a response to current scarcity (ponchos). If you believe that we should ignore this on "boy who cried wolf" grounds, we can go ahead and dismiss the rest of your comment, since you also got something badly wrong…

You can always find a crazy example of something or other and choose to blow it out of proportion, while ignoring positive developments on the ground. Blood and gore sell newspaper subscriptions. In the meanwhile I'm glad Trump ignored the political damage Cuomo was inflicting, and did not send the entire stock of vents to NY. Doing so would be utterly disastrous to other hotspots.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#194

Post by [deleted] »

oxymoron wrote: post #70

I'm in the process of reading _Why Nation Fails_. The central thesis is that the rich and poor countries are separated by inclusive vs extractive institutions. The extractive institutions are characterised by elites that attempt to defend their own wealth and status by maintaining the status quo and resisting the creative destruction that may threaten that position. It seems to resonate a bit here, when Marc speaks o…

[deleted]

Re: It’s Time to Build

#195

Post by _2d30 »

covidacct wrote: post #116
nopriorarrests wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest, no snark question -- what exactly US government did in last 30 years that should warrant providing more money to it? Is there any guarantee that another trillion dollars will be used more efficiently than blowing up another Middle East country?

Here's one teeny tiny example. They made a smart investment, to the tune of billions of dollars, in computer science. And not just for the past 30 years, but continuously for the past 100 years. That investment included a modest (6-7 figure, depending on how your count) investment in a project on digital libraries years before private capital caught on. The private investors were rewarded handsomely for their investm…

You could make a claim about the internet which would be reasonable but that is also a miniscule portion of what the federal government has done with our money so using a teeny tiny example is more of an exception that proves the rule type of thing. The amount we spend on the Federal government and what we get back for it is crazy bad. The problem is NOT the federal government having too little money. It's a huge proportion of GDP, especially compared to when our government was vastly more effective. The problem is that the institutions that make up our government are dramatically incompetent and squander the massive amounts of funding we give it.

> That investment included a modest (6-7 figure, depending on how your count) investment in a project on digital libraries years before private capital caught on. The private investors were rewarded handsomely for their investment in that digital library, but we, the taxpayers, were not.

Definitionally, if private investors made money, so did the taxpayers:

1) The investors are taxpayers who benefitted.

2) The investors returns were taxed and all future economic activity that came from it was taxed.

3) Societally we got the "digital libraries".

Re: It’s Time to Build

#197

Post by neilparikh »

fastball wrote: post #77
wbl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of them started late but Germany seems to be on top of the situation. Singapore and Taiwan are much closer to them then the US.

I don't know, it looks like Singapore has missed a step somewhere. Adjusted for population and looking at the curves logarithmically, they're not doing so well.

The majority of the new cases in Singapore are in foreign labourer dormitories, so maybe the missed step was not putting enough effort into improving conditions in those dormitories? They put a lot of effort into contact tracing and the like, but that doesn't help much when you have a bunch of people who live together in (presumably) crowded quarters, who are unable to isolate themselves.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#198

Post by kitotik »

Somewhat related, but The New Deal basically invested 40% of the GDP into ‘building’ and paying Americans to do it.

The US in 2020 just invested roughly 10% of the GDP to prop up some corporations, and more or less called it a day.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#199

Post by ken »

pm wrote: post #106
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #63

> The problem is desire. We need to want these things. The problem is inertia. I agreed with most of the essay until I got to this point, at which point I rolled my eyes and briefly skimmed the rest. It's akin to people who say that the reason there are so many overweight people is that they lack willpower and motivation. Look at pictures from middle-America in the late 1940s - virtually everyone is thin, whereas tod…

Perhaps desire is the wrong word to use. I don't think he means desire in terms of willpower or motivation, but in terms of ambition. I do think the world has lost some of of its ambition over the last 50 years.

I don't think "ambition" is the correct root cause for "not enough surgical masks", either.

Look at someone like Bill Gates. He had the knowledge of how dangerous a pandemic could be, the financial resources to manufacture or stockpile the basic medical items which would be needed, and as much ambition as anyone on this planet.

I hate to single out anyone in particular, as this is certainly not his fault. I don't mean to pick on him. It's just an example of how even cranking AMBition up to 20 wouldn't have prevented our current predicament.

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