I say this is mostly the automobile and suburbanization catching up with with the US. You can physically disaggregate society and then not expect social disaggregation.
The high price of mistrust
201–210 of 285 posts
Re: The high price of mistrust
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
A method to address mistrust is to initiate "virtue circles": do people unrequested favors, without expectation of any return. Just do it; it actually feels good. And it is infectious . Others start doing it too, and double so when you subtly exhibit the joy of helping others without any expectations. Once more than 3 people in any social circle start this type of positive interaction, a positive culture shift occurs…
And make sure there is space for people to do this, and reward it where possible. Companies are moving more and more towards metrics, which means the nice guy that helps everyone out but isn't as great with his metrics gets screwed, vs. the asshole who optimizes only for the metrics while screwing everyone over gets ahead. Once the nice guy has seen this happen over and over, even the nicest person breaks, gives in,…
"It's all about the incentives" - Steven D. Levitt
Re: The high price of mistrust
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You start to mistrust all of the zealots forcing you destroy the economy^, handicap an entire generation of students, destroy the mental wellbeing of many millions, in order to extend the lives of the elderly and immunocompromised by a few years Wearing a mask doesn't destroy the economy or hurt students. It's the cheapest possible intervention. If wearing a mask helps, it actually sucks the wind out of the sails o…
I feel like I am taking crazy pills whenever people bring up the economy with COVID responses. The virus doesn't and cannot care about the economy or holidays, or any other irrelvancy brought up for arguments. Not to mention the obvious - sick people and people trying to avoid being sick aren't good for the economy. It is just such blatant illogic you would expect from primary schoolers and not adults with college de…
> The virus doesn't and cannot care about the economy or holidays, or any other irrelevancy brought up for arguments
This is an overly simplistic view. The virus doesn't care, but policy makers should care, because if you optimize too much for saving lives from the virus at the cost of everything else, you might find the cure is worse than the disease.
Say you are a policymaker and a new disease emerges that will kill 1% of the population if left unchecked over time, mainly in the elderly. Also say that draconian control measures will cause suicide rate, unemployment, and mental health cases to go up 1% for every day they are in effect, mainly in young people.
What's your policy? Are you going to do everything you can to save the elderly at the expense of the youth? Or are you going to make sure the youth are good at the expense of the elderly? Something else entirely? As far as I can tell in the US, we are optimizing for saving the elderly and throwing everyone else under the bus in pursuit of that goal. We can expect to see a very large increase in suicides, unemployment, and mental health issues above and beyond what we saw in 2020 (including substance abuse) in coming months if we stay the course.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah... the 50s only look good if you ignore the massive racial, gender and environmental problems. US economy was great with the post-war boom, but there's a reason why there are so many TV shows about the rotten foundations of 50s glam.
As opposed to the massive racial, gender and environmental problems we are currently facing, with a additional pyramidion of used needles and feces?
Bro, America was legally segregated then. Give me a break.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glenn Greenwald's personal issues with (1) what he considers the appropriate relationship between journalism and "objectivity" and (2) his ability to maintain that relationship if he votes are not my problem. There are dozens/hundreds/thousands of journalists around the world who are perfectly capable of reporting in a way that is useful, insightful, factual, while still voting in elections. I don't want journalists…
It's helpful to distinguish between journalists and historians. Historians have the time and context to make judgments and draw conclusions. Journalists are reporting on things that happened today , and the deadline is in an hour. The story may still be happening by the time the piece is published. You don't have all the information, so any opinion will inherently be misinformed. Report the facts and leave the opinio…
There are many, many journalists who work on stories that do not have "hour from now" deadlines.
People reporting on, for example: the move towards renewable energy supplies, the redistricting/closure of Chicago public schools over the last decade, gerrymandering processes in a half-dozen states ... in fact, I'd wager than the majority of things that journalists write about are not "hot news" at all.
You cannot "report the facts and leave the opinion to someone else". Even the order in which you report facts is implicitly an opinion.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#206The gig economy exploits the efficiencies of a trusting society masterfully. It would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that we'd let total strangers drive us home from bars and use our houses like hotels. But it turns out that with only a little oversight, we can trust our fellow citizens just as well as an employee of a professional company. Systems of maintaining trust are very important, but having a trustworthy…
A lot of things were unthinkable 20Y ago that were perfectly normal for the century leading up to the mid-1960s.
Pretty much everything you list was, at one time, somewhere between commonplace and not-infrequent. It was the commercialization that brought with it the divide.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust. I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008 financial crisis and the politicians who bailed them out at the people's expense, the military/intelligence and tech industry figures who s…
This is what I've found incredibly healthy and liberating about less developed countries. Nobody believes politicians or assumes that government has their best interests in mind. That level of trust appears as a toxic mythology from my perspective. Instead they look for their own solutions.
Yet they are still developing countries. Maybe being a low trust environment isn't actually working in their favor and having a government you can trust to solve problems is good. A corollary: maybe working to sow distrust in the government doesn't promote the general welfare.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO trust is associated with a certain social interaction. Once it's broken, one common way (the most? not sure) of re-establishing trust is to establish new social interactions, probably more personal and less complex. The example I'm thinking of is the emergence of organised crime in Sicily out of informal relationships between citizens who can't count on the state for protection or justice. Or the emergence of feu…
We're kind of barreling toward this reality in pockets of the western world. Where I live in the US (wealthy blue state, not rural Alabama, don't get your hopes up) you pretty much can't do fair business at a fair price without a personal reference or prior business relationship. And in some of the smaller wealthier towns you can see this kind of behavior start to creep into local government. Of course this is a far…
? Where I live in the US (wealthy blue state, not rural Alabama, don't get your hopes up) you pretty much can't do fair business at a fair price without a personal reference or prior business relationship.
Are you able to share an anecdote on this?
Re: The high price of mistrust
#209Seeing 1950's America is heartbreaking for me. I grew up in the 90s, and I never saw a trusted society. https://www.radiogunk.com/forums/index.php?threads/1950s-ame... Where's the broken glass? The needles, the poop? The stumbling drunks harassing the young women? The masses of tents where children used to play? What the fuck has happened to us?
yeah... the 50s only look good if you ignore the massive racial, gender and environmental problems. US economy was great with the post-war boom, but there's a reason why there are so many TV shows about the rotten foundations of 50s glam.
No, there are TV shows about that because those who control the media want to make us think the 50's, which by all accounts were comparatively really good, really weren't good at all due to some hidden darkness below the surface. Because otherwise we might start to think double-plus bad thoughts about why so many things have turned to shit.
And I mean good for all races - in terms of real-world material and communal circumstances - as opposed to abstract "rights" (other peoples obligations) that mostly benefit a small upper middle class.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> EDIT: I think the guy who started Huawei said something to the effect of when you are a millionaire, you only care about yourself, but when you are a billionaire, you are all the sudden responsible for a lot of people. I wish that attitude permeated our business schools and boardrooms. That’s what the poors need; noblesse oblige oligarchy.
We already have an oligarchy. They control the government, and can get laws passed the poors cannot. What purpose should they serve, ideally? - focus just on investment and profit - improve society ie noblesse oblige - compete for public honor, ie holding high office I'm not suggesting their is one answer, but given the rich hold such sway over government, I definitely don't think they can sit back and enjoy their hi…
You went from Eugene Debbs to fairytale-spinning court jester in the span of four paragraphs. That’s impressive.