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The high price of mistrust

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Re: The high price of mistrust

#241

Post by medium_burrito »

throwaway_4253 wrote: post #236
medium_burrito wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look back 50 years, not 100 years. We're facing a situation where the standard of living is dropping for the young generation. - huge increase in labor supply: outsourcing, women entering workforce in large numbers - productivity wage-gap: http://www.oecd.org/economy/decoupling-of-wages-from-product... - savings gap between millenials and previous generations: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-saving-habits…

> Look back 50 years, not 100 years. This observation is often trotted out, but I'm not sure it's fair. 50 years ago was no picnic, either. We were mired in the Cold War (Vietnam, no less). Nixon was in the White House. There was tons of social unrest (Nixon wrote in his memoirs about the thousands of bomb threats and attempted bombings). Civil rights / racial tensions were extremely high (MLK was assassinated in '68…

I'm going to take the risk of saying "This time it's different!"

- There is no such thing as lifetime employment for most fields.

- Outsourcing wiped out a lot of decent jobs in the US. - Automation is wiping out a bunch more.

- College debt is thing, though I fully expect this administration to forgive it.

- Housing is significantly more expensive**.

- All the rich countries are ageing fast.

- Men are going to college much less, and trend is accelerating***.

* Lawyers are a good example. Search engines have wiped out a whole class of entry-level legal work. We certainly don't need as many as we have now, but what well-paying jobs are going to replace them? Finance is going through a similar transition where you just don't need as many people to conduct trades. I feel like I was reading FT a few months ago and several of the major Ibanks were saying they expect to need a third as many employees in the next decade.

**Taipei is a prime example. Taiwanese salaries are super low, yet property is super expensive. Last time I looked, around $100/sqft for condos. People buying investment properties are the obvious culprit, but I don't think there is political will to deprive the government of property taxes and wipe out the savings of older voters, in order to save the young. And lo and behold the birthrate is 0.9 there.

***I think this was on HN a few days ago: https://hechingerreport.org/the-pandemic-is-speeding-up-the-.... You can argue college is a waste of time, and I'm inclined to agree, but I think we can make up a narrative where young men feel there is no hope.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#242

Post by robocat »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #177
dragonwriter wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a description of the absolute opposite of what “meritocratic” means. Well, its actually exactly what the use that brought “meritocracy” into the common lexicon was referring to, though that use was satirical.

No, "meritocracy" was brought into the common lexicon in the 1960s, specifically as an alternative to existing forms of social structure. A system where it did not matter which school you went to, in particular. I do not read the GP as being satirical in their use, although the use of quotes makes it somewhat unclear.

No. dragonwriter is referencing the original history of the word. The author Michael Young who coined the word in 1958 was using it in his book to show everything wrong with a “merit” based system, as he explains here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

This gives a good background:

https://kottke.org/17/03/the-satirical-origins-of-the-merito...

Re: The high price of mistrust

#243

Post by rossdavidh »

iso1631 wrote: post #133
misterbwong wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds overly-simplistic but the solution is to build trust again. Unfortunately, the incentives that rule our society are pushing us away from this. We need to align incentives properly if we're going to have any hope of building trust again. ex: 1. The internet, as a technology, is amazing but functions as a possible bullhorn for everyone, without filter. It does not reward the best possible or most positive idea,…

> Possibly unpopular view: Encouraging religious participation would go a long way to help. Whether you believe or do not, religion helps align society away from purely individualistic pursuits and more towards a "corporate good". How does that work out in 3rd world countries where there's high levels of religious membership and high levels of angry young men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_co…

The first thing that comes to mind is, if you don't have a high level of trust in the society, the trust fostered by being the same religion is all the more valuable. If you think you can go out into a high-trust society and do just fine, then leaving that religious community your parents raised you in seems low-cost.

Also, if high trust drives economic growth, and wealthier societies become less religious, you would get that same pattern. I think to determine which is driving which, you would need to look at the relation between religion now and trust levels in the past, and vice versa.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#244

Post by [deleted] »

ndiscussion wrote: post #70

Seeing 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?

[deleted]

Re: The high price of mistrust

#245

Post by [deleted] »

ndiscussion wrote: post #70

Seeing 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?

[deleted]

Re: The high price of mistrust

#247

Post by zamfi »

m463 wrote: post #222
i_am_proteus wrote: post #3

I appreciate the author's framing of "transaction costs." These costs are often hidden. It seems that as systems scale (in size) they tend to become inherently lower-trust. Consider a physician who makes house calls (not uncommon as recently as a few generations ago, and certainly not incompatible with modern medicine) and a large medical system such as Kaiser Permanente or NHS. The economic benefits of the larger-sc…

One thing I took away from the beginning of Matt Ridley's book Rational Optimism is that with trust, commerce is unlimited. And here we are stuck in this world where the computer in your pocket is untrustworthy, and you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life. and it's a shame.

> you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life.

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but it appears only 32% [0] of people care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it.

I suspect an even lower percentage know that apps on their phones might even be trying to upload their lives.

This is not the source of "mistrust".

[0]: https://hbr.org/2020/01/do-you-care-about-privacy-as-much-as...

Re: The high price of mistrust

#248

Post by mikem170 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #169
aww_dang wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So your assessment of the benefits of several hundred years of continuous political culture, along with a semi-continuous chain of protest movements, in "developed" countries is ... "meh" ?? Cynicism at this level does nothing but ensure that your worst take on government is what we actually get.

I thought that the parent made an interesting observation.

It's not cynicism, it a simple fact, backed up by history, of what happens when nobody trusts their government, when a the government of a people deviate too much from the interests of those people and making their lives more difficult instead of less, when all of that goes too far.

This can lead to reform. It can also lead to instability. It doesn't matter whether a country is "developed" or not. Developed countries can still have corrupt governments that are not responsive to their people, civil wars, etc. It can happen quick, or take a long time.

The stakes are high. Can enough of us agree on how to fix our problems? I don't know. I think that removing corporate and union money from politics would be a good first step, which is what most other countries already have done. Beyond that I wonder if we've grown our federal government too far past it's design specifications, expecting whoever is president this year to fix all our problems, leaving the other 49% of people very upset.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#249

Post by dredmorbius »

David Gerard made this point a few years ago interviewing with the Financial Times on his book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain:

Decentralisation is the paramount feature in bitcoin, but it turns out that that's a bad idea that's really, really expensive, because it turns out that a tiny bit of trust saves you a fortune.

"Decentralised" isn't a useful buzzword in a lot of ways, because it turns out that you want to be a part of society.

https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod

Thought's ocurred to me that advances in communications technologies serve to undermine social trust mechanisms.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...

Others as well:

https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/medium-and-the-reason-you-can...

(https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/71xbx2/sean_bl...)

And the late David Cornwell, a/k/a John le Carre:

the veterans of the S.I.S. [the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6] think, which is yes, kompromat was done on him. Of course, kompromat is done on everyone. So they end up, the theory goes, with this compromising bit of material and then they begin to release parts of it. They set up an ex-MI6 guy, Chris Steele, who is a patsy, effectively, and they feed him some stuff that's true, and some stuff that isn't true, and some stuff that is demonstrably wrong. Which means that Trump can then stand up and deny it, while knowing that the essence of it is true. And then he has a stone in his shoe for the rest of his administration.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x8tns/control...

Re: The high price of mistrust

#250

Post by kirse »

winrid wrote: post #111

Hopefully this isn't too much of derailing the conversation: This was something that surprised me about China when I visited, although maybe it shouldn't have. The level of community and how close people are seemed unreal, coming from the US. Maybe part of it is the "forced" community - city/urban blocks gated off with single entrance/exit ways, in some cases. I'm not sure. But the dancing every night in the street i…

The level of community and how close people are seemed unreal

All of that exists in Christian churches and their deep (but often quiet) influence over many social efforts and programs across the United States. Have you visited one recently?

Rally is also a pretty tight community as well, everyone is always there to help you press on regardless, whether its a tow out of a ditch on stage or lending a spare for a blown fuse in service.

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