211–220 of 228 posts
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Mississippi?
Mississippi is one of the states that has a lower poverty rate than California when cost of living is taken into account. There are 48 others, can list them for you if needed.
> If the worst poverty rate is "doing well", what would doing poorly look like, in your opinion?
If your measure of pretty much anything puts Mississippi above California then maybe you've not got a great measure for doing well?
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The prisoner's dilemma is a toy example where everyone wants the same thing, but they can't achieve it without some external mechanism. Many regulations in the real world fall into this category, ensuring your competitors can't do things you don't want to do and thereby force you to do it to compete (and they in turn don't want to do it, but if their competitors do it...).
This is not a good example, and is part of the problem with these types of discussions. Not everyone wants the same thing in the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoners all want one thing and the prosecutors want something different. If everyone wanted the same thing here, there would be no dilemma. That's the case with 32 hour work weeks. Employees want them - but employers don't. So there is a misalignment of incentives.…
Thats why it is a good toy example of this issue.
It is a confusing name for it, since in reality there are often mechanism to punish "snitches".
I prefer to think if it as two people wanting to make a trade without a framework to enforce any contract law. You both want to swap your items that are valued more by the other party, but since there's no mechanism to force you to be honest, you're both motivated to steal the other person's goods and not deliver yours. And so you both do that, and the trade doesn't happen, leaving you both poorer.
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Isn't it the authoratarian government that's enforcing these laws? Why are you blaming the poor unions, they're only doing what they legally have to do to maximise the returns for their shareholders.
This entire thread seems to be you willfully misinterpreting their comments, or taking the most negative possible interpretation, and then responding to that. In addition to violating the site guidelines, it's boring, stifles discussion, and is the stuff of emotional, uneducated partisan hackery.
"I want people to be allowed to freely contract with each other without government intervention except when I don't" is a fundamentally ridiculous position for someone to take and pretend they're just following some noble universal law.
If I've not conveyed that message with my replies, then I've failed in my attempt to communicate. But that's the fundamental problem with their stance, quibbling within their bizarre framing is pointless if they still believe they're arguing consistently.
Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…
The only mechanism I'm aware of to change that is government and it needs more power to do so. Government is elected and democratic. Capital is neither.
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So demand massivley outstrips supply. If people aren't living in such horrible circumstances (crime, homelessness, drug abuse), why is demand so high that houses are unaffordable?
I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places now look like homeless encampments. I used to feel comfortable taking out my phone even after dark on BART, now I don't. The economy might still be chugging along but it's not chugging along on the back of the big cities with ultra liberal takes on crime/home…
You may want to increase density in downtown SF, and that's a reasonable decision, but you are claiming fewer people are there now then there were a few years ago. I don't believe there's been any drop in the number of housing units in the city, so that must mean apartments are empty. Is that the case?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mississippi is one of the states that has a lower poverty rate than California when cost of living is taken into account. There are 48 others, can list them for you if needed.
I was just answering your question: > If the worst poverty rate is "doing well", what would doing poorly look like, in your opinion? If your measure of pretty much anything puts Mississippi above California then maybe you've not got a great measure for doing well?
California (contrary to a lot of the images people have of what a progressive state would excel at compared to a more conservative one) is excellent at generating aggregate economic activity with great conditions for capital and a narrow elite labor segment, and very bad at distributing those aggregate gains to the rest of society. (To be fair, there is a very significant way in which that compared to other states, is because the more you fail at the first, the more the feds will ship money from the states that succeed at it to you as long as you commit to spend it on the second, so part of why Missippi looks better is that the gains of the strong aggregate economy California generates are skimmed at given to reduce local poverty in places like Mississippi, not based on relative need as measured by the SPM, but based simply on Mississippi’s weaker aggregate performance.
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California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently. There is a threshold where more businesses leave that it’s starting to reach. The cost of living doesn’t help along with crime. Climate change will also make the situation worse in the coming years, where we eventually lose temperate weather in exchange for forest fires. We’re already experiencing failing infrastructure like…
> California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently How much was it because of the pandemic causing work from home, which led to new employees joining remotely and not relocating to California, young people who lived here to move somewhere cheaper. The net growth might possibly increase in the coming years.
It’s also good to note that more and more companies are leaving due to both a combination of legislation, cost, and crime.
Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…
PS: This applies to every company, so the playground is fair to compete against.
Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…
If the govt does not have the power to dictate working hours, people would did from overwork like in the other countries. May be not software for now, but definitely it is possible with low skilled jobs. This is actually a good thing for the govt to have power over. PS: This applies to every company, so the playground is fair to compete against.
The idea that the establishment of a working week is government tyranny is obvious to one side and bizarre to the other.