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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#641

Post by lampshades »

sanderjd wrote: post #574
oicU00 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah no doubt; I collate trends into reports for rich investors. Lately they have been focused on youth trends, and some numbers are wacky. 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share appeared. Youth participation in sports, especially full contact sports, had been going down since before covid which just accelerated it, leading to forec…

Very interesting comment, but one thing I don't get is the sports one. Why would lower participation in youth sports lead to a contraction of commercial sports? Does low youth participation in making TV shows hurt the market for consuming them?

Everyone I know that didn't grow up playing sports also doesn't watch them.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#642

Post by lampshades »

judahmeek wrote: post #588
mensetmanusman wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting, even if you don’t believe in a higher power, people that believe in God have far lower rates of depression and suicide, so if you try to optimize your life for happiness and mental robustness, it’s then logical to believe in a higher power. This is an interesting manifestation of the incompleteness theorem. :)

I don't consider basing my worldview on emotion-based fantasies mentally robust. Is it possible that believing a lie increases ones chances of being happy & less depressed? Sure, but that doesn't make it worthwhile.

Or maybe it's not a lie and believers are genuinely happier and less depressed.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#643

Post by kergonath »

RubberMullet wrote: post #253
ajross wrote: post #179

[flagged]

What would you consider good journalism these days? And is the right wing news industry bigger or smaller than the left wing side of things?

There isn’t much of a lobby on the radical left that can compete with the Murdoch empire. Yeah, you can pick some communist newspaper with strange views, but nothing close to Fox in the US or the Mail or the Daily Express in the UK.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#644

Post by qiskit »

> "... We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

Since when did we ever "speak the same language or recognize the same truth". We've always been cut off from one another. Racially, regionally, econonically, etc. The civil war being the obvious one. America is a country of many nations. America, the empire, is an empire of many countries.

> It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families…

This is just silliness from the media. This snapshot that the media portrays doesn't really exist in the real world. People just live their lives. Go outside and see for yourself. And even if it did, it doesn't matter. The red/blue, left/right, etc doesn't matter.

Things fall apart when the elites are divided. And the two dominant forces in american life (political, media, economic, cultural, geopolitical, etc ) are imperialism and zionism. I don't see any division amongst the elites on that. Left/right, red/blue, up/down, flat earther/round earther, etc. So I don't think anything is falling apart as there are no signs of fracture.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#645

Post by noloppers »

Minor49er wrote: post #578
hotpotamus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame Steven Tyler for creating the hit song "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)". Before that it was all so clear.

It was actually John Money who formed the basis of modern so-called Gender Theory by his twisted experiments on twin boys who he abused so thoroughly that they ended up taking their own lives. Check out the book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl" by John Colapinto

Some in the modern medical establishment appear to have taken his cue and ran with it, to similarly horrifying outcomes, e.g. https://4w.pub/tiktok-gender-doctor-per-breast-removal-on-13...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#647

Post by lampshades »

RubberMullet wrote: post #300
ravenstine wrote: post #111

Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…

What concerns me more than the collapse of many of our intuitions is the fact that the Neocons have emerged from the rubble. Regardless of party or political leanings there was a time when Neocons were universally reviled. Watching people like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and The Lincoln Project get so much press and attention makes my blood boil. Heck, they even brought out Dick Cheney(!!!) for the J6 anniversary.

I don't think the neocons will survive. It really feels like a last ditch effort to me. I'd say upwards of 90% of Republicans have turned on neoconservativism and the remaining 10% are more likely to vote Democrat where neocons are only welcomed as cheerleaders.

I think regardless of if he gets elected again, even if he only even serves one term, 50 years from now Trump's name is going to be plastered in more history books than any modern President before him (and possibly after). He truly did radically alter the party to an amount that will define different eras in political history.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#648

Post by 8note »

zmgsabst wrote: post #215
_usr1 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good god, enough with this "fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning" nonsense. Let's call it the "No true fascist fallacy". I could bring the corpse of Himmler here and some people would regurgitate the same "Bu-bu-but that's not actually fascist enough!". OP was basically quoting the definition of Ur-fascism by Umberto Eco. Is that historically accurate enough for you? Or should we check beforehand if whoever…

The reason people focus on definitions like “oh, it’s really about toxic masculinity!” is because admitting the truth would make them look bad: Fascism is a collectivist authoritarian system with regulated commerce rather than direct state control, often co-occurring with systemic racism. The reason people don’t want to be honest about the definition is that it’s the platform of modern Democrats, who are gaslighting…

The Democrats are trying to get rid of government violence via getting rid of police. How is that authoritarian?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#649

Post by dv_dt »

asah wrote: post #554
dv_dt wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pension funds depend on increased in production, but are run on common management strategies locking them into broadly supporting large corporations - which actually run less efficiently overall in improving production than small to medium sized companies. Also imho, the public stock markets have decoupled from having a good effect on being able to promote good fundamental value creation behavior on public companies.

You sure about that claim re SMB vs enterprise? There's millions of local businesses that engage in very slow innovation, including restaurants, laundromats, etc. Meanwhile the SP500 have all gotten religion about innovation as a driver for productivity increases. (Not arguing just asking)

I had read a set of clearer papers on this, but I didn't keep a link to them (of course there are many economic views this is just mine). However a couple of large scale effects may indirectly capture it. First there are fewer and fewer new business starts, meaning surviving firms are getting larger and older, and second the overall gross productivity has been dropping.

Maybe it's just correlation and not causation. I'll post again if i can find the more direct paper on the anticorrelation between very large corporations and productivity.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/declining-business-dynami...

https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-producti...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#650

Post by dv_dt »

somenameforme wrote: post #505
dv_dt wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, falling life expectancy is a macro measure of multiple failing institutions, not a singular cause. Obesity is driven by systemic commercialization and sugaring of our food supply, combined with inequality of too low a pay, too many hours, to little vacation. Even funding of highway and road infrastructure over other areas is a contributor here. Another large part of it is because we elect to keep both private h…

Let us imagine that starting tomorrow every single American is granted infinite endless and free access to anything available at any restaurant or grocery store or other food service. Do you think that in 10 years the obesity epidemic would be: better, same, worse? I have trouble imagining that it would be better. Look at people who come into access with large sums of money for reasons outside primarily mental achiev…

Other leading economic nations have increasing obesity alongside increasing life expectancy.
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