721–730 of 970 posts
I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running down the tracks but at this point…
I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running down the tracks but at this point…
I think the 'train' is also on fire just more insulated from the burning and it'll be a bit more comfortable until your car is engulfed and disconnected. IMO the beginning of Walkaway or maybe After the Revolution is a reasonable picture of what the future will look like economically with the gap between the rich and the rest of the world continuing to widen and life outside of that becoming increasingly tenuous. I'm…
I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
Remember, the "stocks" here, are all fiction. production at time t pays for retiree consumption at time t. Likewise housing prices are a waste of time when we should all rent, and there should be a land view tax (rent-turtles all the way down).
"Pay as you go" pensions scheme is good for the same reasons as LVT is good.
I believe society could function with a shorter work-week so I sure as hell am not worried about needing to raise the retirement age cause people are living longer.
If we need more productivity, abolish suburbia.
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…
Go reread the thread. OP said: > "Strong men" make fascism, not good times. They’re not even referring to any person or distinct group of people. The statement is so overly broad that it could cover BILLIONS of people. You’re making a mockery of the atrocities committed by actual nazis and fascists. You know what those guys did right? You would never tell an Auschwitz survivor: “yeah, the strong males are just like t…
No idea how fucked up my gramps were, but by their direct account, yes that "strong males" attitude we're talking about was quite a fascist trait.
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But data can't encapsulate values. My friend sent me a chart asking why were pushing vaccines for kids when only .001% of kids were dying from COVID. I looked at the chart and saw that 1000 kids had died from COVID and thought 1000 kids have died from COVID!?! There's no objective way to agree on whether a number is high or low. A lot of values transcend the underlying data, even when "the science is on your side". I…
> There's no objective way to agree on whether a number is high or low But emotional responses to absolute numbers aren't a good mechanism to inform policy making either. That's why absolute numbers are usually normalized to a "per capita" figure. If 1000 kids die in modern India (pop > 1 billion), that is less cause for concern than 1000 kids dying in a rural town in Pennsylvania (pop < 10000). But just looking at t…
The even stranger thing is that I’m not sure we even all agree on what knowledge is. I think some believe more that knowledge is about what you can argue, sort of a rhetorical/debate centered argument vs a scientific observational/data centered argument.
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OP didn't say kids trust science though. It could be they reject everything. :-(
Rejecting organized religion for any reason is a step in the right direction.
I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
> Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. Pension funds inherently depend on increases in production. Population growth is one factor, but technological development can also increase production. > The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. Hello from a V…
This is largely how dense cities like Tokyo manage to keep housing affordable [1]. When population increases you keep housing affordable by building more houses per unit of area.
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Theres a generational rift that will stop a lot of decaying areas from seeing repopulatin from newer generations. My wife and I saving to house shop soonish, but one of the primary requirements of our residency will be transit access. We don't like driving, don't like having to own a car, and definitely do not want to have to drive up and down the east coast to visit friends and family. Amtrak access is thus basicall…
I medically can't drive, and my other half doesn't want to drive. I see this as well, a number of my circle also want walkable/transit areas. In the states it's NYC, Philly, Boston, Chicago, San Fran, Seattle and a bit more. I feel like I need to leave just to get a sane metro area. I'm in NYC now, but keep circling back to Philly. We're renting for ~3200 now a one bedroom 650sqft in NYC, both work from home. To get…
Where in NYC are you and how does it compare to downtown philly? $3500 NYC rent means you're living in a hip/gentrified neighborhood. You can certainly find cheaper apartments if you are willing to go deeper into Queens. Whole houses? They exist but are in the 4-6k range as well ( friends aunt rents a home in belle harbor for something like 4-5k/month). By me (ozone park) the rent is not that high (~1600+)and we have plenty of busses and the A train. Further north is woodhaven with busses and J&Z train. You can go further east but you are now past most subways.
We were getting close to a fairly positive future. There are three basic constraints to material and non-material goods: - capital - labour - energy There are other raw materials, but they aren't limiting factors. For example, processed Lithium is in short supply right now, but it's not raw Lithium that's the constraint. We don't have enough Lithium mines and processing facilities. capital/labour/energy, in other wor…
That's basically Keynes general theory of employment, interest and money. The moment the marginal efficiency of capital falls below interest paid on money(=capital is cheap), capital is abandoned in favor of money. My entire stance is based around the concept of lowering the interest rate all the way down to the marginal efficiency of capital.
For example, during the great depression people couldn't afford food due to a lack of jobs, at the same time farmers did not harvest their crops because it was unprofitable, they let them rot on the field: http://exhibits.lib.usu.edu/exhibits/show/foodwaste/timeline...
A lot of military spending is simply motivated in using that cheap capital for _something_. After all, the military will give you a job and make your country "great" again. At worst you get to plunder a country which is highly profitable because you didn't have to create all that value yourself.
What boggles my mind however, is the fact that we have this climate change thing. If you want to keep this farce up, just invest in green tech. It's just a matter of changing the tax code. Excess energy/capital can be used for capturing CO2.
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America has a history of political tensions posing a danger to it. For a few years it maybe wasn't one country and quite a significant percentage of the population died sorting that out.
Americans seem to think that we're the only ones who ever had a Civil War and that it is a Really Big Deal, ignoring that there are civil conflicts occurring right now, and with higher body counts, too.