Is everything falling apart? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#781

Post by briffle » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #334

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…

> “Essential workers” are pretty fucking pissed millions sat on their ass with no clue how to feed or care for themselves. They are not showing the same allegiance to shit jobs and moving on. They never had allegiance, they didn't leave shit jobs because of fear and the fact that moving between 2 minimum wage jobs likely wouldn't improve their circumstances. People are switching jobs because its an option now where i…

Its not progress. Your car plant now needs a truck worth of car bumpers every day, when they take 4 weeks to ship from overseas. Any disruption means that your whole plant is now idle. But because of accounting rules, it made companies look much better off if they got 2 trucks of bumpers every day, rather than have 28 trucks worth of bumpers sitting in a warehouse. Much more risk, but sure does help up that earnings per share to help the CEO with his bonus based on stock price.

Remember how hospitals didn't have PPE, because they could always get more shipped in 2-3 days? Works great. Until it doesn't.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#782

Post by pasabagi » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

jaegerpicker wrote: post #746

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Essential workers” are pretty fucking pissed millions sat on their ass with no clue how to feed or care for themselves. They are not showing the same allegiance to shit jobs and moving on. They never had allegiance, they didn't leave shit jobs because of fear and the fact that moving between 2 minimum wage jobs likely wouldn't improve their circumstances. People are switching jobs because its an option now where i…

This isn't progress, it's exporting the work that has to be done, someone has to grow potatoes. We have exported that hard work to poor people across the globe at horrible cost. Cost to the environment, cost to stability, cost to geo-political safety. Someone has to have their hands in the dirt, we act like it's progress because it's cheap and fragile because we don't have to do the work. Is it progress to pay artifi…

Eh, first world countries produce a lot of food. Farming is generally heavily mechanized. Nobody needs to have their 'hands in the dirt'.

In fact, I expect most potatoes will not be touched by a single human hand until they reach the person who actually cooks and eats it.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#783

Post by AvocadoPanic » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

imapeopleperson wrote: post #766

pianoben wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if one's "guy" is in office, I don't think we feel the same about it the way we did even as recent as Obama, and his administration was when we really began to see the social cracks forming. I really don't see it that way - this isn't at all a new phenomenon. What feels different to me is the intensity and pervasiveness of division, but then again that could be attributed to being more generally aware of thing…

> In my view, our "tribes" broadly descend from pro- vs. anti-slavery camps Fact: George Floyd wouldn’t have died if he didn’t resist arrest. I’m certainly not pro-slavery, and agree people can be racist, but there is certainly something wrong if people can’t openly discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a racist themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.

Unless he dies from the OD on the way to jail in the back of the cruiser or at the jail.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#784

Post by jaegerpicker » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

imapeopleperson wrote: post #766

pianoben wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if one's "guy" is in office, I don't think we feel the same about it the way we did even as recent as Obama, and his administration was when we really began to see the social cracks forming. I really don't see it that way - this isn't at all a new phenomenon. What feels different to me is the intensity and pervasiveness of division, but then again that could be attributed to being more generally aware of thing…

> In my view, our "tribes" broadly descend from pro- vs. anti-slavery camps Fact: George Floyd wouldn’t have died if he didn’t resist arrest. I’m certainly not pro-slavery, and agree people can be racist, but there is certainly something wrong if people can’t openly discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a racist themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.

The debate wasn't about that fact, it was about rather a white man would have died resisting or if him resisting in the way he did justified his death. The data shows that minorities are killed by cops at much higher rate[1]. He was accused of writing bad checks, that doesn't carry a death sentence nor should it. The reason people that express that opinion are often called racist is that it seems obtuse to bring up in the discussion. I'm NOT calling you of racist, I don't think people that state that are by default. Many are just siding with the police for various reasons.

1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#785

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #629

crocwrestler wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they did have domestic terrorist groups going around setting off bombs on the regular in the 60s and 70s. I was quite surprised to read about it. https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revol...

The only interpretation of this vs the parent comment is that you are insinuating this is somehow extreme and unprecedented. Surely it is not.

"In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day."

-- https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/

That was extreme and unprecedented for America.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#786

Post by acuozzo » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

sazz wrote: post #772

Humans just tends to repeat themselves every 50 to 100 years. But the good thing is - with each iteration we are learning. It's just a bit but maybe in a thousand years we will come out of our puberty. And no - the world won't go down due to climate change. It won't go down because of some silly war either. It's not a simple graph showing where we are heading to. Especially not an exponential graph. And we are still…

> the world won't go down due to climate change. It won't go down because of some silly war either.

When most collapse-aware persons write about "the end of the world" they mean "the end of complex human civilization", not the total destruction of the planet or even the end of humanity.

> It's just a bit but maybe in a thousand years we will come out of our puberty.

You're asserting that we'll solve the phosphorus problem (among others) in the next 50-100 years, then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#787

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #549

asdff wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace potato with any old piece of handy info, like home or car maintenance. A lot of younger Americans (myself included) have little practical knowledge, so everything needing knowhow in this generation must be outsourced. Compare this to my grandfather's generation, he knew how to frame houses, plumb, electric work, auto work, gardening, etc, and he was not alone. If he needed something done you'd get four of you…

You can still learn these skills. In fact, the wide access to knowledge should give you enough to learn these skills without ever having to ask someone else. The larger reality is a lot of these people don't need to learn these skills, so they won't, for various specific reasons. Same way you can ask a ton of people gen X and higher how to open a Word document, many of them don't know. They don't even know where to g…

The other limiting constraint is the capital needed to engage in some activities that were comparatively inexpensive a generation or two ago.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#788

Post by Manuel_D » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #752

Manuel_D wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building taller, denser housing doesn't pop the real-estate bubble. As cities grow denser, the land gets more expensive because land is finite. The solution to housing shortages is to build more, denser housing. The existing homeowners aren't getting a bad deal - they'll still be able to sell their houses at an immense gain. It's just that the same plot of land would occupy more units of housing. This is largely how…

Density is not a panacea though. Density reduces revenue per capita as you end up with property tax from the cheaper housing so as you build it you see declines in services. Most notably education, if you ever wondered why suburbs tend to have much better schools than urban areas a big factor in any jurisdiction where schools are paid for in part through property tax is that the suburbs have more property tax per stu…

Property taxes can be raised, if higher density makes it so that existing taxes are too low. Furthermore, education is more strongly correlated with parental education and involvement than with spending per pupil. Wealthier, more educated people tend to live in suburbs, that's why schools do better there.

Higher density makes mass transit systems like subways more viable, opening up alternatives to automobiles. Furthermore, greater density means more revenue to spend on infrastructure projects.

When a metro area experiences growth, higher density is inevitable. It's more a question of how that density will be accommodated. Construct no housing and it will take the form of ever-increasing home costs, and higher rents for increasingly subdivided apartments. Construct denser housing and people will be able to live comfortable and affordably.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#789

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

imapeopleperson wrote: post #766

pianoben wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if one's "guy" is in office, I don't think we feel the same about it the way we did even as recent as Obama, and his administration was when we really began to see the social cracks forming. I really don't see it that way - this isn't at all a new phenomenon. What feels different to me is the intensity and pervasiveness of division, but then again that could be attributed to being more generally aware of thing…

> In my view, our "tribes" broadly descend from pro- vs. anti-slavery camps Fact: George Floyd wouldn’t have died if he didn’t resist arrest. I’m certainly not pro-slavery, and agree people can be racist, but there is certainly something wrong if people can’t openly discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a racist themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.

I guess Philando Castile wouldn't have been murdered if he didn't interfere with police target practice either?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#790

Post by bsder » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 10:17 PM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #734

foundart wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pensions are insured but not at 100% of what was promised by the employer’s pension plan. Thus, getting only 10 cents on the dollar is certainly possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corpo...

And this is why forcing USPS in 2006 to prepay pensions for the next 70 years is a good thing, as opposed to a "GOP conspiracy to privatize the post office". Why it was passed almost unanimously by Congress. USPS's primary business, delivering letters, was by 2006 clearly in terminal decline, with no guarantee that parcel volume would increase to compensate. Many, many employees of newspapers—the other industry that…

1) Except that NO OTHER COMPANY needs to prepay pensions for 70 years. I have no problem with the fact that companies must prepay pensions. Then make it the law for everybody--not just the USPS.

2) The USPS is supposed to be unprofitable--it's supposed to service everyone. If you are going to hound the USPS about profitability, then they should be allowed to drop service in rural areas. The easiest way to decrease pension obligations is to permananetly drop a whole bunch of workers from unprofitable areas, no?

The problem is that the arguments around the USPS aren't made in good faith. The goal is to bankrupt the USPS so that they have to sell off the extremely valuable real estate that many USPS facilities sit on.