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The dictatorship of the articulate

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#131

Post by hackerlight »

zuminator wrote: post #106
hackerlight wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I arrived at, but I use the word better instead of fairer , since a regulation can do net harm without being unfair. It annoys me when the right just wants to deregulate and the left just wants to regulate. It's ideological possession. Implement more good regulations. Eliminate the ones that are doing more harm than good by adding too much red tape, or entrenching interests, or having too many unintended…

> Eliminate the ones that are doing more harm than good Easier said than done. When people have fundamental differences of opinion on what's "good and bad" how can we mutually agree on which "bad" regulations to eliminate? Even worse, we might not even agree on who's doing the regulating. For example, let's say me and my neighbors dislike Veltian immigrants, and we get our local homeowner's association to set up a re…

> When people have fundamental differences of opinion on what's "good and bad" how can we mutually agree on which "bad" regulations to eliminate?

Yes, some kind of moral system and political goals are presupposed if we want to start classifying things as good or bad, and not everyone will share these subjective goals. But every political project already has such presuppositions built in, this one being no different.

My point about ideological possession is that the purist "more regulation" and "less regulation" perspectives are logically inconsistent with the other principles that these people profess to hold. So I'm more pointing out the moral incoherence.

> it's arguably not the case when it comes to abortion and trans rights.

So this is interesting. The dichotomy breaks down (or even actually reverses) when it comes to regulation of social issues. But it seems to hold true when it comes to industry regulation, where the only exception to that is when social issues and industry collide. I can't remember a time when a far-left politician has proposed a bad industry regulation to be stripped (unless it clashed with the social sphere, e.g. discriminatory policies). I can't remember a time when a far-right politician has proposed a good industry regulation to be implemented (unless it clashed with the social sphere, e.g. social media). So I do believe there is ideological possession there. Have a read of the Texas GOP platform, it's a mix of anarcho-capitalism (remove all industry regulations and government bodies) and social conservatism.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#132

Post by concordDance »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

The costs of doing things the slow way as we do now hugely outweigh the benefits. Yes, buildings fall down less but they're so much more expensive that if you detregulated and put that money in healthcare you'd save an order of magnitude more lives than you lose.

A big factor is the costs of regulation and the fragility of innovation are both hugely underestimated. Every little form or permission slip is massively more costly than it would intuitively seem (though those who work improving BtC sales pipelines probably have a good feel for how much a little thing can deter someone from completing a sale).

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#133

Post by R0b0t1 »

concordDance wrote: post #132
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

The costs of doing things the slow way as we do now hugely outweigh the benefits. Yes, buildings fall down less but they're so much more expensive that if you detregulated and put that money in healthcare you'd save an order of magnitude more lives than you lose. A big factor is the costs of regulation and the fragility of innovation are both hugely underestimated. Every little form or permission slip is massively mo…

There are plenty of areas with too much red tape.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#134

Post by miles »

> Former head of the US patent office Charles Duell agreed: “Everything that can be invented has been invented,” he yelled from a hole in the mud in 1899.

Duell did not say that[0,1]; in fact, he said rather the opposite[2]:

"In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell#Everythi...

[1] https://gizmodo.com/7-famous-quotes-about-the-future-that-ar...

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=VMcpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29#v=one...

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#135

Post by ithkuil »

> 30 years ago was 1990. What’s happened since then? The Internet and smartphones, mostly.

This is glossing over things that have changed _thanks_ to these new technologies. A lot of things that used to be niches and counter-culture in the 90s (and poised to stay as such) have been accelerated thanks to the radically different way we can communicate.

The way we consume and trust our news, and by consequence the way that we build our world-view and by extension the way we build our tribal bonds and perceive our identities has been profoundly influenced by these two little words, internet and smartphones.

And we're just at the beginning.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#136

Post by concordDance »

1dry wrote: post #63

Unspoken and underlying the author's entire worldview seems to be, "the more new things, the better," a not uncommon tunnel view in the engineering world. The purpose of regulation, ideally, is to ensure that whatever activity/process is being regulated is worth the cost(s) for the majority of people. Defining those terms and making that decision is precisely the job of regulators, who are ideally accountable to a de…

Except in practice regulation increases cost and reduces access, particularly of anything new. Regulation has made building so difficult in the UK that oligopolies have formed and 90% of the young will never be able to buy a house unless they inherit.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#137

Post by gentoo »

spoonjim wrote: post #129
rwl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

Only 11 people died during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge which is fewer than the number of people who jump off of it every year.

what is the acceptable number of people to die during bridge construction

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#139

Post by concordDance »

satisfice wrote: post #100

The dictatorship of the articulate? So the author is clearly saying, "people" should not be in the room, or if in the room, be unable to speak, or if able to speak, be ignorant of their rights-- unless they support whatever he values. And then where will these people be? In which room? And what ability to speak should they have? And what about their rights should they know? "In the old days, it was so cheap and easy…

Essentially the more people have veto power or require consultation the harder it is to get anything done. The more policies and rules there are (particularly once uncertainty about what the rules are creeps in), the harder it is to build.

If you've worked in a large corporation and a 10 man startup this should be obvious. In the latter you can spin up a new service in a couple of hours. In the former a couple of months is a blistering pace.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#140

Post by Teever »

barry-cotter wrote: post #69
throw149102 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the PIAAC, 54% of Americans are illiterate. That is, they are able to read simple things like menus, but they are not capable of synthesizing new information from multiple texts, or understanding the nuance of an authors argument. If I recall correctly, Americans scored an average of around 275/500, while the best scoring country, Finland, scored an average of 300/500. (This is a statistically significan…

Functionally illiterate and illiterate are different concepts. If you can read a menu the thing that’s stopping you from reading and understanding a complex text isn’t about letters and sentences; it’s the inability to recurse on abstract thought and build complicated thoughts that depend on a body of knowledge. Eliding the difference between functional illiteracy and illiteracy confuses unnecessarily.

I think that this is a distinction without a difference in this context.
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