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The dictatorship of the articulate

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#161

Post by notahacker »

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…

There's also a certain irony in looking favourably at the building speed and cost of an era when Depression labour oversupply could get a bridge built quickly and cheaply (with only 11 construction deaths!) but the longstanding invention of running water didn't find its way into grandma's house until well into the second decade of her life. And even people with running water saw it collected straight from the same rivers untreated waste was dumped into until the era of regulation.

In that sense, the history of smartphones looks a bit more impressive than that of running water...

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#162

Post by d4rti »

concordDance wrote: post #136
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.

Which regulation do you think is responsible?

Personally I blame Right to Buy for the collapse in building new homes, as this graph [1] neatly illustrates; Local authority building collapses, Housing association building is a trickle by comparison. Private housebuilding has remained relatively stable since 1955 by comparison.

The financial crisis also has a notable effect, but it's small by comparison.

The cost of housing is fuelled mainly by lack of social rented supply, and the high cost of land with planning permission. It's also to some extent a consequence of political service to the baby boomer generation, who got high house building when they needed it, had the heyday of BTL and have constrained house building since to preserve the value of their investments. The size of houses is decreasing [2] and I can't find a source for it, but certainly anecdotally plot size is decreasing too. The young are paying more for less.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_the_United_Kingdom#... /File:Dwellings_completed_in_England_1946-2015.png 2: https://www.labc.co.uk/news/what-average-house-size-uk

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#163

Post by yodelshady »

kortilla wrote: post #147
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…

False dichotomy. Look at the delays and cost balloons of the HSR project. They have nothing to do with safety of workers. You can adopt modern safety standards and still wipeout a ton of roadblocks to actually get started much sooner by just generally using eminent domain more freely and not empowering people to so easily stop projects with lawsuits.

Indeed. Airlines do well, and they're heavily regulated. But they don't have armies of engineers doing nothing whilst court cases are worked out.

The flip side of that is monopoly. The only recent aviation accidents that have happened, have done so because, put bluntly, the FAA knows they didn't stand a chance if they blocked the only (US) big-jet maker from upgrading its planes. Were there (US) competitors, which once there were, they wouldn't blink at telling Boeing's transparently awful MAX design to go whistle.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#164

Post by ThePowerOfDirge »

rwl wrote: post #120
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…

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…

>We don't accept that kind of risk anymore in the US

3 years of coronavirus in the US seems to disagree with this statement

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#165

Post by hackerlight »

plaguepilled wrote: post #35
superchroma wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think that the wake left by crypto steaming by and then striking multiple successive icebergs demonstrates that regulation is crucial and that unregulated fields with potential profits very quickly become a hell dominated by huge corporations who start to dictate the terms of the field.

True. Almost as if the regulations... Protect? The... Consumers? No no, its the 'talkers' ruining it for the 'builders', surely. Not like people in a given industry ever want regulations. Please don't look up Louis Rossma-

Some regulations help people, and some regulations hurt people.

Regulations that usually help people:

- anti-dumping and pollution regulations - regulations that mandate disclosing added sugar on packaging labels - regulations that protect workers in endogenous bargaining disputes.

Regulations that usually hurt people:

- single-family zoning - price ceilings

Regulations are just laws that force businesses to behave a certain way. And laws can be good or bad, because lawmakers can be corrupted by money or ideology, or because laws can have unintended consequences. Regulations are not good or bad in the abstract.

The mindset that all current regulations are good is quite toxic, actually, because there are quite a lot of bad regulations that would improve regular people's lives if they were removed or refactored.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#166

Post by ghastmaster »

rwl wrote: post #120
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…

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…

> There was also a cost in human life.

The article's first sentence, reads, "A few years ago, Silicon Valley was buzzing with the reverberations of Marc Andreessen’s epic essay, It’s Time To Build."

Here's the main point of "It’s Time to Build" regarding the failures in response to the covid pandemic: "Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t do in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to build."

The direct premise of this article is that our failure to build in the past is costing lives now and in the future. Im my opinion, many many more lives.

Regulatory oversight is not necessary for safety to improve over time. I think history shows that as technology advances and people's standard of living increases, people become more risk averse. General knowledge also increases over time, decreasing the proclivity for humans to put themselves in risky situations.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#167

Post by eric4smith »

This is because Articulate people relay concepts in a simple way.

Even if its something that is well known by almost everyone... the person who can say it the simplest will almost all the time assist in amplifying the loudest.

It's the same as having a really simple UI for your software. It's "articulate" and so simple to use, and so a joy to the users. Especially, if its complex underneath.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#168

Post by ZeroGravitas »

closeparen wrote: post #50
plaguepilled wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Almost as if the regulations... Protect? The... Consumers? No no, its the 'talkers' ruining it for the 'builders', surely. Not like people in a given industry ever want regulations. Please don't look up Louis Rossma-

So the more stringent the local housing regulators are, the more I should be able to find safe, decent, affordable places to live. Whereas in a place where the average project goes through fewer hearings, where the words "affordability" and "equity" rarely cross planners' lips, the housing should be poor quality, unsafe, way too expensive, only the rich living there. And if I go to a neighborhood that violates every…

Yes, Germany and Austria and Singapore and places like that are doing better at this than America.

But you're probably thinking about communist California that passed prop 13 and a bunch of other regulations in the decades before it even became majority Democrat.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#169

Post by hef19898 »

ghastmaster wrote: post #166
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…

> There was also a cost in human life. The article's first sentence, reads, "A few years ago, Silicon Valley was buzzing with the reverberations of Marc Andreessen’s epic essay, It’s Time To Build." Here's the main point of "It’s Time to Build" regarding the failures in response to the covid pandemic: "Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we did…

That trade off is deeply flawed. Future lives saved are impossible to quantify, while lives saved now very much are. But argueing to sacrifice / risk lives now for the benefit of saving lives later, all you do is arguing to get of regulations holding you back right now from making personal gains. And that line if thought is just selfish, entitled and short sighted. And quite prevelant in certain, especially rich and powerfull circles, unfortunately. But after those lives risked now aren't the rich and powerful ones.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#170

Post by blueflow »

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…

New was good because humans needed many things (that were new at this point). Now that we got almost everything we need, "New" is no longer good on its own.
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