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The dictatorship of the articulate

florentcrivello.com

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#171

Post by dsign »

I like the ending words:

> History shows that such progress is unnatural, and typically dies quickly.

I once was reading a piece of fiction where, at some time in the future, progress had stopped entirely and was regressing, even if there hadn't been any big conflagration and it was due entirely to a change in culture. One of the reviewers of the piece of fiction said that "such a thing is impossible, people always push for progress". I'm not sure even of that, that people always push for progress, but I know for a fact that progress requires lots of coordinated work and social support, and is all too easy to stop. If you have any doubts, look at most nations on Earth; look at Cuba for example.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#172

Post by AstralStorm »

blueflow wrote: post #170
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.

There are old things we need that are now threatened: water and food.

Part of why they're threatened is due to lackluster planning and future mugging economics.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#173

Post by ZeroGravitas »

d4rti wrote: post #162
concordDance wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

House size decreasing makes sense as people become more urban.

Everything else you said is exactly spot on though.

It was regulations intentionally written to make the rich richer and keep the poor poor that caused the issue. It wasn't a mistake, or an unintended effect of the nanny state going too far, quite the opposite.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#174

Post by pas »

hef19898 wrote: post #169
ghastmaster wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Zoning regulations mostly hurt the poor, even if lifting them would directly make profit for real estate developers.

That said there is a big difference between zoning and EPA regulations.

The only interesting thing in this article/blogpost is the 30 day limit of prop H.

It's a good thing. Every kind of bureaucracy should have cost-benefit analysis integrated into it. It's ridiculous that government agencies can decide critical things about people's lives but the decision framework is totally arbitrary.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#175

Post by plaguepilled »

hackerlight wrote: post #165
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-

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…

Yes everyone is aware that regulations are laws and can be implemented maliciously. We still need regulation despite those shortcomings.

Regulations give people who have a stake in a given resource a seat at the table, even if they're not part of the regulated business' plans. The examples you gave have negative effects, but they also highlight how ill equipped the industries that have them are with dealing with some problems.

The correct response to seeing that some regulations are malicious is to fix the regulations and to address the ways that affected parties were not adequately represented before the regulation was ratified.

The correct response is not to take a philosophical stance against regulation. Taking the philosophical stance conflates a data point with a trend, and also means we get to question the idea of representation at all in a Democratic system (which, if you're against Democratic processes, that's a whole different kettle of fish).

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#176

Post by fleddr »

https://florentcrivello.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/image...

The chart in the article is nice fuel for the little conspiracy theory I've been internalizing for most of my adult life.

Isn't it suspicious, this hard divide between our wants and our needs?

Our wants (optional goods, luxuries) have gotten dramatically cheaper over time, an explosion of choice, high speed of innovation, accessible and affordable to a growing amount of people, etc.

Our needs (housing, healthcare, education, etc) that for most people in this world add up to the vast majority of their expenses, seem to do the exact opposite.

Imagine that your bills would be 10 times lower in the way a TV got 10 times cheaper. There's very little reason as to why this couldn't happen, but it seems zero or even negative progress has been the trend for decades in a row now.

We got toys and apps, but no true socio-economic progress (at least not in the developed world), in fact the opposite. Per household we work more, not less. Economic security is non-existent as you need to compete with the entire world now and every field is constantly disrupted. Achieving and persisting a basic middle class existence is starting to require a super human effort now. A few decades ago, all it required was a pulse.

The vested interest to at least keep things the same has an existential background. It's people latching on to economic survival. So no, they aren't going to "get out of your way" so you can "build".

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#177

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

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.

> Regulation has made building so difficult in the UK

Lack of appropriate regulation allowed Grenfell tower to burn down. 72 people died. (1) The case for "deregulation" of UK housing is a grotesque joke.

1) How lax building rules contributed to Grenfell disaster https://www.ft.com/content/bf6bcbd0-5b35-11e7-9bc8-8055f264a...

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#178

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

gernb wrote: post #151
spoonjim wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you set it at zero you will never build anything

And further there are trade offs. I don't know the trade offs of bridge building is but the example i've heard in the past is, it's possible we could make it so no one ever dies in a plane crash. To do that with today's tech might make flights cost 2x, 3x, 4x more. Flights cost more = more people choose to drive (say SF to LA or LA to Vegas or DC to NYC). More people drive = more deaths. That isn't to say you shouldn…

I think plane crashes are not a good example of your point. Every time a crash happens, a massive post Mortem tends to occur to determine what needs to be done such that that specific failure mode will never happen again. Pilots have checklists on checklists on checklists that they must tick off during each procedure of the flight, with each point written in the blood of previous crashes. There isn’t discussion generally as to whether or not adding new checklists, the two pilot system, or other safety improvements as a result of this would make flights more expensive: hell, an entire new model of plane was taken completely out of the skies during a recent investigation as to a fucked up sensor.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#180

Post by Mordisquitos »

loxs wrote: post #108
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…

Did you miss the part where exactly these things suffer the most from regulation? How long until we mostly cannot afford healthcare for the middle class? Aren't we already somewhat there?

As you talk about the affordability of healthcare, I assume that you're talking about the US system. Consider this: is US healthcare more or less regulated than that of the rest of the developed world?
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