The dictatorship of the articulate • Hacker News Board

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#351

Post by UmbertoNoEco » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

thrown_22 wrote: post #270

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I nearly brought that myth up as further evidence: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/ Why do people have such a false, cartoon-like, impression of what actual historical fascist movements did? But you're right, it's much more important that he killed people: > Fascist squads, militias inspired by Mussolini but often created by local leaders, swept through the countryside of the Po Valley and the Pugli…

Now do the great leap forward in China.

and later the atlantic slave trade and americas colonization several genocides packed in 2

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#352

Post by UmbertoNoEco » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

BMc2020 wrote: post #18

It’s a funny coincidence that the field where we’re seeing the most innovation happens to be the one we regulated least, and that the fields that got worse are the most regulated ones. --------- As Marc Andreessen remarks, in every case, the culprit is regulation. Ho hum. And the 5 year old AEI chart that's been bumping around awhile. IIRC TVs are so low because they use a trick called 'hedonic averaging' where a 27…

'It’s a funny coincidence that the field where we’re seeing the most innovation happens to be the one we regulated least, and that the fields that got worse are the most regulated ones.'

because the causation is the other way around mostly

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#353

Post by wizofaus » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #174

hef19898 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deci…

> It's ridiculous that government agencies can decide critical things about people's lives but the decision framework is totally arbitrary.

Arguably that's what we elect governments to do. And if they're doing a bad job of it, they get voted out. Obviously it's not a very fine grained system and there's an argument for a constitutional requirement for legislation to be reviewed periodically but that carries the risk of even more bureaucracy and effective regulation being repealed for ideological/partisan reasons rather than any sort of evidence based analysis.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#354

Post by ivarru » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #304

secretsatan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to say this, human life was cheaper. It's quite worrying to see now a trend trying to praise this attitude as fearless workers, where as the ones we have now are all wimps, views usually espoused by people who have never, and will never work a job that could be dangerous

> views usually espoused by people who have never, and will never work a job that could be dangerous Have you ever been on a construction site, shipyard, pit mine, etc.? They're stuck in the mud doing "everybody stand back" shit that isn't technically against the rules with a port-a-power because it's the least worst option and your ilk has the gall to come along and lecture that a 5-gal bucket isn't for standing on.…

I'm sure many workers with dangerous jobs hate rules that only seem to make their work more difficult, especially if this seems to affect their income. Many of them presumably support Trump and others who want to dismantle these regulations, but this is unlikely to improve their situation. There's no reason why corporate HR would then suddenly decide to pay them more or prioritize a second truck crane.

Perhaps the workers themselves ought to be more involved in the processes for deciding new safety regulations, but the intuitions and common sense people have w.r.t. risk and safety can be quite inaccurate.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#355

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #268

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

This comment can only originate from someone who has lived in democracy all their life. Having travelled the world for most of my life, and saw dictatorship at work, I think a lot of HN and Twitter evil sensors need serious calibration. It's like looking at somebody with diabetes and saying they have terminal AIDS.

The two most famous Fascist movements in history replaced democratic governments after initially attacking them as failures for decades beforehand and promising to return the nation to greatness and save it from failure.

They did (most of) the famously bad stuff they are remembered for after they took over and abolished the democracy and its institutions, so no one could stop them.

Many of the people they killed would have lived in democracies all their life. And became targeted because they stood in the way of them politically in that democracy.

So I feel a blanket rule of "you can't call anyone a Fascist in a democracy" is not particularly historically insightful or useful, no matter how many countries and/or dictatorships you've visited.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#356

Post by shswkna » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

wyre wrote: post #318

shswkna wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you will not come to an agreement with those that find that the opposite is true (‘let builders build’) because ultimately it boils down to one’s outlook on life and what we deem important (‘our value system’). By arguing in favour of regulation, you have a set of assumptions and expectations that support your view. For example, in the literal case of buildings, you might be thinking of rent-seekers and gre…

Others have commented on the other fallacies in your post but you say >If evolution had been “conservative” When has evolution not been conservative? Tiny changes over the span of generations is certainly not liberal or radical. It took what, hundreds of thousands of years if not more for us to evolve into Homo sapiens and develop intelligence.

You are thinking human timescales. The sheer diversity of mindboggling lifeforms that exist and have existed have been everything but conservative. And also very wasteful/destructive.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#357

Post by dionidium » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #350

dionidium wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Ironically, the state preventing people from demolishing irrelevant structures to build housing that will exist entirely on their own private property is actual Fascism . I suspect it's a Fascism you're sympathetic to, but it's much more literally Fascism than the alternative.

But the state didn't do that. He's just misrepresenting it > The building’s sardonic “historic laundromat” nickname stems from a 2018 study the city conducted to determine whether the property should be preserved as a historic asset. > The concern at the time was not that the building itself might have historic value, but that as the building’s onetime offices of certain local activist and nonprofit groups it might b…

This explanation does not assuage my feelings of contempt for this process, which I hold to be completely illegitimate and unconstitutional.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#358

Post by shswkna » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

busyant wrote: post #303

edmundsauto wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You start with a truism/No True Scotsman, then overlay a theory of everything without any evidence to suggest how construction deaths Are comparable to natural selection. I don’t disagree with you - but it would be worth revisiting how you make this argument. You took all this time to write a nice comment! & here I am, criticizing it, but I think you may need some refinement.

I think, like you said, the comment needs refinement, but I get the point. Basically, if you lean against regulation, clever/imaginative/quality building will flourish, but the price you have to pay is that cheap/shoddy building will flourish, too. The problem for me is that even though I can see the tradeoffs associated with regulation, it's difficult to determine where to set the regulatory "dial." And even if I co…

I’d say that that these two opposites (regulation vs. freedom to just create) will always exist side by side.

We tend to argue for one or the other and hope that a clean ideology will emerge from it because it makes our understanding of life so much simpler.

But if I continue my way of argumentation, I’d say this ‘pulling of opposites’ is a built-in feature of our existence. The really smart outcomes emerge out of the tension that exist between these opposing ‘forces’.

In the case of my evolution example, the two opposing forces are life on the one hand, and death (or the non-living environment), on the other.

Very abstract, I know. But this world view has been expressed by at least one thinker who formulated this ‘natural law’ if you might call it that: Henno Martin in this book (I couldn’t find an English translation): https://www.amazon.com/Menschheit-auf-dem-Pr%C3%BCfstand-Men...

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#359

Post by wizofaus » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

mburee wrote: post #233

wizofaus wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it pretty hard to believe "just letting workers die" was at all economically cheaper than having regulations in place to minimize that likelihood. The costs might be subsidised more heavily, but to just waste the years of training and effort that's put into ensuring we have skilled qualified workers (of any sort) is surely enormously expensive.

I suppose the more experienced (and more valuable I guess) knew most dangers and pitfalls and were better able to navigate amongst them. Some people also seem to be inherently more clumsy/likely to misstep/hurt themselves and they'd get sorted out sooner. Not that that was any good, but I don't think enough builders died to make a difference in productivity.

I'd argue you're not really considering the total $ cost of an adult human being. I'm guessing many of those who have died during poorly regulated construction projects were relatively young too, so having invested heavily in nurturing workers to that point, the potential to capitalise on decades of productivity is lost.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#360

Post by _fat_santa » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

pif wrote: post #287

_fat_santa wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chesterton's Fence at all: before you criticize let alone dismantle regulation, you should be able to demonstrate a sound understanding of why it came to exist in the first place It's not the individual regulations themselves, it's the mass of regulations that's slowing things down. I'm sure SF has a ton of regulations around building housing. You can point to each rule and give a very good reason for why that rule…

> I'm sure SF has a ton of regulations around building housing. Which only affect those builders who keep wanting to build in San Francisco. Just go and build somewhere else, that's the entire point of San Francisco regulation! > massive disservice to the community by driving away affordable housing and business. I don't agree with you. SF regulations are working exactly fine for SF community: they are preventing the…

> Which only affect those builders who keep wanting to build in San Francisco. Just go and build somewhere else, that's the entire point of San Francisco regulation!

Builders are building elsewhere, and that is precisely the problem. The lack of construction in the city is the main reason for the sky high COL there.

EDIT: You know I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.