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Average Is Over

nytimes.com

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Re: Average Is Over

#241

Post by batista »

anamax wrote: post #224
batista wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really? What is that power? The power to get govt to things on their behalf? There's your problem No. That's one of the problems (others: cartels, influencing public opinion with your media, having people or ideas killed, using his money to buy influence with people, etc). And you seem naive enough to think that somehow we could do with him not getting govt to do things on his behalf. Maybe by reducing or eliminat…

>> Oh really? What is that power? The power to get govt to things on their behalf? There's your problem > No. That's one of the problems (others: cartels, influencing public opinion with your media, having people or ideas killed Having people killed is pretty much a govt thing. Larry can't buy everyone, and gets no benefit from trying. Govt, on the other hand, does both. > (2) government = the ONLY power that is elec…

Having people killed is pretty much a govt thing.

No, it's also a thing rich people and big corporations do all the time. Governments do that also on behalf of those people and their interests. Like, say, the did it for mr. Rockefeller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre with the national guard. But rich people are also perfectly capable of doing it for themselves. In the same case, Rockefeller had an armed guard or his own killing people. Now, at least nowadays, corporations do it a little less in the US, but even US corporations have people "vanish" and be killed all the time, in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.

You seem to think that that's a feature. It isn't - it's a huge bug. I have no interest in being "controlled by the general public and it's will".

Too bad, because it's either that, or a few guys controlling everybody else. Your country is not your playground, and nobody owes to you or anyone else anything from birthright or something. So everybody has to decide together.

If govt has power, it will act in his behalf, no matter how much you'd like otherwise.

Sure, it's a tradeoff. You give some people the power to act on your behalf in order to protect you from big bullies, and they might use it for their interests (or even for some of the bullies interests). Still, there is not other option -- except to give free reign to bullies and try to "protect yourself". Good luck with that. Their boss is a little bully, and still most people bend over backwards to accommodate him and spend their hours working overtime of fear they will get fired and end up on the street. If just your employee can do that to you, good luck with the real big bullies out there (from the health industry, to the banking industry, ..., to the mob).

The only option is that you give power to the government but you are vigilant about how it uses it (something of which we do a really bad job). There is no option b. It's not something it's up for some guy from Nowhereville to decide upon, as if he has some unique insight others lack -- it has been found to work this way since historical times and all over the world.

Re: Average Is Over

#242

Post by snowwrestler »

rayiner wrote: post #158
watty wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the argument of "allowing" people to become billionaires. Many of these people created things that changed the world. Should they be artificially limited even more on their income?

Billionaires don't exist without a state. Nobody toils for years in grad school and invests time and money in a new enterprise without the panoply of legal protections created by the state. Moreover, since the system of property rights enforced by the state is, like any other system of law, completely arbitrary, the specific people that get rich under a certain system owe their wealth to that arbitrary choice. So the…

I don't see how the rules of society are an "arbitrary set of choices." The process of making law is not arbitrary; it's a conscious, directed process.

Re: Average Is Over

#243

Post by snowwrestler »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #10

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think he's right about many things there: manufacturing jobs are leaving and not coming back. Automation is becoming more and more advanced, particularly if you factor advances in robotics and ml since 2006 or so. Things move faster and average just doesn't seem to cut it when you can manufacture excellence. Hell, lawyers and doctors will be next, how about faux ai that c…

I thank many of the people in power do recognize the issues, which is why transforming education has become such a hot focus lately.

Broad advances in education were essential in allowing the "average" person to find employment in an industrial society; the modern average person is far, far more educated than they were 500 years ago when most average people were illiterate and farmed for a living.

We will need a new transformation in education to allow future average people to find good work within an information-based economy. This means, for example, that the average person might be able to program computers at an average level in the future.

Re: Average Is Over

#244

Post by gyardley »

_delirium wrote: post #240
gyardley wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. One of the reasons I'd ideally like (in that magic fairy land we can't get to from here) small, cohesive, homogenous communities to be the ones that take care of each other, instead of relying on some sort of centralized authority, is because it allows the community to set standards for morality and behavior - not just for the poor but for everyone. When you're dependent on a group, you're accountable to that…

Oddly enough that's almost exactly the opposite of one of Hayek's justifications! He wanted a more individualist society where people were free to do their own thing, join/leave groups, etc., rather than feeling compelled to stay in their own tight-knit ethnic/religious/etc. groups, usually the ones they "chose" by accident of birth. And he thought one way that could happen is if the de-facto safety-net role played b…

Ha, that's such a perfect quote - thanks. I can see Hayek's much more of a libertarian than I am!

Re: Average Is Over

#245

Post by Locke1689 »

giardini wrote: post #172
gyardley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a completely wingnut idea. I first bumped into it in Hayek, who was in favor of it and not much of a socialist. The rationale works like this - given that some less-fortunate members of society will need assistance at some point in their life, and given that 'conservative' != 'asshole' and we don't want to just let them die in the street, we have to provide some form of limited welfare state. Since we have t…

"... or we could simply periodically cut everyone a small check." And what do you do when they drink the check and once again lie dying in the street? I really do agree with you - society can pay up to some point and no more. But at some point people must be allowed to die. For example, today I would not be opposed, in the case of cancer, to society providing payment for all necessary pain medications and hospice car…

If I learned one thing from my family of physicians (specifically pathologist parents), it is that anyone who makes broad, sweeping statements about "cancer" knows absolutely nothing about what they're talking about.

So no one survives cancer? I would say plenty of people survive B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, since the average survival for a negative ZAP-70 is over 25 years and many people don't even get treatment for it because they'll die of other things long before B-CLL.

Educate yourself before making statements like "we need to terminate the cancer industry."

Re: Average Is Over

#246

Post by anamax »

batista wrote: post #241
anamax wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Oh really? What is that power? The power to get govt to things on their behalf? There's your problem > No. That's one of the problems (others: cartels, influencing public opinion with your media, having people or ideas killed Having people killed is pretty much a govt thing. Larry can't buy everyone, and gets no benefit from trying. Govt, on the other hand, does both. > (2) government = the ONLY power that is elec…

Having people killed is pretty much a govt thing. No, it's also a thing rich people and big corporations do all the time. Governments do that also on behalf of those people and their interests. Like, say, the did it for mr. Rockefeller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre with the national guard. But rich people are also perfectly capable of doing it for themselves. In the same case, Rockefeller had an armed…

Govts kill millions (actually approaching 100M in the last 100 years) and you equate that with the equivalent of a weekend's worth of drunk driving. (And then there's Ted Kennedy....)

And no, it isn't "rich or govt". For all your bleating, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates don't give a damn about me. Meanwhile, every pol wants a piece.

Your "only option" doesn't work, so it doesn't much matter what would happen if it did.

Re: Average Is Over

#247

Post by Nick_C »

dgit wrote: post #96
robryan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bank would be lending it out though.

What makes you think so? Interest offered by borrowers is generally low these days and risks are high. So lending isn't happening.

If that was the case, we would see M2 and M3 go up, and we aren't. Depending on how you want to measure it, you could even argue they are contracting slightly.

Re: Average Is Over

#248

Post by Nick_C »

His arguments, and many here, are moot because of the political ramifications of disenfranching such a huge number of voters. The average worker, by definition, commands by far the biggest voting block.

When their minds are concentrated on this one problem, irrespective of their normal voting choice, they will vote for whoever offers them a way out.

It will end in tears as almost all wall-papering does, but not for a decade or two.

FWIW, I think this is the beginning of the China-induced global economic realignment. But we won't begin to see the real ramifications for a couple of decades because of the above.

Re: Average Is Over

#249

Post by dgit »

Nick_C wrote: post #247
dgit wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think so? Interest offered by borrowers is generally low these days and risks are high. So lending isn't happening.

If that was the case, we would see M2 and M3 go up, and we aren't. Depending on how you want to measure it, you could even argue they are contracting slightly.

Looks like 'up' to me for M2: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/ M3 not being tracked.

That said, I'm not entirely sure about the definition of M2 and how that's related to 'money sitting in the bank'. M2 includes 'savings and time deposits' according to Wikipedia, but it doesn't seem to differentiate whether banks in turn lend out that deposited money or it just sits there.

Re: Average Is Over

#250

Post by batista »

anamax wrote: post #246
batista wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having people killed is pretty much a govt thing. No, it's also a thing rich people and big corporations do all the time. Governments do that also on behalf of those people and their interests. Like, say, the did it for mr. Rockefeller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre with the national guard. But rich people are also perfectly capable of doing it for themselves. In the same case, Rockefeller had an armed…

Govts kill millions (actually approaching 100M in the last 100 years) and you equate that with the equivalent of a weekend's worth of drunk driving. (And then there's Ted Kennedy....) And no, it isn't "rich or govt". For all your bleating, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates don't give a damn about me. Meanwhile, every pol wants a piece. Your "only option" doesn't work, so it doesn't much matter what would happ…

"Govts kill millions (actually approaching 100M in the last 100 years) and you equate that with the equivalent of a weekend's worth of drunk driving."

Governments kill millions? You seem to confuse governments with wars. Or you mean "kill millions of their own", like, say, Pol Pot? Then you confuse government with dictatorship AND civil war at the same time. Sure, dictatorship is a form of government, but we were talking about representative democracy here.

Historically, every time the governments have gone to war has been to make some rich people richer. It's not called the "military-INDUSTRIAL" complex for nothing.

And no, it isn't "rich or govt". For all your bleating, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates don't give a damn about me

Exactly. But that's not in your favor. It's just that you are an ant to them, and they can crush you whenever they want if it serves their interests. From Bill Gates illegally bribing and extorting PC makers, to Larry Page using his search monopoly to pollute the results and crash the competition.

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