71–80 of 421 posts
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It's much more expensive to lose a war.
We still lost with nothing to show for it but debt for generations, millions of unnecessary deaths, and the TSA. Enjoy the debt service, “support the troops,” and millimeter wave backscatter scans without your shoes.
I think Bukele in El Salvador has been a great example of changing this. Decades of murder and mayhem and having the highest murder rate in the world, and the guy makes it the safest country in Latin America in just a few years by calling B.S on the government's entire approach to criminal justice. It's one of the greatest examples of turning a country around in recent memory. We shall see if Melei can do it in Argentina with his approach to radically changing an economy that has been a basket case for decades.
In the Elon Musk biography, the power he has to so effectively build a manufacturing company is he knows enough about all the aspects of the business that he can call B.S on people in any part of the company who aren't performing. It's the ability to go into power structures that are stagnant and tear out the parts that need tearing out.
(And also https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/)
> Our story begins (says Gurri) in the early 20th century, when governments, drunk on the power of industrialization, sought to remake Society in their own image. This was the age of High Modernism, with all of its planned cities and collective farms and so on. Philosopher-bureaucrat-scientist-dictator-manager-kings would lead the way to a new era of gleaming steel towers, where society was managed with the same ease as a gardener pruning a hedgerow.
> Realistically this was all a sham. Alan Greenspan had no idea how to prevent recessions, scientific progress was slowing down, poverty remained as troubling as ever, and 50% of public school students stubbornly stayed below average. But the media trusted the government, the people trusted the media, and failures got swept under the rug by genteel agreement among friendly elites, while the occasional successes were trumpeted from the rooftops.
> In Gurri's telling, High Modernism had always been a failure, but the government-media-academia elite axis had been strong enough to conceal it from the public. Starting in the early 2000s, that axis broke down. People could have lowered their expectations, but in the real world that wasn't how things went. Instead of losing faith in the power of government to work miracles, people believed that government could and should be working miracles, but that the specific people in power at the time were too corrupt and stupid to press the "CAUSE MIRACLE" button which they definitely had and which definitely would have worked. And so the outrage, the protests - kick these losers out of power, and replace them with anybody who had the common decency to press the miracle button!
EDIT to be more topical to the submission:
> So for example, Gurri examines some of the sloganeering where people complain about how eg obesity is the government's fault - surely the government could come up with some plan that cured obesity, and since they haven't done so, that proves they're illegitimate and don't care that obesity is killing millions of Americans. Or homelessness - that's the fault of capitalism, right? Because "we" could just give every homeless person a home, but capitalism prevents "us" from doing that. Or if you're a conservative, how come the government hasn't forced the liberal rot out of schools and made everybody pious and patriotic and family-values-having? Doesn't that mean our lack of strong values is the government's fault? The general formula is (1.) take vast social problem that has troubled humanity for millennia (2.) claim that theoretically The System could solve the problem, but in fact hasn't (3.) interpret that as "The System has caused the problem and it is entirely the system's fault" (4.) be outraged that The System is causing obesity and homelessness and postmodernism and homosexuality and yet some people still support it. How could they do that??!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We still lost with nothing to show for it but debt for generations, millions of unnecessary deaths, and the TSA. Enjoy the debt service, “support the troops,” and millimeter wave backscatter scans without your shoes.
The US hasn't been invaded since 1942. That's what we have to show for it.
Who is "we"? When engineers are not subject to licensure, don't be surprised when management, pushed by bean counters, let the bean counters make the decisions. Subject engineers to licensure, including ethics clauses, including clauses for building for repairability and minimum expected product lifetimes. Legally protect engineers from dismissal or retribution for invoking these clauses. Then see how much crap we co…
There are honest and competent civil servants, of course. But they are a precious and limited resource for any society, and should only be expended on the most critical tasks.
I'd rather have those people work on important stuff (say, criminal justice), than arbitrate microwave popcorn buttons.
It transcends nations through trade treaties and competition, trillion dollar companies have “no choice” but to lay off workers to placate “shareholders” expecting infinite growth.
And we know it is stripping the planet of its resources at a completely unsustainable rate, poisoning our very environment, some times burning the equivalent of entire forests for as simple reasons as “decentralized crypto NFT defi product scam”
Game designers know better than to make a game with a single high score, and even better than to allow players who amass the score to use it to pay for new rules.
Players know better than to continue playing a game that’s entirely and utterly broken for them.
But humans … oh well
> What they don’t tell you is that we already have solutions for a lot of problems, we just don’t use them. Sometimes this is because the solution is too expensive, but usually it’s because competing interests create a tragedy of the commons. If you have a solution that can't be used because it costs too much money or other societal concerns, then you don't have a solution. Part of making a solution is finding someth…
Also, something I am wondering from the article. If socialized healthcare is the best system ever, and the only problem in curing cancer is the lack of proper incentives which the socialized healthcare provides, why the cancer is not cured yet? We have billions of people living under various fully or partially socialized healthcare systems. Any of them should have all proper incentives to cure cancer. Why China didn't do it yet? Why anybody in Europe didn't do it yet? Why Canada didn't do it yet? I mean I get it, capitalism is bad, profit is bad, profit motives are bad (even though I don't get how curing cancer wouldn't be fabulously profitable beyond anybody's wildest dreams, but let's assume that's the case). But there are a lot of countries which have socialized healthcare systems. What are those people waiting for? Or maybe curing cancer is not about finding proper incentives after all?
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I’m fond of the idea that capitalism is like fire. You can use it as a tool and for cooking and warmth, but it must be regulated lest it get out of control and consume everything it touches.
It's more like the state that's this creature that engulfs everything. Nation states have been extremely successful. Nearly every square metre of landmass on earth is claimed by one nation state or another. Capitalism stays out of stuff just fine. Few people organise their family or friendships or their bowling club along capitalist lines. Even companies themselves are usually structured as quasi-socialist command ec…
Isn't that just because its an abstraction we view the world through? As an abstraction it often doesn't fully work. E.g. is taiwan a nation state? Are the parts of lebanon that have effectively been taken over by hezbolla really part of the state of lebanon if the state isn't fully in control anymore? Is belarus really an independent state or does russia have so much control that it isn't really anymore? The state abstraction makes for neat boxes but the reality on the ground in many places isn't really that clear cut.