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We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

erikmcclure.com

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Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#211

Post by eru »

defrost wrote: post #125
panick21_ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because, unlike what classical-liberal economic theory stipulates, human beings aren't inherently selfish. If you actually knew anything about the history of classical liberalism you wouldn't perpetuate this nonsensical stereotype. Classical Liberalism is not the same as Objectivism.

A core classic liberal belief, arguably the core belief, is that nothing should stand in the way of individuals being able to secure their own economic self-interest. To be sure this does not stipulate that all actors be selfish, merely that no penalty should inhibit selfishness.

Penalties should be on action (or inactions), not on states of mind.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#212

Post by eru »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #205
eru wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics doesn't stipulate selfishness anymore than physics requires cows to be spherical creatures that live in a vacuum.

True. It assumes simple rational actors which act in… well… their own best interests?

That 'best interest' can be anything you are interested in. Eg eating lots of chocolate, or feeding starving children in an orphanage.

People aren't even assumed to be rational. Bounded rationality is a thing that gets investigated a lot.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#213

Post by jdietrich »

michaelmrose wrote: post #187
ip26 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some small towns have started building fiber to every home that want it, as a public utility. It has confirmed cost is the only question that voters care about. In one example it cost something like $200M for a population of 150,000. That’s $1.3k per person. Good luck getting the taxpayer to sign up for that without a clear revenue model. It’s being done, but not as some kind of blind “hey you know what would be grea…

Wouldn't the revenue model be something like $50-$100 per household for the next 20 years to cover principle and interest? Assuming 50k households and 85% uptake and 50 per month is 510M 100 is about a billion.

98% of Americans have access to fixed-line broadband, but only 62% actually have it. A significant proportion are fine with just having mobile and a small but fairly stable minority simply have no interest in using the internet at all.

There are certainly some remaining connection gaps in remote rural communities, but universal fiber coverage is the least cost-effective solution to that problem.

https://itif.org/publications/2022/12/05/state-of-us-broadba...

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#214

Post by prox »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #185
arp242 wrote: post #58

For a lot of things the problem is essentially a problem of scale. Those "ancient human tribes" who did so much better were tribes of 100-200 people, and it's actually not that hard to "do the right thing" with a relatively small group of people. Blaming it on the two-party system is such a short-sighted US-centric point of view. There are plenty of countries with other types of democracies, and they have roughly sim…

I've lived in a few places around the world. By far the best-run one was the Isle of Man, which (when I lived there) had a population of around 30K. It has an independent parliament (Tynwald, the oldest continuous parliament in the world), and it makes its own laws. The government has very little graft. Politicians seemed to genuinely work for the benefit of their constituents [0]. I always attributed this to the fac…

Thomas Paine in Common Sense also describes that is preferable to have constituents from the places and with work in the community they live in. Congress only has 2 years for this reason as well, to be a reflection of the community they live in.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#215

Post by coldtea »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #209
coldtea wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lot of things the problem is essentially a problem of scale. Those "ancient human tribes" who did so much better were tribes of 100-200 people, and it's actually not that hard to "do the right thing" with a relatively small group of people. And yet other societies in the present do the right things in a lot of areas even with comparable groups of people. Not to mention today we have tools like the fast text,…

I’m not gonna argue that it’s precisely a wash, but I’m not aware of any country without political factions who strongly oppose each other and think the country would be much better if everyone else would just get on board. What can sometimes be true is that multiparty systems make the hardness of problems more legible ; if you have 5 different parties with 5 different perspectives on how the education system ought t…

>The author mentions, for example, that we know “providing free college to everyone would be a good idea”. But we don’t know this, and there are many other rich countries that don’t do it; in some, college is entirely unavailable to people who don’t enroll in the appropriate high school track.

We can change this however to "we know that massively cheeper or free college to anyone in the appropriate high school track is better" and it becomes true.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#216

Post by pmontra »

vasco wrote: post #152
hackerlight wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that incentives, especially financial incentives, have so much control over our democracy. Why don't we fix the housing crisis? Because homeowners will vote out politicians who reduce their house value. Same answer for why we don't fix global warming, farming subsidies, carried interest loophole. For everything wrong like this, there's a small but determined group of people who will defend the status quo,…

Things don't change abruptly so society can protect itself from lunatics. Whatever examples you can come up with for "why don't we solve this faster we have the solution", can be counter argumented with the fact that your solution can turn out to be strictly worse and have unintended side effects. Many times in history we thought we had solutions for things and then we didn't. If society, or "the system" is too easy…

I wonder if that's because of communism or because in any country with one party in power for too many years there is a drift to authoritarianism first and eventually to dictatorship. There are examples even in Europe and around it right now.

Of course communism as ideology cannot allow competing not communist parties. That would be heresy and the first years after the revolution in Russia 100 years ago show how it goes. Not communist parties are unthinkable by definition so yes, an ideological communist country sets the stage for dictatorship. A communist party in charge for only a few years in a democratic country, not much more than anything else.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#217

Post by xboxnolifes »

mardifoufs wrote: post #160
xboxnolifes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the people fighting against these things are not feeling the pain. Many people in my family are some degree of anti-vaccine / masking mandates. I can guarantee you that if a single close family member ended up hospitalized due to covid, their tune would do a fast 180. All of their beliefs are based on whether someone they care about had something happen to them.

That's funny, the people who are dumb and emotional in my entourage are those who are still completely afraid of COVID even after like, 5 boosters, even if they are in their thirties, no immune condition, etc. They don't go out, don't see anyone, only order stuff online, and actually think that they are smarter than everyone else who just... lives their lives. (r/zerocovidcommunity is a good example of that, just to…

> That's funny, the people who are dumb and emotional in my entourage are those who are still completely afraid of COVID even after like, 5 boosters, even if they are in their thirties

I have a few friends like this, though to a lesser degree as their worries have disappeared by now.

> I guess my point is that I don't think antivaxxers don't believe in vaccines because they just want people to die, they don't believe in vaccines because they think it doesn't help people from dying. They actually believe vaccines don't work, it's not just pretend play. It's very very dumb, but I don't think that framing as is just not caring until stuff happens to them is helpful.

I wasn't trying to frame it as "all covid deniers just don't care unless it impacts their family" or something similar. It more subtle than that. And what I said was not supposed to be a generalization at all. It was specifically about my family members.

I do think some portion of all people fall into this group though. Yes, they might truly believe the covid vaccines do more harm than good. But also yes, they would immediately line-up for a covid vaccine if a close family member became hospitalized and visually looked bad. Nothing about the dangers of the vaccine changes in this scenario, and covid didn't suddenly become more dangerous to them. It just became more emotionally visceral. That's not desperation. It's straightforward emotional persuasion, and is the "feeling the pain" as originally commented about.

I do think there is many more social dynamics at play, but I don't feel confident in articulating my scattered thoughts on them well. How people adjust how they act based on social groups, or with very little information people form very strong opinions, how information bubbles impact what topics you see or how they're presented, etc.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#218

Post by yetihehe »

moring wrote: post #173
travisjungroth wrote: post #98

If your solution would work except for some reason, then you don’t actually have a solution . A drill that works in space except for all that vacuum and radiation isn’t actually a space drill. It’s a space drill for some alternate reality, meaning the one you’re not actually in. You haven’t solved the problem. You’re not as good of a problem solver as you think you are, sorry. Stop acting like you’ve solved it. You h…

The author almost, but not quite, reached the point where they realize they contradict themselves: Claiming that socialized healthcare would cure cancer, but not explaining how to move the US to socialized healthcare (nevermind that countries with socialized healthcare haven't cured cancer either). Claiming that we could lay fiber cable to every house, but not how to actually do it. Claiming that an alternative votin…

> Claiming that we could lay fiber cable to every house, but not how to actually do it.

This one is pretty simple if you can accept 98% as "every house". Reality is that not every house needs fiber.

I fully agree with the rest of your comment.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#219

Post by Aunche »

coldtea wrote: post #174
Aunche wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't even give an example of "ancient human tribes," but modern day nomads whose traditions have also developed over thousands of years. If ancient human tribes were so great at avoiding tragedy of the commons, I would be eating a mammoth steak right now.

The author explained very well what they meant (optimizing for lower risk vs profit) and this has little to do with preserving mammoths. That would be a very peripheral concern (if it was one at all).

Mammoths were an easy protein source for ancient people that were hunted into extinction. This is optimizing for short term profit.

Re: We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't

#220

Post by xboxnolifes »

coldtea wrote: post #215
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not gonna argue that it’s precisely a wash, but I’m not aware of any country without political factions who strongly oppose each other and think the country would be much better if everyone else would just get on board. What can sometimes be true is that multiparty systems make the hardness of problems more legible ; if you have 5 different parties with 5 different perspectives on how the education system ought t…

> The author mentions, for example, that we know “providing free college to everyone would be a good idea”. But we don’t know this, and there are many other rich countries that don’t do it; in some, college is entirely unavailable to people who don’t enroll in the appropriate high school track. We can change this however to "we know that massively cheeper or free college to anyone in the appropriate high school track…

Not necessarily. It's still possible there are confounding factors that led to it's success, unknown to all implementers and observers. Maybe there are other pre-requisites to the success of the implemented education system.
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