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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

#291

Post by _heimdall »

jampekka wrote: post #238
marcus_holmes wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isle of Man does have the benefit that its economy is based on international tax evasion, money laundering, online gambling etc sleazy stuff that essentially siphon off money from places where the actual labor is conducted.

How do you distinguish this from, say, the US which runs a trade deficit of around $1 trillion?

Is your problem with Isle of Man the specific industries or businesses that drive revenue there, or the siphoning off of money/labor from other places?

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

#292

Post by grotorea »

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).

I am far from an expert but I think optimizing for profit/productivity and relying on a combination of insurance, trade and savings to reduce risk is one of the big productivity boosts in the last few hundreds years.

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

#293

Post by imtringued »

moring wrote: post #275
littlestymaar wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped i…

> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."…

You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution.

The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land.

Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing.

If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.

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

#295

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Contrary to the tweet, I would classify "build nuclear" as equivalent to the programmers pulling out the plugs to smother suggestions for obvious progress.

This can be seen most clearly in Australia, where very much despite, not because of the previous government, renewables are toppling records weekly and offering the opportunity of a lifetime to the Australian people.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/21/nuclea...

Meanwhile, News Corp and the ousted government, almost exactly at the time they lost all control pivoted to suddenly advocating nuclear as a tactic to slow the rollout of renewables.

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

#296

Post by underdeserver »

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…

Absolutely not everyone is doing their best, and not everyone's best effort is in the common best interest. Healthcare works in Scandinavia, Germany, France and some other places. It doesn't in the US. That's not a law of nature.

There are shades of grey between no coordination and perfect coordination, and every step in the right direction makes things better. Care, make changes locally, vote accordingly, and you will move the needle.

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

#297

Post by littlestymaar »

moring wrote: post #275
littlestymaar wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped i…

> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."…

> Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?

Build housing would be a great start! Markets don't care about low-profit cheap small apartments, so there's no supply and the demand isn't being met, so it's the mission of the state to step up and compensate this market failure.

Then you can also tax properties based on their occupied land area, which incentives the private sector to build higher density, which is much cheaper in terms of infrastructure cost and cost of living as well.

Then you'll stay with homeless junkies and vets, for which you'll need social workers and dedicated structures, but you could also try fixing your social issues and wage less wars and the number of people to take care of will plummet and become more similar to what you can find in other developed countries.

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

#298

Post by yetihehe »

jhbadger wrote: post #281
yetihehe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also, the US basically solved an earlier version of this with the 1936 Rural Electrification Act. In 1936, many rural communities and farmhouses in the US had no electricity while it was standard in towns and cities for decades. It was decided that having electricity was just something everyone should have access to and we were willing to pay the price to make that happen. Eventually it even made sense economically b…

We are doing that with fiber in Poland. Just got mine in on christmas in small town, construction was subsidized by EU.

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

#299

Post by littlestymaar »

insickness wrote: post #265
littlestymaar wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped i…

Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.

If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.

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

#300

Post by croes »

prometheus76 wrote: post #65
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.

Some people aren't afraid of dying even after they lose loved ones. Not everyone lives in fear.

Avoiding an unnecessary death isn't living in fear, it's living by common sense.
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