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Death to Bullshit

deathtobullshit.com

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Re: Death to Bullshit

#161

Post by tacoman »

superuser2 wrote: post #156

The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total, utter economic collapse. It's the end of capitalism. It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possi…

This is so obviously true, I can't help but think I'm missing something. It's certainly not limited to the US. It's a world wide phenomenon and exists everywhere people aren't living a subsistence existence.

Everyone's bullshit is someone else's reason for existence. The product I work on is completely superfluous to my life, but over a million people pay for it including some of my coworkers.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#163

Post by eli_gottlieb »

x5n1 wrote: post #126
killface wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. This is why any economic recovery plans that don't focus on growing the income of middle- and lower-class americans is doomed to fail. The rich can already buy anything they want, and they're saving like crazy. Until we unleash more demand from the lower- and middle-class, all efforts are futile. It's also why we should be focusing on, and supportin…

Wallerstein said that Capitalism has failed for the Capitalist class, what he means is that it's costing more and more to make a dollar. The reason that income is falling is because the Capitalist class expects to continue making billions against a market which is efficient. They just squeeze that profit out of the worker's paychecks. Ultimately, that's the problem. The Capitalist project has reached its end, but the…

>Wallerstein said that Capitalism has failed for the Capitalist class, what he means is that it's costing more and more to make a dollar. The reason that income is falling is because the Capitalist class expects to continue making billions against a market which is efficient. They just squeeze that profit out of the worker's paychecks.

I do recall some rather elaborate book, perhaps entitled Capital, being written about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall...

Re: Death to Bullshit

#164

Post by webXL »

It sounds like the author resents having to compete for attention with "bullshit", but I'm not sure if there's a realistic alternative. You're going to throw out the baby with the bath water I'm afraid.

As for advertising, paying for entertainment and information with some time and attention is not really bullshit. It's a voluntary exchange, and both sides would not engage if they did not have some inclination that they would be better off than without the exchange. There are other things you can exchange for entertainment and information, and you can completely opt out.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#165

Post by viraptor »

superuser2 wrote: post #156

The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total, utter economic collapse. It's the end of capitalism. It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possi…

That's assuming people have been so brainwashed they need to be told what they want / should find fun. And I'm sure that's not true.

For example, sure there's lots of advertisements of snowboarding, but if any/all of them disappeared, it doesn't mean I would stop wanting to do it. But of course, I don't need it. I'm still spending my money on gear / clothing / transport / accommodation / food / services that are related to snowboarding, because I want to do it.

People wanted things before bullshit all around us existed (or existed only in a limited and local scale). Civilisation existed before the first advertisement agency was created.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#166

Post by brc »

deciplex wrote: post #144
mikerichards wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let me guess, since "The Capitalist project" has failed we're going to go back to those successes of the 20th century that caused so much human misery.

I mean, I agree with you that Stockholm isn't the greatest city in the world to live in, nor Oslo, but they're not exactly filled to the brim with human misery, either.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland are all capitalist countries with a high economic freedom index.

That the voters choose to vote themselves high taxes for the purposes of high government spending is more a function of their culture than anything else.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#167

Post by resu_nimda »

a3n wrote: post #123
mindcrime wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit. Never gonna happen. Human beings are born to bullshit. The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that. We are always going to bullshit each other to a certain degree, as we try to achieve the ends we are innately wired to pursue. That doesn'…

> The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that. I think we've accumulated some nuance over the millenia. Killing the mating competition, or even lower level violence, is very relatively rare these days. And I'm pretty sure that significant numbers of people approach meeting and mating with more sincerity than bullshit.

Yes, in many ways we have gotten rid of a lot of bullshit since the dawn of society, and one could argue that we have been on a monotonically upward slope over that period. One thing I think some people get wrong is the sense that the bullshit is a new thing, introduced by relatively recent societal/technological developments. People have been calling bullshit since as far back as we have records, and I think on the whole it has actually been steadily getting better, counting by the total percentage of the population that is educated or "enlightened" enough to recognize and condemn and not practice various components of what we are generally calling bullshit behavior.

And "relative" really is a key word here because while this is happening insanely fast on universal time scales, it's actually agonizingly slow within the context of a human lifetime. Which creates a catch 22: I could devote my life to stamping out some form of bullshit (if simply by promoting education), and on my death bed wonder if my efforts were even distinguishable from noise. But it is combined efforts like these that do gradually move the needle, and for each person that makes that evaluation and decides it's not worth it, it will take that much longer.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#168

Post by brc »

killface wrote: post #110
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

> There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. This is why any economic recovery plans that don't focus on growing the income of middle- and lower-class americans is doomed to fail. The rich can already buy anything they want, and they're saving like crazy. Until we unleash more demand from the lower- and middle-class, all efforts are futile. It's also why we should be focusing on, and supportin…

By growing the income, you mean growing their productivity so they make more money.

Rising minimum wage and reducing hours does the exact opposite. Decreasing a tax burden is a good idea - but decreasing the tax burden on everyone.

'Tax the rich' while a popular strategy to single out a minority group, is ultimately a useless strategy as there aren't enough rich people to tax, and they already disproportionally pay more than anyone else.

The UK dabbled in extremely high investment taxes at 98%. I think this would fall under your 'tax the rich' proscription. The unfortunate side effect was that investment was virtually stopped overnight and the country stopped growing GDP for two whole years, making everyone significantly poorer and destroying many industries and companies.

Unfortunately I read this type of comment frequently, and they all fall into the trap of the 'daddy model of wealth' : http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

But not all is lost, you did suggest that middle class income is key, understanding that productivity is the key to income growth is the key to that. However, cutting hours and increasing pay are the exact opposite to increasing productivity.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#169

Post by brc »

spacehome wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose to work more to afford more goods. I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food.

I would say that a lot of issues could be solved in the US by reducing the amount of sugar in everything and reducing the amount of credit used to buy everything.

Getting people healthier and saving more can never lead to bad outcomes.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#170

Post by massysett »

spacehome wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose to work more to afford more goods. I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food.

> primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food

You forgot taxes, which for me is larger than transportation, housing, or food and is nearly as large as all three combined.

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