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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#281

Post by 0_____0 »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #228
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

Take a look at the poor construction quality of new build homes too--there's an entire subgenre of social media where home inspectors find all sorts of horrifying and "hilarious" issues with newly assembled McMansions. This runs the gamut from beer bottles overturned in insulation to doors that don't fit in frames, fire hazards, etc. I've seen the same in apartments I'd rented over the last few years. The owners (man…

Hah! When we renovated we found century old liquor bottles in the walls. Some things don't change.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#282

Post by constantcrying »

0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

>Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs.

I do not think that's it. I think that many people are very capable of delivering decent work, but they choose not to.

This begs two questions, why are people not interesting in delivering high quality work and why are people accepting low standards of work quality?

>There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity.

Let's not be too kind here. This is not mediocrity. A mediocre worker would be someone who performs his work satisfactorily, but does not ever go beyond his duties. The person you described certainly is not that, corrupt, lazy and lecherous would describe her behavior.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#283

Post by greenavocado »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #269
greenavocado wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. The Fed prints trillions, mortgage rates plunge, and suddenly BlackRock's buying up entire neighborhoods with cheap debt while renters get priced out. Inflation is "healthy" if you're the one holding the deeds. But tell that to the family paying 40% of their paycheck just to keep a roof over their heads while wages crawl. Or look at food prices. The USDA says inflation's "moderate," but try explaini…

It’s Blackstone that’s investing in single-family homes, not BlackRock. They also only own 0.06% of US single-family housing stock. Easy mistake to make. Also, there was absolutely inflation before Bretton Woods, and significantly worse inflation at that. See, for example, the hyperinflation during Weimar Germany which led to WWII. Or the nearly 10% deflation in the US during the Great Depression, which just exacerba…

The Weimar hyperinflation wasn't caused by gold's limitations - it was the inevitable result of political cowardice and monetary arson. After WWI, Germany made the fatal decision to abandon gold convertibility and fund reparations through the printing press, transforming the mark from 4.2 to $1 in 1914 to 4.2 trillion to $1 by 1923. This wasn't some unavoidable monetary phenomenon but a deliberate policy choice to avoid fiscal responsibility. The Great Depression tells a similar story of government malpractice rather than gold standard failure. During the Roaring Twenties, the Federal Reserve artificially suppressed interest rates, creating massive distortions in credit markets and fueling the stock bubble. When the inevitable correction came, instead of allowing the market to clear, Hoover's administration compounded the crisis through disastrous interventions - hiking interest rates during a liquidity crunch, imposing Smoot-Hawley tariffs that strangled global trade, and strong-arming businesses into maintaining unsustainably high wages. The resulting deflationary spiral wasn't gold's fault but the direct consequence of central planning arrogance. The Bretton Woods system's collapse in 1971 followed the same pattern of political expediency overriding monetary integrity. The U.S. promised dollar convertibility at $35/oz gold but only to foreign governments while banning domestic ownership. When LBJ's simultaneous Vietnam War and Great Society spending spree drained U.S. gold reserves, Nixon simply severed the dollar's last tether to reality rather than confront fiscal discipline. The post-Bretton Woods era of pure fiat has created the illusion of stability while systematically eroding purchasing power - the dollar has lost 87% of its value since 1971, with the Fed responding to every crisis by printing trillions to bail out financial elites while main street struggles under crushing inflation. Weimar, the Depression, and Bretton Woods all share the same root cause: governments refusing to accept that money must be anchored to something beyond political whims. Gold doesn't cause collapses. It reveals them. Fiat doesn't prevent crises , it merely delays them while making the eventual reckoning worse. The historical record is clear: when governments treat money as a policy tool rather than a sacred trust, the result is always catastrophe dressed in different eras' clothing. Today's $35 trillion debt and monetary debasement suggest we've learned nothing from these lessons.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#284

Post by saubeidl »

chrisco255 wrote: post #206
jplusequalt wrote: post #43

This is late stage capitalism at work. Our economy and political systems incentivized the behavior that lead us here, and the current apathy we see is the working class realizing the rot in the bottom of society.

There's no such thing as late stage capitalism. There's ebbs and flows, businesses that were formerly great (like newspapers), fade out and go out of business. New forms of media take their place, the cream rises to the top, the train keeps going.

There definitely is. The contradictions inherent to capitalism are becoming harder and harder to ignore, to the point where we're all in a state of hypernormalisation. Everyone knows the system is broken, yet we pretend it isn't, because to think of an alternative is too scary.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#285

Post by _DeadFred_ »

deadbabe wrote: post #125
palmotea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal? > I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride…

Unfortunately it’s becoming more obvious that “short-term” is all we really have in this world. There is no long term. So why plan for long term? Life is a series of short-term wins until you finally die. Same with companies. Things change so fast now that you could be crushing it one year and going out of business the next. It’s not like old days where you could setup a blacksmithing shop and have business for gener…

Blessed are those who plant trees under whose shade they will never sit

Re: The Who Cares Era

#286

Post by WalterBright »

bumby wrote: post #263
WalterBright wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a contradiction to me. If you're sacrificing the long term for the short term, your stock isn't going up.

Depends on the time horizon of investors.

The value of a stock is based on long term results. If the investors catch wind of the company sacrificing the long term for the short term, the stock price will go down accordingly.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#287

Post by lesuorac »

This is seems largely expected from Dunning and Kruger's paper.

The true Dunning-Kruger effect is not that low-skill individuals believe they're better than high-skill individuals but that low-skill individuals do not know what skill looks like. (Hence the title "Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments").

When you cannot evaluate the output of something then _any_ output looks good.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#288

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

sp0rk wrote: post #66
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal? I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in…

On the gripping hand, if you do put in the hard work, you are likely to be exploited. I can think of several examples of excellent workers: they come in, do great work, do not play politics, are known for being dependable, etc. Management ignores them and promotes the mouth breather who does nothing but cheerlead themselves at every opportunity for accomplishing the most basic of tasks.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#290

Post by RamblingCTO »

weweersdfsd wrote: post #179
RamblingCTO wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason simply is late stage capitalism, there's not enough upside anymore, so why bother do a good job? That's how I explain it. I noticed that as well with almost all employees, there was a shift. And it feels like it's got to do with misaligned incentives. Why bother working yourself stupid if you'll never own a house if you don't become a slave to the loan? There's no upwards movement/middle class anymore.

This is it. It's rational not to give a damn in this environment, at least for anyone who isn't an entrepreneur or very well paid.

Yup, and even that is way harder nowadays. I feel like the VC backed startup thing is dead and there are no big moonshots anymore from underdogs having a big idea.

Everything capitalism, especially of the American variation, promised us isn't being delivered anymore. The numbers are pretty clear, so I don't understand how anyone in their right mind can argue against that.

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