331–340 of 341 posts
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That is a strawman argument. Nobody is seriously arguing to take all the money. I called out extreme wealth disparity, and implied it was a problem. You can disagree at the latter, but you cannot disagree with the former.
> Nobody is seriously arguing to take all the money. They are arguing to take enough to destroy the businesses they create. Remember Bernie Sanders saying billionaires should not exist? That's taking away 99.9% of Musk's wealth.
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I do not understand what you mean by "overcorrecting WAY too far". I have not posited anything aside from wealth disparity existing and that the wealthy do not have a tendency to just give money to the government for the fun of it. If they are paying most the taxes, it is because they have most of the money. Seems self-evident to me.
> I do not understand what you mean by "overcorrecting WAY too far". you wrote this, and I would call this "attempting to correct any misconception": > This is a byproduct of wild wealth disparity, not because the rich are so generous with paying the government. I'm saying that your formulation is not much better than what you are arguing against because you neglect graduated income tax. It's not because rich people…
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No reasonable person would call a $6m purchase "modest".
I'm reasonable and I say it is. You are looking at a number, I'm looking at possessions. For example, he could have bought the entire building but he is sharing it with two other owners. A modest man.
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> That is more than enough money to solve structural issues. But that's the thing, the money is not helpful when it comes to policy issues. As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will. I can only surmise that the reason more US non-profits don't achieve lasting change is because they are not able to or they are not trying to. This is not to say they…
> As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring. My dad worked on projects that achieved incredible results in Bangladesh, for…
It didn't solve maternal mortality rates either, where it ranks dead last amongst the states: https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/mississippi/r...
> Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring.
Kind of, but my point is it's not just a function of throwing money at the problem, because "meeting where the community is" typically a) is just the first step towards overcoming structural issues; b) requires properly skilled staff; and c) involves politics in some form. Like I would bet most of the things your dad had to do often had to be supported by the local power structures (e.g. being blessed by the village headman.) They may not even have had official policies to be changed, but for sure certain ways of doing things were institutionalized.
I know someone posted in a poor, rural corner of India whose primary "KPI" is improving the maternal mortality rate in their region, and meeting the community is only the first step in solving problems that include -- in addition to the problems you mention -- chronic malnutrition, unawareness of potential pregnancy complications, lack of appropriate medical facilities, lack of infrastructure to access any that exist, and, most insidiously, age-old biases about how "things should be" where women are at the bottom of the social totem pole. Each of them is a separate structural issue and most of them cannot be changed by working with the community alone.
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Have you checked real estate prices in Manhattan? Today for these prices you can likely buy an appartment. Its just area itself is expensive. Not like owns mansion with a zoo and 100 servants.
That just means that there does not exist any "modest" property in Manhattan. It doesn't make a $6m purchase modest. There is no frame of reference whatsoever which can justify calling $6m "modest".
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It's still not modest. There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest". Don't try to launder it through lying with percentages. It's not modest.
You need to prove to us that modesty is an absolute quality. Reasonable people would agree that that is a bit extreme ("immodest") and that modesty is relative. (Try cheap instead of modest to see how this works.) > There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest". Relative to his wealth bracket he is being modest but not cheap.
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> The classifieds on CL and other sites for sex were were largely individuals choosing to do it. They were not being trafficked or pimped. Yep. Just like with marijuana and other such "vices", the thing that takes most of the violence and exploitation out of the industries that produce, market, and sell a "vice" [0] is to make it legal to produce, advertise, and sell. There's also a side angle here where some folks a…
Legalization reduces the risk of violence to sellers and buyers and external parties. This in turn reduces the risk premium and quick score potential of the "business". The problem with the legalization strategy to reduce violence is that it has its limits. It turns a high-risk game into a high-volume high-scale game. It validates the creation of a corporate ecosystem who then are incented to create demand for the "v…
Indeed. Organized Crime is [0] known for being entirely up-front about the side-effects of the things they break the law to sell, as well as being extraordinarily circumspect about both whom they take on as customers and how their products and business practices affect the long-term well-being of those customers.
Anyway. I agree that dealing in the public eye and ensuring a merchant's customers can air their grievances in the courts absolutely isn't a magic cure-all. I think we both know that for "vices", it's nearly always better than the black market.
[0] ...not...
Is Craigslist still the go-to classifieds site in some places? Around here it’s (very sadly IMO) been almost completely replaced by Facebook Marketplace, to the extent that people make Facebook accounts just to use Marketplace.
In Wisconsin and Illinois, I had far better luck both buying and selling on CL. I moved to CA fairly recently but the story seems to be the same here. As a seller, FB marketplace is just a neverending stream of "Is this still available?" "Yes" and then radio silence. I also found it far less common for CL sellers to share a different price in DMs than they list in the ad. CL users are also better about taking their a…
Thanks -- that explains why anonymized email as an ad reply option has (silently) disappeared.
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It's still not modest. There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest". Don't try to launder it through lying with percentages. It's not modest.
> Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that . Modest was qualified. The statement is accurate. Your objection doesn’t make sense.
> Modest describes someone who is unassuming about their abilities, or something that is limited in size, amount, or reach
Buying a 6 million dollar house is not unassuming.