391–400 of 452 posts
Without ending up on an FBI watchlist, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Sales and "Uncle Ted" were on the right track about technology inevitably leading toward psychic isolation and environmental devastation, that corporations are finding ways to turn each human interaction into a commodity, that we're well beyond carrying capacity for the planet and have likely screwed up the ecology for the next mill…
A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty,…
He predicted society's "collapse", that by now we'd be living in small bands. Global warming steadily making the worse a crappier place is an awful thing, to be sure, but we're nowhere near collapse, at least not at the moment.
The first part of the bet is a good one: the dollar -- the world's reserve currency -- becoming worthless is something that makes sense as a part of society collapsing, and more importantly, it's fairly objective to judge. The other two are far more ambiguous.
He may have lost his bet, but maybe he came close. 2020 was the closest I’ve come to feeling that society was collapsing.
You must be quite young. 2020 is a minor blip on the huge ups and downs over the past 2 centuries. The only way I could fathom "society collapsing" is if I felt the interactions you see on the internet were an accurate reflection of society at large. It's not - not even close.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, how rich is your dad? Because unless it was "can drop quarter of a million dollars or more" rich, then no, in the US he would've just been sent home to die. The existence of a public healthcare system running at capacity is not evidence the US system "doesn't have this problem". Being denied treatment because you can't afford it is objectively worse then being denied treatment because the system is busy. One prob…
Well my point was to not compare with rainbows and unicorns but how it works in the real world. Also I'm not saying the US has a better system. But just to entertain this discussion (big mistake), the problem is that you can't pay for surgery even if you're rich, which means that useful price signals for how to allocate resources are missing. You'll perhaps say: "Well it shouldn't be like that". I agree but there is…
Yes you absolutely can, here in the UK I've had private health insurance from my employers for the last 23 years of my career. I'm not aware of any country that outlaws paying for private treatment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you personally feel like smashing such a truck? Or would only ex truck drivers feel that way? Because if they are simply being faded out of existence (replacing retiring drivers with AI), there won't be any ex truckers to smash the trucks.
> Because if they are simply being faded out of existence (replacing retiring drivers with AI), there won't be any ex truckers to smash the trucks. counterpoint: > Well paid drivers no longer exist. The last time he has seen a local work as truck driver was in mid-2000 and meanwhile salaries have dropped to ~€700 and less therefore only some Eastern Europeans can justify that working as a driver still makes sense for…
1. an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930;
2. a rebellion of the poor against the monied;
3. a significant number of environmental catastrophes.
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# Condition 1:
Well, the Covid-related depression could be described as worse than in 1930, but it's a toss-up, especially if you don't focus on the US. However, the dollar has not been rendered worthless at all. And while the population is struggling, the world and the US' base of industrial production and infrastructural services are in reasonable working order.
So condition 1 is NOT MET.
# Condition 2:
The poor have not rebelled against the monied. In most of the world, there is some Covid-related unrest - some demonstrations, some strikes (a really huge one in India recently, but maybe not quite Covid related). In the US there has been a wave of mass protests, occasionally bordering on riots, regarding police violence and fueled by Covid. But that has not gotten anywhere close to a rebellion against the monied. I _wish_ it would have, but:
Condition 2 is NOT MET.
# Condition 3:
Is Covid an environmental catastrophe ? Naah, that's too much of a stretch. There's Global Warming - but it's currently only grave, not catastrophic. One might argue the catastrophe is now just a matter of time (not sure I would accept the argument) - but this is a timed bet.
You also have things like mass deforestation destroying cultures; or the state of the great barrier reef etc. But still,
Condition 3 is NOT MET.
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Kelly squarely wins the bet. That Patrick guy evaluated the situation unfairly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well my point was to not compare with rainbows and unicorns but how it works in the real world. Also I'm not saying the US has a better system. But just to entertain this discussion (big mistake), the problem is that you can't pay for surgery even if you're rich, which means that useful price signals for how to allocate resources are missing. You'll perhaps say: "Well it shouldn't be like that". I agree but there is…
>the problem is that you can't pay for surgery even if you're rich, ... Yes you absolutely can, here in the UK I've had private health insurance from my employers for the last 23 years of my career. I'm not aware of any country that outlaws paying for private treatment.
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2019/2/12/18215430/single-pa...
Regarding the first paragraphs where luddism is mentioned several times; Lord Byron, father to Ada Lovelace the first programmer, was one of the few on the House of Lords to defend the Luddites: > But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of poverty; men, who had been nefariously gui…
This reminds me of the "lump-of-labor fallacy" fallacy [0]: > [0] http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2016/01/sandwichmans-lump-of-...
However, that does not mean that those displaced from work will not struggle to find new jobs. You're not going to turn most coal miners into coders. There's also no guarantee that you replace automated jobs with better jobs. Much of the service sector work that's been created in recent years has been low wage.
TLDR: Just because there will still be jobs, does not mean they will be good ones or that the workforce can easily shift to them.
A comment I made on this when it was posted a few days ago: I am surprised that this was regarded as a close decision. I guess a lot depends on wording, but when one person is predicting the dollar will be worthless, and the person in the role of judge claims that given global economic uncertainty, it's a "close" question, I wonder if they're just saying that to be diplomatic. Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on what you've said, I get the same impression. If you want to connect with somebody, don't talk. Listen. Even if you "know" you're right. As stubborn as you think those people are, they have a good case for arguing that you are just as stubborn if not more so.
Do you hang out with people who just talk all day without a prompt? How do you listen if you don't first ask?