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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#621

Post by GhettoComputers »

confidantlake wrote: post #619
GhettoComputers wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Surely you see the problems with technology, you don't think that the world was more social, people less polarized, and less isolated? Why do we have to assume its not when its obviously true, smartphones did change society greatly, so did online dating apps. T…

Is it about less governmental control? Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals.

>Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals.

Who legalized marijuana in California, and said he inhaled on video?

>more supportive of police than liberals.

NIMBY are not liberal or conservative, when did you last hear defund the police?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#622

Post by Swenrekcah »

slg wrote: post #193
Swenrekcah wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. I talked about carbon taxes to make people pay the true price of their consumption so the market forces can find the right equilibrium, which they can’t when the price doesn’t include all the information.

It seems like we are talking in circles. The original debate was that there were two options for dealing with climate change. One was expensive and painful and the other was cheap and easy. The cheap and easy one is we just all decide to voluntarily reduce consumption. That isn't feasible for the reasons listed in previous comments. The expensive and painful one is a combination of disincentivizing consumption, offse…

I agree with that. The only thing I have an objection to is that it would be so painful to give up a portion of the consumption, because some of it is truly excessive and encouraged mostly by advertising and 'influencers'. To which I don't have a solution except trying to reduce the relentless consumerism and trying to convince people they'll be much happier with stuff they can buy outright and truly own (see Right To Repair) than with stuff they have to buy on credit and don't really own anyway (see iPhones and Audible collections).

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#623

Post by confidantlake »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #621
confidantlake wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it about less governmental control? Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals.

>Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals. Who legalized marijuana in California, and said he inhaled on video? >more supportive of police than liberals. NIMBY are not liberal or conservative, when did you last hear defund the police?

Pointing out a single pro legalization politician does not invalidate the claim that conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization than liberals. Look at any poll out there.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#624

Post by GhettoComputers »

confidantlake wrote: post #623
GhettoComputers wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals. Who legalized marijuana in California, and said he inhaled on video? >more supportive of police than liberals. NIMBY are not liberal or conservative, when did you last hear defund the police?

Pointing out a single pro legalization politician does not invalidate the claim that conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization than liberals. Look at any poll out there.

>Look at any poll out there.

I don't trust polls. Dehumanizing people into numbers is pointless. People are not numbers, and the elections showed how worthless they are.

During Obama there were raids on dispensaries. These labels are meaningless.

We are not liberal or conservative. We are people with many different often hypocritical viewpoints, nobody is consistent. Nixon’s universal healthcare would have been more comprehensive than Obamacare, but Senator Kennedy rejected it. Politicians are opportunistic, Obama said he was not pro gay marriage, and Nixon said he’d never put in price controls (he did). Clinton was a carbon copy of a republican and weakened welfare and popularized super predators as well as deregulate heavily.

Let’s not fight over labeling, let’s agree all politicians are dishonest.

I’m a fan of lower taxes (I think it’s silly to expect to give money to government and expect a bigger return), deregulation in over regulated markets that serves to only help big businesses, entropy in energy waste/use, removing subsidies from farming since it’s harmful to the environment and health, making natural resources into corporations so they have the sane rights as citizens and can sue for damages done.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#625

Post by WalterBright »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #533
WalterBright wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there is nothing natural about it The natural pressures are the law of supply and demand. If the bank creates too much money relative to the collateral, it risks a run on the bank. Too little, and the bank goes out of business because it isn't making money. > Is having no rules free market? Yes (other than you cannot force people to do business with you nor can you defraud them). > The amount of money in the sy…

'If the bank creates too much money relative to the collateral, it risks a run on the bank.... This is called "fractional reserve banking". ' I dont fully understand the system, and its clear neither do you, or most people commenting here We have not been using fractional reserve banking for at least 60 years now, as you sibling comment and this paper by the bank of England Explains. The only thing limiting hiw much…

It is true that the FDIC has eliminated the risk of a bank run.

It's still a fractional reserve system, at least in the US. The "capital requirements" sound like fractional reserve, too.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#626

Post by WalterBright »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #539
WalterBright wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to investigate the economic collapses caused by government run monetary systems. Like the Weimar Republic you mentioned - that collapse led to Nazism. Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite? BTW, are you enjoying the 9% haircut we all got in the last year courtesy of central banking?

"Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite?" Which type of spherical cow free-market economy should i compare it too? No matter what system i pick, from medieval gold based systems to modern floating currency, someone goes "ThaTs NoT Real Free MaRKet!" It's like communism, not real life system was ever the real deal.

> Which type of spherical cow free-market economy should i compare it too?

The US system of free banking before 1914.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#627

Post by cesaref »

jodrellblank wrote: post #262
cesaref wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest you dig out and read a copy of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. It's obviously all new age whackery, but the more you read about it the more sense you'll see in it. Definitely worth tracking down.

In what way is it new age whackery? In his book Novacene he describes it non-mystically; a planet with two kinds of daisy. As the planet cools, the dark petalled daisy thrives and absorbs light and radiates heat into the atmosphere. The atmosphere warms. The dark daisy doesn't do so well in warmth, the pale daisy thrives. It reflects sunlight before it can be turned to heat. The planet cools. The dark daisy blooms. T…

I was assuming the poster I was responding to would be sceptical of the idea, so I was saying 'you'll not agree with this, but as you read more and think it through it'll make more and more sense'.

It didn't come across very well, and i'm certainly not suggesting the idea has no merit, which is why I raised it in the first place!

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#628

Post by IcyClAyMptHe »

vkk8 wrote: post #478
danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

Alain de Botton has a book called "Religion for Atheists". His central point is that religions have gone through hundreds or thousands of years of cultural evolution and likely contain rituals and rules that benefit us even if the religion literally isn't true. Discarding religions because we don't literally think there's a bearded guy in the clouds watching over us is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

I'll have to check that out. It's something I (as an atheist) feel as well. There seem to be a number of religious practices which align quite nicely with mental health practices. The ones that immediately spring to mind are responsibility transfer (short-circuiting anxiety spirals by throwing faith into an imaginary party who says it will all be ok), and "gratitude" practices - practicing thankfulness for what you have, meeting quite nicely with the practice of saying grace before a meal.

At first glance it seems foolish for a poor family praising their god for the pittance of food in front of them, but the idea that pausing to be grateful for what little they do have may make them feel better mentally (regardless of the wider injustice of the situation) has merit.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#629

Post by IcyClAyMptHe »

IcyClAyMptHe wrote: post #628
vkk8 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alain de Botton has a book called "Religion for Atheists". His central point is that religions have gone through hundreds or thousands of years of cultural evolution and likely contain rituals and rules that benefit us even if the religion literally isn't true. Discarding religions because we don't literally think there's a bearded guy in the clouds watching over us is throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

I'll have to check that out. It's something I (as an atheist) feel as well. There seem to be a number of religious practices which align quite nicely with mental health practices. The ones that immediately spring to mind are responsibility transfer (short-circuiting anxiety spirals by throwing faith into an imaginary party who says it will all be ok), and "gratitude" practices - practicing thankfulness for what you h…

It seems like the process could be - do a thing, see positive results (maybe from improved outlook), interpret it as gods reward for pleasing him, codfiy the practice.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#630

Post by WalterBright »

DarylZero wrote: post #473
WalterBright wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism is when there is an owner class that owns the means of production and extracts profit from the workers' labor. That's Marx's explanation, all right. What free markets are, is when people freely decide to make transactions with each other, without using force or fraud. The simplest case is you have an apple tree, I have an orange tree. You have too many apples, and no oranges. I have the reverse problem.…

Free markets are a game with rules set by the government. "Without using force or fraud" just means not breaking the rules of the game set by the government. It's a very deceptive way to describe rule-following. It implies a very idealistic, unrealistic vision of what those rules are and how they are made. The people who benefit most from the rules control the system, making sure rules don't change. The benefit they…

> just means not breaking the rules of the game set by the government

You can make up your own definitions of things as you like. It's a common rhetorical device to divert a conversation into a swamp. Me, I'll stick to commonly understood meanings.

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