921–930 of 1001 posts
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The electricity in both things are real, and it's unkind to twist the words of the person you responded to that way. They specifically mentioned emotions, not electricity. An AI will be completely unaffected by anything said to it.
I think it's a legitimate question, because ultimately all brain activity is electrical and chemical signals. To say that some electrical signal objectively is or is not an emotion implies that there is some objective rule for deciding this -- but I'm not aware of any such rule, only longstanding conventions.
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Many of us have a vision of Japan from when we were younger. But in modern times their economy is much closer to a developing country. The median income in Japan is $25,313. [1] The median income in the US is $47,960. [2] If we consider only full time year-round employment (which is probably closer to what Japan is measuring), it's $60,070. Ever inflating house prices are caused by high demand and ease of access of d…
Income is a terrible metric for identifying a developing country. Japan is clearly developed. Housing in Japan is kept sensible in large part thanks to their land value tax for real estate.
When prices are high anyone who owns has incentive to prevent the supply problem from being fixed.
> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. They actually don't. Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities, and more so in effect and understanding. You can't convince (enough) people anymore that it is even important as many…
I agree that socializing and so-called "third places" are in decline but we have to ask why. I'll spoil it for you: it's capitalism. Where once a family could easily be supported on a single income and you could afford to send your kids to college, real wages have been stagnant for decades and people now need 5 jobs between 2 people to not be homeless. Why? Student debt, medical debt, mortgage debt. The time we spend…
It’s unpleasant to say that people actively desire the current outcomes, but nature does not care how people feel. It is valid to say the purpose of a system is what it does.
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These "ill-advised beliefs" are extremely valid beliefs. Most humans are just ignorant and human history has shown that plenty of times. I admire people blind enough to see the good in humanity
Valid does not mean productive. The unfortunate reality is that people hold these beliefs not because they are true, but because they desperately want them to be true. Self-destruction is perhaps the most common behavior there is. We would all like to believe nothing is our fault and the world just sucks, and such a belief is very comfortable. But we form that belief because it is easy, because it requires no thought…
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It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form of copyright, patents, even domain names, the orbitals in the sky, the electromagnetic spectrum. Capital can be used to produce more capital, but you cannot produce more land, more electromagnetic spectrum, more orbitals, etc. The housing crisis is a restrictio…
I’m sympathetic to your overall point - I’m not a convinced Georgist but I’m open-minded about the idea - but I’d question some of your specific examples > even domain names, With an alternative DNS root, you can have any domain name you like, except for legal constraints such as trademarks, defamation, obscenity, etc. The problem is none of the alternative roots ever took off, in part because the browser vendors did…
It's a network effect. The same reason it's easy to build a facebook clone yet nearly impossible to get it off the ground.
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Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls
The average age of first home owners has risen to 38. In another decade or two the American dream will probably be to buy a house when you're 50 and then settle down, get married, and have a family. I wonder how that's going to work out?
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Out of all developed nations, Japan is probably the one least affected by housing pricing in the world seeing as though Japanese housing depreciates rather than appreciates over time. Rent prices in America are a staggering 177.4% more expensive than Japan[1]. Ever increasing house prices, caused by the underlying power imbalance between capital and labour, is the root of all evil in the Anglosphere. It will not stop…
Isn't housing exactly the most accessible of all the world save for 2-3 totalitarian countries like Oman, in the United States? According to the Numbeo data exactly. It also has nothing to do with labor vs capital. Billionaires don't invest (much) in housing. Sometimes they do invest in commercial real estate, but never into housing. It's the middle class who buys up everything - now almost exclusively in cash - and…
There's dirt cheap housing in some very rural places and impossibly expensive housing in several of the major population centers where most people actually live.
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git diff your_argument my_response - monkeyFeelSmart(); + monkeyFeelSafe(); People feel hurt and lied to after decades of diligently studying a curriculum who's foundations turned out to be completely fake. Our mental garden must be protected from pests. Some pests even imitate benign bugs like ladybugs, in order to get in. Imagine if tomorrow, it was announced that atoms and gravity don't exist, the motion of heaven…
Could you elaborate on the subject of the foundations of a curriculum (of what?) being entirely fake? That's a bold statement to make!
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I know people who don't want to spend $30 on dinner because they already drained their accounts for minor medical problems, yes.
That's precisely what I meant about disposable income. Safety nets in my mind are what kick in after a person has no way to pay for necessary stuff by themselves. Disposable income is what gets cut down by the costs of necessary stuff. Very few people are going to not go to dinner because they are aware that if they become indigent US society will not pay, and thus feel an obligation to save. Lots of people will not…