2rafa
1d ago
There are arguments for the UK warehouse worker doing better. British rents are cheaper in dollar terms. Grocery costs are lower. Low income neighborhoods in Britain have much lower crime rates than their American equivalents.
But even if we assume their QoL is merely the same, that’s incredible - America is twice as rich as Britain! British professionals make less than half of their American peers.
2rafa
1d ago
Happy and functional are two vastly different things. The same is true even within a family. There are terribly unhappy people with entire well structured family lives - a paid off mortgage, a marriage without fighting or much drama, three children, no financial troubles, and very happy people whose lives are far messier.
Scott presents several reasons why Finns and Danes might have high suicide rates even though they have well functioning societies: these include things like lack of daylight, boring and bland diets, etc. But what if lack of daylight actually does make you much less happy? Scott says that black Americans have lower rates of depression than white Americans. OK - my impression is indeed that black Americans are often happier than white Americans (there are even plausible Motte-friendly reasons why this might be the case)!
I don’t buy Scott’s last theory that suicide is just a function of societal development level or something like that. I think it most likely that after a certain development threshold where individuals don’t have to worry about daily survival and the prevailing society doesn’t consider suicide an extreme taboo, it’s mostly about sunlight hours experienced (this accounts for weird discrepancies between places that are sunnier but have fewer daylight hours, and for places that have fewer of both but where people spend more time outside during the day, albeit mediated for altitude (like in the ‘big sky’ states).
2rafa
1d ago
Right, you hit on a very important distinction which is that birth rates only matter because of immigration.
If your society is 98% indigenous and tfr falls through the floor, and mass automation replaces most or all jobs, this isn’t really a problem. In fact, as long as consumption rises, which it easily can, everyone lives a better life, has more space, etc. This is not really a problem. The economics of population will change in an age of mass automation anyway. Koreans will still exist (assuming the stalemate with the north holds), there will just be fewer of them, which is fine. They will remain in control of their destiny.
If your society is diverse and divided, then you have to care, because these people are your neighbours and their children will be your children’s neighbours (and yours if you lead a long life), and they will have the same vote that you do, and they are probably having more kids than you.
2rafa
1d ago
You know these polls always remind me of the “happiness surveys” that show that Finland is the happiest country in the world.
In the abstract, the rankings have some truth to them. They are broadly correlated with GDP. The countries with the lowest happiness rank are places like Congo and Yemen. The highest countries are - Costa Rica aside - all rich. But zoom in and some discrepancies become apparent. Greece has a far, far lower happiness ranking than many poorer countries - roughly the same as Libya, which has been in a civil war for 15 years. And if you visit the top countries like Finland and Iceland, they don’t seem that happy. Not only are these cultures quite unfriendly, lonely, cold, deal with depressing and harsh winters etc, they also have much greater problems with alcoholism and suicidal than the “less happy” Mediterraneans. They laugh less, they smile less (no offence, but this is just something that one notices immediately in them).
I don’t really think that Finns are actually so much happier than Greeks. In fact, I often think they’re less happy. So what really explains the difference? Social pressure. Finns read every day about how rich and happy they’re supposed to be, how low their unemployment is, how their social fabric is the envy of the world, how un-corrupt they are, how lucky they are to have been born Finns. The depressed alcoholic Finn whose cousin just committed suicide last month ticks ‘8’ on the happiness survey because - his temporary problems aside - he is pretty lucky, right? The Greek sits back on his terrace overlooking an azure sea, ouzo in hand, another day of pretending to work complete, and thinks doesn’t he read all the time about how corrupt Greece is, and how many problems it has, and how Greece is the basket case of Europe or something - and there was some struggle with the debt crisis 15 years ago etc etc? So he puts down ‘5’.
The reality and the survey are two different worlds. It’s not about how happy you are, it’s about how happy you feel you’re supposed to be. In the end, people believe what they’re told. How they act varies more.
2rafa
1d ago
It was probably poorly worded. My point wasn’t that revenge is limited to autists, or that mob mentality around this kind of thing as in your last example isn’t real. It’s that there is a specifically autistic catharsis around someone who was perceived to be ‘getting away with it’ apparently no longer ‘getting away with it’. To the victim or even observer this may be indistinguishable from ‘you hurt me, I hurt you’ revenge but I think there is a distinction, it’s more about the rigidity of the underlying rules. This is why I think autists are drawn to clear cut extreme ideologies like corporatist fascism or communism that define enemy classes and establish strong rules for the in group and out group.
2rafa
1d ago
I’ll tell you what’s not well this Wednesday: this website. Was what felt like a two+ hour outage until pretty recently.
Trudeau is a terrible politician and leader who, as you note, in may ways damned Canada by adopting the kind of harebrained immigration policy that even Angela Merkel might have balked at.
You’re also right that a lot of this dissident right reaction is cope and seethe. The reason is simple. Extremist politics is and has always been dominated by outsider groups, especially autistic men. Autistic people have a very strong concept of fairness, which is widely noted by psychologists. Autistic people find people “breaking the rules” more viscerally painful, annoying and unfair than neurotypical people. The fact that life is unfair, that many people do, in fact, “get away with it” and always have and always will, is more painful to them than it is to everyone else.
This manifests itself in two key ways. First, autists seethe about the political and social opponents (real or imagined) more than mentally normal people. This is expressed often in the desire for them to be “punished”. So according to these people Trump must be “punished”, Trudeau must be “punished”, Stacies must be “punished” as per Rodger etc. it’s not enough for them to be removed from power, they have to suffer because that is them repaying their debt to the rules they broke.
Secondly, autists*, who dominate most politically extreme movements, always prioritize “owning” the enemy over actual positive change that doesn’t necessarily directly (even if it may indirectly) hurt one’s enemies. The joy experienced at watching a fat blue haired liberal cry after being OWNED in a college debate is far greater than the joy of getting a promotion, a tax cut, a nice annual return on your investments. The joy of watching some Hispanic guy who used the OK sign FIRED for being a white nationalist, or of forcing some poor parents to accept unreservedly their child’s medical mutilation because the law says they can’t stop it far outweighs the boring mundanities of single payer healthcare.
The most psychologically healthy people I know (not me) often don’t think about this form of punitive, absolute, rules-based “justice” at all. Which isn’t to say they don’t care about unfairness or corruption or whatever, it’s just to say that they are able to acknowledge and live with the unfairness of the world, perhaps find it sad, but don’t let it guide their every emotion and value.
* political autists, of course. Those whose special interest is vintage stamps or taxidermy couldn’t care less
2rafa
6d ago
Yeah. To be fair, Ulbricht did do 11 years in jail. SBF will probably do similar, his parents seem to be quite well-connected and some EA autists from Silicon Valley will probably be in the next or next-next Dem administration.
You need men, you don’t need ethnic diversity. Lesbian separatism is a weird punchline, a trivia question, something from the ‘70s. Ethnic nationalism is real and has had many successful exclusionary movements execute substantial, genuine ethnic cleansing in the last century alone, if you look at tribal wars of extermination historically it’s even more common.
Women disliking men, really, is socially meaningless. What, is the kingdom of women going to enslave all men? Even legendary homosexual misogynist BAP thinks that some form of female control of men can only be achieved by way of complex psychological conditioning process called “the longhouse”, arguably a metaphor for civilization itself, not martially (obviously). Women love men and men love women, that’s biology. Patriarchy waxes and wanes as a function of technological development, primarily.
Biology has much less to say amount a society of diverse people who (at least initially) look very different getting along together forever. It doesn’t preclude it, but it doesn’t endorse it either. And the historic example suggests real, bloody conflict between ethnic groups is very much commonplace. That is why people take it more seriously, probably.
2rafa
8d ago
You’re making my point. The leaders of those countries are still nominally members of the state church (or indeed head of it).
Now imagine, say, the president of Germany announces he’s converting to the Anglican Church. That’s interesting. That’s unusual. That suggests a much more genuine belief than King Charles formally being an Anglican.
2rafa
8d ago
Every Catholic monarch of a Catholic state is Catholic by definition. If you’re the next Crown Prince of Liechtenstein, a devoutly (and officially) Catholic country ruled by a Catholic monarch, you can’t really abandon Catholicism, which both your people believe in and which forms the spiritual justification for your rule. If you’re an atheist you can break the rules but you have to keep your beliefs to yourself.
A religious Catholic by choice in a non-Catholic land is already signalling much more devotion to Rome and to the Pope than someone who doesn’t really have a choice. They are more likely to actually believe. The threat of eternal damnation carries more weight.
2rafa
8d ago
There are many Americans (including those of non-Mexican descent) who retire in Mexican resort towns, sure. That’s a very different visa class and lifestyle to working a regular job in Mexico.
The same is true even with less economic inequality in Europe. Spain is full of English and German retirees, but barring a few senior corporate executives at Inditex or Santander the only non-Spanish speaking English and Germans who work there are a small number of low pay service workers whose jobs are catering to their own nationality’s tourists and retirees.
2rafa
8d ago
I don’t think it’s very common for even the tiny minority of successful retail traders to join a professional fund, the approach to risk management alone would make that a compliance challenge at the best of times. It has happened, but far more common is what Jane Street, Two Sigma etc do (as far as I know) where they pay savants for trade ideas directly. There are quite a few basement dweller math geniuses who make a living that way.
“Trump doesn’t need Congress to pass a bill to stop bombing Iran, just like he didn’t need Congress to pass a bill to start it”
2rafa
9d ago
“The President launched a disastrous war that he lost, and now to save face wants to claim victory by signing a far worse version of the deal we negotiated under Obama, and which he left and rejected. The Iranians know the Democrats actually stand by their word, so when we come back to power, we’ll negotiate a better deal ourselves” is a powerful argument and certainly doesn’t make it look like like they co-own the war, which Trump would claim either way if necessary. By the way, this works even if they agree to the same deal later on - there’s no game theoretical reason for the Dems to agree.
2rafa
9d ago
For the Saudis the pipeline would transit only Jordan and Syria, both effective Arab client states. For the UAE and other GCC nations the pipelines would transit Saudi Arabia, which is more contentious.
There is no doubt this is a victory for Iran. No regime change, nuclear development will continue unabated and, most importantly, an aesthetic and propaganda victory for the Islamic Republic. US sanctions relief will be limited and the Iranians know it, although the wildcard there is whether the Europeans agree to some of it in a political deal.
In the long term, I think this is more mixed for Iran than many realize. The infrastructure destruction has been extensive. As oil prices come down again, a boom in oil revenue will be temporary. Iran is extraordinarily corrupt, and that includes the IRGC; those $2m shipping tolls are unlikely to fund necessary reconstruction and might not even fund weapons purchases after the relevant figures have taken their cut.
Much of Iran’s non-oil export industry, especially around chemical, medicine and some industrial manufacturing and export, has been destroyed. If oil returns to $65 a barrel it’s unclear how fast that can be rebuilt, especially if the IRGC, now firmly in charge, channels as much as possible toward rearming and the nuclear program. The civilian infrastructure destroyed is extensive, and public anger will mount further if much of it goes unfixed while the IRGC spends all it can on munitions and drones.
Eventually, as humiliating a defeat as this is for Trump (not that he cares, and not that he will pay for it) in objective terms, it might herald the end of the Islamic Republic, some years from now.
2rafa
9d ago
Isn’t Congress required to lift most sanctions against Iran? Most Democrats are still broadly anti-Iran and won’t want to give Trump a win, and many Republicans are hardliners, why would they vote for sanctions relief?
2rafa
13d ago
The question is whether this makes a withdrawal more or less likely. Under most presidents, I’d say less, but under Trump, I think perhaps more.
My read on the strikes over the last two days is they’ve been purely aimed at destroying expensive infrastructure to cause economic chaos after a withdrawal that might, hopefully presumably, create space for some kind of popular uprising. Destroying it to make rebuilding armories more expensive doesn’t make sense, since the IRGC will always prioritize that over civilian infrastructure.
2rafa
13d ago
As I understand it the liberal justice clerkships are much, much more competitive than the conservative ones, so some ambitious students do swap sides for their own gain. But the overall pool or spaces is so low that even among the best ‘conservative’ (real or fake) HYS law students (or even just Yale ones, as I understand that’s the best) the odds are still slim.
It’s possible Russia has some leverage over Iran or could at least stop sharing intelligence and targeting data with them. As to what Trump could do, unsanction Russia, which is worth more than any weapons shipment.
The super rich are irrelevant to British politics unless you’re a communist. This is because everyone except Jeremy Corbyn and Zach Polanski types understand that the rich are transient, that they have little money in Britain, that if their businesses are based in Britain they usually derive the majority of their earnings from overseas, and that the exceptions are a few elderly landlord who are mostly politically and economically irrelevant, and whose wealth is itself propped up by the transient international rich (eg the Grosvenor family owning half of central London). You can’t really rinse the Ambanis or the Qatari royal family or Ken Griffin (to name three super rich people who own some of the most expensive ultra prime property in London) because they are ‘British’ the way that I am Maldivian when I go on vacation.
The moderately rich, people at the top end of finance, commercial law, some corporations, insurance etc are similarly transient. The businesses they either work for, ultimately serve, or both, are mostly not based in the UK. That the UK serves as the global or regional center for finance, insurance, consulting, ex-US commercial law etc is a matter of history and convenience and, in a big pinch, could be relocated to any number of other welcoming jurisdictions. This leaves the domestic moderately rich, like the owners of successful chains of car dealerships, large scale fast food franchisees, property developers, medium sized manufacturers, etc. They can probably be squeezed a little but not much.
Domestically wealth in Britain is concentrated in the upper-middle class who did pretty well until 2009 but have been rinsed since then by a combination of tax changes, extreme salary stagnation, a weakening pound, stagnant property values in the southeast and London especially etc.
I agree that this has been a well-intentioned aim, but of course in classic British fashion almost every innovation designed to ‘make work pay’ and ‘increase the percentage of people in work’ (most infamously recent measures like PIP, Motability and UC) have only served to increase the welfare bill with laughably exploitable mechanics that the British underclass and their sponsors quickly figure out.
The problem in British politics is that both main political factions (the Left and the Right) each rely on a welfare-dependent constituency. This is true for both Labour and the Tories and, if they have any hope of government, the Greens and Reform, too - not to mention the regional parties. Under FPTP in the British multiparty system, small swings are enough for a parliamentary majority.
The sum of these effects is that it is impossible for Labour to cut (or slow the growth rate) of any benefits whatsoever (the baseline welfare class plus second generation migrants who are disproportionately welfare reliant are its core voter base, while pensioner swing is necessary for a Labour majority even if most of them vote Tory), and it is impossible for the Tories to cut (or slow the growth of the bill) in net terms, since they can’t do anything about pensions, and while they can slightly trim some benefits they tend to compensate for others by jacking up in-work benefits to buy votes among the poorly paid white working class, who are still far below the ~40k net contribution threshold.
The bizarre salary compression story, where a 19 year old warehouse worker and a 26 year old graduate get paid the same, is a consequence of government policy but, much like the “triple lock” bill, largely unplanned, a simple byproduct of the above political dynamics worsened by the unfortunate fact that Oxford PPE seemingly doesn’t, in fact, teach you as much economics as it should. Raising the minimum wage as significantly as the UK did is essentially a Hail Mary attempt to boost consumption at any cost since the working poor spend everything they make; in a way, it is (kind of) working. Whether ‘it working’ is actually good for the country is questionable.
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