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BurdensomeCount

Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...

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joined 2022 September 05 16:37:04 UTC

The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.


				
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BurdensomeCount


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...

				
				
				

				

					6 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 16:37:04 UTC
				


				
					

					
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not paying teeny tiny taxes like most of these people, I'm paying (nearly) mid six figures in taxes every year. At the very least that should get me a medal or some sort of other thing that distinguishes me as above those who pay £3,000 in tax a year and consume £30,000 worth of public services.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Breaking ahead of me in queues, generally acting rude when asked simple clarification questions, asking me if I speak English (this has happened multiple times, I kid you not, from people whose command of the English language is worse than the level I had at age 9), taking my money (via taxes) and then acting like they're the generous ones for letting people like me live in the country (without a shred of self awareness) etc. etc.


Now I must say this doesn't happen all the time or even most of the time or even with much regularity in my interactions with the lower class. It happens in fewer than 5% of such encounters I'd say (and in reality probably fewer than 2%), but when you have to live around and amongst such people the total number of interactions gets very high very quickly so you get exposed to a fair amount of such low human capital behaviours.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Lack of izzat is a massive problem among westerners if you ask me. The level of disrespect they show towards not only other people but also other things means a lot of the time I'm interacting with (especially lower class) people I'm subconsiously thinking "didn't your parents teach you any better?". Same with how westerners send their own flesh and blood parents off to a care home when they start becoming too much of a burden on them. The lack of respect here is galling: your parents took care of you when you were nothing more than a little shit machine and this is how you repay them???


The kiwifarms post is a half truth (well actually more like a quarter truth), which makes it worse than a total lie. Some elements of it are correct, but others (like how you can rape and murder with impunity if you have enough izzat) are totally 100% false (rape and murder are the number 1 way you an destroy your whole extended family's izzat in a very short space of time for generations).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My favourite macroeconomic model requires competitive markets without monopolies trying to maintain their influence over the rest of society by restricting who gets to benefit from the latest tech advantages and at what price. Our current society is nowhere near my favourite macroeconomic model and we're not getting there any time soon.


It's like the Coase theorem when it says it doesn't matter for societal welfare who is given ownership over goods and services so long as transaction costs don't exist. In real life though transactional costs are very real and somebody trying to rely on Coase to justify why the boon from AI should be handed disproportionately to the owners of current capital would miss the point completely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nope, I'm talking about people working 4 days but paid at the same amount they currently are. Yes, this means an across the board payrise per hour worked for everyone, which is affordable because AI is going to increase the productivity of everyone and rather than this boon being given to those who give people jobs (by e.g. them getting the same company output with half as many employees saving them payroll costs leading to more profit for them) we cut down the hours worked for ordinary people so the benefits of the productivity increase goes to them (by giving them an extra free day of their lives).


Now yes there are some jobs where a 4 day week isn't going to be possible so for them yes due to Baumol's Costs Disease they're going to end up getting paid more per current 5 day week than they are at the moment, for the exact same reason why the same coffee today costs more in Sweden than Turkey.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah, my fault, I didn't even know they were spelt differently.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


a comfortable £120k a year




£120k? Even junior commerical barristers in their first year post pupillage earn multiples of that each year. From the website of One Essex Court (top Commercial Chambers), bolding mine:




As all members are self-employed, it impossible to give a particular figure for what junior tenants at One Essex Court can expect to earn. Earnings depend to a great extent on how hard members wish to work. However, barristers at One Essex Court can expect to earn comfortably in excess of their peers in comparable professions. As a guide, over the last three years, average first year income exceeded £360,000 and average second year earnings exceeded £475,000. New tenants are also offered an interest-free loan of up to £50,000 to assist with the transition from pupillage to tenancy.




Almost makes me question my life choices... I think I'd be good enough to get pupillage and then tenancy, maybe not at OEC but very likely at one of the other similar caliber sets, I know how to turn up the charm when necessary and while I don't speak in RP I think you could safely describe my accent as "exotic" in the good way.


People tell me the best part of being a barrister is getting others to effectively treat you like royalty: say a FTSE 100 CEO wants to discuss something and he wants a meeting in person. It's now his choice, either he can come visit you at your chambers, or if he's really that busy you're happy to go visit him, but he should be aware that all time from the minute you leave your house door to the minute you get back to your home's door is all chargeable time being billed at £500 per hour (plus VAT of course).


And of course the total independence that comes with being self employed means that even as a junior you can treat some very senior very commercially successful people (almost insulting them to their face when they say something legally stupid) in a way that a solicitor would be terrified of doing because they'd risk losing a massive contract with all the career implications that'd follow.


As a barrister it literally doesn't matter: make the CEO look like an idiot in front of the whole C-Suite and what are they going to do, not hire you again? That's perfectly fine because you're already rejecting so much work your diary would be full twice over. You even have the polite fiction to hide behind that you're an officer of the court and while the lay client pays for your time your first duties are actually to the court and you can not in good conscience do what the CEO wants you to do, what he wants to do will be shot down in court and he'll then have to pay the other side's barrister's fees so actually this is just tough love meant to save you money.


Plus if it's senior court litigation and you're not a natural person you need to have someone with higher rights (almost all barristers) represent you in court by law and every other barrister will give you basically the same answer as I have, so just take my advice and let the professional run the case. Fun fact: as a corporate firm you can do the work of a solicitor through your employees if you want to and you don't need to have a solicitor to run litigation in the higher courts, that's strongly recommended but it's left up to you, but legally you're not allowed to get one of your employees to do the job of a barrister, that's a criminal offense.


Also self employment means that if tonight you don't feel like working tomorrow as long as you don't have any deadlines or court appearance that's fine, there's no boss you're answerable to: you choose when you work. It's basically like being a minor Greek deity (or so my friends who're now reaching the point where they have an established practice tell me). And then there's the whole massive status that comes with being a barrister and especially once you take silk...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, and if working Saturdays were expected of you you'd be getting paid more for the job. If you're arguing instead that as a white collar worker you're paid for what you produce rather than time put in then yes, I agree, if through future tech people are able to do in 4 days what they currently need to do in 5 then we should move over to 4 day work week as standard: the results produced by the job are the same for the same pay for the employee, they just get an extra day of the week free for them to do what they want with. It'd be the great increase to general societal welfare in the last 100 years. There's no reason why the benefits of the extra productivity should accrue to the owners of capital rather than labour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Schilling fences are a recognised term going back to the Great Scott himself: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even reading this makes me go "yuck" at the whole business model of these places. Prop shops etc. manage to produce more value per employee by only working them 40-50 hours a week (notable exceptions excepted) than investment banks manage. All that talent which could be put to good use elsewhere to benefit humanity gets wasted in IB make work.


I know places like Jane Street etc. are expanding out into more traditional type banking and trying to eat the lunch of these dinosaurs billing $100m on something that can be done faster and better by smarter people running a leaner operation but providing a more complete service for under $10 million (while the employees still work something resembling a 9-5).


Similarly in the legal world I know there are now barristers who with their junior bill around £700-£800 an hour but as a one two team coupled with a very hands off instructing solicitor produce more robust documents with a faster turnaround than the overcharging magic circle firms but the MC firms still get a ton of business from clueless corporate charging more to produce worse results just because clients want to communicate with people that have "Clifford Chance" on their letterhead rather than "4 Stone Buildings" even though your average junior at 4SB is higher human capital than a partner at Clifford Chance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you want to work for money you can also work 6 days a week over 5 and get more money, and yet very few people, even those who enter the white collar world for money, do this. If there's a societal shift working Fridays is going to end up looking as quaint to Westerners as working Saturdays does to the right now (plenty of parts of the world where working Saturdays is normalized).  We keep it at 4 days to start with because we need to take baby steps, it's a small move of the Schilling fence and once its normalised and if productivity has gone up so much we can shift over to a 3 day week as a society then we'll do that, the down to 2 days and so on if general societal productivity allows it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Techbros really have had horrendous PR as a class and it's not helped that people associate the average techbro with the people at the top of the techbro pyramid like Zuck and Musk etc. and so are happy with seeing them suffer, even though their suffering is often done to benefit people like Zuck and Musk etc. (less headcount, more automation).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fortunate log(N) grows really slowly compared to N. Doubling N only requires adding a constant amount of extra overhead regardless of how big your company is, which can easily be handled by big employers.


The true extra costs of doubling N is the doubling of the total salaries you'll have to pay out, not the O(log(N)) extra overhead and if AI increases productivity to the point where the former is viable then the increased costs of the latter will be easily covered by a few extra months of productivity gains, your argument is at best one that this transition might have to be delayed for a few months to account for overhead costs, not one that it's not feasible.


You're already getting O(N) increase in costs due to the extra headcount by paying people the same but working them for half as long, the O(log(N)) increase in overhead is a minor triviality compared to that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nah, I don't think the people in charge of decisions like this think far enough ahead to consider the increased amount of internal competition etc., rather their thought process is a lot more base: they want to win the status competition with their current peers, and the way they do this is by having higher PnL per partner etc (PnL envy, like I said) and if they have to treat their workers as badly as possible to eek out those last few percentages then they'll absolutely do that for their own self ego.


Story I was told about someone who witnessed this event first hand (and who I have reasons to trust): Apparently one year Ken Griffin (Citadel dude) got visibly super angry at his senior team and demanded changes because Millennium (run by rival Izzy Englander) had managed to make more money than Citadel had done that year, even though it had been a very good year for Citadel compared to its average performance too. People like that don't belong anywhere near the reins of power in a society that has its head screwed on correctly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


that works




Due to the usual cost disease considerations if the rest of society moved over to 30 hour weeks you'd see big pay bumps for 45 hour days in retail environments compared to the current situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is obviously the correct solution. AI is going to reduce the need for human labour by increasing productivity; rather than transferring the fruits of this productivity to the owners of capital it's much better to transfer it to labour instead by mandating a three (or even two) day work week as standard on the same pay as before, thereby not only creating a lot of jobs to coutneract the job loss from AI but also helping people get more of their own free time.


I've long been a proponent of a forced average long term (over say 6 months) 40 hour work week for Investment Banks etc., sure they can make you work a 100 hour week when a deal is close but to make up for that they need to give you a week and a half off to rest and recover. If the IB wants to preserve its man hours it can simply hire a lot more people, it's not like there's a shortage of capable people who want to go in that area or they don't have the money to do this.


The reason this doesn't happen is simply because the people at the top want to maximize their "PnL per partner" which is an argument I've started to see as more and more bullshit over the years (if you're happy with a yearly $2 million PnL per partner you shouldn't be any less or more happy if the people in $RIVAL_BANK are making $0.5 million or $5 million in PnL per partner, anything else is just PnL envy and should be beaten out of you by the government).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This genuinely could be a real false flag.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, but their EU operations exist because the Eurocrats allow them to. Such a proposal would mean their EU operations are no longer viable and they have to choose between the US and EU. Yes of course they are going to choose to keep the US operations but that means a full sale of the EU operations to an entity which will be EU based and therefore comply with the Eurocrats.


This will give the EU ready made versions of their own services that they don't need to build up from scratch, a bit like how McDonald's still exists in Russia after McDonald's International left the country, the restaurants just changed their name but offer basically the same food at basically the same prices, Russia didn't need to build up their McDonald's replacement from scratch.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just shows the importance of having your own versions of the services which are necessary for daily life. Europe made the mistake of funneling its resources to paying for the welfare of low human capital instead of developing indigenous service providers. Now it's suffering the consequences. The hope would be that they learn their lessons, cut welfare and move the money into long term US (and China) independent services. Payment processors are a good starting point, even places like Nigeria have fully functional home grown versions like Verve.


In the short term they really should force the American companies to lift these sanctions or suffer just as nasty consequences in Europe as not following the sanctions would inflict upon them in the US. This would basically force a divestment of the EU business by the company which would give the EU a good starting point for their own versions of these services.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I haven't seen the rdrama pink theme etc. but have been having loading issues over the last few days. Something somewhere is broken.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
These days I just use Google Docs which is browser based. Exactly the same product on Windows vs Unix. Microsoft Office is basically dead (plus if you really like Office there's an online version which works on Linux).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If GabeN brings about the Year of the Linux Desktop I will praise him to the end of my days.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And here we see C users talking about how bugs are actually features one should be glad of. All I'll say is that this would never have happened in Rust (which is unironically a superior language) because the type mismatch between a struct and a struct* would mean the program would never have compiled and rustc would have provided a helpful error message bringing up the mismatch and told you the correct thing to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And what's more, AI + third worlder is closer in productivity to AI + westerner than the third worlder alone is vs a westerner. Prepare for more offshoring of western cushy jobs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ubuntu UI is very good these days, and MacOS is known for its UI. You hardly ever have to use the Terminal these days unless you want to (which you should, writing commands  to do a simple task is faster than the multiple clicks normally needed to do the same thing via GUI).