Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2hr ago
Silesia is in south-western Poland. Schleswig seems to have its own name in english.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4hr ago
I think rao is wrong.
This seems like the wrong way around. Supposedly, status comes from other people appreciating/having use for/wanting to be allied with you, and then that is aggregated over the other people to get a status-point-total. But then, its obvious why this would break down when zoomed in: the reality are just various instances of people wanting stuff from each other, so maybe in my current situation, the „lower-status“ person really is more important to me.
But venkat starts out with the total ranking of status, and anything going against it must be some sort of collective delusion. Its like starting out with market prices, and concluding that no transaction can ever be mutually beneficial.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4hr ago
This is really vague, but: The Saudis do a good job not being of our age, Im not so sure theyre great at being in it. Primitive peoples encountering civilisation generally fall for scams. It doesnt help all that much if its the distrustful kind of primitive - the problem is lack of understanding, not a directional error. The Saudis are definitely out of the scam phase - the next one is "failing in society", which they dont because they sit on the oil, but Im not sure they personally are really well equiped. Im not sure they really could be without assimilating more - those parallel societies in the west still move, well, in parallel to mainstream society.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5hr ago
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6hr ago
Im pretty sure it originally was english? Besides, this seems more like a current iteration of heartland theory then an invention of his.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6hr ago
Ah. I did read it, but propably to late to learn anything from it - and I guess I didnt expect it on a list like this, anyway.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7hr ago
3: Eliezers utopia/if everyone understood Im right world
12: Your polyamorous partners other partner
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
18hr ago
On the mutant third hand, tariffs are a revenue alternative...(In reality, the only one of these that makes any measure of sense is tactical tariffs)
Id expect a tariff to be a lot like a sales tax (and in the limit of increasing import and export identical). The concentration means somewhat more distortion per revenue than a uniform sales tax increase, but since you think the fundamental problem for conservatives is unwillingness to raise taxes, is it really that bad? You might even get some industrial policy, as a treat. IDK, I just think its funny how many lefties are now making anti-tariff arguments that are in fact generic anti-tax arguments.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
the story of Romulus and Remus creating a cultural melting pot
Really? Theres a difference between recruiting people of various ethnicities, and creating a cultural melting pot. Do you see any evidence pointing to one in the mythology? I would expect that a small group of exclusively men of working age would form a culture of their own, dominated by extreme founder effects, random developments, and whatever the boss decided. I would predict it to be farther from the italic average than average.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
Subtracting the wage you recieved obscures that change in value.
But not subtracting it is an overestimate, unless you think most people produce value equal to double their wage.
As you rise up density thresholds
Density is for the most part a political decision. More immigrants dont make cities denser, they produce more city at that same density.
And "more transport [per] person" is definitely wrong.
Its a weak effect, but if you grow a city at constant density, the average length of trips to similar destinations will increase.
I'm not addressing non-economic objections to immigration
Thats fine, I dont intend to go into them. But we do try to write for a audience broader than ourselves, and its worth mentioning how things may apply to them.
Centralization effects are the entire reason we have "cities" in the first place
That is a centralisation effect, but a different one than you talked about before, with different margins, and much less bearing on immigration.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
Curiously, in both his read on Zelensky and yours on Tsipras, theres seems to be idea of getting to wear something more formal. I dont see that attitude a lot, and especially wouldnt have expected it with a western leftist like Tsipras.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
inaptonymous
This comment is literally the only google result for that word.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
It would have probably signified a humiliation and subjection, a kowtow to the new Emperor.
@Dean was quite sure it would have signified selling out. I have a feeling that if we keep rerolling this discussion, well get yet more comments that Zelensky was definitely in the right with explanations that sound good in the context they occur but contradict each other.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
Maybe we're seeing the rise of a new ethnic group, not based on shared genetic traits, but on certain cultural traits being emphasized more than others, as has happened thousands or millions of times in history?
Many of those shared cultural traits didnt exist a hundred years ago, and are highly atypical compared to any other cultures. The liberals here like to emphasise the way progressives are hypocritical and who/whom, and they are, but its not all there is to it. Thats just tribalism, and tribalism is not, in and of itself, a culture.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
I would first see how much steering power over the EU establishment I have when Im a more normal american president, before I go full Trump. I would try to get a deal in Ukraine with the europeans on board - I wont fully disentangle from them in 4 years, if they actually get into a war with Russia congress will make me help them, and they know it. Ideally Id want a deal that I can weaken later when I pivot, but its not all that important. Then I would start to separate from my allies. That would be harder to do while the war is hot. I think in the end, Russia doesnt necessarily want Ukraine right now - if I destroy the NATO behind it, thats much more important.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
I guess Im surprised that this worked on someone like you. Im a bit unsure if my own weirdness is more autistic or sociopathic, maybe that has something to do with it.
If any of this is effective, it would make sense to me if top politicians are pretty heavily selected for natural aptitude at it.
It would certainly help, but a lot of politics is also about doing well in impersonal interactions, more so the higher you go. Where you would really expect a lot of this is someone who sells things, but at a high enough level that you wouldnt just call him a salesman. Maybe someone like Trump.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
If you want to factor out that term because you don't believe they do, then I'm fine with that.
Thats not what its about. What I said is that GDP already includes wages. GDP measures production expenditure, which includes expenditure on wages. If hourly wages go up, ceter paribus GDP goes up. If hours worked go up, ceter paribus GDP goes up. This is also why you should subtract the immigrants own wage - it goes into GDP, but doesnt benefit natives.
densifying population centers means that people increase faster than miles of roads and sewage
If thats true, then is should already be profitable to urbanise the existing population more. And Im not sure it is all that true - as a city grows bigger, it needs more transport per person to still get everyone everywhere at even just the same velocity.
to other sub-american countries they will be less productive than they would have been as americans
I say that? You get less, but still most. This is important in the political calculus, where there are non-economic objections to immigration, and the size of the benefit matters in addition to the sign. And it matters to all non-american first world countries.
There are also services that are difficult to provide non-locally
Sure, but people in the non-local jobs are freed up to do those local ones, compensating most of the loss.
And-- centralization effects are a big deal too.
Im not sure theyre such a big deal. Maybe without immigration, every person would have gotten the same wage at home, which would lower the average in America but not for americans. So I dont think the higher wages in America relative to other countries are evidence of productivity gains from centralisation. The fact that centralisation occured is evidence for a benefit from it, but doesnt tell us how high it is. Benefits from centralisation, like pretty much all benefits from scale, are asymptotic. The US tech industry it quite big already, it propably wouldnt lose much from being split in halves.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
Hm. Any theories on why it happens in person, but not hearing them otherwise?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3d ago
But "overcoming those effects" is also how Trump won the primary. So youre imagining a world where the press was nice to primary Jeb, but hard on general Jeb. Possible in theory, but is is really more likey than nice in both?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3d ago
it's intended to capture all of
Do you agree with my modified formula and if not, why does your formula measure these correctly?
this fails to capture that working-age immigrants already received a massive amount of societal investment in their home countries
Fair.
It is not my position that immigrants and natural-born citizens provide the same net benefit, only that they both, on average, provide a benefit.
Im not sure they do. Even the government expenditure that isnt directly welfare still does scale with population - more people need more roads etc. So I think (the effects of pure population discussed below aside) that the averge person is breaking even.
because network effects and economies of scale would combine to raise the living standards in both americas
That effect exists, but Im not sure its very big. In the limit, returns to scale are constant, and there already are lots of people in the world and even lots of first-worlders.
And there would also be another effect: the two americas would be competing for the same imports and exports the first one currently does. This can be dampened to some degree by different specialisation and such, but those would still be worse than what the current US does, because otherwise theyd already be doing it. I suspect this would a bigger effect than the benefits of pure population.
But even if its not, and this works exactly as you say, the benefit doesnt require the immigrant to go to your contry specifically. If its another one with a similar GDP that you freely trade with, you should get almost all of the benefit. So the US wouldnt lose much from sending its immigrants to Canada; us Europeans could propably turn a profit sending ours to you.
People are power
In the geopolitical sense I agree, but thats mostly independent from the other stuff were talking about.
Yeah, I think the best approach here is to find some multiplier for GDP to estimate total surplus, maybe with detailed economic study of some sample branches, and then just use that multiplied ΔGDP - his wage. GDP already includes native wages as well, so well never need a decision on that effect in isolation.
The entire country of Austria has 8M inhabitants. Our biggest city is Vienna, 2M. The others are all below 0.5M. So, I would say I live in a city, but its propably Bumfuck, Alabama by your standards. But I dont think the facts here are especially inaccessible to outsiders. Really, smaller cities usually densify more from growth than large ones.
...and that is why the entire US population lives in one contiguous metro area. Or does it? What you initially described was something pretty specific: an entire industry concentrating in one place, benefitting from a unified pool of workers. That effect is real, if IMO not very strong at the relevant margin, and really does require international immigration, because the US alone couldnt produce tech workers for the whole global tech industry without serious quality loss.
Meanwhile, there are great returns to urbanisation if you start out evenly distributed, but that doesnt mean of anything in our actual situation.
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