The-WideningGyre
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User ID: 1859
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think this is a matter of degree, and also that while talent is important, luck is also.
So I think most would be okay with Musk / Gates / Bezos having 100x the median wealth, maybe even 1000x, there is a problem with them having 100000x the median wealth. They may be talented, but they aren't that talented.
I may just be projecting -- I'm generally a big fan of capitalism, but I think the differences between the 0.01% and the 70% in the US are just too big -- and it's hurting overall society. I'm generally for fairly mild adjustments to redistribution (small bumps to, e.g., income tax, inheritance tax, maybe capital gains) to reduce the skew at the extreme edges.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
If you add two spaces at tend of a line, that will cause a line break in Markdown.
Very useful for poetry.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW this comes across as quite condescending. You're so sure you're right you don't to actually provide any evidence of it, or even an argument.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Also, the corruption. Putting in so many completely inexperienced family members, and extracting money (e.g. via forced use of your hotels) is banana republic stuff that weakens all kinds of good things.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Agreed. I wouldn't say I'm hopeful yet, but I just visited with some very historically progressive friends in CA, and all were sort of hinting at things having gone too far, which I don't think they ever would have dared to do a year ago.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
You nail this 100%. I see it play out at my woke tech company. I find it incredibly tiresome and annoying, and while I'm sympathetic to people who've had a shitty experience, and I think everyone should be judged on their own merits, the constant whining without evidence is so tedious, and I have no patience for it.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
There is occasional hand-wringing, but no actual changes to, e.g. scholarships. And they can always find a few majors that are mostly men, and hold that up as a reason to keep discriminating.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Isn't the "intent to intimidate" the big part? It seems hard to prove (and should be), and could be applied to a candlelight vigil as well, which would usually be a bad thing, IMO.
I didn't pay that much attention, but in the images I saw, the torches seemed an incidental thing. If they were waving them in people's faces, sure, fire is serious business. But if they were just walking holding them, no I don't think the law should be stretched that way. It's like if there were a law about wearing military clothes to intimidate, so anyone with a camou-colored backpack, or rangers baseball hat got charged with an extra serious crime.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Minor note: for me "to go Dutch" means to split the bill, not to avoid paying. I guess in the sense of date your phrasing fits too.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Jack Reacher was fairly good, I thought. Not woke at all, and pretty good action.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
It's not just "network effects, more capital, more talent".
I'll just speak for Germany, which I know fairly well. It's fairly anti-tech -- suspicious of digital technology. It limits, with laws, the ability to innovate or create. Agreed that the pay is much below the US (for top folks) and even fairly far below Switzerland. Start-ups are also harder (for (at least) the reasons you give).
Germany has things like the GDPR, it resists hire & fire (which I think is mostly good, but has economic costs), it requires annoying things like putting email signatures with your company owners in your mails, putting Impressums on your websites listing how to reach, getting double confirmation before being able to send a mail, or even remind you about an upcoming doctor's appointment.
I think mainly it's the lack of payoff, and lack of startup culture.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think there's the significant point that the job of person making a poll on sexual satisfaction with partners is offering sexual satisfaction as a non-partner. Yes, maybe he could have used another word, but the point was (primarily) to draw attention to that.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I didn't think this was a low-effort sneer, and I thought it was very much relevant and on-topic for what the person brought up. It's the core criticism.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Well, for one, the statistics I've seen for divorce is that there is a very large class difference. My first result of a Google search was this that says overall only 30% of middle and upper class couples get divorced, 41% of the working class, and 46% of the poor (which also disagree with 50% overall).
Result #3 says the overall divorce rate is 44%. It also notes many professions (including SW devs) have a divorce rate around 20%.
Aella's readers are a very non-representative sample. Perhaps not quite as non-representative as the lobby of a divorce lawyer, but not too much worse, IMO, and yes, selling very skewed data as representative data is worse than NO data, IMO.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The sad part is, apparently many prisons do stop most rapes from happening. It's entirely feasible, but many don't make the apparently not-too-large effort. I'm sorry, I don't have my source handy for it, but it's something that's been looked into.
It's maybe weird -- my only real reason not to support the death penalty is that the justice system makes too many mistakes -- but I really think it's barbaric that this is such an issue in US prisons, and we should be able to do better.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The housework thing always seems odd to me -- these are consensual relationships. If it bothers the people they should talk about it, or leave.
(Also, apparently the leisure time of both is about the same, men are working longer, or doing things that don't get counted. I tend to be skeptical of these things, for the reasons noted in this thread).
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Just wanted to say, awesome engagement here and elsewhere in the thread. It is very much appreciated, and I think this particular post is strong evidence for good faith discussion that was sometimes disputed elsewhere.
I tend to fall into the "the average woman doesn't realize how massively privileged she is" camp (or perhaps more "the average woman doesn't realize how comparatively unprivilegeg the average man is"), but I'd like (1) I'd like us to figure out how make things better, rather than just yell at each other and (2) somehow I still think i wouldn't like to switch (although when I was younger, maybe), which is an indication of something....
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I found the fakes of Gandalf reviewing the Rings of Power pretty funny.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
No, but high testosterone and being willing to be daring in any form do go together.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
100% Most conservatives also agree, but, stereotypically, see it as the church helping widows and orphans.
We are a rich society, and I think that behooves us to help the less fortunate. The trick is how much, and doing it in a way that doesn't encourage too much becoming an 'unfortunate'. I think that's a really complex topic, and one, unfortunately that seems hard to talk about.
E.g. I think having decent unemployment insurance and welfare is a net social good, reduces stress, making people more willing to change jobs, and even reducing crime (as you have more to lose). OTOH, it of course incentivizes people who could work, but just don't, which parasitizes society. I don't think you can have the one side without some of the other, and the key to good policy is finding the balance, and ways decrease the bad effects in ways that don't decrease the good effects more.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I think that says more about your world than the larger cultural one. I'm kind of involved in that sector and burning man is barely on the radar.
We're not in the US, which perhaps plays something of a role, but BM seems more known for drugs, garage creative, and rich folk cosplaying as creative.
I agree there's a lot of creativity there, but I don't think it's made it out much into the larger world.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I think it's a really interesting topic, and it touches on a number of things.
I don't think the narcissism is the key point -- I think you've got those on both sides.
I think the willingness, and push, to break tradition and authority is certainly a part of it. There's an assumption that convention is bad, and to be subverted, which is pretty inherently anti-conservative.
However, I think the biggest aspect is the ... well, to be a bit politer, let's say a good creative is providing services for the upper layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- entertainment, mental stimulation, belonging. And most can only do so on largesse of people who fulfill the lower layers (safety, food, shelter, wifi). So they don't have to worry about how things will work, they just sort of assume it will be there, and they just need to persuade people to give it to them. Someone else characterized it as childlike empathy, and I think that's a part of it too, but to me it's more this idea of things not having consequences -- if people are poor, give everyone a million dollars.
I think that's also where a lot of the frustration with them comes from; maybe that's an area the not-psycho left should work on -- explaining why the things they propose will make the world a worse place, rather than a better one.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
That completely changes things. Without it, very creepy and no borders. With it, sure, betrayal of honesty experiment.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
You sound like a 'character', is that right?
While I'd heard similar groups had gotten caught, I'd heard mixed things about performance. It would actually be encouraging if it were more performance based, and less random-seeming, as it does from the other side of the Atlantic, where the cuts aren't all through yet.
I don't think that's true, as there seems to be a cap on human longevity -- so it seems it's more like you have a larger population dying potentially decades earlier, and then 'the rest' living essentially to near the cap, which seems to have a LEGG effect.
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