morphism
live long and prosper
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User ID: 2721
morphism
live long and prosper
4d ago
Is this true?
As a matter of scientific record, yes. I think that Witherspoon 2007 explains the situation nicely:
The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci. This article explains why.
The very short argument is this: A sub-saharan African will very likely have dark skin color, whereas an European will likely have light skin color, due to selection pressure on Vitamin D und UV protection. You can distinguish populations with this. However, that's about it — most other genes face little selection pressure, or similar selection pressure which is not dependent on population location. Some genes do face selection pressure, e.g. Italy contained many swamps and was prone to Malaria, so the incidence of hemophilia from this location is higher, because that correlates with protection against Malaria.
The versions of homo which did have significant genetic differences to be separate species, such as Neanderthals, have already died out.
morphism
live long and prosper
4d ago
Reading the Wikipedia article on Lewontin's Fallcy, it appears that the main difficulty is to make the statement precise. The cited reference Witherspoon 2007 explains:
The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci. This article explains why.
morphism
live long and prosper
4d ago
This is likely the end of US hegemony in Europe — or anywhere else for that matter. The US Empire is unable to afford the hegemony, Trump's random acts of trying to scrap some money together are pretty much doomed. (Not to mention that this money will end up in the pockets of rich people.)
If Europe survives this, then probably as a joint military power and with France supplying the nuclear weapons.
morphism
live long and prosper
4d 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?
This has been the case for a long time — the thing is that genetic distance within, say, white people is much larger than the genetic distance to a black person. I mean, the only genes that differ are essentially about some obscure pigmentation. As far as the science of the human genome goes, "ethnicity" has always been a cultural thing, not a genetic one.
morphism
live long and prosper
20d ago
Whoops. Well, so much for that. I was wrong. And this shit is starting to be a bit genuinely alarming.
😅 Like dr_analog, I would be curious to understand why this conclusion came so late.
The way I see it is the following:
- One of my core values are rationality and natural science. If an argument is not logically sound, it's wrong. If a theory doesn't match up with observations of reality, it's a fantasy. The thing about Trump is that not only does he lie — he propagates statements that are clearly absurd and where he doesn't even bother trying to justify them. These statements are completely disconnected from reality, and knowingly so. Any person with paranoid schizophrenia has more connection to reality, because at least they believe that their statements are real. With this way of presenting "arguments", I fail to see how Trump would be able to make any of his policy promises real — they don't work, they are not even intended to work. This implies that Trump has no genuine policy goals, he is just fishing for votes. But then what are his goals? He must have some, or he wouldn't run for presidency…
- Trump wants to undermine the Separation of powers. Separation means that lawmakers decides what should be, the executive makes it so, and the judiciary checks that what the executive is doing matches what the lawmakers said it should. It follows that the Supreme Court should have no place for partisan politics — neither Democractic nor Republican, it's not their job. The job of the executive is not to make law — it's to make real those that already exist. The attempt at dismantling the separation of powers in favor of political influence is a clear sign of authoritarianism.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Great. Let's pick them up very gently and also very gently drop them off on the other side of a heavily fortified border. No need to do bodily harm. This is fine. Bodily harm is not my terminal value here. We can reach a practical compromise I'm sure.
The trouble is that this idea is not going to work out. Someone who tries to come from a country where they fear or have experienced bodily harm will accept the risk of scaling a high wall, or paying a smuggler to get them in somehow. The problem is that the option of not trying to get into the country is terrible to begin with, they don't have much to lose.
Are you in favor of private gun ownership because people will always find ways to arm themselves?
No, I'm not in favor of gun ownership. But the methods for reducing gun ownership is different from the above, because people who arm themselves illegally still have something to lose — by choosing the option of not owning an illegal gun, their live becomes better because they do not have to pay a large penalty. Most people find that option ok and will oblige. Still, similarly, despite countermeasures, a small amount of people will find still ways to arm themselves.
I'd say we can do fine without inflicting bodily harm very much most of the time, but a principled refusal to employ violence ist just an open invitation to abuse by others.
Humanism does not principally refuse violence, though — protection against abuse is necessary. But if that abuse is non-violent, then the response should be non-violent as well. And also "perception of violence" is not the same as violence; as humanist, I need to take care that my violence is really used to stop violence, not just on a gut feeling. Have you seen the movie "The Equalizer"? It's a revenge fantasy, but that's probably as close as a humanist comes to revenge fantasies.
Is that...concern trolling, I think it's called? I strongly doubt that is actually your concern.
I'm not concern trolling — it's just that I can't debate the concern without engaging in debate about immigration itself, as opposed to a "meta-debate" about the concern.
Trump cannot possibly do more damage to Germany than progressive ideologues have done Then you would be a smart self-serving politican and very uninspired and uneffective in destroying my country.
Thank you for this answer, I think that this satisfies my curiosity. In my original post, I stated that …
"Now my quick rundown of Trump: The key tactic of populist figures is to deceive about the actual benefit of their policies. Will Trumps' tarrifs improve the lives of most American consumers?"
… and from what I understand, your stance (trying in my own words) is "As long as Trump promises to uphold my cultural definition of country, I am willing to endure hardship and also accept that he is enriching himself". As far as I can tell, it's also ok if he only promises (but fails to deliver) and it's also ok if your economic situation is worse off. Which is curious given the arguments in this thread that immigrants would worsen economic situations, but the realization that I need to have is that it is not really about economics, but about cultural values, where immigrants simply do not belong.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
An important thing to remember is that Canada has had approximately 1/8 of its residents added in the last 5 years (2019 census has 37.5 million population, 2024 has 41.8, but there was also a report that approximately 1 million people had overstayed their visas).
That appears to be true — but Google gives me population data that shows a linear increase at roughly the same rate since 1960. In other words, this level of population growth has been happening for the last 60 years. Now, it's no longer clear how this steady growth would explain the recent 65% spike in the housing market.
I consider the housing market to be generally fishy. For example, there are two ways to come to own a house:
- buy a house
- build a house
If first way spikes 65% for no apparent good reason, ok fine — but one would expect that the second way, building a house, just keeps up with inflation. After all, it's the cost of materials and construction worker wages. If buying a house is too expensive, people would build houses instead, which equalizes the price of houses. But apparently, that doesn't happen, so something fishy appears to be going on; I bet that there is some sort of rent-seeking going on.
We had a fairly big outrage recently over Indian international students raiding food banks for meals - this directly reduces the resources available for our population that uses them (which has gone up to about 20% of the population).
That may be true — but the word "outrage" makes me skeptical: How many Indian international students are raiding food banks for meals? "Outrages" typically arise from small-scale stories that gather much more attention that their actual effect size merits.
I mean, to turn the question on it's head - is there any evidence that would persuade you that it is caused (or at least, worsened) by immigration? From my perspective, it doesn't have to be caused solely by it in order for it to be aggrevating the situation.
Yes, but the evidence would have to come in the form of a model in the sense of system dynamics. This kind of model was used for The Limits of Growth, for example.
My primary issues is that "direct negative" is actually hard to argue and usually not true — as the example of historical Canadian population indicates. Correlation ≠ causation.
Strictly speaking, I don't even want to claim that existing problems cannot be slightly worsened by immigration. What I am claiming is that the existing problem is the one worth fixing, and immigration is a red herring.
(I would concede half a point if the model shows that the system is unstable in the sense that a small amount of immigration causes large downstream effects. Again the stability is the underlying problem, but I concede that this would constitute a very strong aggravation.)
In fact, your other question about labor market participation got me thinking, to the point where a simple calculation shows that at least the position "immigrations steals our jobs" cannot be true. The calculation is this: Consider a city and add 1 marginal person. For simplicity, this person provides 1 person worth of labor. Now, let x be the labor that this person provides. There are essentially two cases:
- 1 > x. Apparently, this person provides less work than required for their subsistence. In this case, immigration is indeed a bad idea — an additional mouth to feed that cannot feed themself. By that account, it would create more jobs, though.
- 1 < x. Apparently, this person provides more work than required for their subsistence. But this should be positive, no? After all, they can feed themselves through their labor and do some extra work for the community. However, it is precisely this case where the position "this person steals my job" would apply, because that person clearly demands less labor for living than they provide.
The point is that it's not possible for both cases to be negative at the same time — otherwise, the only positive action would be to disband the community. After all, this calculation doesn't care whether the person comes from a foreign country or is a white neighbor from a city close by.
The resolution of this conundrum is that the second case is not negative for everyone, but that someone else reaps the benefits. And indeed: If the additional labor makes wages go down, then it must be the job provider who captures the excess labor capacity that the additional person provides. That's what I mean by "existing problem". The new person provides excess labor and could make your life better — but you don't profit from it, because someone else captures that excess labor.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
OF COURSE it's OK to inflict bodily harm on other human beings if they qualify for it! That's what it means to qualify! That's what it means to have criteria!
The implied question is: Which criteria are you applying? From your answer, the impression I got is that "an eye for a hair color" is fine with you. Also: Who decides? You?
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
someone losing their job
This is not a bodily harm — but the consequence of not being able to buy food is a bodily harm. The point is that under different policy choices, losing your job does not imply that you can't feed yourself anymore, the two can be decoupled.
losing access to affordable housing, having to live in less-safe / more dangerous neighborhoods,
Agreed. Losing access to housing is a bodily harm. Violence in the neighborhood is a bodily harm.
Don't dodge the discussion, make your stand: does mass migration cause no harm, or do you simply not care about the harms other people face as a consequence of it?
What I'm saying is that different policy choices that are unrelated to migration will do more to prevent the above bodily harms. The claim "immigration is harm" is different from the combination of effects "immigration does X", and "X does bodily harm" — a policy choice can affect X instead.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
argumentation that amounts to "thing A is negative-value, but if we also did thing B (which, for whatever reason, we are not actually going to do), then the expected value would be positive, so we ought to do thing A".
The argument is that "A non-zero amount of A is happening whether you like it or not, so let's also do B". It's not an argument for unconditional A.
Apart from the circumstance that the case that successful integration is in fact possible has not been made convincingly,
The US in the 19th century looks like a case of successful integration to me.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Like, if we only have around 65% of the population of working aged individuals engaging in the labour market, doesn't that imply that adding a marginal person does not generate a marginal job (but rather, 65% of one)?
I don't think so? I don't quite understand which theory specifically you mean, my immediately preceding post contains two. On the first one: The marginal person generates demand for labor and adds supply of labor. The 65% figure would be about the supply of labor. If you want to draw conclusions about the demand for labor — which can be entirely different from that figure — you need additional data. For example, you could try to argue that it's a closed system, where labor supply and demand are equal; but with exports, imports, and profit margins, this is not a closed system.
The second theory is about the utilization of the supply of labor. Labor works for some company, which takes a cut of the produced value and pays out the rest as wage. The company could choose to pay higher wages — but they don't.
Perhaps the following calculations illustrates what I mean: A marginal person of working age offers 1 person of labor, but the labor that they demand in order to stay fed and bedded may only be, say, 0.5 persons due to automation. If this single person were a closed loop, there is no good reason for this person to work more than 0.5 persons worth of labor — that will be enough to feed themselves.
If human labor goes extinct, this means that this person would only demand ~0 people worth of labor — nobody has to lift a finger to keep this person well-fed, it's all taken care of by AI growing corn and mowing the lawn.
The trouble is that this person is not a closed loop — they don't have access to that AI growing corn, they have to pay an exorbitant fee. That's the issue about "work saved" that I mean, and the thing that Henry George pointed out in "Progress and Poverty".
The math doesn't pan out exactly in this way, because automation changes what constitutes human labor, so you can get the work of 90 people from year 856 for the price of 1 crane driver and 1 crane in the year 2025. Work saved means that each person can do more, but that in turn may lead to demanding more.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Thanks for being nice to, uh, the lefty. :D I don't really want to argue about the pros and cons of immigration here, as my main point is about Trump and deception, but in order to argue that deception might be going on here, I can't avoid debating the policy issue.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Man, are you just shitposting?
No, I'm serious. 😅 I mean, I know that I'm not going to convince anybody, but I want to learn what you think, because of my statement here:
"I do believe that he [Trump] will make the lives of almost everyone worse, including his own supporters, except for the direct beneficiaries of his authoritarian rule."
I genuinely think that Trump's policies are going to harm you, who seems to support him. That is why I can't quite make sense of why you're supporting him. As mentioned, I'm humanist, I do not want you to be harmed, because you are a human being, that's why I'm posting in the first place. Essentially, I'm asking myself "Why are you going to hurt yourself?" 😅 You're probably seeing this differently, and that's fine — all I can hope for here is to gain some more insight into your thoughts.
Is it wise to have immigration when integration is unreliable or just completely outpaced by the formation of parallel societies?
To pick on this point: The problem is that you can't voluntarily choose to not have immigration — people who are desperate enough will try to come and take very high risks. I mean, seriously, which human being in their right mind wants to risk being shot for walking over a border? You'd only risk that if your current live is worse than this risk. This means that if situation on the other side is terrible enough, you will have immigration — and then it's better policy to invest into integration, because that ameliorates follow-up problems later on. "Nah, I don't want to invest into integration because I don't want immigration in the first place" doesn't work out.
Drug dealers should be shot, hanged, and shot again, and illegal immigrants who enter a wealthy country without permission only to proceed to deal drugs should be hanged and shot once more for good measure. What the fuck is the argument here?
This goes against my core value, humanism. Do not inflict bodily harm other human beings, regardless of whom. (There is a subclause on what happens when other people want to inflict bodily harm on you, which I will not go into here). That is why leftists do not condone attempts at assassinating Trump and there was no Jan 6th equivalent. Do not inflict bodily harm.
The refugee one - they had to flee from violence and persecution, that's why we need to accept them in spite of their coming illegally, but as soon as they gain safety they turn into scum?
Do they become "scum" voluntarily? Or is it because they are not allowed to work? If you can't work legally — you have to work illegally, because you have to buy food. The policy of not allowing immigrants to work is actually causing them to work illegally. Duh.
Your ideology is destroying my country, the actual society and culture that make the country what it is, and replacing it with the same easily influenced, easily marketed-to, easily controlled global slurry you can find everywhere else that the third world found a route to. What is our future now?
Genuine question: From this answer, I take it that you are not humanist? That's it's ok to inflict bodily harm on other human beings if they qualify for some criteria? Not sure I'm ok with that, but it seems to me that this a core value that I should check with you.
Your ideology is destroying my country
The thing is this: Whether "my ideology" is destroying your country or not is up to debate. But that's not what I'm really concerned about when posting here — the point that I'm genuinely concerned about that Trumps is destroying your country in a way that you don't realize.
Look, if I wanted to destroy your country, I would do it exactly like Trump — throw random nonsense at the internet, stick to the things that people believe in ("Huh, apparently they care about immigration, sure, let's go with that"), make up some policies that work or do not, I don't care, as long as they are flashy — while enriching myself and those most loyal to me. I would play the difference between what you think is a good idea ("restrict immigration") and what will improve your life in reality ("UBI", universal health care, … — I think so, up to debate), and you would never know the difference. I would use your own beliefs against you.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
You describe genuine issues. But the question is: Are these really caused by immigration? I mean it, for real. You can have the firmest belief in the perception that these issues are causes by immigration. But reality simply does not care what you believe. What if you seriously entertain the possibility that you could be wrong on this? What if stopping immigration simply doesn't do anything on the above issues?
That is the essence of my point: There is a good chance that the issues in housing and health care that you are experiences are not caused by immigration, and — there are people out there who want to profit from your belief on this matter, that's what my quote by Henry George is about. Trump is such a person.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Indirect economic harms are still economic harms.
No. Indirect economic "harms" are trade-offs. For example, if the price of chocolate rises, then some people cannot afford the amount of chocolate they used to buy. That's not a harm — yes, the chocolate buyer is worse off, but there is a chocolate producer on the other end, who would in turn be worse off if the price were lower.
I'm after a precise definition of "harm" here, because that's relevant to my core values, Humanism. Do not harm human beings. One primary source of harm is loss of integrity of your own body (being subject to violence, …). Higher chocolate prices are ok, a threat to your existence is not. Let me call it "bodily harm" for the sake of discussion. (At some point, economic
Harms to social trust by unilateral disregard of legitimate laws is still harm to social trust. Criminal harms by criminals who partisans protected from deportation because they wanted to spite or defy their outgroup are still harms. Self-righteous support for human trafficking that corresponds with the significant smuggling of addictive and harmful substances that fund violent criminal groups domestically and abroad even as the smuggled migrants compete with citizens for public goods and services while disrupting local social equilibriums is a whole host of harms to be encountered by various people in various ways at various times.
I would agree that these are either bodily harms or do border on bodily harms, yes. But the point is: Are these caused by immigration — or are these caused by how immigration is handled?
- There are no "legitimate" laws. Anybody can claim that that other law is "not legitimate". True scotsman.
- Deportation has a cost, both monetary and bodily (harm). Does stealing merit corporal punishment? No, according to humanism.
- When people are desperate enough, they will try to escape their current conditions — you would, too. The only way to physically stop them is to inflict bodily harm. If immigration were legal, smugglers were out of a job.
- Sellings drugs involves harms people. But: If you can't work legally, do you have a choice? No, you have to work illegally. Why would immigrants volunteer to work in the drug trade? These are people like you, and they would rather not. Drug trade is not immanent to immigration.
Much of what you are attributing to "immigration" is actually "consequence of current handling of immigration". This is a policy question. The thinking that you can stop people who are very desperate does not work out.
This is not about outgroups, this is about core value, humanism: Do not inflict bodily harm on other people, regardless of whom.
The argument with immigration is it makes the problem worse, adding many more people to the pool of people without adding more jobs -- or at least enough jobs to make up for the added labor.
But in the most basic sense of the word, a job is a piece of work that needs to be done — and the immigrants bring that in as well, because they also need lettuce and tooth brushes and haircuts. The underlying issue is not that there's isn't enough work that people can do for each other — if anything, it's that creating a job is typically done by an employer, who needs to be reasonably competent and has their own interests.
her opinion is that AI is coming to extinct human labor in short order, and so massive unemployment is top-of-mind.
I would relish the extinction of human labor, because then I don't have to work anymore and could relish my free time will still being provided with all the services that I need. The issue is not that work goes extinct, the issue is that I, as a lowly peasant do not profit from the work saved — but that's a problem of distribution of wealth. And that's what I also find mind-boggling about voting for Trump — he is so rich that he doesn't have to work anymore, yet promises the restricting immigration will solve my, the peasant's problem, rather than redistributing his very own capital? I don't know, but that looks like deception to me.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
I happen to live near a neighborhood with such tendencies. But is that a consequence of immigration for failed policy for integrating immigrants? For example, if these people are not allowed to work legally — they have to resort to criminal work (drugs) to make a living. It looks like the very attempt to actively restrict illegal immigration is making this perceived problem worse.
I can see how "ingroup of young men with foreign language" tends towards harm. But that's not quite the same as "harm of immigration".
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
Yes. The article goes on, and notes
Maintaining the current immigration level, but skewing its composition toward workers who will compete in the labor market’s high-wage segments, will tend to strengthen worker power in the market’s low-wage segments even more quickly than would a policy of restricting immigration broadly.
This is not an argument against immigration — it's actually one for controlled immigration. I don't think that this is what Trump's current policies have in mind, though.
By the way, the main issue with high-wage segments is that they have entry control — you (probably, I think) need a degree in law, medicine, from a US school … in order to enter that segment. In other words, these segments have active import restrictions. Likewise, illegal immigration cannot happen into high-wage segments — you may get away with working illegally on a construction site, but as a registered medical doctor? No chance.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
If a job needs to be done, and I am one of the few people who can do it, I have much better leverage than if I am one of the many people who can. This is a very classic leftist argument (see union shops).
Yes. But the influx of people also means that now two jobs need to be done, and you're no worse off. That's the core of the argument — there is more labor, but there is also more work to be labored on.
Same goes for housing — new people? They are willing to pay for building more houses!
Of course, the time horizons and other restrictions do matter. I'm not saying that the housing market isn't broken, or that sudden shifts in worker availability do not have temporary effects. What I am saying is that blaming it on immigration is not an accurate model of reality — and, even more importantly, Trump is exploiting that for his personal gain.
Why would something need to harm you personally for you to be justified in being against it?
That's a fair point. But there is a difference between being "anti-murder" and being "anti-immigration", because "murder" is obviously violating the bodily integration of a person, whereas it's more difficult to argue that "immigration" is harmful on a personal level — that's what I wanted to hone in on by using the word "personally", though missed the mark by being too specific on the interlocutor.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
I can’t answer for the user you’re replying to, but can for me.
Thanks!
The answer is immigration.
🤔 But — could you describe how immigration harms you personally?
I'm asking because the general argument against immigration is an indirect economic argument. The argument typically goes like this: The land can support a certain size of population. If more people come in, the land will not be able to produce enough food for everyone.
The trouble is just: This argument is precisely the Malthusean theory that my quote of Henry George refers to. And it is unfortunately not an accurate model of reality — it's not true. And hasn't been since 1879. 😅 After the invention of fertilizers, land size is not a big issue anymore — the economy now runs on goods and services that people produce for each other. Sure, immigrants lead to more consumption of goods and services — but in order to be able to buy these, they also need to work to produce them. In other words, "land" has been replaced by "labor" — and while an immigrant can, by definition, not bring the resource "land" with them, they can and do bring the resource "labor" with them anywhere they go.
morphism
live long and prosper
1mo ago
What will be the consequences?
For a thorough economic analysis, I recommend Patrick Boyle. The gist is that tariffs are redistributive: They take income from the household sector and transfer it to protected businesses — both within the US. Whether Canada will be thrown into a recession depends on how badly Canadian goods are demanded by US consumers.
The basic economic incentive for international trade is the same why we have different professions for people: by dividing labor, countries can specialize and be more efficient in producing particular good or service, making it cheaper for everyone. Yes, you can grow bananas in Canada, but it's just way cheaper to do it in warm climate. The flip side is that Canada will never gain the expertise needed to grow bananas, and will not have any bananas if the other countries close down shop. This is fine without bananas, but if you replace "banana" with "weapon", then some people start worrying about "natural security".
Up until now I've been more or less indifferent to Trump. While I find him personally and aesthetically unpleasant, the hysteria surrounding his every move – and especially the mainstream media's tendency to misrepresent him, often flagrantly – has sort of balanced things out for me. I confess I felt some cruel enjoyment watching people on the left (many of whom have done great harm to me and my loved ones) melt down both times he won.
This is not directly related to your questions — but I'm genuinely curious. How would you describe the harm that the left has done to you and your loved ones, and how would you say the mainstream media misrepresents Trump?
The reason why I'm asking is that I'm firmly anti-Trump — I have no hate for him, but I do believe that he will make the lives of almost everyone worse, including his own supporters, except for the direct beneficiaries of his authoritarian rule.
And I'm bringing this up with you because I'm curious why his own supporters would support him, even though he will harm them. Obviously, that doesn't make sense to me. 😅
Before I expand on that, I'd like to expound that my core value systems is humanism — essential, every human being is worth caring for. That includes you, every Trump supporter, all leftists, and people of all colors. However, it appears to me that Trump supporters do not necessarily see it the same way, and then it becomes a question of how much care I can afford for a human that is fine with harming me.
Now my quick rundown of Trump: The key tactic of populist figures is to deceive about the actual benefit of their policies. Will Trumps' tarrifs improve the lives of most American consumers? Judging by argument above, the answer is "no". Does Trump care? The answer is — "no". Why would he care? Why would he not lie to everyone? His good character? But he doesn't seem to have a good character? And will people be able to tell the difference? The answer is "no" — that's why the deception works. Most people do not understand well enough what effect tariffs have — and they will harm themselves if they belief they work while the reality is that they don't. It's the discrepancy between belief and reality that is the source of harm. And the populist strategy is to play exactly that: Tell people what they want to believe, reinforce it, throw new beliefs at the wall and see what sticks, without any regard for reality. Everyone who is in on that deception will win, everyone who is not will lose out.
As Henry George put it in his 1879 book "Progress and Poverty":
“A theory that, falling in with the habits of thought of the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the theory advanced by Malthus.”
morphism
live long and prosper
2mo ago
I don't believe that you have "sat down and done the calculation."
You are the one who does not seem interested in such a calculation. You cite some GDP figures and rest on your preconception that you're right. I'm not gonna bother discussing data against such attitude towards truth. (EDIT) For example, you make an assumption about me making a trip to Germany, which is factually wrong.
No. Look, if you sit down and actually do the calculation, the combination of GDP, prices, salaries doesn't add up as you claim — and that's before asking the question of which quality of service you're getting.
EDIT: And the statement "salaries are higher, therefore prices must be higher" cannot even be a causation — if anything, it's the other way round: higher prices cause higher salaries (assuming that the workload stays the same). But why should prices for each specific medical procedure or diagnostic in the US be higher? Do they add magic sprinkles to it, so that the health outcome is phenomenally better than in Germany? Price and value are two fundamentally different things, and the question is whether the US offers a good price for the medicine stuff.
None of these phenotypes experience significant selection pressure on the genetic level, they are strongly influenced by the environment (take e.g. lead in gasoline), and variability in the white populate alone is so high that even population-level differences between blacks and whites would to amount to meaningless differences on average.
The onset of puberty is controller by many factors — most environmental, nourishment being the most important.
Does this mean that you won't cite source for any of your claims?
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