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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28405 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I mean, good for them. We should all be so fortunate. When software engineers are begging for scraps on the streets, the longshoremen will truly be kings among men. When the social contract (referring to pro-social business norms) cannot keep your family fed, people will resort to other means.

I think that this the opposite of good. It is pure rent-seeking. If everyone does that, you end up with the medieval guild system. Want to bake and sell bread? Sorry bro, you must be in the baker's guild to do that. No, you can't just join the guild. The best you can do is to beg for an apprenticeship with a guild member, and after a decade of working for pitiful wages and playing politics, you might earn your cushy guild job. Or the son of a baker might get that job instead. In such a system, nobody has any incentive to work on innovation or efficiency.

Today, you would end up with a system where you can't fill your gas tank by yourself, because the gas station attendant union lobbied against it, nor change your own car tires, because once the car replaced the horse, the blacksmith's union transitioned from changing hoof irons to changing tires.

There are never enough cushy union jobs for everyone. The net effect is a transfer of wealth from the the people who are not in union jobs to union members through increased product costs.

I am not as rabidly anti-union as the Mindkiller podcast people, and think that historically, unions were probably net-good at times. From a gut feeling, collective bargaining feels more acceptable if exploited factory workers do it than if a cartel does it. But messing with the forces of a functioning market is rarely beneficial.

From a gut feeling, collective bargaining feels more acceptable if exploited factory workers do it than if a cartel does it. But messing with the forces of a functioning market is rarely beneficial.

A trade union is a cartel, it's just a cartel of individual employees rather than individual CEOs. The goals are the same (artificially raise prices by limiting competition).

A world without trade unions is a world where average wages are higher, employment is higher and consumer goods cost less.

I realise that I'm basically agreeing with your larger post, just pointing out that you shouldn't be afraid of taking your ideas to their logical conclusion. If rent-seeking is bad, then it's bad even if the guys doing it have working-class authenticity.

Today, you would end up with a system where you can't fill your gas tank by yourself

See: Oregon, New Jersey

Oregon has actually amended this law and you are allowed to pump your own gas now!

That drives up the price of all goods. They are really sticking it to you and me. And also making our ports far behind the automated ports the rest of the world has.

Well yeah, but if I were a longshoreman, I would rather my Amazon order be $5 more than have no job. Minimizing costs for businesses is not an end on an of itself. From the perspective of the longshoreman, trying to automate away their jobs is defecting and its obvious they would want to punish this behavior.

I have heard at least one (blue-voting!) New Yorker complain about the stranglehold the transit unions have on the city's mass transit. In particular that the leverage of a strike halting the subway prevents investment in some better technology that would improve the rider experience. In particular, this included any sort of automatic driving system, which (I'm told) limits total system throughput and those self-aligning train and platform doors that have existed elsewhere in the world for decades and would probably improve safety substantially.

I'm not wholly opposed to unions, but I don't think they uniformly make everyone's life better either. See also the Chicago plumbers union and lead pipes. But I suppose most of the time they probably ask for more reasonable concessions.

Automating the ports is pro social. It's just not pro-longshoremen, who account for 0.01% of society. What kind of costs should the rest of us pay so that they can keep doing this generation after generation? I'd be happy with some kind of lump some payment plus forced retirement so this danegeld situation stops. Otherwise it's just another of the absurd frictions that are eating away at American prosperity.

And thus we import cheap Chinese goods instead of supporting American manufacturing, and outsource millions of cubicle jobs to India and the Philippines.

I have no strong feelings on longshoremen or automation in general, but optimizing for the lowest cost of goods and services for the greatest number of people is only maximally beneficial in an actual global economy where everyone from India to the US is fungible. In the world we are in now, it's not just a choice between "Should longshoreman be overpaid or should Americans pay more for a toaster?" Eliminating American jobs eats away at American prosperity also.

It should be the federal government collecting tariffs on those imports, not the union.

It also increases the expense of exports.

American unemployment is at something like 4% which is pretty good historically speaking (yes there are other measures of unemployment, no they don't show a crisis of unemployment). This despite jobs constantly getting offshored, automated, and otherwise eliminated over the past two hundred years. Where are the farmers who used to make up 80% of the population in the 18th century? Where are the spinsters and weavers who used to make up almost the entire female population? Are their kids going hungry in the streets? Obviously not, and neither will the kids of the longshoremen. Are we better off with abundant food and textiles? Obviously yes (I don't consider obesity to be a compelling counterargument to material prosperity).

Looking at it the other way - why should we prioritize buying American? Wouldn't it be better if Californians bought Californian instead? Of course my interests are more aligned with Americans than indians. But they are even more aligned with Californians on account of being surrounded by them. And in fact, why shouldn't I restrict all my economic activity to my blood relations? Those are the people closest to me of all.

American unemployment is at something like 4%

Only due to the way we collect these statistics, which is suspect at best in order to make the party in power look good. Working Amazon or gig economy is often considered "employed", but it's not really living, either. Might as well be a slave.

Might as well be a slave.

But not really.

Pay by role Some Amazon warehouse worker roles and their hourly pay include:

Warehouse associate: $21.22 per hour

Packer: $17.92 per hour

Store shopper: $17.80 per hour

Order picker: $18.65 per hour

Handler: $16.88 per hour

Fulfillment associate: $20.28 per hour

Package handler: $17.46 per hour

So not quite slaves. I won't bother looking up gig worker pay, but similarly find the comparison to slaves (which the US famously had for real) to be silly.

Amazon very recently (as in will take effect on the next check) raised wages for frontline staff across all of CS and Fulfillment https://fortune.com/2024/09/18/amazon-pay-raise-hourly-warehouse-workers-22-average-wage/

yes there are other measures of unemployment, no they don't show a crisis of unemployment

Gig economy

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/12/08/the-state-of-gig-work-in-2021/

4% are currently doing these types of jobs, while an additional 5% are not currently doing this but have done so in the past year. In total, 9% of U.S. adults are current or recent gig workers, meaning they have earned money through an online gig platform in the past 12 months.

I don't consider this to hugely move the needle.

Working Amazon

There's always been jobs that people look down on but still need doing.

I wish you would at least have read the parenthetical intended to head off criticisms of this type and engaged more substantively rather than gesturing at two things you don't like.

And in fact, why shouldn't I restrict all my economic activity to my blood relations? Those are the people closest to me of all.

I won't generalize as to whether the ports should be automated (I think they should!), but yes, you should strive to do more commerce with people closer to you, and less with those further away.

Trust is a superweapon in business. Industries where trust is paramount (for example, the diamond industry) are dominated by tight-knit ethnic groups.

Any businessman will tell you that a contract is just a piece of paper. Ultimately if someone wants to screw you, they will, damn the contract. Trust is based on a theory of mind of the opposite party. Think about a prisoner's dilemma situation. If the other party is your brother, would you co-operate? What about your friend? A guy who looks like you and thinks like you? A random American? A Haitian immigrant?

The answer, of course, is cooperate, cooperate, cooperate, maybe, defect. And don't worry the Haitian immigrant will defect too for the same reason. I trust people who are like me. The more like me they are the more I trust them.

For an actual prisoner’s dilemma situation where I’m staring down years to decades in prison? Man, you have way more faith in the average American rando than me, because I’m defecting for sure. I would most likely defect on the friend too unless they were one of my closest, most trusted friends.

For a metaphorical one where the stakes are much lower and it’s much more likely to be an iterated prisoner’s dilemma? There’s no way I’m defecting first, even with the Haitian. I just don’t see any real life situations where the rewards are big enough that I could justify acting in such a petty manner. Can you think of any?

but yes, you should strive to do more commerce with people closer to you, and less with those further away.

See the Arab world for how this pans out when you take it to the logical conclusion. As an American you have the luxury of professing this belief because the entire world around you is made possible by trusting strangers and you, too, benefit from this enormously. You're not actually going to go live innawoods with your cousins and live off the fatta the land.

That trust is a superweapon is exactly why those who can effectively cooperate with more people are more prosperous than those who are stuck with kinship networks. De Beers revenue is $6B. Walmart revenue is $650B.

See the Arab world for how this pans out

Or the Chinese guanxi networks. Reliable contract laws, courts, and economic trust of strangers is main engine of Western dominance of the world. Its so baked into Anglo culture that we hardly notice it, like a fish in water. Operate somewhere where this isn't the rule and you notice immediately when its gone.

live innawoods with your cousins and live off the fatta the land

Just by the by, can you explain why you typed this in this way?

I've seen it on the Internet before, and it looks like it must be a reference to something, but I can't think of what.

My exposure was the 4Chan post "GRAB SKS, GO INNAWOODS" as a response to the scenario of SHTF.

It’s just a bad accent.

(Not OP)

innawoods = 4chan (?) slang for rural living away from big city degeneracy

living off the fatta the land = the dream of George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men

Gravity theory of trade actually explains our trading flows a bit more than strict comparative advantage. That is, you do trade with Californians more than ever one else, and then Americans more than everyone else, and so on and so forth.

See the Arab world for how this pans out when you take it to the logical conclusion.

Because it's Friday night... I think you should trust your closest relatives, not actually breed with them.

But yeah, in all seriousness, I think that living in a high trust society is fucking awesome and I lament its loss. I tend to err on the side of more trust, rather than less. But trusting strangers the same amount as relatives is pathological pro-outgroup bias.

I think you should trust your closest relatives, not actually breed with them.

One implies the other. Cousin marriage is a driver of low social trust- that’s the upfront reason it’s so destructive(the genetic issues usually take multiple generations to manifest). And low social trust drives towards marrying in the circle, which eventually means cousins.

Living in a high trust society is awesome precisely because you can trust people who aren't related to you by blood.

Who's at the top of trust rankings? It's not the Arab world. The highest ranked Arab country is Morocco at 17% of people saying that people can generally be trusted. The US is at 37% and the top spot is Denmark at 74% (inb4 Denmark is an Arab country).

Structuring society around kinship networks is a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that your countrymen are bastards and is correlated with living in an impoverished country. It's certainly not how you get and stay rich.

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