site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4453 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

ELIRetarded: Why has service gotten worse, and why is everything expensive and smaller now?

When I Google this I get a bunch of one-sentence explanations about "inflation" and "supply chain problems" but those just sound like things that most people think a smart person would say and/or that they heard from the TV box. There are also conspiratorial comments amount money printing, M2, the "true" inflation rate, etc.

Inflation and supply chain issues don't just fall out of the sky, they're the result of government policy. My economics-illiterate impression is that technocrat morons freaked out and started pulling levers during covid, ruining the economy in the process by causing mass unemployment and killing SMBs and pumping massive amounts of free money into an economy where money was already free, which caused serious inflation nothing to see here citizen, inflation is low, CPI is normal, everything is fine, don't trust your lying eyes or wallet and now another band of technocrats are raising interests rates to control the mess their comrades caused in the first place, compounding everyone's pain.

If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy. Please tell me my understanding is incorrect so I can stop being mad about this every time I buy groceries.

My thought is basically “they can get away with it.” If you can make a cheaper product and it doesn’t cost in sales, then you get to keep the money left over. And likewise with services, if I can get as many customers offering shitty service as I can by offering full service, why not lower costs by cutting services?

Your impression is basically correct, but with the caveat that there was already a structural tightening of the economy on the horizon for generation size and prior debt reasons and bureaucrats reacting to Covid fear mongering was a major accelerator and also screwed the pooch on a bunch of soft landing options. I don’t expect most people understand how screwed we are; for population size reasons most government pension funds are already going to burst one way or another, and for political reasons that’s going to be dealt with by money printing.

Now customer service is shitty partly because the service worker class got used to not working and resents having to have a job. Again, that’s society losing their shit about Covid.

When I Google this I get a bunch of one-sentence explanations about "inflation" and "supply chain problems" but those just sound like things that most people think a smart person would say and/or that they heard from the TV box.

Sure, but the other explanations you have don't really seem much better. Can M2 really cause unemployment to skyrocket? Or do you just know that both these things are 'bad' and therefore must be connected?

Inflation and supply chain issues don't just fall out of the sky, they're the result of government policy.

They don't fall out of the sky, they spring from the earth. Inflation and supply chain issues were here in the world long before our current government policy, before our government, before your nation, before nations themselves. It is simply the natural order of things that pieces of paper don't have any value and that it's very difficult to coordinate supply chains across the entire planet. To the extent that we've made things otherwise, it's the result of (among other things) government policy.

Second of all, even in the narrow sense you mean it, it's not government policy. Japan, for example, has avoided high inflation despite continuing to pursue the kind of easy money policy you rail against. Despite this real wages have been eroded - caused by high commodity prices, which are not in the gift of the Japanese government to control.

My economics-illiterate impression is that technocrat morons freaked out and started pulling levers during covid, ruining the economy in the process by causing mass unemployment and killing SMBs and pumping massive amounts of free money into an economy where money was already free, which caused serious inflation nothing to see here citizen, inflation is low, CPI is normal, everything is fine, don't trust your lying eyes or wallet and now another band of technocrats are raising interests rates to control the mess their comrades caused in the first place, compounding everyone's pain.

So which one do you want? Easy money or tight money? Or do you just want to believe what you want to believe?

Easy money or tight money? Or do you just want to believe what you want to believe?

No idea, man. Whichever one doesn't make less able to afford stuff with the same paycheck, I guess. You say it's the result.of government policy -- which ones?

I don't think it's the result of government policy.

Oops, yeah, I misread. You say government policy is the tool we've used to mitigate economic issues that spring from the earth.

I'm not really sure how to respond to you tbh. You seems to be criticizing something in my post, but I've already admitted in the first sentence that I don't claim to understand much about economics.

There are also conspiratorial comments amount money printing, M2, the "true" inflation rate, etc.

Why do you think these are conspiratorial? The Fed makes the data publicly available! The obvious explanation that growing the money supply by more than 40% in a couple years actually does increase prices substantially remains the obvious explanation. As an Occam's Razor appreciator, I don't really feel much need to find better explanations than that one. The only reason that inflation data isn't even more horrifying is that much of the newly created "wealth" wound up saved or stored in housing rather than actively circulating.

If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.

People believe the claim that the government had to do something about Covid, that lockdowns were a reasonable short-run response, and that shoveling money at people was necessitated because they couldn't just go earn it with normal economic transactions. This is the majority position. Bringing up your (and my) conspiracy theory that this was probably not a good idea will get a lot of, "yeah, but we didn't know that then" even from people that half agree.

On the hand, with regard to the pitchforks, you may have noticed that the Summer of 2020 really was marked by endless left-wing riots, then there was also a right-wing riot at the beginning of 2021. The federal government took sufficient action to persuade many right-wingers that they would not be treated as gently by the legal system as they had observed their left-wing counterparts being treated in 2020. Prosecuting a thousand or so people for whatever you can make stick has a way of dissuading many people from continuing with the same plan, at least in the short run.

The problem I have with your theory is the assumption that things would have just continued along as normal if it hadn't been for those meddling lockdowns and stimulus payments. The weekend before lockdown I was at a birthday party at a restaurant in Pittsburgh, and the place was practically deserted. This was at a popular restaurant at 7 pm on the Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend in one of the busiest nightlife destinations in the city. After businesses had reopened, owners complained about capacity restrictions, but even at 25% capacity I had no problem getting a table the few times I went out; it's not like people were lining up out the door to get one of the few available spots. I also think that the politics of the lockdowns shaped how a lot of people viewed the virus. If you thought the lockdowns were a prime example of government overreach, then chances are you also thought the virus wasn't that bad. I know I thought this way. I don't know that this happens to the extent that it did if businesses stayed open the whole time and no restrictions were put in place, the upshot being that conservative leaning people would have been more likely to be concerned about the virus since tribal politics weren't implicated to the same extent. If the virus began running rampant in some parts of the US in late March or April, there would have been a major depression of economic activity, even if it were clear that business closures weren't on the table.

A lot of businesses wouldn't be able to justify keeping staffing levels at pre-pandemic levels in such a scenario, and they'd be forced to make cuts. It's hard to see any scenario where there's no stimulus payments, no mortgage forbearance, and no student loan pause that still sees the COVID recession being as short as it was. People seem to forget that the market was in freefall in the early days of COVID, and it was only when it became clear that the US government would put some kind of protections in place that the market started to recover. If all the predictions the Treasury Department was making in March 2020 had come true, we could be in a situation now where instead of complaining about inflation we're complaining about a persistently high unemployment rate, and instead of complaining about housing costs we're complaining about a moribund housing market that's caused massive layoffs in the construction sector. I'm not trying to argue that the powers that be made all the right moves with respect to the pandemic, just that we aren't in a position to second-guess them and assume things would have necessarily been better had they done nothing.

As mentioned in my post, people believe that the government had to do something. I stand by the position that the panic was a result of media and government messaging rather than an organic development, but I obviously have no way of proving that. Whether I'm right or wrong about what the governments should have done and how people would have reacted, governments did what they did and it had the completely unsurprising consequences that we've seen play out. I think it's weird that people still defend it even with the current available knowledge, but it doesn't really matter what I think, it matters that most people think it was basically fine (or not aggressive enough!), so there are no riots over the consequences of lockdowns, restrictions, and helicopter money.

The initial wariness during early COVID was reasonable under ignorance. To sum up what my faulty memory tells me I thought in early 2020: "New respiratory virus, something about 5% death rate, seems to spread very quickly." It seemed reasonable to stay home a bit more.

I believe you're correct about government/media messaging, more correct as the pandemic (response) went on, but in the initial stage I think the "panic" was much more organic.

Bringing up your (and my) conspiracy theory that this was probably not a good idea will get a lot of, "yeah, but we didn't know that then" even from people that half agree.

I just can't understand people who think this way. If we had Athenian democracy by random citizens I could probably forgive this huge mistake, but the Experts™ who make up the administrative state literally have one job. They should at least all be purged and a full retrospective should be done on how to prevent this sort of policy disaster from occuring again. I've said it before, but the docility and lemming-like behavior during, but especially after, covid have almost completely convinced me that the vast majority of people should have zero political power.

Not sure about people having no power, but I'm with you in that it's very frustrating how willing people are to just forgive the massive, society shattering mistakes made during 2020 and the next couple of years.

We are only just beginning to see the negative effects play out, personally I think the fallout from kids losing socialization during developmental years will be massive.

If we had Athenian democracy by random citizens I could probably forgive this huge mistake, but the Experts™ who make up the administrative state literally have one job

Their one job is to give options to politicians. The politicians then make choices based on that advice..plus an idea of what will be popular among the people they were elected by and want to be elected by again.

If most people want something done, then politicians will do something. This is a feature not a bug. Democracy isn't optimized for the best outcomes. It's the rough outcomes that the majority of people want, tempered by advice, depending on how strongly the people feel about it. That's it.

Giving people political power is not so we get better decisions, it's so that we get decisions that are somewhat representative of what the people want. Even if what they want is stupid or counter-productive. That's the deal.

Their one job is to give options to politicians. The politicians then make choices based on that advice..plus an idea of what will be popular among the people they were elected by and want to be elected by again.

I might agree with you.... except that approximately 9000% of the experts gave the advice of "lockdowns aren't severe enough, every single one of your constituents is going to die". This was blatantly wrong- it wasn't a best guess at the time, it's obviously stupid in retrospective, readily available data made it obviously wrong then, it was a political narrative to make ruling conservative parties look bad. And the experts constantly spitballing fantastic hypotheticals about how it could be true was something they fed to politicians as facts.

So yes, experts take the blame here.

I hear a lot of people talk like this and I genuinely wonder what ‘experts’ means here.

If it’s the statements of scientists as filtered through news or politics, then I don’t really think of that as ‘expert’ since it’s mixed with other idealogical frames. I don’t actually know what the expert is saying in that case, or if they even represent a qualified authority.

In general, when a headline references ‘Experts’ or ‘Researchers’, I replace it mentally with ‘Some guy’. Not because I don’t trust experts or researchers, but because broadly the media has a bad record of science communication.

That's a fair point, but communications given directly by government employed experts like Fauci and Wallensky were pushing the exact same trivially-false chicken little syndrome drivel, just with fewer basic math errors.

except that approximately 9000% of the experts gave the advice of "lockdowns aren't severe enough, every single one of your constituents is going to die".

This seems to not be correct. See the recent leaks from Boris Johnson, where he privately says the expert studies show him that lockdowns are not necessary and that the risk to under 40's is negligible. Then a week later announces another lockdown. Not because of what government experts were telling him, but because of public pressure on his MPs.

I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.

What do you think 1/6 was?

Primarily about the future of the nation and social/political/moral grievances. The economic suffering was a catalyst but not the main point.

I guess you're asking three questions here:

  1. Why has service gotten worse? - Has it? In a measurable way? It's plausible that a tight labour market and some cost-saving measures put in place have made service worse in some sectors, but it would help if you could be more specific.

  2. Why is everything expensive? - Assuming you're from the US, incomes (inflation-adjusted) have either decreased by 4.7% or increased by 3% between 2019 and 2022. However, wealth is up significantly. This article is worth reading.

  3. Why is everything smaller now? - Do you mean consumer goods? Shrinkflation for food is definitely a thing, but it's just a manifestation of regular inflation. Over the long term, food costs are static, which with growing incomes means food is getting cheaper in real terms. Again, can you be more specific? Houses are getting bigger while households shrink. TVs are obviously getting bigger. Cars are getting bigger.

Thank you for patiently dissecting my incoherent rant.

#1 When I've been back in the States, store hours have been reduced, services have been cut, and menus shortened. Maybe it's just my perception or the places I've been, but it seems different than 2019.

#2 The article was interesting, thanks. But this was concerning

So anyway, the basic story here appears to be that Americans saved a lot of money since 2019, and the value of their houses and retirement accounts went up in spite of rate hikes. That’s great news, and it suggests that much of the pessimism Americans are feeling about their finances is really more about the general unrest in American society and the scary stuff on the news.

and

Now, one slight note of caution. A bit of the increase in wealth — about $8300 for the median household — came from an increase in the value of used cars.

If my income is $100k/yr, and the price of consumable goods goes up 30%, BUT the estimated value of my house and car go up 50%, I guess on paper I have more wealth, but buying groceries and vacations is going to feel more expensive.

Also, as the article points out, if you don't have big far assets that have appreciated over the last few years, you're missing out on this wealth boom. Maybe that's why I'm feeling the squeeze.

#3 I don't have any specific examples for this one off the top of my head. I'll need to keep an eye out.

On bad service, I did read some discussion that this is downstream of the tight labor market. Service jobs are struggling to hire good people because good people would rather get other jobs if they could. So they have to hire crappy people or nobody at all. I'm also seeing anecdotally that teenagers are delaying drivers licenses and jobs, so I think the talent pool is smaller on that side.

There was some talk about service being the best during recessions when all your laid off engineers/etc got jobs at Dairy Queen and crushed it.

In addition to teenagers delaying driver's licenses and jobs, those that do try both are trading their time against extracurricular that can be marked on a FAFSA or CommonApp, and it's extremely unlikely any entry-level job will be as remunerative in the long run, especially with how scholarship-focused a lot of programs have gotten.

I think there's also been improved outreach from blue collar work to skilled- or smart-but-not-college-bound students, which on the upside means that they're getting pulled into more serious careers instead of spending a few years at McDonalds before seeing something more serious, but it does mean you're not seeing the sort of person you'd trust to reassemble a car engine doing customer service.

But more morbidly, the educational system has also just very strongly moved away from practical skills. I see it more clearly in STEM outreach, where it's now typical to see students who've never handled a wrench (and sometimes not even a screwdriver!) nor had a serious long-term project to manage, but almost all of the nearby schools have completely closed down their shop classes, and classical reading-writing-math has moved away from larger-scale or longer-term projects without immediate oversight.

I think there's also been improved outreach from blue collar work to skilled- or smart-but-not-college-bound students, which on the upside means that they're getting pulled into more serious careers instead of spending a few years at McDonalds before seeing something more serious, but it does mean you're not seeing the sort of person you'd trust to reassemble a car engine doing customer service.

This has not been my lived experience in highly skilled blue collar work- functionally all the decline in smart non-college types’ availability is from increased pot use. Young people entering the trades mostly went to college, discovered that they still didn’t like school, and then left to go to trade school because it will at least be over quickly(or had a relative in the trade in question).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats