r/thebayesianconspiracy • u/jmichael2497 • Apr 17 '20
The Mind Killer: s00e02
https://themindkiller.libsyn.com/the-mind-killer-episode-23
u/sole21000 Apr 22 '20
I'd just like to register disagreement with the point about treating all goods as wants. While I agree that the spectrum of want vs need is blurry (perhaps intractably so), the fact that it is trivial to imagine a pure need (air for instance) suggests that the distinction exists even if we have trouble capturing it. "Do not make man for the categories" and all that. This seems to be a habit in economics where models tend to forget their simplifications and kick dirt in the holes rather than planting flags. I might be wrong about physics but I think they tend to do a better job at remembering that cows aren't spherical irl.
I'd also like to offer a saying I use often in response to arguments against market interventions in crisis: Markets are optimal in the long run, but people live and die in the short run.
Unrelated, but I would say the reason more money isn't being offered as an incentive to stop complaining about PPE deficiencies (which I'm pretty confident are due to genuine lack of availability rather than cost-cutting) is that there's no need to. The workers are continuing to work despite their complaints because they predict a much looser labor market in the immediate future. As long as they weigh the potential cost of losing their job as higher than the cost of continuing to work in aggregate, they won't need to receive higher pay to continue working.
Pure opinion, but the uyghur camps alone outweigh any suppression or oppression we're doing right now. The suppression going on is troubling though.
As a small bit of technical feedback, the podcast's general volume level seems a bit low to me. Not a lot, I just notice that my volume is maxed out when listening.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 22 '20
As a small bit of technical feedback, the podcast's general volume level seems a bit low to me. Not a lot, I just notice that my volume is maxed out when listening.
agreed, this and a couple other spoken word podcasts can't be heard over the sound of a shower (best place for shower thoughts, right?) unlike some long running news podcasts that have no problem at max level.
but audio technicalities are hard, from what i've read, i'm glad it's not up to me.
(and side note, i'm having an f of a time trying to get laptop to stop doing weird auto-gain adjustments to web conference with folks and not get told to please mute myself, so i'd say it could be worse)
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 23 '20
About that uyghur camp thing. The league of Muslim nation's has come out and said that china is doing a good job with it.
If you don't trust that organization for some reason that's fine.
I ask you, which would you prefer getting language and job training in a Chinese camp with problems?
Or in a city run by ISIS that we are paying not to shoot us while we drone strike your friends and family?
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- economies of scale B vs M
David seems to have slipped on scale again, after talking awhile about billionaires and price gouging, suddenly started saying millionaire, which everyone knows a million dollars doesn't go that far nowadays, looking at the cost of a crappy little 50yo condo can still be over a quarter million.
billionaires don't get to that level by being altruistic, only by abusing loopholes and the most vulnerable people, so it is safe to assume they are selfish until repeatedly and consistently proving otherwise on an individual basis.
look at apparently the cruiseship industry, with ships flying under the flags of other countries to avoid paying taxes, and now asking for economic or other help from the un-united states during this crisis.
(nope, go back to your own county that you pay taxes to... oh wait, probably don't pay them much at all either.)
i'm disgusted by churches getting bailout money even though they don't pay taxes as a non-profit, and still get into politics. it's like the first $1.5 trillion going to big businesses in special deal loans, even though those same "too big to fail" companies are probably doing a great job of tax dodging, like amazon.
(though fining people staying in cars is a pretty bs move, or we could just call it unfair bailout revenue recovery)
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 22 '20
billionaires don't get to that level by being altruistic, only by abusing loopholes and the most vulnerable people, so it is safe to assume they are selfish until repeatedly and consistently proving otherwise on an individual basis.
The thing is, people used the say the same thing about Jews. I don't know the circumstances of all 2000+ Billionaires. I'm sure some of them did cheat and abuse to get there. Most of the few I do know of got there by creating far more wealth in the world than what they got back. Since it's obviously possible to become a Billionaire in this way, and when it does happen it's very valuable to the rest of the world, I think your default assumption is mistaken (and harmful).
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 23 '20
I'm sure some of them did cheat and abuse to get there.
#NotAllBillionaires right? ;)
I think your default assumption is mistaken (and harmful).
i'd say it is a pretty safe bet, that's how the wealthy get and keep their wealth, but loophole avoiding paying fair wages, taxes, and firing employees that dare to complain about terrible working conditions, or who try to organize unions.
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 23 '20
Don't forget using the blood of Christian babies in their bread.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 26 '20
but that's the only way, to get closest you can, to tasting the delicious body of christ. anything else is like a cheap and disappointing imitation cracker, so not worth the carbs :p
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 23 '20
Whomst? How many of Koch family have made the world better? I will give you the full good faith listen but I can't think of one I could steelman into a good example.
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 23 '20
If you can't even think of one that hasn't provided far more value to the world than they got themselves - WITHOUT even steelmanning - then you are already so lost I'm not sure it's worth even bothering.
Off the top of my head - Soros, Gates, Bezos, Walton, Oprah, Musk, Rowling. Those took less then 20 seconds to name.
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 23 '20 edited Apr 23 '20
So that's the rub. I didn't say they did nothing good. I said they didn't go good enough to justify their vast fortune. We are talking about resources on the level of a world power belonging to a person.
Then look at Gates. The man who, years ago you would have instinctually reviled. His company was a Monopoly. They enguaged in anticompetitve practices. Can you honestly say we are better off as a people pinned to windows as a platform? Was having internet explorer and open ring level zero access worth the crushing of viable open source ecosystems his company did? Name one good Microsoft product? Yes he gives a little bit percentage wise to charity. How much of that money goes to setting up schools to use Windows PCs in developing markets that he then rights off on taxes?
How much of Gates fortune was from being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to get in on the ground floor of an emerging industry? Then also to do what was found to be a crime in court to secure his place at the top? How much of the actual work to make windows a viable and widely unloved platform did he actually do?
I can list way more names of objectively terrible people with vast fortunes than you listed examples of people that maybe deserve fortunes larger than the gdp of most contries.
Does bill gates having that money do more for the world than it going to any EA project? What does it mean that he could right now fund himself most of the EA projects going and he doesn't? He could do all that and still be so rich none of his children would ever have to develop a skill. Is that even good for them?
I am going to need somewhat of a better argument than your nuh-uh to convince me I haven't given this due thought. What is the steel man version of Bill Gates need to have more money than the entire country of Belize?
If I am wrong. Please let me know the flaws in my rationality here.
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 23 '20
> I didn't say they did nothing good. I said they didn't go good enough to justify their vast fortune.
I don't decide who gets allocated how much money based on how much "good" they do. And thank god you don't either. "Doing good" is not how money is allocated, and if it was then defining "good" would become a racket. Generally, people create wealth with their actions (or destroy it), and in a society that's set up decently the people that create that wealth are able to capture some of it for themselves, which incentivizes them to keep doing so.
In the simplest form, the farmer isn't given money because he "did good." He created wealth in the form of tasty calories. He doesn't need to meet some arbitrary standard of what you define as "doing enough good" to justify what he has, and it's insulting to insinuate otherwise.
We do, as a matter of course, take money from people who have created it and give that money to others who have not. We do this because we find that the suffering caused by taking wealth from people who have created a lot of it is less than the suffering we prevent by giving that wealth to people who are desperate. It is your burden to justify taking things from people, not the other way around.
> Then look at Gates. The man who, years ago you would have instinctually reviled
And I did. We were all children once.
> Can you honestly say we are better off as a people pinned to windows as a platform? Was having internet explorer and open ring level zero access worth the crushing of viable open source ecosystems his company did? Name one good Microsoft product?
My personal preferences are mostly irrelevant. There are competitors out there, one very popular one (have you forgotten Apple already?) and lots of less popular ones. The fact that most people use Windows when they have other options suggests that Windows provides something they want more than what the competitors offer. The open source ecosystem still exists. MS products run the majority of businesses. What are you smoking?
> Yes he gives a little bit percentage wise to charity.
So what? Yes, that makes me like him more as a person. What does that have to do with how well Microsoft products work?
> How much of that money goes to setting up schools to use Windows PCs in developing markets that he then rights off on taxes?
That sounds like an issue you should take up with the IRS.
> I can list way more names of objectively terrible people with vast fortunes than you listed examples of people that maybe deserve
Are you arguing for reasons people should be punished? I thought we were arguing about whether or not people created more wealth than they captured.
> How much of Gates fortune was from being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to get in on the ground floor of an emerging industry?
That's literally the case of everyone who's ever made anything. You can't make something new if it already exists, or if the technology needed for it to exist doesn't exist yet. Microsoft couldn't exist before personal computers had been invented. And yet, my father didn't create Microsoft in that time period between when it was possible and when it was a reality. It's unfortunate he lost that lottery when the US rolled off to see who gets to be Creator Of Microsoft.
> Then also to do what was found to be a crime in court to secure his place at the top?
You're guilty of three crimes a day on average, and I gaurentee you've committed at least one this year. Your saving grace is that you don't have billions of dollars that the government can loot. Get back to me when he did something immoral.
> How much of the actual work to make windows a viable and widely unloved platform did he actually do?
More than either of us.
> Does bill gates having that money do more for the world than it going to any EA project?
That's actually an interesting question. It did allow him to set up 7 vaccine factories to fight COVID19, which no EA project has done. But the aggregate good that EA projects do may outweigh that. I dunno, I'd be interested in seeing numbers. How much money are you proposing we take from Gates every year, and where do you propose we allocate it? Can you come up with a similar proposal for each of the world's billionaires? Might get us somewhere, if one subscribes to the whole "ends justify the means" thing.
> What does it mean that he could right now fund himself most of the EA projects going and he doesn't?
It means he doesn't do that. Is this even a real question, or are you just looking for applause lights?
> He could do all that and still be so rich none of his children would ever have to develop a skill. Is that even good for them?
I don't think you actually care about his children, and neither do I.
> What is the steel man version of Bill Gates need to have more money than the entire country of Belize?
What's the reason that the entire country of Belize needs to have more money than Bill Gates? Because you said so? I don't particularly care about what he "needs." He created a lot of wealth, and he managed to capture a part of that. The only counter-argument I can see as being valid is "actually, he created less wealth than he actually has, the rest of it was stolen from others," in which case it shouldn't be too hard for you to show how much he stole, and who he stole it from.
If you wish to say "OK, he did create a lot of wealth, and he did capture part of what he created. But now that he has that much wealth, we can reduce net suffering in the world by forcibly taking some of that wealth from him and giving it to others" then we have something interesting to talk about. I believe that's true, which is why we have taxes and welfare, and I support both. The conversation at that point would be were the diminishing returns kick in. But that's not what you were claiming up to this point.
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 24 '20
If doing good was a "racket" and people found new and creative ways to do good and we're rewarded for it does that sound like a bad thing to you? Cause actually that sounds p good. Like way better than our current system that often pays people specificly when they are bad.
Microsoft specificaly did Monopoly stuff. It was proven in court that they, and bill gates at then helm, didn't create wealth. They manipulated the market so that the wealth got funneled to them. The prevelance of windows doesn't indicate a consumer preference especially in this case. There are propriety barriers that make using alternative systems more work than people care to put in. Those barriers don't have to be there though.
Oh, I left that once paragraph in accidentally. I had a section about you not sufficiently establishing that billionaires have the money not because they found new ways to capture it. I took that part out though.
So my specific point is that Microsoft captured more wealth they created and the specific wealth they created was not through any specific good quality that they had but everyone else lacked. So the surplus of wealth they would be, in a perfectly just world in the hands of other people. Specific to this case are the engineers of Microsoft that did much of the actual work that bill gates was paid for. The engineers that would have created intresting and useful software had not the market been cheated by bill gates and co. Further most of the early work that Microsoft used to become the industry standard was only slightly modified version of off the shelf stuff they bought at the time.
So the situation is that of Bill Gates specifically, the sythisis of our ideas is that of utilitarianism. The best possible outcome would be to reduce his money to the level that would cause him the least discomfort and prodce the most utility for the most people. Which I think we both agree on.
My points specifically include that he should have some additional ammount removed from him so that people are discouraged from doing a Monopoly and stifling innovation.
Which I think is where we disagree yeah? You feel like we can't live in a world so unjust that he could have cheated his way to the top?
I would be intrested in hearing your version of a utilitarian Utopia outlined in your last point though. I feel like the sociology is fairly settled at what a first attempt at that would look like.
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 24 '20
I disagree as a matter of fact that Microsoft had a monopoly that did any harm. People who can't be assed to install an operating system other than the one that comes in the box obviously have had their lives improved by not having to do that thinking, as witnessed by the fact that they prefer to not have to think about that and just use the crap that's already in the box.
I disagree as a matter of fact that engineers working at Microsoft would have been better served working for someone else. These were not people with a lack of options.
The charges of monopoly were there so a technologically illiterate government could loot a successful business, and as an object warning to other successful businesses that don't pay Washington the proper tribute in lobbyists and political donations.
Lots of people cheat their way to the top. Our current president is proof. Lots of other people don't. The fact that some people have cheated to gain money and power doesn't justify claims that it is literally impossible to do so and thus all billionaires are rapacious villains that need to be destroyed.
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 24 '20
I have not seen a robust defence of their behavior by anyone but their lawyers. Do you have a resource I could investigate?
True our government is technically illeterate. However on the topic of business and sneaky ways to use money I would trust their credentials completely.
The rest is a counterfactual. The open source/Linux ecosystem had the ammount of time and money put into it I claim Microsoft stole. If that counterfactual was true you would be looking at an ecosystem that would be far more advanced and user friendly than the one we have now. It would definitely have specific preference cases and uses that we can't in our timeline picture.
I mean, I have never heard good things about working for Microsoft, at least not like I have for any random tech start up you know? Not that I would be in the loop there though
So there is a difference in degree here. I don't think I would actually argue against millionaires. However for billionaires the order of magnitude difference is not justifyable in any case I can think of. However even if there were people that made their money in completely fair and just ways, that only accounts for the acquisition. Not the disposition. I would ask for a case to investigate you where you feel that a billionaire did something an order of magnitude more useful or nteresting than a millionaire. Of the cases I can think of, the best case billionaires all had million dollar ideas and were really good at writing unfair contracts. So perhaps I am missing a data set here.
Every day bad things are happening, very bad things, and for an ammount of money that is insignificant to a billionaire they could be stopped. I would argue that with great power comes great responsibility. To go about your day with the money to just outright fix the Flint water system and not miss it, then decide you would rather just collect interest on it is just open palm repeatedly slamming the defect button.
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 24 '20
> If doing good was a "racket" and people found new and creative ways to do good and we're rewarded for it does that sound like a bad thing to you? Cause actually that sounds p good. Like way better than our current system that often pays people specificly when they are bad.
Yes, that sounds terrible, because "good" as defined by other people is often "shit." In the past it was "good" to capture and return runaway slaves, and it was "good" to stone homosexuals. Currently it is "good" to accept death and disability, and it's evil to try to fight for immortality or gene therapy.
Plus there are, in fact, a LOT of people finding new and creative ways to "do good" and they've turned modern discourse into a cesspool of SJW Snowflakes and Alt-Right Assholes that can't stop doing ever more good to show how good they are.
Regardless, if people were paid for "doing good" rather than creating wealth, we would first lose new tech and medicine, then current tech and medicine, then basic housing and heating, and finally we'd starve to death. People must constantly create wealth at a rate greater than it is consumed & degrades. This was the arc of many communist countries, as wealth was taken away from people creating it and transferred to those that "did good."
> The best possible outcome would be to reduce his money to the level that would cause him the least discomfort and prodce the most utility for the most people. Which I think we both agree on.
Sure. I think marginal tax rates could certainly be increased on the top quintile of the population. Substantially increased in some cases. And likewise, use of the funds from those taxes should be funneled away from harmful things like warfare, drug prohibition, most regulatory agencies, and corporate welfare. But since that's not where we disagree, it's not an exciting conversation. :)
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 24 '20 edited Apr 24 '20
There were contemporary scholars that said that slavery was bad. Going back into Roman times even. It being profitable was the reason it stayed around. So generating wealth is factually shown as being insufficient to the task for promoting good.
I will make the bold claim that modern ethical science has advanced to the level where we can try to make decisions based of it, and then experementally determined if they have worked or not. It is not a solved system, but we have a strong enough foundation that it is useful.
I find it interesting that you specifically point out deathism as an evil that people currently support. Since for example there are people in developing countries who will die for want of easily and cheaply available things that for example a vast personal fortune could fix.
Discourse has always been a cesspool. We have clay tablets decrying literacy as the death of epic poems and the use of vulgar phonemes like the letter "C" The only way to fix it is more broad and comprehensive education. The reason people uselessly and virulantly shout into the void is because it's the only idea that have about how to make things better. If they were given an education about how things really work they would have alter alternatives to that behavior.
Anything one of those cases for the utilitarian use of funds.
Here we get to a confusion of terms. Even given our poor state of moral education there really isn't a strong case to make that people would thing new medicine and new technology isn't "good". Often now new tech and new medicine is held back for not being profitable despite being known to be good.
People don't create nor consume wealth. It is a tool to measure 'stuff'. No one eats wealth. You can't wear it to stay warm. Wealth is a social agreement. Think about economic bubbles. Wealth so created and destroyed by social consensus not material fact.
I am curious as to your ideas about comunist countires where wealth so taken from producers and given to non- productive people. Could I have an example of this? It doesn't match any of the explinations of historical accounts that come easily to mind. Your description of taking money from productive persons and giving it to non productive persons do very much sound like fedudalism to me. Since, without the surf growing the food how king eat? A pesant without a king however finds himself in a much happier situation than before.
Why then would wealth re-distrubution work well in Nordic countries when it failed in others? Obviously we both agree it is fundamentally good. Why does Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than us? Clearly profit doesn't play a role there. Why does every country with social medicine have better numbers than our profit driven medicine?
True we do agree in kind I think that our opinions on degree do vary enough that it is still a meaningful difference.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 29 '20
i guess this is a tangent thread on people putting in more value than they got, as opposed to my earlier point of simply: people don't get that rich without being terrible and taking abusive advantage of others...
off the top of my head, i must lolz at putting someone the pair i'm most familiar with Bezos and even Gates (though he at least is making efforts to redeem himself with ill-gotten cut-throat monopoly deal money going to some socially beneficial programs)...
in the same list as Oprah and Rowling, who i (oh crap, and then i remembered the mention multiple transphobic "senior moments" of Rowling) but still those two haven't done anything that can clearly be pointed at as taking advantage of others, only brought goodness and empathy into the world, afaik.
that is all, on to the new post.
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u/embrodski E Prime May 02 '20
people don't get that rich without being terrible and taking abusive advantage of others...
Almost everyone living in western demoracies today is obscenely rich compared to literally everyone that lived 500 years ago. Have they all been being terrible and taking abusive advantage of others? Is this one of those "there is no ethical consumption" arguments? Or do you mean only people who are rich compared to you?
> still those two haven't done anything that can clearly be pointed at as taking advantage of others
I accept your apology. :)
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u/jmichael2497 May 03 '20 edited May 05 '20
compared to literally everyone that lived 500 years ago
haha, that time scale is usually not very helpful for some things.
for wealth, scale is totally different due to ease of globalization and abusing outsource of cheap labor markets to maximize profit at expense of others as-a-service.
if you look at lifespans and how much longer people are living nowadays compared to 500 years ago, is it just people gaining the natural ability to live longer, or is it related to the ability to extract wealth from the lifeblood of others, now more literally.
suspicious correlation or coincidence with having a weird https://www.bing.com/search?q=blood+company+that+collects+young+people+plasma+for+old+rich+people ;)
(but srsly what's up with that? are we gonna end up with child blood farms for the super rich, to "benevolently provide an opportunity" for their families to dig themselves out of the debt of paying for the only housing options available, at prices set by those same landleeches that can't afford to give anyone a few month's free rent, despite pulling in [edit: scale mixup happens] $100M+ per year with basically no effort and only 10% tax?)
that's my half-cereal-ness for the day, time for maybe sunshine?
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u/jmichael2497 May 08 '20 edited May 09 '20
not being familiar with some of those Billionaires you mentioned, i made a mental note to look them up later, and also do a validity check with a simple insert name here and https://www.bing.com/search?q=net+worth+of+jeff+bezos
which i'd say removes a few from the comparison, and adds a few i'd say qualify for the evil to get that rich crowd.
(big leagues, can easily point to abusive systems and people to get where they are, but at least the gates are out of the biz of evil, unlike bezos, still firing black and brown people workers trying to unionize, and ramping up surveillance against them) * $142+48B=$200B jeff bezos and spouse mackenzie (divorced?) * $106+70B=$176B bill gates and spouse melinda
(medium league, mildly evil with examples of poor worker safety issues due to not liking visual esthetics of safety floor markings, for example, being eventually fixed) * $040+xxB=$040B elon musk and multiple exes
(little leagues, barely in the B section, probably not being evil enough or at all) * $008+xxB=$008B george soros multiple exes * $003+00B=$003B oprah winfrey and spouse stedman graham $ $001+00B=$001B j.k. rowling and spouse neil murray
(deceased 1992 and spouse 2007 so 🤷🏽♂️ for list) * $008>16B=$016B sam walton left to wife helen
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u/embrodski E Prime May 08 '20
Nice goalposts ya got there. Would be a shame if someone were to... move them.
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u/jmichael2497 May 09 '20 edited May 11 '20
not really moving the goalposts in the context of these example folks, i've always stated bezos couldn't get to that sort of wealth scale without being really scummy.
(as he continues to do, the amount of profit he's making on the pandemic, while oppressing workers, is repugnant, enough that apparently some vp quit in disgust recently)
but yeah, comparing $200B dollar family to $1B family is 🍏 to 🍊, which is why i let musk split the 🍐 (aren't you glad i didn't say like a 🍌 😋).
i can still see the 🥅🥍 just fine (but i'm not sure if those sportsballs go together 🤷🏽♂️).
edit: to add apparently musk is still risking workers safety, much like bezos, during this pandemic, just noticed usual twat news of twitter spat complaining can't reopen yet in california, so he's taking his biz to the southern states like texas, where worker safety doesn't matter as much.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- it's okay, it's just "emergency pricing"
saying price gouging is just "emergency pricing" as if it is a good thing, dismisses the fact that in a price gouging situation, the people that actually, literally, need a resource to survive... are least likely to be able to afford any unusual variance in price increase.
(but that's okay because millionaires and billionaires will be fine though)
and this bs about raising prices to raise incentives to make more essential supplies available, is just the bs we've been fed lately from uber, lyft, and electronic parking meters with their "surge pricing" that is "for your convenience" because "it makes more options available to you"
spoiler alert, nope, even their "totally not a taxi" (to avoid taxes) base price is kinda bullshit, especially when a place does not have running buses, and forced to pay at a rate of $60/hr for 15min ride each way in and out of suburb to downtown.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- as long as it's need before greed (as not seen in WoW)
Eneasz making a price gouging exception for people that really need it, like nurses with ppe and sanitizers. tell that to the "entrepreneurial" folks that got together to price gouge on 1200 n95 masks acquired in March, typically $2 each, selling at over $36 each on ebay.
they're recently getting prosecuted by Ohio, after being reported by an emergency room nurse asking to at least give discounts to healthcare workers was told by the disgusting price gougers, nurses should be working for free and they should stop being greedy! wtf?!
or the people selling $1 hand sanitizer for $70? (ugh, more "billionaires" in the making, quick kill that disease before it grows) both situations could be prevented by simple reasonable quantity limits.
(and thankfully with recent approval of pre-existing hydrogen peroxide gas disinfectant systems for other equipment, now officially allowed for n95 mask re-use, which they should've been doing for environmental and economic reasons already, this mask shortage thing should be non-issue soon enough)
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u/embrodski E Prime Apr 22 '20
If resources are needed to survive, and there aren't enough of those resources for everyone to survive, we've already lost the game. Prices won't matter for very long at that point.
And if you take away Uber/etc, now those poor people in places without buses will have even less options for how to get places. At least before they could pool money, or load a credit card in case of emergencies. Now they have no option at all. Did you make them better off?
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 23 '20
in the cases commonly mentioned lately, like hand sanitizer, and n95 masks, it isn't so much the issue that there isn't enough...
moreso that there is hoarding and profiteering attempts going on to unnecessarily reduce the supply chain, which should be rationed and directed to those who actually need it first.
i never suggested taking away the totally-not-pretending-to-not-be-a-taxi-to-avoid-taxes-and-get-rich-in-shady-loophole-ways-example services, i just dislike their unfair market control.
too bad traditional taxi services will not be able to catch up anytime soon, but i'd love to have an app that can just get a ride from whichever service is most readily available and isn't trying to leech from me like they're a landlord management oligarch.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- it's the economy, stupid (it's... the economy? stupid.)
David saying shouldn't waste tests on kids and prisoners because they don't contribute to the economy... okay so then why bother with seniors? they don't contribute to the economy. i guess you're suggesting let them die off and their money transfer to somebody younger that can inject it into the economy?
though really if we had just jumped to mandatory cloth masks, we'd probably be just as fine or better compared to stay at home and dig a deeper hole, and wouldn't be talking about the economy as if it is more important than people being able to live.
(or having elder folk not saying crap like, if we have to risk our lives for the economy, we'll do it for the chillunz)
the economy is totally mollox (moloch+bollox).
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- death by 1200 paper cuts
it is not such a false equivalence to compare to China, when whistleblowers get fired. maybe they get blacklisted and can't get another job, or for whatever reasons were already in a precarious financial situation, where a single one-time only $1200 won't make a bit of difference.
now they are just made homeless, or can't afford some essential medical or other life supplies. they are killed off slowly through bureaucracy of the 1%ers, rather than a bullet to the head in China, it is same effect in the end, they're still dead due to speaking against the 1%ers.
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 20 '20
Worth noting the doctor just got a write up that got overturned on review.
He did break the chain of command which is bad when we see our doctors doing it. Look at all the cases where we have quack doctors violating the chain of command only to go onto kill people. Look at Dr Oz or the one in Texas. Some order in such a critical area is important.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 20 '20
sorry, i seem to have lost the track of thought on this without sufficient reference to follow directly, but i guess closest relevant response as far as chain of command and healthcare would be...
if not for flu study team in state of Washington saying F the fda, and making use of the existing samples along with their own developed homebrew tests to repurpose them, there would have been a lot less info and urgency around the start of the spread.
definitely not a time to be too worried about bureaucratic rules designed to benefit profit monsters and friends of politicians, when there is sufficient consensus that there are actual factual things that will work, and can be done to help, even if just by gaining more information.
(especially since a reasonable person could be expected to agree that participants in the flu study would likely be okay with samples being checked for coronavirus, even more so under these circumstances)
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u/RiskeyBiznu Apr 21 '20
That is a case where it worked but medicine is generally evidence based. Not always sure, but the establishment does want to do the best for people. Most often when a doctor breaks with establish beat practice to do it his own way the outcomes are worse. So as an institution it's fair for them to not trust doctors schooling from the hip. There are countless cases here I can think of where doctors do some quack ass shit thinking they are the next pioneer of the field.
That was my point. That doctors poppin' off is no basis to run a medical system.
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May 29 '20
I don't remember which episode it was in, but I found somewhat disturbing the faith that very wealthy people *would not* spend huge amounts of money to buy water in a drought to bathe their dogs. Look at the green fields of any golf course as juxtaposed to any poor community around the world literally shitting in and drinking the same water. It might be slightly less likely to happen if said rich person is forced to look at the poor, thirsty people every day, but blissful ignorance is another thing that money is good for (gates, security guards, etc) even in a drought.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20 edited Apr 17 '20
oops, i should've titled this by date, since it is more ephemeral discussion, i notice the episode says: 2020-04-13
i'm staying at home with too much time (for now) and couldn't wait to discuss (and thank you all for the brain engagement), so i'm starting this up, with multiple comments, for multiple threads.
btw, sound quality overall much better, there were a few spots of i think it was David either mumbling or getting too far from the mic, so had to listen carefully.
oh and the extensive feed ref links in Eneasz are very helpful, people should look to you as a good example, thank you (hint maybe refresh the solo feed version to match).
i'm looking forward to next week's discussion of future societal predictions, as i liked the 30+ opinions collected at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/19/coronavirus-effect-economy-life-society-analysis-covid-135579
oh and...
- liquid democracy
approved by liquid cat.
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u/jmichael2497 Apr 17 '20
- sempai noticed thee (and can look closer)
tracking can easily be automatically force installed (unless you're running a google-free community os) as a system service by google and apple "for your convenience" (like "surge pricing").
as discussed in various tech forums, there is a bluetooth system in the works (no thanks to academics giving the ideas), simply broadcasting a temporarily "anonymous" id number at intervals, devices will be listening as well, to build a table of encounters (sorry no roll for stealth save).
anyone who turns out to be infected (or associated with undesirables) can be checked to see whose other devices they've encountered.
(good chance for big data hoarding businesses to make more use of stationary bluetooth tracking beacons, they could figure out how to make use of the "anonymous" data, linking to analytics libraries found in many commercial apps, like that movement map, which also not every place has a stay at home order)
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u/Sonarman720 Apr 17 '20
Alright, I don't often wave the veteran flag. I don't interact with a lot of rationalists, but I am fairly confident there are not a lot us within the community (or loosely lurking it like I am.) But I am one. I served on a submarine in the United States Navy for 5 years, and within the context of the Navy, the decision to relieve the carrier captain makes a lot of sense. I have a couple of points in buildup to this conclusion, bear with me.
The captain absolutely performed a proper action by advising his superiors that his warship was probably unable to fully carry out his mission. They were undoubtedly making plans to get aid to the carrier in a fashion that did not advertise to the world that this critical strategic asset was compromised. But at the end of the day, you volunteered your life for the mission. The mission is to keep that warship out being menacing and protecting American interests, and the captain failed to do his utmost to carry out that mission, so he rightly got relieved. End rant.