BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.
User ID: 628
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
2d ago
Yep, equivalently US citizens who move to Europe largely move to big cities and live in apartments.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
2d ago
Our version of single family home in Britain is a bit different from that in the US. This picture from your link shows a nice symmetrical structure in the middle which Americans might think is a single house for a single family. In reality it's two houses (semi detached) for two different families which share a central wall.
Fully detached houses etc. do exist but they are very much an exception and even then we don't have "suburbia" in the sense the US does, you'll often find such fully detached houses a short walk away from a 6 storey tall council estate and a commercial area a few minutes away too. There is very little "this is where houses are, full stop.".
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
2d ago
I've lived in a big apartment block which had exactly 0 year space and the nearest grocery store was literally on our ground floor (though it was more expensive than the supermarket 5 minutes walk away). And yeah I had access to a well maintained very large green space two minutes from the apartment lobby much bigger than the yard even massive detached houses have.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
2d ago
Agreed. The whole "suburb" thing as defined here in uniquely American. Here in the UK we also have homes with a yard and a dog and a car (though some of the most expensive properties in central London won't have an exclusive yard and potentially not even off street parking given that they literally share walls with their neighboring super expensive properties (they are terraced, not detached). They are amazing places to live (hence the prices) but Cowen's phrasing would put them as not "attractive".
Plus the whole controlling your school district is a very American thing as well, it just seems quaint and weird in the UK: schooling should be run by professionals, not the whims of a bunch of parents who don't know shit about pedagogy. As we move to a more and more multi polar world US citizens need to realize that the rest of the world doesn't think like them and while in the past they had the luxury of being able to ignore what we said without much consequence this is fast dissipating and they will now need to learn some cultural sensitivity like the rest of us.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
3d ago
Both things can be true at once.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
4d ago
Honestly I would not claim to know what any of these people were thinking, remember this was said in the early 20th century so their standards of civilisation and decadence were probably quite different from ours, but the general sentiment of Americans being seen first as uncivilised barbarians and transitioning straight to being parvenus when they finally get wealth still is as relevant today as it would have been then, if you ask my non American social circle (the Americans I know would half agree and half vigorously deny it, in the "doth protest too much" sense).
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
4d ago
If Republicans think it's perfectly reasonable to boost fringe political parties in Europe because they genuinely believe that's in the best interest of the USA then it's perfectly reasonable for European countries to officially adopt positions supporting the Democrats wholesale because they genuinely believe that's in the best interests of Europe. Something tells me the Republicans would throw a tantrum if it actually happened though.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
4d ago
There is a quote, often attributed to Clemenceau or Wilde or sometimes Shaw that goes:
American is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Seems more and more pertinent by the day if you ask me...
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
7d ago
so your comment is utter nonsense that you obviously didn't even bother to check
Fair enough, I remember reading something like this somewhere on the internet a few years ago and so brought it up. I fully accept that I didn't even bother to check, and yes, I should have done that.
Let nobody say that I don't admit to making bad points when I actually make bad points.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
7d ago
That's positively cheap for even the outskirts of London or even 2nd tier UK cities, remember the figure is CAD.
The other thing is that people aren't comparing like for like. NYC in the 1960s was a much smaller city than NYC today. If you look at similar sized cities as NYC was in the 60s today the pricing of housing in a similar area in real terms is basically the same as it was in NYC in the 60s.
EDIT: This is wrong.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
9d ago
You still owe duties to guests you invite into your house and then ask to leave but who refuse to leave, or at least you do in the UK under the Occupier's Liability Act 1984. They're not as stringent as those you owe to guests you continue to give permission but your not giving permission to be on your property doesn't give you an automatic right to treat them in whatever way you want until they leave.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
10d ago
I'm not paying teeny tiny taxes like most of these people, I'm paying (nearly) mid six figures in taxes every year. At the very least that should get me a medal or some sort of other thing that distinguishes me as above those who pay £3,000 in tax a year and consume £30,000 worth of public services.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
11d ago
Breaking ahead of me in queues, generally acting rude when asked simple clarification questions, asking me if I speak English (this has happened multiple times, I kid you not, from people whose command of the English language is worse than the level I had at age 9), taking my money (via taxes) and then acting like they're the generous ones for letting people like me live in the country (without a shred of self awareness) etc. etc.
Now I must say this doesn't happen all the time or even most of the time or even with much regularity in my interactions with the lower class. It happens in fewer than 5% of such encounters I'd say (and in reality probably fewer than 2%), but when you have to live around and amongst such people the total number of interactions gets very high very quickly so you get exposed to a fair amount of such low human capital behaviours.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
11d ago
Lack of izzat is a massive problem among westerners if you ask me. The level of disrespect they show towards not only other people but also other things means a lot of the time I'm interacting with (especially lower class) people I'm subconsiously thinking "didn't your parents teach you any better?". Same with how westerners send their own flesh and blood parents off to a care home when they start becoming too much of a burden on them. The lack of respect here is galling: your parents took care of you when you were nothing more than a little shit machine and this is how you repay them???
The kiwifarms post is a half truth (well actually more like a quarter truth), which makes it worse than a total lie. Some elements of it are correct, but others (like how you can rape and murder with impunity if you have enough izzat) are totally 100% false (rape and murder are the number 1 way you an destroy your whole extended family's izzat in a very short space of time for generations).
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
11d ago
My favourite macroeconomic model requires competitive markets without monopolies trying to maintain their influence over the rest of society by restricting who gets to benefit from the latest tech advantages and at what price. Our current society is nowhere near my favourite macroeconomic model and we're not getting there any time soon.
It's like the Coase theorem when it says it doesn't matter for societal welfare who is given ownership over goods and services so long as transaction costs don't exist. In real life though transactional costs are very real and somebody trying to rely on Coase to justify why the boon from AI should be handed disproportionately to the owners of current capital would miss the point completely.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
12d ago
Nope, I'm talking about people working 4 days but paid at the same amount they currently are. Yes, this means an across the board payrise per hour worked for everyone, which is affordable because AI is going to increase the productivity of everyone and rather than this boon being given to those who give people jobs (by e.g. them getting the same company output with half as many employees saving them payroll costs leading to more profit for them) we cut down the hours worked for ordinary people so the benefits of the productivity increase goes to them (by giving them an extra free day of their lives).
Now yes there are some jobs where a 4 day week isn't going to be possible so for them yes due to Baumol's Costs Disease they're going to end up getting paid more per current 5 day week than they are at the moment, for the exact same reason why the same coffee today costs more in Sweden than Turkey.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
Ah, my fault, I didn't even know they were spelt differently.
a comfortable £120k a year
£120k? Even junior commerical barristers in their first year post pupillage earn multiples of that each year. From the website of One Essex Court (top Commercial Chambers), bolding mine:
As all members are self-employed, it impossible to give a particular figure for what junior tenants at One Essex Court can expect to earn. Earnings depend to a great extent on how hard members wish to work. However, barristers at One Essex Court can expect to earn comfortably in excess of their peers in comparable professions. As a guide, over the last three years, average first year income exceeded £360,000 and average second year earnings exceeded £475,000. New tenants are also offered an interest-free loan of up to £50,000 to assist with the transition from pupillage to tenancy.
Almost makes me question my life choices... I think I'd be good enough to get pupillage and then tenancy, maybe not at OEC but very likely at one of the other similar caliber sets, I know how to turn up the charm when necessary and while I don't speak in RP I think you could safely describe my accent as "exotic" in the good way.
People tell me the best part of being a barrister is getting others to effectively treat you like royalty: say a FTSE 100 CEO wants to discuss something and he wants a meeting in person. It's now his choice, either he can come visit you at your chambers, or if he's really that busy you're happy to go visit him, but he should be aware that all time from the minute you leave your house door to the minute you get back to your home's door is all chargeable time being billed at £500 per hour (plus VAT of course).
And of course the total independence that comes with being self employed means that even as a junior you can treat some very senior very commercially successful people (almost insulting them to their face when they say something legally stupid) in a way that a solicitor would be terrified of doing because they'd risk losing a massive contract with all the career implications that'd follow.
As a barrister it literally doesn't matter: make the CEO look like an idiot in front of the whole C-Suite and what are they going to do, not hire you again? That's perfectly fine because you're already rejecting so much work your diary would be full twice over. You even have the polite fiction to hide behind that you're an officer of the court and while the lay client pays for your time your first duties are actually to the court and you can not in good conscience do what the CEO wants you to do, what he wants to do will be shot down in court and he'll then have to pay the other side's barrister's fees so actually this is just tough love meant to save you money.
Plus if it's senior court litigation and you're not a natural person you need to have someone with higher rights (almost all barristers) represent you in court by law and every other barrister will give you basically the same answer as I have, so just take my advice and let the professional run the case. Fun fact: as a corporate firm you can do the work of a solicitor through your employees if you want to and you don't need to have a solicitor to run litigation in the higher courts, that's strongly recommended but it's left up to you, but legally you're not allowed to get one of your employees to do the job of a barrister, that's a criminal offense.
Also self employment means that if tonight you don't feel like working tomorrow as long as you don't have any deadlines or court appearance that's fine, there's no boss you're answerable to: you choose when you work. It's basically like being a minor Greek deity (or so my friends who're now reaching the point where they have an established practice tell me). And then there's the whole massive status that comes with being a barrister and especially once you take silk...
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
Yes, and if working Saturdays were expected of you you'd be getting paid more for the job. If you're arguing instead that as a white collar worker you're paid for what you produce rather than time put in then yes, I agree, if through future tech people are able to do in 4 days what they currently need to do in 5 then we should move over to 4 day work week as standard: the results produced by the job are the same for the same pay for the employee, they just get an extra day of the week free for them to do what they want with. It'd be the great increase to general societal welfare in the last 100 years. There's no reason why the benefits of the extra productivity should accrue to the owners of capital rather than labour.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
Schilling fences are a recognised term going back to the Great Scott himself: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
Even reading this makes me go "yuck" at the whole business model of these places. Prop shops etc. manage to produce more value per employee by only working them 40-50 hours a week (notable exceptions excepted) than investment banks manage. All that talent which could be put to good use elsewhere to benefit humanity gets wasted in IB make work.
I know places like Jane Street etc. are expanding out into more traditional type banking and trying to eat the lunch of these dinosaurs billing $100m on something that can be done faster and better by smarter people running a leaner operation but providing a more complete service for under $10 million (while the employees still work something resembling a 9-5).
Similarly in the legal world I know there are now barristers who with their junior bill around £700-£800 an hour but as a one two team coupled with a very hands off instructing solicitor produce more robust documents with a faster turnaround than the overcharging magic circle firms but the MC firms still get a ton of business from clueless corporate charging more to produce worse results just because clients want to communicate with people that have "Clifford Chance" on their letterhead rather than "4 Stone Buildings" even though your average junior at 4SB is higher human capital than a partner at Clifford Chance.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
If you want to work for money you can also work 6 days a week over 5 and get more money, and yet very few people, even those who enter the white collar world for money, do this. If there's a societal shift working Fridays is going to end up looking as quaint to Westerners as working Saturdays does to the right now (plenty of parts of the world where working Saturdays is normalized). We keep it at 4 days to start with because we need to take baby steps, it's a small move of the Schilling fence and once its normalised and if productivity has gone up so much we can shift over to a 3 day week as a society then we'll do that, the down to 2 days and so on if general societal productivity allows it.
BurdensomeCount
Misinformation superspreader
13d ago
Techbros really have had horrendous PR as a class and it's not helped that people associate the average techbro with the people at the top of the techbro pyramid like Zuck and Musk etc. and so are happy with seeing them suffer, even though their suffering is often done to benefit people like Zuck and Musk etc. (less headcount, more automation).
Or else you continued to get laughed at and have power moved away from you because the rest of the (western at least) world stops accepting you as the primus inter pares and then lose the exorbitant privilege of running 6% yearly deficits because you have the world's reserve currency and can freely export away your inflation. If the UK tried the level of profligacy which has become standard in the US we'd end up under an IMF programme in 2 years.
The levels of contempt I am hearing against the US and Americans in my personal circle are basically the highest they have ever been. This isn't just a me thing, there was a recent piece in the FT how the appropriate response for the EU now given the US reducing its support for Ukraine is to hit back hard on US tech with tariffs rather than the "roll over and take it" with the 15% tariffs they accepted earlier this year. It's now becoming fairly standard that when I meet someone new from the US they'll volunteer by themselves unprompted within the first few minutes that they "are one of the good ones"...
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