FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
11d ago
Why would I hold economic efficiency as an end in itself without regard of who gets to benefit from it? I don't treat all humans alike.
Is your claim then that you would rather American firms hire mediocre American programmers over talented Indian ones?
FtttG
11d ago
Unless you actually care about the American people and giving Americans jobs?
But by your own admission, you don't care about giving Americans jobs. You want to give Americans jobs at vastly inflated salaries relative to their market worth without their creating any additional value i.e. rent-seeking. If you just wanted to give American software devs jobs, you would tell them to either:
- make a compelling case that they have more to offer employers than their Indian equivalents, which would justify a higher salary; or
- revise their salary expectations down so as to be competitive with their Indian equivalents.
Option 1 is not a facile or rhetorical suggestion: it might well be the case that the modal American software dev is more productive than the modal Indian. Maybe a native English speaker will have an easier time understanding and being understood than someone speaking English as a second language with a heavy accent, which will be more efficient (hence cheaper) in the long run. Maybe the modal Indian coder is more prone than his American equivalent to writing sloppy code which works in the short-term but creates technical debt over time. (These are toy examples: I don't believe that the latter is the case.)
But an American software dev who acknowledges that he is no better than his Indian equivalent but demands to be paid double his salary anyway (because he's an aMurrican, dammit!) inspires no emotions in me other than disgust and contempt. This sort of whiny entitlement actually strikes me as profoundly un-American, in the McCarthyist sense of the term.
I would even be open to being persuaded on the grounds that, while hiring a talented Indian programmer on a H1B at $70k/year is cheaper and more efficient in the short-term, in the long-term high levels of migration from overseas might impose negative externalities (in the form of community cohesion etc.) on society as a whole. But when I hear someone moaning "it's not fair — I'm just as good at my job as he is, but he'll work for cheaper!", all I can think is "oh, well then he deserves the job more than you."
FtttG
11d ago
Cooperate-cooperate is better for everyone, but if one party defects, the other party must punish them by defecting in turn. Tit-for-tat outcompetes DefectBot and CooperateBot.
Last night we rewatched Sinister. It pains me to see horror films using jump scares as a crutch, especially when the film has already demonstrated that the crutch isn't called for. There were several points in the film in which something scary appears onscreen accompanied by a sudden loud noise, and I found myself thinking it would actually be more scary without the loud noise. I'd actually love to do a fan edit with all the silly jump scares removed, especially the one immediately before the closing credits. (The one such scare that I found worked exactly as intended was the "Lawn Work" one.)
But for all that, it's an intelligent, well-acted, well-paced movie that makes the most of its limited budget, displays admirable restraint in its use of violence and gore, and knows just when to deploy a comic relief character to defuse the tension. For my money I can't think of a better Hollywood horror film from the 2010s: in terms of scares and atmosphere, it's obviously superior to such critical darlings as It Follows and The Lighthouse. There's even a bit of wry social commentary in its characterisation of true crime writers as muckraking, narcissistic glory hounds who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. My girlfriend says she's hit her quota for horror films for the rest of the year, and was so scared that when she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she asked me to stand guard outside with a baseball bat.
I strongly urge you to read this article by Hanania. It's a stock narrative in American populism that neoliberal policies in general (and NAFTA in particular) resulted in all of the manufacturing jobs being offshored and the demise of the Midwest, but Hanania quite rightly points out that, as a consequence of more efficient technologies, the proportion of the US population employed in manufacturing had been in steady decline for decades prior to Reagan's election. The graph illustrating this is really striking (Ctrl-F "continuation of a long run process"): there are literally no shocks, spikes or sudden drops visible from about 1977 onwards, it's a smooth, continuous decline.
offshoring is forcing American workers to compete with every person in the world and making software far more attractive since software companies can hire thousands of Indians to work for pennies.
If an Indian can do the same job as an American for half the price, it would be foolish not to hire the Indian. This is also known as "economic efficiency".
If you want a job as a cashier that will pay €75k a year, no one would hire you. If you whined that you can't get a job because of all the scab workers/immigrants who'll work for peanuts (i.e. €25k a year), everyone would laugh at you. I truthfully do not understand why this complaint is illegitimate for an unemployed cashier with delusions of grandeur, but why I'm supposed to take it seriously when an unemployed software dev makes it. Because software dev is "skilled labour"? Too bad: your salary is in part a reflection of your skillset's scarcity in the jobs market. If lots of people invested in learning the same skillset as you, and some of them want to live within their means, you will be outcompeted. Better luck next time.
FtttG
11d ago
Does anyone really think Doug Ford is a huge Reagan fan?
Of course not, but Ford might well concede that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
FtttG
12d ago
Agreed, it's pathetic. His hypocrisy and evasiveness on the trans issue is frustrating, but I understand it's borne of a desire to stay on good terms with his sister and their child. But when I see him throwing a tantrum at someone who criticised a point he made in an article, or lashing out at one of his fellow writers (like Jesse Singal or Rob Henderson), I just can't fathom how he can be so immature and petulant. One would have thought someone who's worked as a professional writer for the better part of two decades and earns a pretty respectable income from it would have developed a thicker skin at some point along the way.
FtttG
12d ago
Yes, it's the second book in that series, and picks up the story exactly where My Brilliant Friend left off.
FtttG
12d ago
But I feel reasonably confident that a woman who showed up to a posh restaurant dressed in such a garment would be turned away. People dressing casually isn't Freddie's complaint: it's the relaxation of standards such that people no longer feel any expectation to dress formally in certain specific contexts.
FtttG
12d ago
Last night we watched We Need to Talk About Kevin, the latest in a series of not-quite-horror movies.
Hypnotic, unnerving and merciless. It wasn't marketed as a horror film, and yet is more frightening than most straight examples of the genre. Impeccable performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller, and the actor who plays Kevin from the ages of 6-8 might be the best child actor I've seen in a film (except maybe Haley Joel Osment): he has to portray the character for a longer chunk of the film's runtime than I'd remembered, and pulls it off. Lynne Ramsay's control of the camera, editing and sound design is exceptional: I really ought to watch her earlier films. I wouldn't change a thing, but I won't be watching this again for quite some time.
Also curious to see how the book compares, especially given that Lionel Shriver is arguably more famous as a culture warrior than a novelist these days (I've read some of her columns in Unherd and elsewhere and enthusiastically agreed with them).
People often talk about how we live in a politically polarised era, but politics is only one axis along which we're polarised. Instead of everyone dressing fairly presentably, a minority of people put a huge amount of effort into their appearance while the great unwashed wear grubby athleisure. Instead of most people having a normal BMI, there's a minority of slim people investing in cosmetic surgery, while the majority are overweight (if not obese). Instead of most people having a small but closely-knit social circle, there's a minority of social butterflies while the majority of people have no friends at all. Instead of most people being sexually active, there's a minority of highly sexually active people while the rest stay home gooning to their heart's content. This trend is most visible in Gen Z, but also in earlier generations.
FtttG
13d ago
About a hundred pages into The Story of a New Name, the second book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet.
Like the first book, it's extremely well-written and the characters are well-drawn and believable. But my God, it is bleak. It's so dour, humorless and devoid of hope or optimism, I dread picking it back up again.
Ireland has a new President, the outspoken leftist Catherine Connolly.
I'm less interested in talking about her politics (which I find enormously distasteful) than describing what a circus the election turned out to be. With a meagre three candidates on the ballot (one of whom had formally pulled out too late for his name to be taken off), it was down to Connolly and the boring neoliberal centrist candidate, Heather Humphreys. Turnout was nearly two points higher than the most recent presidential election in 2018, with 45.8% of the electorate (or ~1.65m people) going down to the polls. Results were as follows:
- Catherine Connolly: 914,143 (55.2%)
- Heather Humphreys: 424,987 (25.7%)
- Jim Gavin (who, as mentioned above, pulled out of the race weeks ago): 103,568 (6.3%)
You may notice that the three figures listed above do not add up to 1.65m/100%. That's because the real story of this election is that about 214k people (nearly thirteen per cent of those who voted) elected to spoil their votes rather than vote for any of the candidates. (In the last Presidential election in 2018, only 1.2% of people did so.) In some cases these voters wrote in "Maria Steen" (who sought a candidacy but did not succeed) or "Conor McGregor" (whose efforts to seek a candidacy seemed entirely performative). In other cases these voters wrote political slogans on their ballots, such as "she was only 10", in reference to a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a 26-year-old asylum seeker earlier this week, leading to riots on a comparable scale to those of November '23 outside an asylum centre in west Dublin. One enterprising individual in Cork decided to spoil his ballot in the most literal possible sense of the term. Personally, I couldn't bring myself to give a first preference to either candidate, so simply wrote on the ballot that there were no candidates I felt represented me.
While I remain relieved that Conor McGregor's name was kept off the ballot, Connolly's tenure in the role troubles me. The best-case scenario is that she spends her first year engaging in some grandstanding before quietly settling down and treating her role as the ceremonial sinecure it is. The worst-case scenario is that, when meeting with Trump, she openly attacks him on his immigration policy and support for Netanyahu, and Trump immediately slaps Ireland with a massive tariff as reprimand for her impudence. Even if she's smart enough not to go that far, the Irish president cannot travel abroad in an official capacity without the express approval of the government: Éamann Mac Donnchada is concerned that, should one of her requests for a "fact-finding mission" to Gaza be vetoed (as it inevitably will), Connolly will start a knife-fight on social media which will embarrass the government and bring the office of president into disrepute. The current incumbent (Michael D. Higgins) does not differ greatly from Connolly in his attitude to the Palestinian cause, but credit where credit is due: he never overstepped himself, so far as I can recall.
Continuing on the movies I'm watching for Spooky Season.
Last night I tried showing herself The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but halfway through she asked me to turn it off because it was stressing her out too much. She's more of a psychological horror gal — slashers aren't really her bag.
Tonight is We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I haven't seen since it came out.
FtttG
13d ago
Of course it's possible. I just don't really believe overpolicing is happening in the US to any significant degree. Progressive complaints about alleged overpolicing in the US generally tend to boil down to incredulity over the idea that different ethnic groups could commit crimes at different rates, and hence that the different arrest rates between different ethnic groups must be indicative of systemic bias (and hence overpolicing) on the part of the police.
Freddie deBoer talked about this in his article "Our Product is Permission", in which he argued that modern Western society has become overly permissive along numerous axes, one of which is a greater tolerance for slovenly appearances and dressing comfortably in public spaces. Twenty years ago, seeing a woman wearing a Snuggie while stting down to dinner in a posh restaurant would have been unheard of.
I'm hesitant to attribute this trend to "wokeness".
I don't think so. As far as I can tell, what progressives want from a police force is to limit the negative externalities of crime to the victims without limiting the negative externalities to the perpetrators (optionally, provided the perpetrators are of the appropriate skin tone). Because these two goals are obviously mutually exclusive (yes, having an active police presence in a neighbourhood might discourage crime, but in practice the only way to deal with criminals is by arresting them and sending them to prison), progressives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's a bit like a thermostat: when the rate of crime gets high enough, they will complain about police officers being too busy sitting on their asses eating donuts to actually do their jobs. When it drops, they will immediately pivot to complaining about police brutality, "driving while black", BLM and so on. Sometimes they'll even manage to complain about under- and over-policing at the same time, somehow.
FtttG
15d ago
having had a close friend who was slandered in a similar Facebook group
"Are We Dating the Same Guy?"?
FtttG
15d ago
Honestly, at this point I think a reescalation of Troubles-era hostilities is profoundly unlikely. I think it's more likely that the Catholics and Protestants set aside their differences in order to more effectively fight their common enemy: Romanian immigrants.
FtttG
15d ago
I recently went to Greece for the first time and stayed for a week. I had a fabulous time, I enjoyed it more than Italy. Ate my own body weight in gyros, drank loads of cheap red wine, didn't see a drop of rain the whole time I was there. Highly recommended.
FtttG
15d ago
(academic curiosity only)
Likely story buddy.
Joking aside, I'm sorry dude, that's a nuisance.
That is not remotely what non-partisan means.
Echoing @ArjinFerman, I take "non-partisan" to mean "not driven by partisan affiliation"; in other words, the fact that someone believes in X doesn't tell you much about their political affiliation. This includes beliefs which are so popular that practically everyone believes them (like "murder should be illegal"), but also includes unpopular beliefs which are equally likely to be endorsed by a conservative or a progressive:
Based on 20 surveys conducted in the US between 2012 and 2021, the authors found that around a third of the conspiracy theories they reviewed were more attractive to Republicans than to Democrats, a third were more attractive to Democrats than to Republicans, and the rest were non-partisan... Some of the best-known conspiracy theories, including the JFK assassination, Holocaust denial, and 9/11 being an “inside job,” were not associated with political views, although they may have been in the past.
If four per cent of conservatives believe a conspiracy theory and zero per cent of progressives do (e.g. "the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats"), that's a partisan belief: the fact that someone endorses it sends a strong signal as to their political affiliation. If four per cent of conservatives and four percent of progressives believe a conspiracy theory (say, the Warren commission lied about the assassination of JFK), it's a non-partisan belief (even though it's unpopular in absolute terms), as the fact that someone believes doesn't in and of itself tell you anything about their political affiliation, unless further disambiguated by "Oswald was in the pocket of the Soviets"/"Oswald was a CIA stooge set up to kill Kennedy so they could escalate the Vietnam war". If conservatives are just as likely as progressives to want to "recognise" (whatever that means) a Palestinian state, then it falls into this category.
I'm not talking about Indians working remotely from India, but Indians moving to the US for work (e.g. the ongoing debate about H1B visas).
I'm marginally more sympathetic to an American coder who complains about being undercut by an Indian in Mumbai who can live like a king on US minimum wage. An American coder who lives in SF who complains about being undercut by an Indian coder who also lives in SF? Sorry, don't care. Either git gud or adjust your salary expectations.
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