SophisticatedHillbilly
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User ID: 1964
SophisticatedHillbilly
7mo ago
the US challenge on the budgeting sense is the automatic entitlement spending, not the bureaucracy administering it.
I’m not sure how true this is. Most times people complain about government spending it seems to relate to corruption, cost disease, and regulatory costs: Broadband programs that provide access to ~0 people for billions of dollars, bridges that cost 100X what they should, hospitals needing 10 administrators for every doctor etc. All of these are executive issues. The complaints about the actual literal entitlements ordered by Congress usually come up as complaints of vote buying, and regardless aren’t the core of the problem.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Human cloning: not enough people want it badly enough. Same probably goes for surrogacy, with the added fact that anyone who could afford the criminal price could just afford legal workarounds.
In the case of CP I think it results in similar behavior to drug prohibition. Extensive criminal networks, child trafficking and all the associated crimes, etc. the people who want it want it bad, will pay for it, and have no easy substitutes.
Deepfakes are currently too easy and still readily available even when technically illegal. No market when the supply is nearly infinite and demand is relatively low.
None of those things are comparable. A better comparison is bans on drugs, which do result in broken kneecaps and gang shootings, and bans on prostitution, which result in the same.
SophisticatedHillbilly
7mo ago
Any proper system has to explain the machinist vs sheet-metal-worker divide (around a 30-point difference) and I have yet to see one that does.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Couldn’t the argument be made that it’s not about increasing volume of life, but rather just about not ending life that already exists? Prevention =! Elimination after all. He even gave the birth control argument (though many conservative Christians would oppose this as well).
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
This creates an odd scenario where you could reasonably argue that a few modern despots are the wealthiest people ever. Near-infinite monetary wealth, combined with modern amenities and technology, combined with ancient style control over other people.
Stalin wins out I think on total amount of control of resources, but he does miss out on some modern goods. Perhaps Putin as wealthiest person ever? I could see arguments for other despots as well.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Understand that for many the problem is in fact the suffering the homeless people themselves are experiencing. You might not care about them, but many do, and this is one of the core disconnects in these debates.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
I’ve heard from multiple people and personally seen one example where the following is true:
It’s basically just overly low risk tolerance around food safety, built in on an evolutionary level. The solution is having the whole family eat the same thing repeatedly (for like a week straight) and nothing else. That food will then be added to their ‘safe food’ registry and they’ll be fine with it forever. Rinse and repeat with each food.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Any more info on this? I’d be very interested in getting an EU citizenship.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Could you please expand on what you mean by this? I’ve read a lot of Woodgrains’ stuff and never noticed any ideas in this vein. Interested in what you’re referring to.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I’m youngish (just shy of 30). I have never sent a physical letter. No one I know my age has ever sent a physical letter. I have sent 1 package by UPS. I recently had to walk a friend through how to do so because they had no idea how it worked at all, whether they needed their own box or were provided one etc.
It’s just really not that common unless you sell stuff online or something and so need to ship things.
SophisticatedHillbilly
5mo ago
Is the Allies winning WW2 really evidence of liberal societies with unplanned economies being better when they only won by taking national control of ~their entire economies, in some cases suspended elections, and turned the entire state towards control, propaganda, and bureaucracy?
I’d go so far as to say that “liberal” countries in the pre-WW2 sense just plain don’t exist today. Pre-Wickard v. Filburn the idea that the government even had the authority to decide whether you could grow grain on your own property to feed to your own horses was unthinkable. Such ideas didn’t really survive contact with war.
SophisticatedHillbilly
7mo ago
The issue is that pay increases for government employees just means poaching talent from the private sector. You’ll increase government efficiency at the cost of lower private sector efficiency. There’s only so many competent people. Raising pay doesn’t make more of them.
SophisticatedHillbilly
7mo ago
Making federal employees a higher tier of citizen is a horrible idea that would contribute to the Sovietization of society and is directly contrary to the American ideal. The government being generally low quality is fine (though the floor should be higher than it currently is) it just needs its scope massively reduced. If it had the scope reduced to match capabilities, then you don’t have to increase capability
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
It has largely worked for the woke. A large portion of the population has gone from fervently supporting color blindness to fervently supporting affirmative action, and so on for every other social issue. It doesn’t convert everyone. It doesn’t have to.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
Yeah aren’t American conservatives one of the only non-hyper-religious groups left with an above replacement fertility rate? (only like 2.3 if I remember right but still)
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
What are they, if you don’t mind sharing?
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
they can't bring themselves to fire these employees or disproportionately reward the people whose productivity increases.
Why is this so true? I would be happy to do this, but it seems it’s anathema to most companies. Any explanations?
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Yeah this wasn’t (isn’t?) uncommon in my very white hometown.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Why only factor in IQ? Given that things like moral preferences, health, and a good portion of culture come from genetics as well, doesn’t an IQ-maxing breeding strategy destroy those other three things?
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Isn’t this what winning is supposed to look like?
No. Winning is supposed to look like getting an increase in resources and abilities, allowing you to tackle even more difficult challenges, ad infinitum.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
From what I’m seeing a direct torso hit only had a 62% death rate in the civil war era. If you have a better than 62% odds of hitting their head, you would have been better off aiming for the head. Doubly so if the person is particularly healthy and hardy, given it was usually days or weeks till they actually died, and those with robust immune systems had much better odds.
SophisticatedHillbilly
18d ago
if a model was right, you wouldn't give up and call it merely useful.
This is only true if a correct model is useful, which is certainly not always true. Even further: the most correct model isn’t necessarily the most useful model even when it is useful.
If I remember correctly evolutionary simulations consistently show a fully accurate perception of the world is generally actively harmful even when there’s no associated resource cost. Autistic analyzers often have more accurate models of social dynamics but do worse at socializing. Blind optimism, undeserved confidence unfounded worries etc are all extremely useful, and moving to a more accurate view is less useful.
It’s possible to have wrong and useless models of course, but that’s the point of the adage.
SophisticatedHillbilly
4mo ago
For this reason, conscription is ironically good because it allows meatgrinder-wars that eliminate the populations of “nations that don’t deserve to survive.” If we do this enough we might end up with some deserving nations coming up.
SophisticatedHillbilly
6mo ago
From my anecdotal experiences (which weirdly enough include specifically receiving an MRI as part of a health sharing system) you pay out-of-pocket and that price ends up being equal or lower to the negotiated insurance prices. You may have to do some negotiating yourself, but it’s usually as simple as calling the office and saying “this is unreasonable, give me the real price” and then they do. The $5000 price is there because they know insurance will haggle, and so they can charge the government systems exorbitant amounts, insurance pays the $1000 price, and if you pay out of pocket it’s more like $500, then health sharing reimburses you. The amounts aren’t accurate but the ratios are.
The $5000 price is part fraud, but realistically mostly just because they have to recoup the cost of all the non-payers who receive care and don’t pay for it. It’s basically just backdoor government-funded healthcare for the poor, scummy (has money just doesn’t pay or pays like $10/month), or undocumented. The only ways to bring the costs down are to not allow those people to receive maximum care, which the public doesn’t have the stomach for, or to address the elderly medical cost issue, which is politically untouchable, or address the supply cartel issues mentioned above.
That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?
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