SophisticatedHillbilly
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User ID: 1964
SophisticatedHillbilly
1d ago
Don’t the lower classes have the lowest rate of suicide? Suicide is correlated with income if I remember correctly. Seems like that supports the idea.
SophisticatedHillbilly
6d ago
I wonder to what extent just decriminalizing minor physical violence would help. Like you look back to the 30s/40s and it seems like a low level of pervasive physical violence was normal. Guys get mad at eachother, fight it out, all is well (unless someone suffers a horrible permanent injury, which did happen).
Commonplace martial arts etc might do it well enough but I do feel part of the desire/need is the need to be unconstrained by a boss/teacher/parent/state/wife. Those adventures were vital for my own development and I think if I grew up where I live now (generic mid-sized US city) then I would never have gotten that taste of freedom. That unsupervised part is just as important as the physicality I think
SophisticatedHillbilly
9d ago
Wait I’m confused. Wasn’t creationism just being suggested here because it’s a right-wing theory with roughly equivalent public support to the core wokism (like the actual serious all whites are racist etc type) and with roughly the same level of grounding (which is to say, a lot of circularly cited papers and few ground facts that don’t have better alternative explanations) and so would be a ‘fair’ replacement?
I don’t think the point was ever that there’s actually a 1-1 prevalence of every single problem between the two of them.
SophisticatedHillbilly
3mo ago
Is it safe in the two senses of:
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Doesn’t cause any appreciable loss of strength, at least not beyond what losing that amount of weight would normally do via not eating (exercise held constant)
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One can stop taking it without any negative consequences beyond just the loss of the benefits?
I’m interested in taking it but haven’t done a deep-dive into the subject yet. Any resources you’d recommend?
SophisticatedHillbilly
3mo 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
7mo 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
8mo 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
10mo 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.
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
I think the answer there hinges on whether you’d vote for a pro-abortion anti-Griggs candidate or an anti-abortion pro-Griggs candidate if they were head-to-head.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Objectively, pretty much just white men in the like 25-45 range (definitely blurry at the edges there) who are some combination of wealthyish, charismatic, and healthy (or maybe just agentic? I’ve always felt that was a bigger factor.)
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Machine operator is a pretty basic role. If you’ve ever used a 3d printer and had to deal with leveling the bad, clearing stuck plastic, verifying that prints are proceeding correctly etc. it’s basically that but with bigger machines.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo 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
11mo ago
If it set the stage for Trump, then it sure does make sense for Trumpians to support a continuous long-term version of it.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Two arguments here:
1.) Government spending: consider that the massive efficiency issue applies not just to bridges, but to nearly all government spending of any kind. While bridges alone are a small cut, it’s significantly more expensive to spend 10X or 100X for many different things.
2.) The issue goes beyond government spending to include government cost. Cost includes the expenses that are offloaded to the private sector, many of which are executive in nature. Rolling back a wide swath of administrative regulations could massively increase private wealth and save the public fisc indirectly. This also applies to the healthcare spending that makes Medicaid so expensive. That 10X multiplier is there as well (more than in most industries really.) Cut medical regs, increase doctor supply, etc etc.
The administration will have trouble with this politically though, since the second type of cost saving doesn’t show up in a straight “spending in 2022 vs spending in 2026” analysis
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo ago
We could have chosen differently
And in fact, some countries, or even states, did. I feel like this conflation of COVID with COVID-response is a huge issue.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo ago
You have to look at their predictions in aggregate. If they predict 20 elections with a 95% chance for party A, and A wins 19 of those 20 elections, then yes they were accurate.
Even if that 1 election was a landslide for party B, the prediction method is accurate. People who say otherwise just aren’t accepting that it’s a percentage chance and not a poll.
I will jump in on the “I’ll take this problem off your hands” idea.
Is your concern here just taxes? If so just sell it and make a reasonable guess as to the basis, file the taxes, stick the money in an investment account, and give it a year or two to see if the agency wants their money. Or just do the zero basis thing and pay full taxes. Either option results in you coming out better than nothing.
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