The-WideningGyre
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User ID: 1859
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The housework thing always seems odd to me -- these are consensual relationships. If it bothers the people they should talk about it, or leave.
(Also, apparently the leisure time of both is about the same, men are working longer, or doing things that don't get counted. I tend to be skeptical of these things, for the reasons noted in this thread).
The-WideningGyre
7mo ago
I think this is a matter of degree, and also that while talent is important, luck is also.
So I think most would be okay with Musk / Gates / Bezos having 100x the median wealth, maybe even 1000x, there is a problem with them having 100000x the median wealth. They may be talented, but they aren't that talented.
I may just be projecting -- I'm generally a big fan of capitalism, but I think the differences between the 0.01% and the 70% in the US are just too big -- and it's hurting overall society. I'm generally for fairly mild adjustments to redistribution (small bumps to, e.g., income tax, inheritance tax, maybe capital gains) to reduce the skew at the extreme edges.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
It's not just "network effects, more capital, more talent".
I'll just speak for Germany, which I know fairly well. It's fairly anti-tech -- suspicious of digital technology. It limits, with laws, the ability to innovate or create. Agreed that the pay is much below the US (for top folks) and even fairly far below Switzerland. Start-ups are also harder (for (at least) the reasons you give).
Germany has things like the GDPR, it resists hire & fire (which I think is mostly good, but has economic costs), it requires annoying things like putting email signatures with your company owners in your mails, putting Impressums on your websites listing how to reach, getting double confirmation before being able to send a mail, or even remind you about an upcoming doctor's appointment.
I think mainly it's the lack of payoff, and lack of startup culture.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
You sound like a 'character', is that right?
While I'd heard similar groups had gotten caught, I'd heard mixed things about performance. It would actually be encouraging if it were more performance based, and less random-seeming, as it does from the other side of the Atlantic, where the cuts aren't all through yet.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I felt that was true pre-pandemic (and I used it, and wrote reviews), but Trip Advisor's coverage seems crap now, and it's scores not really to be trusted.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I mean, I mostly agree that it's not productive, and often not healthy, to spend a lot of time thinking about things that won't happen.
I think bringing in a moral judgement onto it makes no sense though.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
In Germany, we have quite a few refugees, including in our town. They are all women and chlidren. There are no men that I know. Perhaps some very old ones, but I haven't seen them.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think simpler is pyramid schemes need a large infeed / network effect. He killed off a competing pyramid, so more people to feed his base.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Like how being a woman, or not being fat both also mean you live longer?
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Yes, I think when it's distributed / public there are interesting ethical questions, but inside people's heads it seems entirely their business, and no moral issues whatsoever. (The only hints of moral issues are that it increases the chances of it making it outside of their heads).
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
As a minor point, I think the poverty line is set relative to the population (that is, it's set as an amount of money, but that amount is set by percentiles). So the change could be significant if, e.g. the poverty line was set at 25%, so you've effectively chopped 7% over to 2% over.
I don't think anything this big is happening, but it does make the change slightly more significant, in the sense that the baseline isn't zero.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Because that one can easily be mapped to "(white) men bad"
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think that will be a healthy shift, but I'm not too optimistic about it. It doesn't seem impossible though, especially if high-status people start pushing it. Unfortunately, many of them love to be on-line -- fame seems tied to on-line presence for many these days.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Oh I realized you also think he is right.
My (apparently not well expressed) point was that because he's right, calm, and backed with facts, he's extremely hard to attack for his opponents, so they are better off ignoring and hoping he goes away. (If any of the three things were missing, they would have a way to attack...)
The-WideningGyre
7mo ago
If you add two spaces at tend of a line, that will cause a line break in Markdown.
Very useful for poetry.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Jack Reacher was fairly good, I thought. Not woke at all, and pretty good action.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think the more present danger is it reinforces the echo chambers and denial of truth science. People will point to chatGPT answers, just like they do censored wikipedia articles.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I'm going to also not read other comments yet.
I would guess that the editor endorsed comments will consider AA to still be a regrettable necessity. And trot out some disparity stats as to why. I would guess the reader picks would be mixed, overall less supportive, but still with some of the 'regrettable necessity' getting votes, but also some "don't fix discrimination with more discrimination also doing well".
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Callous treatment of tech employees, especially politically active ones -- I'm sure there were a bunch in the SF audience.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
If you have enough money to make friends with the right Gulf royal family, I think you are pretty safe too.
E.g. see Ruja Ignatova, another crypto scammer, who disappeared, and arranged a diplomatic passport to Dubai a while before her disappearance. The report I watched claimed Dubai didn't extradite foreigners, but I haven't looked deeper.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
It does, and it will endlessly remind you of it. At a AirBNB place we stayed at, they had Alexa, and you could sort of trick (play channel X, or play a different song, which it then tells you it can't, and plays something close). Super-obnoxious, further turned me off assistants.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
According to German news, it was two, so likely a married couple, which means their house got hit (edit: or tractor apparently), so not particularly strange from that aspect.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Just wanted to say, awesome engagement here and elsewhere in the thread. It is very much appreciated, and I think this particular post is strong evidence for good faith discussion that was sometimes disputed elsewhere.
I tend to fall into the "the average woman doesn't realize how massively privileged she is" camp (or perhaps more "the average woman doesn't realize how comparatively unprivilegeg the average man is"), but I'd like (1) I'd like us to figure out how make things better, rather than just yell at each other and (2) somehow I still think i wouldn't like to switch (although when I was younger, maybe), which is an indication of something....
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I found the fakes of Gandalf reviewing the Rings of Power pretty funny.
Also, the corruption. Putting in so many completely inexperienced family members, and extracting money (e.g. via forced use of your hotels) is banana republic stuff that weakens all kinds of good things.
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