The-WideningGyre
No bio...
User ID: 1859
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
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
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
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
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
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'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
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
7mo ago
FWIW this comes across as quite condescending. You're so sure you're right you don't to actually provide any evidence of it, or even an argument.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I don't think it's worth spending a lot of time on, but this sounds bat-shit crazy neurotic unhealthy self-flagellating.
Or do you just have something against imagination and fiction entirely?
Also 'provides strong support' is a fairly "strong" statement. I would have expected "provides some support" or "adds some weight to".
I'm personally not very convinced by the 'cycle of poverty' argument, having seen rich families fail, and having come from a fairly poor one myself (and seeing others of my friends improve their lot as well). Culture & genes seem much more significant factors, and I think both are passed down through generations much more effectively and directly than wealth.
The difference in crime rates between the poor Amish (or Vietnamese refugees) and the not-as-poor in Detroit seem to support this.
I think poverty does encourage crime to some degree (less to lose!) as does disparity of wealth, but I think it's a much smaller factor than the idpol folks make it out to be.
Oh, I just remembered another nice counter-example given on the original motte site -- Catholics and Protestants in (Northern?) Ireland. The Catholics were systemically literally discriminated against (couldn't hold certain jobs, etc). Once that legal discrimination was removed, they had essentially equalized in ~2 generations. Sorry for the vague recollection, but I found it a really interesting and relevant data point for all of these "cycle of poverty" and reparation claims.
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
1yr ago
No, but high testosterone and being willing to be daring in any form do go together.
FWIW, I think you're right, it won't be a big deal.
I think you're also missing -- he's right, it's backed by data and presented in a sympathetic way, so probably the best move by feminist activists is to pretend it doesn't exist and hope it goes away.
There may be some value in the near-willfully ignorant people who didn't know some of the things presented.
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.
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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