cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
8mo ago
I see it as a sort of tragedy of the commons. You can have a better view and a better time at a baseball stadium by sitting down, but this is conditional on everyone else sitting down as well.
The politicization of economic value is super super tempting. I think it is inevitable to some degree and I'm fine with it happening. I think it would be best if it happens within Dunbar number limited groups of people of about 150. Let a small company or group of people determine among themselves how to politically split up economic value. But make them compete in a more global system where value is determined by the erldritch invisible hand.
There is a sweet spot of not being subject to the eldritch forces, but also it's a benevolent eldritch force that will ruthlessly optimize for the things we are willing to trade for. So I guess I agree with your assessment, I just dislike the people that band together to deny reality, aka Marxists.
cjet79
8mo ago
Quality doesn't shine until Fulgora. I would almost advise avoiding it altogether on Nauvis.
Fulgora has you developing lots of sorting builds and figuring out how to avoid the jam ups that result. It's a good crash course in how to make safer quality builds, that don't gunk up your factories.
There are also only three use cases where I've found quality to be absolutely worth it: spaceships, personal items, and resource extraction devices (pump jacks and miners). Almost everything else is solvable more easily through the traditional factorio solution: make your factory bigger. The resource extraction devices preserve more resources at higher quality levels. Allowing you to tap mines and oil fields for longer. So they are sort of a convenience, but still ultimately ignorable with just "expand the factory more".
I'd recommend just trying to go to space, and maybe even Vulcanus before you feel fully ready. Just get Nauvis to a defensible position, or shut most of it down to minimize pollution while you are gone.
cjet79
8mo ago
There is an economic concept called "perfect competition" I want to be clear that this economic concept is not required for efficient prices.
And I am talking about efficient prices, not "perfect prices". Prices are a process and a search function for an optimal set of tradeoffs. One of the tradeoffs is information. To perfectly know all the inputs of a product, and to perfectly know the desire for that product would be a very costly search process. There is going to be some fudging of prices and that fudging should be expected given that information itself is not free or costless.
[Plumbers]
You've created a very long example that kind of assumes away many of the standard market fixes. I do generally like to use theoretical examples for most economic concepts, but I find that they tend to lead people astray when it comes to the nature of prices.
To me your example sounds a bit like this:
"Geologists say that older mountain ranges tend to be shorter and rounder than newer mountain ranges, because wind and erosion will gradually wear mountains down. But that's not always true, imagine there are two mountains. One mountain is 20k feet and in an old mountain ranges. And the other mountain is 10k feet in a newer mountain range. They are both subject to similar levels of erosion, and neither is a volcano. So older mountains can be taller."
You've assumed your position to be true in your example.
And yes the government is fully capable of distorting prices, or assisting companies in distorting prices. I usually bring this up as a reason why government should not have this power, or should at least have many restrictions on the use of this power. But this is also not evidence that prices don't reflect the real world, instead it is more evidence. After all if a government makes it hard to be in the plumber business we should expect the price paid for plumbing services to go up, because the supply of plumbers has been restricted. It would be strange if the government could intervene and not change prices.
cjet79
8mo ago
So everyone wishes they were a monopolist with respect to their own jobs. No surprise, but we need to treat these requests as the selfish self interested lobbying that they are, rather than some generous societal oriented philosophy.
cjet79
8mo ago
The idea that utility value and market value are different is a fundamental economic misconception.
Market prices reflect real resource shortages and tradeoffs. "Important" jobs are often paid low because many people can do it.
cjet79
8mo ago
No worries someone else from themotte has been super available, they also like trains a bunch. So you'll be happy to know we aren't neglecting the trains like I would.
cjet79
8mo ago
Still playing factorio space age. I think we've had a thread about it every Friday since its release. It deserves it though, solidly awesome game.
We finally made it to Aquilo. Kept feeling like every other planet still had minor things we needed to fix. Aquilo feels like the seablock mod a bit. You need to build your own land.
The high power costs of drones, and the requirement to use heating pipes adds some new challenges. Builds tend to look pretty different.
I'm also trying to build a massive space platform for some forms of production. Its almost 4500 tons so far. I expanded it from a ~1000 ton ship that was producing its own space platform. I think I want to see how ridiculous the space platforms can get.
Quality has also been a fun mechanic. Feels like burning massive amounts of resources for slightly better stuff. But factorio is all about using up massive amounts of resources. And usually the resource sink is science, but sometimes science isn't enough.
cjet79
8mo ago
I do wonder if the DOGE organization is just a way to offer a cudgel to the private sector that they can wield against the bureaucracy.
Right now it is mostly one way power. A regulator can come in and say "hey we don't like this" and a private company is faced with a costly and lengthy legal battle to overturn that.
Now musk can say "oh you don't like that thing, maybe you are being inefficient and need a reduced headcount".
If your goal is to reduce overall regulation it will mostly fail. If the goal is to reduce regulation for the people that have connections to DOGE then it will probably succeed.
Main problem is this is bureaucratic end-state problems. When the main reward you can hand out to political allies is an exemption from the worst regulations and taxes that everyone else must face.
cjet79
8mo ago
I think there was a case of this in 2020, guy got a delivery truck and drove it into a crowd at a parade. There was also the Unite the right rally in Charlottesville where a guy drove his car into a crowd. So it does happen sometimes.
Maybe people who go on these killing rampages often want to make it a murder suicide event. Guns make the suicide part easier at the end, whereas the car murderers tend to get caught.
Mass car murder also seems like a crime of opportunity, you need the right circumstances to actually pull it off. Most sidewalks are full of hard things that will wreck a car, including up to concrete barriers that are specifically designed to stop a car. Larger vehicles are necessary. And crowds of people in a flat non barrier area that are not so dense that the vehicle will be immediately stopped, and not so sparse that they can easily see what is happening and move out of the way.
It's a messed up person in the first place that wants to commit mass murder. But I think they usually want more choice in their targets, they want to be dead afterwards, and while cars and trucks are ubiquitous they are actually more expensive than guns and ammo. There are ways to get large vehicles, like theft or working a job site with them. But those are still a little harder to pull off than just buying guns.
I think there is a steady supply of crazy and crazy mixed with the wrong meds that if we magically banned all guns in the US you'd probably see more car based killing rampages. But guns have a specific purpose and they are good at that purpose, so I think they will remain in use.
cjet79
8mo ago
This is the full interview: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ry1IjOft95c
What was great about it is that Trump is a New Yorker, and this is a podcast of New Yorkers. I of course knew intellectually that Trump was from New York. But it didn't sink in.
New Yorkers have an aggressive and bombastic style of talking and interacting that often involves lots of interruptions and talking over one another, active ribbing each other, and grandiose exaggerations (that everyone in the conversation knows are exaggerations). Trump is often given too much of a chance to talk. It leads to him ranting and going on weird tangents. This happened quite a bit early on in the Joe Rogan interview he did, and I could not watch more than ten minutes of it. Trump gets accused of being a bully for the ribbing he constantly does. And finally Trump is known as a liar for his constant grandiose claims.
In the flagrant interview Trump is interrupted, he is talked over, and there is ribbing going on constantly, and Trump loves it and thrives in it. Because he is a New Yorker and that is how they talk and interact. He even extends the interview for an extra 30 minutes or so. His ranting is far lessened. His weird tangents are there, but don't dominate the conversation. He is quick on his feet with jokes. There are very few awkward moments.
To be clear, I am not a New Yorker. And their style of interaction can grate on me. I can take it in small drunk doses in person, and can barely stand it at all when sober. For podcast listening it can be real fun, but is often a bit overwhelming. I don't regularly listen to flagrant, but they can have some absolutely laugh out loud banger episodes when I'm in the mood for it.
I just finally feel like I understand Trump, and that is a huge relief. I don't feel like I've ever really understood him in the past, and I don't feel like I've ever understood any other president or presidential candidate in my lifetime (except for Ron Paul).
cjet79
8mo ago
I just don't think that these sit-down interviews are that important when it comes to a presidential general election campaign.
They switched my view. Trump's flagrant interview literally changed my whole opinion of him, and I voted for him and it was my first vote for a republican candidate ever.
Joe Rogan has 18 million subscribers and he did an episode with 3 million views right before the election with Elon musk where he endorsed Trump.
Rogan has higher viewership then all of the mainstream media combined. I think the longform interviews were more watched than the debates.
To think this doesn't move the needle is a little crazy to me. Sure they didn't do crap back in the 1990s but we live in a different world. And Trump moved with the world rather than clinging to old strategies.
cjet79
8mo ago
Real poetic and stuff, but too "battles of the sexes" heavy for me to really resonate.
Men and women are different, but they are still ultimately the same species. The variations among our minds can dwarf the average variations of the sexes. The tallest woman is much taller than the average man. The most caring and consensus driven man is much more so than the average woman.
Whichever woman you are talking about might just be a psychopath. They aren't all that rare. I knew at least one maybe two hot women psychopaths in college. Not a moral bone in their body, though a little less dangerous than the three male psychopaths I've known that have to find balance while dealing with a male sex drive.
cjet79
8mo ago
Ya there should be some way, we are mostly hosting and communicating through steam
cjet79
8mo ago
I'd still hold people accountable for any rulebreaking that the AI does at their behest. Its certainly not a get out of jail free card. But they aren't going to stop using a useful tool. "I spoke to an AI about security systems" becomes instead "I spoke to a knowledgeable friend about security systems". And then we are just having either less honest conversations, or dumber ones if they don't do the research in the first place.
cjet79
8mo ago
This does not seem like "padding out the word count". I use AI in this same way when I need an expert-ish opinion on something. I won't always post the exact text of the AI, but it seems fine to do that, especially if you are just gonna ape the conclusions anyways. This was a responsible use of AI.
cjet79
8mo ago
add me on steam: https://s.team/p/dwg-vdjj/KQWDPRPP
I can stream the game for you if you are online in a bit.
Right now I am building a small factory on vulcanus, and someone else from themotte is building up our Nauvis base
cjet79
8mo ago
I have a group of themotte players with a server on steam, any interest in joining?
cjet79
8mo ago
This isn't really the right place for this kind of thing. We are a discussion forum, not a place for organizing political action.
If you want to discuss that website, or discuss who you prefer for president, or discuss why we need approval voting all those are fine.
cjet79
8mo ago
Yeah all of them announced completion of their vaccine literally the day after the election.
And it'd be better to begin geoengineering now than to wait 20 years, wouldn't it?
Not really. Depends on the discount rate and the cheapness of various solutions. Basically do the geo-engineering when it makes sense from a cost benefit perspective.
cjet79
8mo ago
I originally had something in my post about negotiating with terrorists.
I didn't want to be confused about calling the dems terrorists. But there is somethign to the US policy of "no negotiating with terrorists". If someone threatens you with violence or defecting, it makes sense to no longer negotiate with that person. Basically once that is on the table there is no guaranteed off-ramp except more violence.
If the democrats are willing to hold the government hostage, then there really isn't much room to negotiate with them. The only winning move is not to play.
cjet79
8mo ago
Multiple companies announced the completion of their vaccines immediately after the election.
This feels like the health equivalent of street racing, motorcycle driving, skydiving, and shooting up heroin. And then worrying about smoking as a health risk. I'd tell someone with those problems to go ahead and smoke if it gets rid of any of their other terrible habits.
I'm also aware that we can basically do massive climate change on the cheap whenever we want. Sulfur dioxide seeding in the upper atmosphere or a massive sun shade in space are orders of magnitude cheaper than carbon emissions reduction.
cjet79
8mo ago
I think they exercise the veto power prior to Trump doing anything, and they exercised it without any serious consequences. There were generals lying to Trump about troop levels in foreign countries, and not only were they not court marshaled for insubordination they were lauded for their efforts. And I'd be pretty happy to with generals that were willing to stand up and defy orders like "shoot american civilians" but they used their "backbone" to defy the president by continuing to wage wars abroad that the president and voters did not want.
I agree that there is a good use case for a veto among the bureaucracy and state agents. But they basically demonstrated the worst level of judgement in exercising it pre-emptively, used it for dumb things, and then suffered no consequences. Theoretically good, but in practice it was awful.
cjet79
8mo ago
I think there are subscribers only open threads, but otherwise no you don't have to pay to comment. Though he usually expects a real name with the comments. Which is another reason I can't post it. I'd reveal my real name in the process. (I could theoretically go through the trouble of creating a fake account, but it's all just extra friction for an inferior interaction.)
Vulcanus is a great first planet. It is most similar to Nauvis gameplay, but even lower maintenance. You can basically get infinite copper, iron, and sulfuric acid within the drop zone.
Meta is go big and build massive factories. Which is good cuz the enemies on the planet require an extensive expenditure of resources.
There is also some minor opportunity for space mining. Little asteroids will come at you above Nauvis. Early game that just means iron, carbon, and ice. But a free trickle of iron after an initial investment isn't bad.
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