cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
My first point in the list is how you don't really need that much effort to meet the minimum standards. If two paragraphs is hard for you to write, what are you doing here? It took you what, 5-10 minutes to write this response to me, and its double the length you need.
The longer posts have happened organically.
cjet79
1yr ago
I've had this conversation a lot lately.
Go through my old posts:
- The amount of effort we are asking for is super low. Just like two paragraphs.
- The point of this website is discussion. If you can't be arsed to start a simple discussion about something you brought up what makes you think other people want to talk about it? I often see low effort posts around fundamentally boring topics.
- It comes off as demanding content from other people cuz you are too lazy to think for yourself on a given topic. Let the content creators pick the topics they care about.
- There is a crowding out effect with discussions. If one person takes the time to write up a long post where they think about it deeply and another person just rushes to post the story and get hot takes, then all the discussion happens with MrHotTake. So that system would reward people who rush posted and didn't think through a topic.
cjet79
1yr ago
That was predictable. Life expectancy had been going up at the time.
There were other predictable problems:
- If the number of children born decreased. The demographics have to look like a pyramid, if it looks like a tube the thing falls apart.
- If the government ever touches the money allocated for social security.
- If any politician comes along and offers to make social security more generous.
cjet79
1yr ago
I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?
That is a large amount of slack created by the AI. Typically that much slack in resources can be used to do many things. Resources are transferable between economic sectors in the long term. I have no doubt that communism would escape any blame in this scenario, but yes I'd still say that is a massive failure of communism that basically destroyed resources on a massive scale.
Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.
The outcome was certainly foreseeable after the fifth or sixth attempt. Which is how many attempts singular countries racked up trying to do these farm reorganization schemes, or "land reformation". Less people died in the later attempts ... but there were also less people to feed.
The failure of communism in these cases was a failure of understanding base incentives. They had magical thinking that their reorganization scheme would work. They treated humans like chess pieces, and assumed they would just work themselves to the bone for no reward. If communism is not responsible for these starvation deaths, then there is no meaning to the word "responsible". I can't conceive of a line of thought that absolves communism of these deaths. You say there is one, but you'd have to lay it out for me very carefully for me to understand.
And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.
They are called death tolls, and not murder tolls. Some of the "holocaust deniers" use these same kinds of wheedling arguments. "they weren't outright murdered, they were just starving in this camp because there wasn't enough food for everyone". Why was there a food shortage in Europe ... because there was a war. Why was there a war ... because the Nazi's started one. Likewise with the communists, all roads lead back to fingers pointing at the communist government. At certain levels of power, casual indifference and outright hatred are equally effective at slaughtering millions of people.
cjet79
1yr ago
Should just be labelled "Boomer bribe" on my taxes. That is the oldest generation that is cogent enough to still defend it, and why it is untouchable as an issue in elections.
If historians were competent they'd label this FDR's greatest blunder. He established a generational pyramid scheme, and instead gets seen as some great savior. This has been a ticking time bomb since day one.
cjet79
1yr ago
The most regressive aspect of social security is simply that poor people die younger than rich people.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44846 (pdf warning)
There is about a 10 year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest. Which overwhelms nearly any difference in generosity between payouts and the taxes collected.
In general I think social security is a horribly designed system for multiple reasons:
- Its a pyramid scheme and would be strictly illegal in the private sector. Newcomers pay into the system to support the people that were already in it.
- Its goal was to not let people become destitute if they could no longer work. But used a poor proxy measurement to determine if people couldn't work: age. The disability payments system seems like it could accomplish the same goals.
- Its a generational trap. The system places the burden of funding on kids that are not yet born, and couldn't have possibly voted to not have the system.
Even if it is a horrible system. I don't think we are getting rid of it. I'm guessing the US government will continue to take the easy way out. They will inflate their way out of the obligations, and slowly scale back how much they pay. Anyone in my generation (30's) would be an idiot for making any retirement plans based on social security payments.
The whole thing should probably be replaced with a disability insurance system.
As you become disabled from doing certain types of work you can receive payments to supplement your income back up to where it would have been. With benefits maxing out at some minimum standard of living. If you were once a construction worker at $20 an hour, but you hurt your back and can now only be a walmart greeter at $10 an hour, then the disability payments make up for that lost $10 in wages. If you instead learn how to program and start making $50 an hour you get no payments.
Possible adjustments to the system if you want to be a nanny state:
- Increased minimum standard of living if you raised kids.
- Increased funding for medical research that solves common disability issues.
- Lists should have three things, but I'm blanking on another idea.
cjet79
1yr ago
"Don't be egregiously obnoxious" is kind of the guiding principle. Sorry there isn't anything more specific. If a bunch of people here found some behavior annoying we'd ask the poster to knock it off. Which has happened with some users that keep posting about Jewish people and the holocaust.
If people find a weekly update on a topic interesting and it generates discussion, then not only is it ok, it could be an AAQC, or turn into a weekly staple. The Transnational Thursdays thread was originally just some posts in the main culture war thread. People liked it a lot, and now its got its own thread.
I absolutely do not want the rules to get in the way of good discussion or good posting. Myself and the other mods will never try to follow the rules over a cliff.
cjet79
1yr ago
One followup comment a few days later is fine. Especially if the original comment has been knocked way below the waterline on visible comments. And if it starts a discussion in a new direction that is also fine.
If the original comment is still visible then a response comment, or an edit are both fine. Personally I'd do a response comment, but that isn't a mod rule, I just think it would more clearly mark that I have a separate discussion in mind, and people that respond to the response comment are clearly interested in the separate discussion, rather than the original discussion.
Its just two followup comments that would be bad. Which you haven't done (and probably wouldn't have done anyways?), so there is no warning here.
cjet79
1yr ago
I would maybe be willing to walk down that road. But it would not be fair to label all political deaths under communism as simply totalitarianism.
Communism is a form of economic and political organization, and some people are not going to like the arrangement. If someone protests the economic structure of communism and they are killed by a totalitarian regime, I'd still blame that on communism. If someone protests that Joseph Stalin is in charge, and that there should just be someone else in charge of the apparatus of communist government, then I'd say its fair to attribute that death to totalitarianism.
The Holodomor is something I'd attribute to economic protest.
I haven't looked into the numbers on the victims of communism recently. If I remember correctly political deaths were not the largest cause of death. It was instead starvation.
Those starvation deaths seem clearly to be the fault of communism. In both Russia and China there was a working farm system for centuries that had been supplying the food needs of the nation. Famines might only be expected if there was a widespread crop disease or really bad drought.
The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.
cjet79
1yr ago
I think the other arguments brought up here were good. Imperialism seems to be practiced by any government of sufficient size. Including communist governments.
The Lenin paper also assumes the exploitation hypothesis to prove that imperialism is the final form of communism. I think Marx and the other communists were totally wrong on the exploitation hypothesis, so of course their theoretical argument isn't going to be convincing in this area either.
cjet79
1yr ago
Scott had an interesting post a long time ago comparing the death tolls, and came up with vaguely similar ball park numbers.
I would find it interesting to see a post about the number of deaths caused by capitalism, i.e. private ownership of the means of production, and markets.
Many of the lists seem to just be a list of deaths caused by imperialism.
I like capitalism, but not imperialism.
cjet79
1yr ago
This got reported for low effort. And it kind of is. We'd like you to not make a thing where you just re-post about the same topic with slight additions to the content as a way of "bumping" the topic to the topic. That would be obnoxious, so if I think you are doing that again it will result in some mod action.
This is not a mod warning, but I'm going to distinguish the comment to hopefully give some guidance to people.
There were a lot of people upset about me saying a post last week was low effort. And they got worried that I have super strict standards for a top level comment. But I'd like to clarify that this post passes my personal standards for what is "low effort", and it does so while only being 8 sentences long. Here is a breakdown:
Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
This is the context for the post. It could be replaced with a link to a story, or a link to the post. If they had stopped here it would be equivalent to just dropping a bare link. This is not nearly enough. If its someone that is maybe new I will give a warning, if its a longtime user I will give a ban.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
This is a spicy opinion part and an observation of the world. But its spicy in a way that doesn't actively insult anyone for believing the opposite of what the poster thinks. Adding this part with the previous part makes it an on the edge post of effort. I might have given a warning if they'd stopped here. Or if the spicyness was trying to insult people it might have been a ban.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
Here is an additional defense of the spicy take. And they've now cleared my "low effort" post standards.
It all adds up.
And this is a useless sentence, which means they could have gotten away with a 7 sentence top level post and it wouldn't be low effort.
So to summarize:
- Provide context for the discussion (a story, a personal thought, whatever).
- Provide an opinion or take on the context. Something personal that if another person chimes in and disagrees with you, then you are willing to have a discussion with them on why you think you are right. (this is perhaps the most important thing)
- Provide a defense of your take, or try to preempt a common counter argument. This shows that you've maybe thought about the thing for more than 30 seconds.
What I don't want to see is "here is a thing, please provide me with content about it!" You are the content here. Having a discussion is the content. When I ask people to start the discussion, that is what I am trying to get at. Ultimately we would like to reward our content creators, or people that start discussions, not those who request discussions.
cjet79
1yr ago
I would like to tie social security to an official retirement age.
Once you hit the retirement age you are expected to retire from any publicly held office. No elected officials older than that age.
This would tie in with the other solution that is my favorite: just raising the age of retirement to save money.
As a young person I have little to no expectation of receiving social security money.
cjet79
1yr ago
No worries, I saw this and just wanted to clear up the confusion that could happen if only parts of our conversation are relayed.
cjet79
1yr ago
We had a confusing back and forth conversation in my inbox. I dislike having conversations there unless someone provides a lot of context. But I'd just banned them, so its not like they could have the conversation publicly on the relevant post.
His post wasn't banned for culture war reasons, but it certainly fits as a culture war topic. I told them that the public mod note is why they were banned, which is what SSCReader repeated above:
The mod note was: Low effort top level post. This is against the rules. I strongly doubt that you don't know this. 1 day ban.
cjet79
1yr ago
This post is fine, and if your post had put in half this effort it would have been fine too.
cjet79
1yr ago
True, I should probably shoot for a specific quality contribution to post ratio. I don't want to waste my time here with things no one likes, but if people like what I write then its more worth it.
cjet79
1yr ago
Not my post but that's a good argument. If I were remzem I might say it is never psychologically healthy to get so involved in anything on the internet that it has a noticeable impact on your mood.
Eh, we are all past that point probably. To engage at all you need some level of emotional attachment to the content.
If I were me and I had made the op I would say that to dismantle your appeal to the emotions of readers by making them empathise with the discouraged, I had to neutralise the empathy - and I assumed game would recognise game and you would respond with a better argument.
That would feel like an own goal. By his own admission he is here for interesting content. My goal is to preserve this place for interesting discussions. Interesting discussions bring in people that create interesting content.
Have you really reprimanded each other before? Do you mean aside from Hlynka? It would be neat to see evidence of that, because previously I have been told that you guys don't pay much attention to reported mod posts because they're always punished users being spiteful.
Yes, I've at least reprimanded one other mod publicly (it wasn't hlynka). Told them to back off from an argument. I've been privately reprimanded once or twice cuz I got too heated and involved in an argument. Its more common that we pull ourselves out of the situation first. "I'm too annoyed at this user to be fair to them in moderation, someone else needs to step in" I've done that before and at least one other mod has as well.
Zorba and I are both legacy mods. But the other mods were selected by a community process, and they picked among the best users. So even if the other mods weren't mods they'd probably never be getting in trouble with the mods anyways. Going way back zorba and I were both selected by other moderators, in part because we had long histories of good behavior in the slatestarcodex subreddit.
Fake edit: I got a phone call that interrupted this post, but coming back to it I realise I have been focused too much on symptoms, which is exactly what I'm bitching about elsewhere. To me it looks like the root cause of the issue is that you need some more mods. Zorba has his hands full with the backend, so you have to use shortcuts to keep up. I'd suggest recruiting someone like netstack, 2rafa, selfmadehuman, or ToaKrakoa.
We might go through another mod selection process. We've talked about it.
cjet79
1yr ago
I am usually very happy to have one aaqc a month. Three of them makes me think I'm spending too much time here.
cjet79
1yr ago
It's similar, not the same. Disheartened is most similar to discouraged.
But sure let's pretend they are the same, your post above no longer makes sense:
think it’s fine to think “there is something a little off if someone gets disheartened over being preempted on a discussion board.” Look, I participate here because I think the people are interesting etc. But it isn’t like we are competing for Pulitzer Prizes etc. If someone preempted something, I’d think “well at least there is another person who thinks like me and seems reasonably intelligent” and go on my way. Being disheartened is not psychologically healthy.
Why is being disheartened not psychologically healthy?
Mod posts can be reported. We have reprimanded each other before.
It's not a length requirement, it's a requirement to start a discussion and invest some amount of effort. Length is easy to quantify and generally people say enough things within certain lengths that I can give that as guidance.
We have a general policy of not removing discussions. If you see disappeared posts it's cuz the user deleted them.
Ban lengths are pretty light for low effort posting. Usually no ban at all. 1 day recently.
I am not asking for length I am asking for some/any signal. Not a signal from the outside world but from the poster, the one who is supposedly posting because they are interested in a discussion.
I am typically trying to stop posts that have no signal at all.
I don't get why writing two paragraphs is destroying quality. It barely takes any effort, and if it does take a bunch of effort for someone, then I don't get how the rules forbidding them from dropping bare links is somehow preventing a quality contributor from being here.
I'm not incentivizing long posts I'm disincentivizing content-less posts.
This post is longer than it needs to be. I do this all the time when I write. I make the same points in multiple ways. I have found over many years of online discussions that this is sometimes the most efficient way to get through to someone.
If I don't say it all up front it just ends up coming out over multiple posts. But by the end of it those posts are long buried and the casual readers have dropped off. That's if the other participant even wants to bother having a multi day back and forth.
I think what is happening is that we are asking people to say something, and they are realizing it's hard to say things in a short and concise way. So they have longer posts. Or they start saying something and realize they have a lot to say.
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