theincompetencetheorist
No bio...
User ID: 1270
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Do you know what a sumo wrestler is?
or their food is still so much more pure.
I wonder how much HFCS you can find in their food that they get from 7-11s? The options for good food at 7-11s AFAIK better than anywhere else ( not that I've looked myself but know people who have lived in Japan and talked about the cultural difference).
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Just because you find companies where it doesn't seem to hold up in one aspect it doesn't mean the whole statement falls. Large companies like Google do other stuff that is against the interest of their customers and especially against their users. For example "ad topics" is to use their browser monopoly to be the only game in town for targeted ads on the "open web", after disabling third party cookies they jack up the prices. Also they are trying their best in tricking chrome users on enabling it.
But keep in mind For every "bloated big tech" company that pamper their employees, you find big tech companies who doesn't do that. Oracle, Cisco, IBM, AWS ...
The obvious case is the investment banks where the employees are millionaires while shareholders fight over scraps.
As for investment banks paying their employees much, who do you think has the most ownership of those companies? Is the compensation given to employees as equity(i.e. shares) in the company?
Businesses that treat employees poorly are generally structurally unprofitable – forced to compete on cost. They don't want to, but they have to in order to survive.
Talked as someone who hasn't been in contact with private equity firms I see.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
I think you're missing the simple fact that torture scenes are incredibly dramatic.
No, I'm positing that torture was included to "manufacture consent" in a similar way that the series contained rationalizations of mass surveillance to not get upset at the politicians when they continued to vote through continuation of "war on terror" policy that was eroding their liberties. I'm a total outsider of US-politics and culture in many ways. It is schadenfreude when the Jan 6 republicans got their names in the no fly list that was rammed through by republican politicians in the "war on terror".
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
It is only the extremes that have the belief of big systems with delibirate coordination to surpress the truth. Those closer to the center it myths and half-truths that previal but not the full blown conspiracy world view that everything evil is deliberate machinations by group of people.
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Why would the borrower take a loan that didn't benefit them?
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
They'd take out loans even if the price of the property didn't go up.
I'm not sure that would be the case if they would be targeted with marketing for taking on more loans.
This is a fully general argument against homeownership.
No it is not general argument of homeownership, it is an argument against predatory practices on giving out loans without the safeguards of looking at DTI etc... i.e. the first claim you made on how it is supposed to work.
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Sure people pay off their loans, but there are a bunch of people that use the raising equity prices to fund that they can on other liabilities.
I cannot parse this sentence.
People take out more loans when the price of the property goes up, they leverage that as an asset to have as collateral on other loans.
Obviously, the bank is not a charity. People enter into agreements for mutual benefit.
Again looking on the mechanics of the subprime crisis back in 2008, the loans given were not to the benefit of the lender. The calculus for the banks where that the value of the property would be higher when the lender defaulted, thus being the only ones benefiting on collecting the interests and get the money back with the sale of the asset.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
But it doesn't prove that they use profits from one part to funnel over to other parts of the organization to push "the message" at a loss! The vague indications show that some of the decisions are coming back to bite them, this is me trying to think differently and if the annual report next year show that I was wrong. So be it!
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
Yes reading that gives food for my ordinary bias whenever I see cancellations. The usual it is the elites dunking on the working class. I was trying to avoid it with my reasoning and it is the same old story as we've seen for the last 8 years that I've been aware of the phenomena.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
There is a long history of e.g. the US Navy lending "production assistance" to TV series like JAG and NCIS . I have no proof of a such link but is it not a possibility that such a link exist given that the military-industrial complex has supported movies and TV series with the "correct" message in the past?
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Well that is the general theory of how it is supposed to work. They haven't corrected all of the mess that led up to the subprime crisis back in 2008-2009.. Sure people pay off their loans, but there are a bunch of people that use the raising equity prices to fund that they can on other liabilities.
No, if you can't pay your mortgage, the bank takes the house and kicks you out. Yeah and if you can't pay your landlord rent they kick you out. That is the point, with rising property prices people that attempt buy a house if it is too expensive you essentially rent from the bank if they ever get laid off and can't find a new job fast enough to keep up with the payments. Plenty of families ended up in that situation 15 years ago. This is tragic family history for some people.
Sure you can say that it is the customers responsibility and it is absolutely that. And they are plenty of people see that they don't have the economic means of buying property because they are being responsible. A couple of decades ago plenty of jobs it was possible to buy a house and pay it of outright, but now it is fewer and fewer people that get opportunity.
But make no mistake, if someone in the bank thinks that they can make a profit of a loan too you... they will do that, even if it is just the person approving it is just getting a bonus.
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Well the modern aristocracy keeps "their people" on top by suggesting that Asians are "white adjacent" when applying to universities and making BIPOC the benchmark for affirmative admission, miseducates the black youth by saying that math requiring correct answers is racist(so they can't succeed when they get older) and so on. If you look closely by the elites woke policy outcomes and if they don't benefit you are not part of the elite. You'll end up paying rent like the rest. Sure violent uprising could happen but chances that you end up being warrior elite from behind they keyboard are slim.
theincompetencetheorist
1mo ago
Well if we are ignoring the superficial political alignments you are essentially getting that end result. Feodalism is the end goal of todays elite when they travel to Davos for the WEF summit. The the mainstream wokism only purpose is to subjugate the plebs allow the elites to become rentseekers. To discuss the finer points enlightenment has given or not given the modern world is pointless since the "inferential distance" is so big between us.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Well the thing for me which I'm open about it that there is that it feels different. Almost like the dominios started to fall after Elon bought Twitter and the latest domino to fall is all the DEI directors booted from the media companies. I remember at the beginning of the Bud Light boycott that the likes of Tim Pool thought at it was going to go over, but it is still going. But on the woke side of the things fizzle out really fast it seems. Like where they able to disrupt boycotts on the non-woke side earlier? It looks like something has changed.
Fair enough, in my defense, this side of you is all that I've seen.
It is a online persona that I use only here where I want to discuss semi controversial views. It is the only side you are going to see. And for the first time it is working.
Not necessarily, it's all a question of relative to what. If you're doing your activism with full knowledge of how unpopular your views are, having your message pushed through Disney is still a win, relative to it never making it out of the fringes of society.
In many ways the culture war is virtual where they consider themselves as being mainstream and not at the fringes of society. In many ways it could be considered the mainstream views, that the majority of people that is not on Twitter and so on(i.e. virtual milieus) don't think it should be in their entertainment.
Bullshit Jobs feels to me like kicking the can down the road. Yeah, it's not the fault of an individual bad actor, or even a group of bad actors working together, it's... that our system maintains legions upon legions of workers that bring absolutely nothing? I'm not against the theory, but the magnitude of the systemic failure is about as mind-boggling to me as an outright global conspiracy.
Yeah welcome to my world view.... the stupidity paradox comes into play with that maybe the systemic failure is because of a reason, some mechanism in our world makes it necessary. Even if the book about stupidity paradox only talk about organization, my synthesis of the two essentially touches there is a reason for Bullshit Jobs is that there is a functional reason for them to exists which Graeber only touches upon but don't delve into deeper. The mind-boggling nature of it validates is a "incompetence theory" akin to "conspiracy theory". On the other hand the question is though if the framework of "incompetence theory" is useful for me, I haven't decided that yet. Also it all could be wrong and useless and then I'll invent a new persona instead.
Though with that phrasing it becomes less distinguishable from my theory. Is a conspiracy to push an ideology all that different from a conspiracy of incompetent people using an ideology to cover their asses?
Well it is a question if they are true believers or if they are adherents of practicality. So if it is practical adherence when the ideology is not useful for them anymore they dump it and move on to the next thing to cover their asses. True believers would stick to it unless they end up in a crisis of faith which is a higher bar for change. So I'm just speculating about the future of the ideology, that when reality strikes and how high the bar is for them to change. Much of the culture war is just virtue signaling for status and if the number of true believers are low then the shift might be faster when people break ranks around the issues.
Others pointed it out already, but the whole idea is that ESG is not about fighting climate change, but about propping up political/ideological allies and punishing enemies. Under this view, their decisions re: Tesla are a lot easier to explain.
So it is corporatism where corporations dictate the state and politics?
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini (although disputed if he really said it)
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Not who you're arguing with
It is a forum with a discussion in the open so feel free to chime in.
but Tesla gets a low ESG score because Elon Musk runs Twitter, and that allows for problematic badthink to spread.
Yeah so we can change the climate of the planet(If I personally believe or not doesn't matter, it is the mainstream narrative) so the most marginalized people are impacted by various ways all over the world, but that doesn't take precedence over hate speech for a minority of people that we would classify as twitter users and a minority of that reading it and an even smaller piece(if any at all) of it enacting that speech in the world.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
I have no claim of speaking for ordinary people. But in light of recent events DEI and ESG is failing the messaging for ordinary people. Nobody is watching new star wars except for notable exceptions that have good story telling in it. Like the two first seasons of The Mandalorian and now recently Andor. Like the rest of it could be "making money hand over fist" too, but they insist on weird messaging instead so people don't watch it! That is the only incompetence that I'm talking about. According to meager public data on viewership and online sentiment they are not being watched, and it is possible that it would be so much better without the "weird stuff".
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Yeah but the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't what was on the books in 2022 but what is going to be on the books now. We don't know how the annual report for 2023 is going to look like but if the headlines and layoffs are any indication it is not going to be as good as 2022.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Accounting can be tricky and if it comes from Hollywood it is Hollywood accounting where surprisingly many movies are booked as losses in the books. It is not as cut and dry that is why I use examples from headlines rather than the annual report, there is trouble brewing in the horizon... especially from the stuff that cost a lot of money that nobody watches! There is an accounting reason for pulling Willow of Disney+ so shortly after the premier, but the exact reason for it well... I'm not an accountant. Disneys troubles has been a constant in the headlines recent months and I'm trying to speculate on it.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Oh come on! Your whole shtick here from the start, including your username, was "it's all just incompetence and mundane market forces, guys!"
Yes that is the shtick, give me an example where is there more to it then! I want to have the shtick tested, it is the point of me having it! But it is not only mundane market forces, there is a bit of corruption and dare I say conspiracies there, the reason why I'm claiming the incompetence angle here is that it is obvious in income of the company that there is no customers for what they are selling, why are they still persisting with it?
The ideology creates incompetence though. One of the culture war fronts was woke culture's hostility to meritocracy.
So the incompetent don't join the ideology because they see that it hostile to meritocracy and use it to avoid becoming competent? Can we reverse the cause and effect of your statement?
It's almost like this is exactly what ESG was specifically designed for.
So if we have a sketch on how the ESG system is designed: Who benefits if they aren't making profits by doing this?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Ok. So. You said they're equally foul. Was that hyperbole? I'm not clear on how you got there. Do you think the two victims are equally traumatized?
No it is because both are a result of mass movements that reasonable people see the folly of but unable to stop, because they would be persecuted by ideological zealots. The foulness is people that are supposed to be our best and brightest to help other humans being captured by an idea that is obvious for the non-captured that it won't work... even a century ago.
Why do you think the experiments are similar? Because they both involve difficult to reverse body modification?
No it isn't the body modifications that is the issue. Both things were done in the name of progress while rejecting the very thing that allows human progress namely reason. Both fascism and gender ideology is throwing away the enlightenment values.
Do you think whether or not the child says they want something initially is completely irrelevant to how ethical it is? That only what they think later matters? Do you have the same position on- say, women who consent to sex in the moment but decide later that they didn't want sex and they were coerced into it? Do you think that is 'equally foul' to violent rape?
Would you have sex with a child that wants it? Is it ethical to do so? Is it ethical for a tattoo artist tattoo a child if the child threatens to commit suicide if they don't get one?
Forget changing your mind, right now, I'm either not grasping your foulness metric at all or simply not believing it's your actual metric.
I use the word "value" in the sense that it can be compared not necessarily measured as opposed to "metric" that can be measured and compared.
I'm not a big believer in changing minds via debate anyway. It's more effective to change them via friendship and familiarity and positive experiences.
I try to be honest about being open to be swayed by arguments. I used to debate online all the time back in the day and have changed my mind in a few of them. It changed back in 2014 when I ran into my first SJW online and saw it more and more. I have read enough history in my life to know where it was going and became more careful. Open minds can be changed in discussions.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Of course there is a difference! But I’m not here to do a culture war and discuss the finer points on gender transitioning, merely illustrate that trans acceptance is not as clear cut when it comes to minors in my value system. I’ve adopted the value partially because I think the transition of minors today is similar to experiments done in the past, if people here feel that I committed a fallacy then do whatever you want with it. I’m not here to change your mind, I’m giving you an opportunity to change mine.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
I'm fortunate and I'm lucky to have job that I consider "fulfilling". I just stopped chasing productivity to make myself a better worker, not that I don't want to become better to feel good about what I do. The thing here is that what I've given up on is very specific, I've stopped chasing productivity for my employers and starting to do stuff that I find interesting and where I can feel that I have mastery. Everything I do it is for me. I made move in my career to have a more general so I can be hired by a broader set of companies than doing hyperspecialized stuff that is only applicable for my employer and their competitors. Because of you becoming a better worker is benefitting your employer more than it benefits you. You'll just get more work.
I'll undelete my comment and I was in a slightly bad mood as I wrote it. But the wording is important, by my own accord. i.e. my productivity is improving for work and so on I just don't use my free time to make myself more produtive(I have hobbies that doesn't involve work, like sitting here and commenting occasionally). Well the reason is because of the concept the market for lemons. There is a simple description of it but the most succint way of explaining it is that information asymmetry leads that things priced lower in the market because the buyer can't valuate it properly. There is also a nasty effect that information assymetry is used to suppress your wage and turning a blind eye to information that would give a reason to price it accurately. It is the direct and local effect why my choice of trying to have a life outside of work like most people. I just discovered that I was priced the same as the guy that produced fast and sloppy work and was considered "more productive" even though the error accumulation made our productivity equal. This was almost two decades ago I came to the conclusion. An ambitious former colleague of mine came with a story last month: a performance review of "exceed expectation" didn't lead to a wage increase because there wasn't "development potential". This is constant and reinforcing my belief that I made the right choice 20 years ago.
And even looking at the macro economic perspective. No one is getting their fair share of productivity increases since the 1970:s ... the numbers are clear regular wage workers has hade a smaller real wage growth compared to the increase of productivity.. And that gap has been compensated with easy cheap credit deregulated to the point of threatening a systemic collapse 2008 - 2009. And as soon as people caught on to this the protests were derailed by a culture war.
Edit: lets add another source that is not clearly left-leaning : https://www.oecd.org/economy/decoupling-of-wages-from-productivity/
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
I know close to nothing about econ,
The day I learned how the economy worked is the day I stopped improving my productivity by my own accord. The economic system is thoroughly rigged. With luck and grit you can escape but if you are unlucky none of your hard work will matter. I just stopped playing the game and do as I'm told instead.
So you think that "food deserts" don't exist because you can walk an 30 minutes to yours? There doesn't exist places where people live where they have to drive an hour to get "real food" while passing various corporate fast food chains on the way?
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