what_a_maroon
No bio...
User ID: 644
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
I have to agree with @Soriek, that "let each religious group live on its own" fits much more with my idea of the Enlightenment than "crush all religions." Also, free-market capitalism is way more of Enlightenment economics than the mish-mash of top down policies imposed during the French Revolution.
Also, was literacy really 70% over the whole continent? I was under the impression it was pretty high in Puritan and Quaker areas, and very low elsewhere.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
So we might set a new record soon, but it's only recently (last 10 years) gotten close to the level that was maintained pretty consistently from 1870 to 1920 (although this is also affected by the native reproduction rate--I think "we have more immigrants" may be less useful than "existing residents are having fewer kids"). So it's still not really accurate to say "There were never as many Italians or Irish then as there are Mexicans and assorted CA hispanics now." If this trend continues it might be true at some point in the future.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
Yes, at which point their language and culture were brutally suppressed, and they were forcibly assimilated into the WASP culture of whiteness.
But what problems did this actually cause prior to 1914?
No need to wait, just look around you.
Ok, what am I looking at? Is it that the children of those immigrants from the 80s and earlier have started using American names and speaking English? Is it that these 3rd generation immigrants are more likely to describe themselves as American (also more data on language)? What? Or do you not actually have a justification for anything you've written, and are expecting me to just agree because something seems obvious to you?
still carry with them a dagger with which to plunge into the back of the nation that welcomes them
That's a completely wild sort of accusation to make. Do you have any evidence for such a strong claim?
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
No, they were actively proclaiming for assimilation and suppression of foreign cultures and foreign tongues, if not explicitly foreign people.
Some people certainly wanted this, but did it actually happen? Or rather, did it actually happen any faster than it does now, or would have happened anyway? German was actually a very popular language in the US, with German newspapers in many towns, until the world wars. Lots of other diaspora communities persisted as well, like Celtish in the Carolina lowlands. My impression is actually that a lot of nativists did the opposite, and wanted the immigrants to remain separate in their own enclaves indefinitely--"No Irish need apply" doesn't seem like it encourages assimilation.
There were never as many Italians or Irish then as there are Mexicans and assorted CA hispanics now.
Do you have data to support this claim? Raw immigration numbers peaked in 1990, with the second peak being 1900-1920:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States#/media/File:Immigration_to_the_United_States_over_time.svg
Adjusting for population, it's clear that we're in a pretty low spot historically (excepting the Depression and WW2)--adjusted for the 4.3x population difference, even the low point in 1900 is equivalent to well over 800,000 today. In fact, even going purely by raw numbers, "the last 60 years" is largely not that high!
Things have changed, and those changes have destroyed the mechanism for the assimilation that you take for granted. Hence the sneering. That machine's broken, it's not going to be rebuilt, and anyone who wants to do so is pilloried.
I don't see much in the way of evidence for any these things. I think people who say this don't sufficiently grapple with the history of assimilation, which I only know a little bit about, but I know enough to know that it's complicated.
This won't happen, because that goose is cooked.
Well, this is a testable prediction, at least. I think it's rather early to conclude it won't happen, when large-scale hispanic immigration is, what, 30 or 40 years old? German language newspapers existed as far back as the Revolution and was quite popular throughout the 1800s, only really declining because of WW1. Do you think that, say, the grandchildren of early hispanic immigrants (so, the children of people born in the US) don't speak substantially more English than their grandparents?
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
What pressure are you referring to? And what do you mean by "native" here? Rich old money families descended from Mayflower passengers aside, my point is that the great-grandchildren of Italian immigrants from the late 1800s are not pretty much completely indistinguishable from the grandchildren of Polish immigrants in the 1920s or from the great great grandchildren of a German immigrant from 1850 or from the 5x great grandchildren of English immigrants from the 1700s.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
It seems odd to me to talk about immigration in America without talking about, you know, immigration in America. "A nation of immigrants" is a cliche but America's current population pretty much all arrived in the past 400 years from other places. And in that time it went from being a handful of starving colonies to the most powerful nation in world history (as well as one of the richest). At times the Italians, Irish, and other Catholic nationalities were considered to be a mean, mongrel group who could never be trusted. Now a white nativist probably couldn't tell them apart from any other American. The Chinese were also once believed to be uncivilized barbarians; now they along with other Asian-Americans are literally too successful to avoid being discriminated against by college admissions. (Yes, recent immigrants are not a contiguous group with most of the ones who migrated in the 1800s to work in California--but neither genetics nor culture is going to change that much in 150 years. Modern immigrants are richer, but almost all the European immigrants were poor too. If they had been allowed to, the Chinese immigrants of the 1800s could have assimilated trivially easily).
All through these times recent immigrants and their families often provided large amounts of cheap labor, settled new frontiers, and gradually improved their lot--the American dream. When they arrived, they often formed immigrant enclaves, but gradually assimilated over a few generations--other commenters seem to sneer at this possibility, but as far as I can tell it's literally exactly what has been happening for many years. The first generation that moves as adults is mostly the old culture, their kids are a mix, and the grandkids are just like other Americans. Sometimes it happens faster than this, but even if it does take this long it doesn't seem to matter.
In light of all of this history, most of the fears proposed by modern anti-immigration activists seem to ring hollow.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
We used to have a bare links repository subthread back on reddit, but it was removed (I don't actually remember why; I think it just generated lots of heat for little gain, gave people an excuse to put low effort content in the main thread since "if it's ok in the BLR it isn't that bad to put it in the main thread", and generally lowered the level of discourse).
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
My understanding is that Robber's Cave involved a lot of manipulation by the experimenters to get the boys to behave one way, and that by changing the circumstances they were able to get them all to work together again. "Fake" is an exaggeration, but the standard interpretation of the results may not be correct. E.g. https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html mentions this.
I'm less familiar with the Milligan experiment, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity indicates that the reported data may be inaccurate or missing key information. The section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Replications_and_variations indicates that the results could be highly dependent on situation.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
On one hand, this is a nothingburger. On the other, I might be sheltered but it does surprise me when people in positions of seniority, especially Europeans, reveal such base, zoological prejudice, grounded more in axiomatic disgust than in any moral outrage about population replacement, decay of trust, death of the national Logos or whatever.
I suspect this is actually how pretty much all cases of xenophobia throughout the world, and throughout history, operate(d). It never actually mattered who the outgroup was, or what their real behavior was, or even if they had personal spaceships while you lived in a cave. That just means they were crass materialists while you were in touch with the spirits of the world. It's this meme, but unironically, because the meme was always an accurate depiction of reality. It's only relatively recently, and only in some parts of the world, that things like empirical evidence and logical argument started to be considered as valuable, or that beliefs should flow from them rather than the other way around. And so people need to at least come up with a plausible-sounding explanation, grounded in some sort of logic rather than pure visceral tribalism, as to why the other actually is a civilizational threat this time.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
I'm able to see it fine and I don't have a twitter account; not sure what's going on
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
In my mind, in support of this claim: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/yjbefg/oc_how_harvard_admissions_rates_asian_american/
When looking at alumni interviews, which actually meet the applicant, Asian applicants do better overall and pretty much identical on "likability, courage, kindness." Asians only do worse when ranked by the committee that doesn't meet the applicant.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
Looks similarly cursed on firefox on my laptop
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
Thanks, and I feel especially bad now since I upvoted one of those! (It is old, to be fair to me). I do feel like the standard here is pretty low, and is more along the lines of "discourage the worst posts" rather than "encourage a high standard of discussion" but I'll take what I can get.
Especially since only the latter is a report option!
I meant to mention this fact originally; since several rules are not listed on the report default, I assumed this was either a technical limitation or to prevent decision paralysis.
Amadan can disagree, but I don't think I have seen a modhat comment explicitly invoke that rule in a long time. Since the migration off of reddit, at least. If they have receipts, I would be happy to see them. @ZorbaTHut, since this is a meta-thread do you mind if I tag them in this thread (or you can let them know or whatever you think is best) to ask for specific examples?
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
I would support getting rid of private profiles. It doesn't stop someone from keeping their own list of comments from users they might find convenient to bring up in a later argument, or just remembering. It does make it more difficult to track down comments that might be interesting or helpful.
Making alts to avoid bans seems like a no-brainer immediate long ban to me. Replying to yourself on alts also serves no purpose except to mislead other others; I would modhat and ban aggressively if you know for a fact this is happening.
I want your feedback on things, as if that wasn't clear. These threads basically behave like a big metadiscussion thread, so . . . what's your thoughts on this whole adventure? How's it going? Want some tweaks? Found a bug? Let me know! I don't promise to agree but I promise to listen.
There's a rule on the sidebar, "proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be." (emphasis mine). I think this rule is a great idea, as it supersedes meandering arguments about burden of proof that would otherwise consist of "no you" back and forth. It also encourages users to, well, do as it says, and provide evidence for things! But, that's only if the rule is enforced. This might be the rule with the highest ratio of violators to modhat comments, in my opinion. Sometimes it feels like I must be crazy, and have to scroll down the sidebar to make sure it still exists, because it feels like no one else knows it's there. Either that, or my idea of what is proportional here is entirely out of calibration with everyone else. I think it would improve the forum greatly, and help cut down on low-effort vagueposting, to more vigorously enforce this rule.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
Whether they are wrong or not, it's clearly low quality as it doesn't contain any argument or evidence. It also violates the rules for boo outgroup and speaking plainly.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
they managed to allow states to ban abortion with minimal loopholes
I'm confused by this statement. Wasn't, "states can decide what to do on abortion" the entire explicit point of Dobbs?
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
Now sure, normal people with normal social skills could figure this out.
I'm no lawyer, but is this the point of the "objective person" standard which is common across many issues in law? A very wide range of behaviors could effectively become legalized if you can just say "I didn't know/couldn't tell that what I was doing was bad" and the prosecution would somehow have to prove you knew it was bad? (While trying to find an answer to this question, I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person#Mentally_ill, which says "The reasonable person standard makes no allowance for the mentally ill."
(For what it's worth, I agree that it seems fairly weak to convict someone of a crime when the most explicit message they were given is being unable to see the profile and when they did nothing beyond send facebook messages.)
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
The "spirit of this place" (as well as the written rules) require the previous commenter to be clear about what they mean in the first place.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
Appeasing dictators is the kind of thing that sounds good in the short-term, but can wind up being very bad later. It's also very easy to say "oh just let Hitler have Czechoslovakia" when you are British and not Czech. The strategic problem in WW2, of course, was that Hitler was never going to stop there, and letting him do what he wanted mostly just made Germany stronger. Making it easy for dictators to achieve big wins easily, just by threatening war, even encourages other dictators to threaten war and try to invade other countries. A short-term victory, but long-term loss. The humanitarian problem was that Hitler was now in charge of more people, which is obviously bad; this badness might have been more insulated from British politicians than a war involving Britain would have been, but it was still there.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
The moment you no longer have free trade with the entire US (and its trading partners) you find that what you thought was your strong economy was actually one cog in a giant machine that no longer has a reason to exist. The UT system? No longer attracting talent from around the world or students from other states. Those big tech offices that have been popping up all over Austin? They're all out. The energy industry in Houston? Some presence will remain but they know they're not hiring Americans from other states if it requires them moving to a new country. All those farmers and ranchers in the Western and Northern parts of the state? Now might have to pay extra to ship their goods to Colorado, New Mexico, etc.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
Why would it be much more expensive, or indeed more expensive at all, if every single thing a child needs can be done both massively cheaper and better in modern times?
I feel like I've already expressed my answer to this question: Because of a combination of wanting to advantage their children (which in the modern world means substantial education among other things), preferring high consumption to themselves and a small number of children to having more children, and of the existence of many things which people want (or at least, are willing to buy/do) that didn't exist in 1800.
Kulak has already prescribed a medicine.
Well that's a fairly horrifying way of thinking
If energy is cheap then how come they have an "energy crisis" in Germany (a supposedly first world rich country)?
Cheap is relative. What did energy cost in 1800? What did it cost compared to the median salary? The median German is still going to consume vastly more energy in total this year than his great-great-great-grandfather did in his whole life. In any event, Germany right now is clearly an outlier both compared to other developed regions and compared to its own recent history.
you get the idea. It's not just your 100$ monthly electricity bill.
Yes, I'm well aware, and this is my point. Total energy consumption has vastly increased. We could choose not to travel outside walking distance, but people like the ability to quickly and conveniently travel, provided by trains, planes, cars, etc. We could choose to sit in the dark after sunset, but people like having lights. We could choose to only buy goods from the immediate vicinity of where we live, but we like that we can buy a computer from Korea, get fresh fruit from South America in winter. And we like to provide all of these same things to our children.
They provided water to public bath, fountains, and to private houses whose owners paid for that service, yes. Sure that may be far from every house, but remember that the tools and knowledge the Romans had, were laughably inferior to what we have now.
So every home in the US today, except maybe the very poorest, has what only rich Romans did. Tools and knowledge makes this possible, but it doesn't make it free.
Thus I find your assumption hard to accept, especially so without evidence.
As I said, this is a guess. There's probably multiple reasons. Many houses pre-date the aforementioned process, and it is not cheaper to demolish and rebuild them. Maybe the production lines are not viable in areas that are too spread out, or have varying/hilly geography or other physical complications, and we've already exhausted locations that are amenable. Maybe they're in more use than I think they are (although I suspect that plenty of people are willing to overpay for their "dream home").
"Cost disease" is just another way of saying "bureaucratic overhead in adjacent industries".
No, these are different. The latter increases costs as well, but Baumol's cost disease is simply the observation that if the productivity in some industries increases, then prices will increase in industries that don't see the productivity increase (or see less of one). The textbook example is a live band, which requires the exact same number of people for the same time to play one concert as in 1800, but the salary for musicians has to increase or no one will be a musician when being an unskilled laborer suddenly gets you 10x the income.
I am deeply convinced that this is the only real cause. Prove me wrong.
It sounds like we don't disagree that much here. I think there is a case to be made that there are financial and/or cultural, although the ways these manifest is often as supply regulations (e.g. local zoning gets imposed because existing homeowners want to make more of a return).
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
The central point of my argument is that these additional costs are massive, mind-boggling, enormous
Sure, but I think even in the hyper-competitive world you describe, raising each child would still be much more expensive than it was in the 1800s. I suspect that if you freed up that income, most people would default to using it on more consumption for themself and their few children, rather than having many children.
It's a pity that the verbose version of your comment got lost because I think this difference in worldviews can be only productively discussed in details, diving deep into a particular industry, dissecting it's practices, costs, regulations, etc.
I can recreate most of what I had, I just don't know if it answers your particular questions:
electricity
Energy is very cheap, and we consume a lot more of it. Do you want to drive your kids to school, activities, a friend's house? Do you want goods from all over the world shipped to your local stores? Do you want heating, cooling, electricity, hot and cold water running water on demand? It could be even cheaper, yes, but would that result in people having more kids, or using more energy on what they already have?
medicine
Yes, many aspects of medicine are cheap, and the industry as a whole is massively regulated with tons of waste and bullshit. But A) most of the expensive things are still things that people want, even if the marginal value per dollar is less than the basics (medicine is probably a luxury good, and B) I once again suspect that additional income would mostly not go toward having more children.
running water
Did the Romans have hot and cold running water, under pressure, in every house and apartment?
Now to the rest of this comment:
These things aren't that hard, I could literally do most of them on my own..
You may have these skills, but most people don't, and in any event doing them for an entire house is time consuming.
Probably the hardest part is to build the structure itself, but it is my understanding that the modern tech allows to do that really fast and cheap too... especially if you design a building once and mass produce it.
Sure, and many of the early Levittown suburbs were built this way, effectively on a production line. Why did we stop doing it? I would guess because once people could afford it, they wanted homes that were more custom, although I have no data here. Home construction is labor-intensive and thus subject to Baumol's cost disease.
The fact that a so-called "middle class" man often needs to work several years to buy a property that's barely suitable for a family with e.g. 3 children, is obscene by itself. On the other hand the construction industry is regulated to hell and back, not to mention their suppliers, which is the one and only real cause of high housing costs.
I agree that this situation is obscene, but it is absolutely not the only cause, unless you are including all of the restrictions on what you can build where (zoning, environmental review, parking minimums, etc.)
Why didn't they choose that back then, in such case?
I have no idea what you're asking. In 1800 most people had no choice.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
The website seems to have eaten my comment, so I'm going to be lazy and summarize a bit. Feel free to ask for more details.
Yes, for all of these categories, you could consume them at an 1800 level for relatively cheap (I could pedantically debate this, but I won't because I don't think the overall point is affected). However, we consume vastly more per person. We use more energy per person, for controlling the temperature of our buildings, for transportation, for shipping goods all over the world. We have more advanced medicine. Yes, some additional cost is artificial, but some of it is because people want things that didn't exist in 1800. Building the same building now is probably easier than in 1800, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about replacing a one-room log-and-thatch cabin with a multi-story structure with many rooms, electric wiring, plumbing, glass windows, etc.
And, even if it were legal to raise a child in 1800s conditions, most people would freely choose not to, I think. Of course, there's also no need to have 12 kids, since survival rates have improved (one of the effects of consuming more per child!). Overall, I don't think there's any confusion as to what people mean when they say that kids are expensive, or why this is the case.
How about neither?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=179Pg
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=179Pi
As far as major economic trends, nothing seems to have even changed when Trump was elected. These graphs show % change from 1 year prior, but they're easy to modify to show raw level or whatever else. I guess he was "lucky" in the sense of being elected after the recovery was well under way but even that seems like a stretch.
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