domain:open.substack.com
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
17hr ago
Same with indigenous Australians. Demand sharing from family and friends is speculated to have roots in hunter gatherer societies.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
17hr ago
Tolstoy had the following to say about the peak of the peasant work year.
The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one of Levin’s most painful days. It was the very busiest working time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor, such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense labor were not so simple.
To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn—all this seems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
Yeah, "there are 4 experts on this equipment in the world and none of them are US citizens and we need one of them for 4 weeks" is a problem which is not well addressed by my proposal (or by our current system).
In the current system they could theoretically come in on an O-1. In practice, the expertise may be too narrow to be legible to the US government.
Bartender_Venator
18hr ago
Oh yeah, certainly, sector-specific deflation is usually good, because it means that real productivity/quality gains are happening. It's generalized deflation which kills the economy, I believe, because it kills the availability of credit and the velocity of the money supply. Even if there's an increase in general productivity, the effects on the financial system would be extremely dire. But I'm not sold on AI causing deflation - if anything, if AI creates a strong deflationary pressure, then it makes sense for the government to print money to pay for debt/entitlements.
I think its more that about the Eternal September of international travel driven by price and accessibility. In the old times they were sending their best for work and tourism. Now, not so much.
/pol/ was making a lot of hay about Thailand and more recently Philippines allowing 'short term' visa free entry from India for example.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
18hr ago
Same reason there’s a lot of intransigence on politics and religion: it’s a moral issue. It’s also closely linked to questions of willpower and akrasia for a lot of people, which is a particularly touchy subject. “The only reason you want to promote food X is because it aligns with your sinful and gluttonous lifestyle. I on the other hand am able to control my baser impulses, which is why I walk the path of true righteousness and eat food Y.”
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
18hr ago
Yeah, "there are 4 experts on this equipment in the world and none of them are US citizens and we need one of them for 4 weeks" is a problem which is not well addressed by my proposal (or by our current system).
BahRamYou
18hr ago
Maybe. But they had plenty of vices back then too. Bootleg licquor, drugs like opium and barbiturates at pharmacies, and stds like syphalis. And, yes, since stay at home shut-ins and fat people. Somehow they found a use for all those people.
Supah_Schmendrick
18hr ago
anyone who would be addicted already is, and the only effect of keeping the drugs illegal is that criminals are in charge of selling and producing them instead of capitalists/entrepreneurs who are above the law, and that there will be less stuff that is spiked/laced because of regulations.
The cartels have a significant leg up on would-be legal operators; the cartels don't have to pay capital costs to create new production infrastructure. The cartels already have extant and significant distribution networks that new operations have to create from scratch. The cartels don't have to comply with the significant regulatory and tax burdens that legal operations have to comply with. This isn't to say that legal operations can't ever compete, just that it's not the lol capitalismzorz curbstomp that the legalization argument presumes.
Also, cartels already deal in legal products (just with a side of violence). Diesel fuel and avocados, are two significant examples. In fact, cartels need legitimate businesses in order to launder their drug proceeds and provide cover for the movement of product and purchase of materials for drug production/cultivation/processing.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
18hr ago
IIRC the reverse: "my factory in flyover country that needs real experts won't be able to compete with the coastal tech companies hiring entry-level JavaScript developers."
erwgv3g34
18hr ago
Same reason as cigarettes in prison. It fulfills all the criteria for money; nonperishable store of value, fungible, everyone uses it, solves the coincidence of wants problem, easy to transport, etc.
Laundry detergent, razor blades, and baby formula are the big three of ghetto currency.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
18hr ago
The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims. The Taliban succeeded not because of a belief in the afterlife, which is shared by all Afghans, but because they are an extremist brotherhood oriented around a moral ideal that they are constantly reinforcing to the exclusion of everything else literally all the time. The Bolsheviks had no belief in an afterlife, yet they completely defeated the Orthodox Christians who had such a belief. Same re the French revolutionaries. Did the Greeks and Romans lack courage in battle? Or the North Vietnamese, or the North Koreans? Or the Japanese — who fought more courageously than the Japanese? There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.
I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out. But instead of getting into the weeds with whether poverty is literally a mark of perfection, I’ll say that I know a lot of Christians and they all enjoy your typical American consumer activity and wasteful purchases. I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars. How is it that Warren Buffet lives more frugally than a major Catholic figure who sits in the front row at Papal visits? It can only be that they don’t genuinely believe in the rewards of heaven, which if believed would necessarily result in maximal charitable activity (certainly not mansions and luxury cars). At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.
This famously does happen, though
As a 1 in 200 million chance? It’s famously unusual.
cjet79
18hr ago
Ownership is a form of social technology. An old one for sure.
But I guess that means I could consider communist nations attempts at controlling technology levels at a national level. They failed due to outside competition and a breakdown in the fact that the social technology they tried to get rid of was a load bearing part of modern society.
roystgnr
18hr ago
American food is great.
It is if you look hard enough, it is, and you don't have to look too hard, but you have to admit that walking into a restaurant aimed at an American audience (so, including Asian and other ethnic cuisines) is a crapshoot in at least the "incorporating vegetables into their dishes" category. These days "bland, boiled mush" is rare, but "steamed, with butter and salt" might be the median and "your meat and starch comes with so few veggies they're practically just a garnish" is way more common than it should be.
H-E-B is the best grocery store I have ever been in, anywhere in the world,
Have you been to Central Market? That upscale subsidiary is the H-E-B of H-E-Bs (except that ordinary H-E-B stores somehow accomplish high quality without high prices, while Central Market ... does not). When their grandmother last visited and wanted to spoil my kids, my son lobbied for (and got) a grocery shopping trip there, I guess on the theory that he had enough entertainment to last until Christmas but who knows when he'd next get let loose in an aisle with four or five hundred (not hyperbole) different kinds of gourmet cheese.
and their produce is fantastic.
You do still want to get there early and shop in person for the best selection. I usually order online for pickup, and that's still great for most fruits and veggies, but there are a few (fresh okra!) that are a crapshoot unless you pick your own.
H-E-B is also decent with charity and famous for disaster relief efforts. "Better than the government of Texas" isn't as high a bar as it should be in that case, admittedly, but it's still impressive that they clear it.
Spookykou
18hr ago
It doesn't need any difference between the labor pools. America has 1000 great workers (toy example), India has 3 times the population, same quality labor pool, so they have 3000 great workers (TOY EXAMPLE), then, assuming America can actually find a need for, say, 2000 great workers, then the only way we could fill those jobs is by importing great workers.
I don't agree with this and think the high-skill immigration argument is 99% fake, but the argument works even if the labor pools are exactly the same.
They even work if the labor pools are very different and the foreign country is way worse. Say the top 10% of American workers is the same as the top 1% of Indian workers, the US is still operating with a fundamentally limited pool of around 20 million top 10% workers, if we need/want more than that, we can import them from the 9 million top 1% of Indian workers.
bonsaii
18hr ago
and even then the person expressing it was visiting Illinois or something.
I mean, sure, you can get some authentic, quality food in NYC or LA where there's enough of a market for them to import key ingredients directly, but the vast majority of America doesn't have these options. Illinois is far closer to a central example of the American dining experience.
it is the exact same food, prepared the same way.
I'll have to disagree here. I don't know the exact reasons (dilution of expertise, ingredient quality, market forces of a primarily American palate), but flavors and textures are noticeably worse in the US. I've spent a decent chunk of time in multiple American metro areas that claim to have top-tier food scenes (by American standards). Outside of NYC/LA, it is a rarity for me to encounter a restaurant that would surpass median standards in their country of origin. The quality distribution is so heavily left shifted.
What would happen if we legalized every drug out there? The argument is that anyone who would take such drugs, is already taking it despite it being illegal
I keep seeing people bring up Portugal when talking about policies like this. I admit I don't know anything about Portugal. But I will say that I am fairly unconvinced by these proposals that legalizing something will not affect uptake at all.
A lot of gun rights supporters say "An armed society is a polite society." I think the more obvious "legalizing thing makes thing more common" is trivially true. Guns are legal in America. This has led to lots of people buying guns. This has also led to gun violence statistics going insanely high compared to countries where there are no guns. It's led to increased gun suicides, it's led to increased gun thefts, it's led to increased negligent discharges, and (on a more positive note) it's led to more self-defense with guns. But I would have to see a lot of evidence to tell me that there is less violence in America than there would be if there were no guns.
Ditto for weed. A lot of people already smoked weed before it was legalized. In my state, it's legal now, and no surprises, weed seems a lot more common. I can't tell you any statistics, but there are a lot of people really open about smoking weed and outright tell me they smoke up every day after work. I don't think it's controversial to say that the lifting of punishment for doing a thing leads to more uptake of doing the thing. You've just removed one of the reasons some people never took up the thing.
We also see the same dynamic working in reverse with tobacco, I think. I get the idea that a lot of people my age who smoke started when they were like, 12. There will always be cases like that, probably. But smoking uptake has decreased quite a bit among the youth now that everyone around them looks down on cigarettes for smelling bad and being bad for you. Bans on selling nicotine to under 21 helped with that. Putting all kinds of restrictions on cigarette companies, forcing them to display warnings everywhere, helped with that. Taxing the living shit out of nicotine helped with that. Being hostile to this drug helps reduce uptake.
Legalizing something is the opposite of being hostile. You might be right, uptake might not increase by that much. But it will almost certainly increase, and it will HURT to lose relatives to this shit and think to yourself "gee, the government WANTS people to get addicted to drugs that make them rob their families and kill themselves. They made it legal and started taxing it." I worked in a gas station once and witnessed this 60 year old grandma on oxygen buy two bottles of vodka every time I saw her, her hands shaking, more and more, every time I saw her. Totally legal, and I had no choice but to sell her the stuff that was killing her. I hated her for making me do it to her, and for being so weak that she let it be done to herself.
I don't think Americans should be sacrificed to help people who aren't in America.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
18hr ago
Around here it seems to be laundry detergent for some reason. Don't ask me why, but every store has Tide locked up so that you have to get an employee to get it out for you.
lurker
18hr ago
What the heck is your definition of healthy????? Do you just think that being "trendy" means it's better in health and taste?
It's always strange when I meet people like this. Theres a certain kind of person that fixates on a particular diet and reasons about how healthy food is by how closely it follows their chosen diet. It's hard for me to get into the head of people who are just completely immune to any actual examination of the outcomes of various diets and insists their diet is healthy. Someone downthread points out OPs supposedly healthier national diets have significantly worse outcomes than the supposedly unhealthy japanese diet and OP basically ignores it. I do know people like this IRL but they're all boomers probably basing their ideas off a debunked paper that was widely reported in the 70s or something. People have some utterly bizarre ideas about what food is healthy and I don't understand why theres so much intransience on this particular topic.
Jiro
18hr ago
Making things easier to do has huge effects on the addiction rate. "Anyone who would be addicted already is" turned out not to be true of Internet-based gambling.
Spookykou
18hr ago
I thought that the hard working life of peasants was a bit overblown, that they would take long breaks, day drink, and get about half the year off. Based of vague half remembered scholarship, maybe Juliet Schor?
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
18hr ago
I used to think this but have realized it's only if you legalize it to the extent that the market economy can compete even after the cost of licenses/legal compliance. Afaik there's still no center pivots of weed growing selling weed by the bale. There's no capital markets that allow massive economies of scale so Walmart can crush prices on distribution and sale.
There's still a little room for illegal moonshine to compete on cost but for 99% of the market, Diageo or one of their competitors is preferred. That's not true for weed markets because there's no way for weed economy to be in the bank system and the liscenses and taxes leave too much room for illegal distribution.
Spookykou
19hr ago
I wonder with life satisfaction if the USA might be weird in terms of age cohorts, where old people are happy and young people are unhappy. A young person in another country with a more even distribution might then find that their fellow young people seem more satisfied. Total speculation on my part though.
I think this is a good place to leave this discussion. If liberty is an idea so sacrosanct that it can’t be discussed in a meaningful relationship to the rest of the world in all its friction, I see little utility to it in any sense. Someone can hug the idea to them if they like, but it’s not for me; nor do most people care about it in that way.
If you don’t want to read in greater detail the information I want to present to you and simply dismiss it out of hand, that’s fine. The data itself is about “perceptions,” not how you may feel about the idea in private abstract.
It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.
I didn’t say it’s an assumption that the US is the most wealthy country in the world. I said the assumption lies with thinking that that’s an important barometer for gauging liberty. Which I reject. 10 fish in a bucket is quantitatively the same thing as 1 fish in 10 buckets. The latter is a ‘wealthier’ society measured by its health as a whole, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Conservatism includes a “place” for personal liberty in the lives of ordinary individuals. I completely buy that premise and reject any one of them that postulates the totalitarianism of liberty over anything of equal or greater importance.
yeschad.jpg
Although I have no idea what they are doing at night that would so disrupt their sleep, light is expensive.
Edit - I guess threshing, shouldn't skim so much.
More options
Context Copy link