Noam Chomsky: Life Expectancy in the US Is Declining for a Reason | Hacker News Reader

Noam Chomsky: Life Expectancy in the US Is Declining for a Reason

truthout.org

74 pointstomerbd25 comments

> Half the population has negative net worth, meaning debts outweigh assets. There has been stagnation pretty much for the workforce over the whole neoliberal period. That’s the group that we’re talking about. Naturally, this leads to anger, resentment, desperation. Similar things are happening in Europe under the austerity programs. That’s the background for what’s misleadingly called “populism.”

The way Chomsky thinks (and expresses himself) is always fascinating. The linguistic background is as evident as his political activism, perhaps a tad uncomfortable for conformists.

> perhaps a tad uncomfortable for conformists

I hope you're not implying that conformists being uncomfortable with an argument somehow lends a weight to the validity of the argument.

No.

Part of the work of a linguist is to try understand why people use one term rather than another, often this happens because a word is associated with a particular idea rather than another: a different speech may imply a different acceptation or a different nuance.

These linguistic differences are obviously related to the set of beliefs, social habits, routines of the individual or set of people in analysis.

I simply believe that it can be extremely unnerving to be criticised by a linguist like Chomsky, who in this step uses his skills to highlight the imbalances and logical internal inconsistencies (the wrongful usage of the word "populism") of the neoliberal political thought to favour his worldview (political activism).

It's a critical point of view that's difficult to find in other figures, and one of the reasons why I follow his ideas, because whether you agree or not he offers another perspective.

It would be nice for him to stick to topics he's an expert in. Though considering he's a "word" guy, he does know how to manipulate language to achieve his goals.

I'd assume that for long time he's an expert in much more than linguistics. Even his colleagues from computer world still assume he's only a linguist, but a man can learn.

When you say he should stick to topics he is an expert in, do you have issue with something specific he’s saying or is it that this information conflicts with your personal beliefs or politics?

> "It would be nice for him to stick to topics he's an expert in" Well if everybody sticks to his/her own expertise that would mean the end of HN ... And I'm not even talking about twitter.

He´s the leading expert at this.

Interesting that the article barely covers the reason for the decline of life expectancy. Instead he goes on a very long tangent about the second amendment. Murder rates are continuing to decrease, so the murder rate has nothing to do with the decrease in life expectancy.

It could be as simple as overprescription of them and aggressive marketing and sales by manufacturers.

This article goes into the actual statistics which are impacting the life expectancy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-li...

Chomsky asserts (without evidence) that opioid abuse is a disease of despair and that it is a result of unemployment and the wealth gap. He doesnt provide any data or citations demonstrating this link.

It seems that it is more likely that opioids became over prescribed as a result of aggressive marketing and sales by pharmaceutical manufacturers. Ironically the factor protecting nonwhite communities from opioid addiction is the lack of health insurance to meet with doctors that can prescribe them.

This paper supports prescription as the possible underlying cause.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

<<Conclusions and Relevance The race/ethnicity and income pattern of opioid overdoses mirrored prescription rates, suggesting that differential exposure to opioids via the health care system may have induced the large, observed racial/ethnic gradient in the opioid epidemic. Across drug categories, controlled medications were much more likely to be prescribed to individuals living in majority-white areas. These discrepancies may have shielded nonwhite communities from the brunt of the prescription opioid epidemic but also represent disparities in treatment and access to all medications.>>

I guess Chomsky didn't point out the fact that opioid deaths fell last year for the first time in around 30 years. That actually dovetails with the idea that increased opportunity, low unemployment and improved wages helps.

Liberals have embraced capitalism leading to stagnation? I prefer Eric Weinstein's formulation of the root cause. There has been limited technological growth in almost all tech fields (except semi-conductors) from 1970 through present day. Physics, chemistry and biology for example are not producing new technology that fuels growth. The explosive growth in semi-conductors and computers have obscured this reality. We have greater knowledge in all those fields today, but it's not translating to the rate of tangible progress that was seen in previous years (like 1920-1970).

I think you don't actually disagree with Chomsky. This is what you'd expect (1) shifting resources from the public sector to the private sector and (2) financializing the economy because a corporation is by design oriented towards short-term profits and highly trained workers such as mathematicians and physicists are being tied up in finance.

The smartest people today are working on optimizing the number of ad clicks for Facebook and Google, or on optimizing profits on stock market manipulations for Goldman Sachs and the like.

A lot of talent is used not to create new value for society, but to optimize profits for rich people.

Why are business paying Google and Facebook for those ads?

> and highly trained workers such as mathematicians and physicists are being tied up in finance.

The problem in my observation (in Germany) rather is: I know quite some excellent mathematicians and physicists who would love to work somewhere else (even for less money etc.), but the only place where they found jobs was in finance.

Quite some great mathematicians and physicists that I know have/had lots of trouble finding jobs because they are/were rejected because they are "overqualified", "too specialized", "too academic" etc. Specifically the finance domain seems to be somewhat more open towards highly-intelligent applicants.

I understand it like you mean that mathematicians and physicists don't want to become entrepreneurs (i.e., create jobs for themselves) - they want keep their main professions, but in traditional workplaces they are overqualified, startups are few and far between, and finance offers much better (though still not outstanding) salaries than freelancing.

Interesting that finance turns out to be more flexible than traditional economy.

Quant finance is nakedly a battle of wit. The one with the smartest technical staff wins. So of course you go out and collect all the smartest people you can find, no matter what it costs.

Typical businesses are based on customer and partner relationships, acquisitions, deals, strategy, licensing, lawsuits, marketing, and business processes that can be executed reliably by interchangeable cogs. Any snowflake intellectual superstars they're interested in are for executive roles.

> So of course you go out and collect all the smartest people you can find, no matter what it costs.

Yes, but also: Why is there so much money in finance in the first place? This isn't just the way the world is. We consciously financialized our economies. Them being able to afford basically anything has everything to do with deregulation and an insanely low tax burden in that sector.

> Quant finance is nakedly a battle of wit.

I'm afraid it's also a battle of least ethics. Ethics can be considered in a broad sense here.

> I'm afraid it's also a battle of least ethics. Ethics can be considered in a broad sense here.

Ethics is something that not everybody is able to afford. If you believe that ethics is something important, you should consider where people who are really smart or have a marked moral sense are supposed to find jobs.

What Chomsky points to as a cause (wealth distribution) I might argue is an effect. Those few with the ability to do so, continue the growth while others are left behind. Eventually for the wealthy too the growth will stop. This leads to violence and large scale violence resets the wealth inequality (temporarily). Peace depends on continued real growth.

False: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3042915

I am not sure "false" is enough to understand your position. The paper you point to supports my point. Is that what you intended?

The shocking obesity epidemic?

I doubt Chomsky is the entire reason.

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