1,506 karma · joined June 8, 2023
I would also introduce the concept of culture – if the economic indicators seem fine, but the culture is becoming balkanized and sectarian, then I would argue you still have a problem driven by quantity and or pace of immigration.
You’re making an assumption that immigration lead leads to a better economy, ignoring the possibility of more competition for jobs, lead leading to less power and wages for workers.
Furthermore, it’s deeply disingenuous to suggest that inconsiderate people only exist on the upper end of the income distribution. Assholes who want to take over and control others are found at every income level. If you want to keep your country from descending into Marxist dystopia then making fuck you money a requirement for immigration is not a terrible idea.
Some of us find production and optimization more interesting than marketing and distribution.
Instead, the claim is more limited - that even in times of shortage if you want to make sure that the item in question is still available, raising the price will accomplish two things: it will encourage marginal production and discouraged marginal consumption.
Without prices, the only mechanism you would have to accomplish the same effect, would be a political decision about who did or not deserve to have hard bread, while you work out the production issue.
In both systems, you’re doing rationing, just by different means.
Whether under capitalism or collectivism the way you solve a shortage is always the same - you produce enough for everyone who wants the thing.
The difference is the presence for absence of the feedback mechanisms like prices. The problem with collectivism is that once you get rid of prices, there is no explicit feedback mechanism. There may be implicit mechanisms such as a waitlist, but ultimately the decision to increase production is turned into a political decision. I doubt many people care if production decisions about hard bread are made by politicians or business people, but in more consequential areas, such as housing, we have a century of experience of what happens in production decisions are collectivized and politicized. (it is illegal to increase the national stock of interior residential floor space by even one square foot without prior political approval, I.e. rezoning, variances, etc.)
How do you know that you aren’t doing the same thing?
> Based on an agentic market research campaign, we vibe coded an app called GutCheck, a bathroom diary for people with IBS. We chose this app for its minimal yet helpful functionality: an iOS app live on the App Store with the RevenueCat MCP and App Store Connect CLI. Saul has full write access to the codebase. We set up the App Store account permissions beforehand to ensure Saul wouldn’t get blocked by Apple human compliance checks. We sourced this idea from Reddit.
- when what generates the power changes the landscape they can see, many people get upset, however irrationally
- many people are emotionally attached to lifestyle objects that use fossil fuels, i.e. cars, boats, planes, etc
- even where there are good options, most people are not willing to spend one extra penny
- even when there are options that cost less (i.e. bicycles, walking) humans spend a lot of their energy thinking about status and struggle to voluntarily choose things that they fear might result in a loss of status
- even if you solve all that, collective action problems are a named thing for a reason - they are hard and don't necessarily have obvious answers.
My point is not that everything is hopeless, but that OP who said "Have we ever as a species successfully changed our behavior on a scale..." has a point that we will have to grapple with if we want to actually change stuff. Wishing human nature away doesn't actually solve anything.
Actual headline is "Donald Trump jokes about 2028 re-election bid".
Given the submitter's comment & submission history, we have to consider this an attempt at disinformation. A poor attempt, to be clear, but an attempt nonetheless.
You comment presumes that either the posted article or the comments are doing in any informing. I contend that neither do, they are both simply writing prompts for partisans.
Your comment also presumes that the entire earth is not already saturated in Israel v Palestine content. You not getting your desired outcome is not evidence that people are uninformed.
Whether they are or are not, you are also sidestepping an even more important question - why must all internet sites cover all topics? There's nothing wrong with any site making clear what topics they want to focus on. HN and it's users have made it clear they prefer to focus on tech and there are literally 70 million other places you can go to fight over Israel & Palestine. If that's your thing, have at it, you don't need to do it here.
In fact, I would argue that both HN and Israel v Palestine fight sites would be better for it. If all sites are for all issues then all sites just devolve to the same slop. If sites can focus, they develop their own unique community. The attempt to invade such spaces and force them to have the discussions you want them to have is just colonialism by another name.
Because individual HN users do the flagging and many are tired of the inevitable and pointless Israel v Palestine proxy comment war that predictably erupts on any topic related to the Middle East.
What do we do when people disagree about the intent behind a word?
Who decides what is antisocial?
What do we do when people disagree about what is antisocial?
I don't believe there are neat clean answers to any of these. The closest we'll get will involve mutual respect, assumption of good faith, and dialogue. We can't have any of that if our starting point is, "I believe your words are secretly not what you say they are" or "I will hold you responsible for anything bad that anyone does that might be tenuously connected to your words"
Citation needed.
The idea that most statements contain hidden meanings or only serve to cover up hidden motivations suggests an incredible level of paranoia.
I would posit the opposite - when people say things you can & should generally take them at face value. Sometimes people will disappoint you some of the time. Some people will do it so often that you would do well to discount their future statements. If you find yourself believing that anyone who doesn't share your opinions & values is secretly a facist/nazi, carefully curating their public image until it's time to strike, then you should really consider finding some grass and touching it.
Creating an intellectual culture where all political ideas you disagree with can be construed as X-ist... not so much.
If you are judged not on your actions but on the actions others may take due to words they heard from someone who heard them from someone who heard them from you, then we might as well close up shop.
The responsibility for actions remains with the people who those actions.
The exceptions we have traditionally made, "You can't shout 'fire!' in a crowded theatre" same quite reasonable next to, "You cant discuss the sexual dimorphism of humans because someone somewhere might feel bad about themselves"
There’s a strong case to be made, that if there’s any ideas that should be considered heretical it’s ideas like that. On this, I think you’d find broad agreement.
However in the current orthodoxy, politely declining to agree that men can be women, to cite one example, is treated as literal genocide.
If we are allowed to paint all ideas we disagree with as literal genocide, then not only have we destroyed the meaning of the word genocide, but it’s not really possible to discuss ideas anymore.
But the article isn’t about people not wanting to be polite, it’s about perfectly polite people being told that some ideas are off limits in all context of life except sitting alone in a dark room with your thoughts. And of course, there are some ideas so extreme that they do belong there and do belong in the ranks of heresy, but the current mania has expanded this category rather generously.
I am familiar with the 737 MAX critique and I'm very comfortable saying that Boeing was sloppy and cut corners. I just don't think the decisions they faced and failed on are new. 300 years ago someone built someone a ship and cheaped out in some way and it sank. Call it cheating/lying/scamming if you like, but the word "financialization" does not help anyone understand what's going on.
"Financialization" is a 7 syllable word with no definition.
There is nothing about how Boeing builds & sells planes today that is qualitatively different than how they did it 50 years ago. Yes I am familiar with the concern that engineers hold less sway than previously and I agree this is a concern. I would not be shocked to discover that it's true. But this is not a new thing.
People who sell a thing, be they multinational airline manufactures, or a kid selling lemonade, have been able to profit by lying or skimping on quality since the dawn of time.
If your concern is that Boeing will skimp on quality & safety, then say that, instead of a buzz word like "financialization"
I have no idea where you came across the word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's some new concept/activity that started in the 1970's. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that money = financialization or "number go up" = financialization, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with money as one of the tools we use to organize society.
As long as it's free for individuals to pollute, we are going to demand polluting products & services without regard for the environment.
The solution is to price externalities, but your fellow citizens will vote out anyone who suggests those cuz they like polluting for free.
Collectivism will fare no better unless it's a dictatorship (which they all devolve to eventually, but putting that aside...) After the people's revolution they will demand the right to unlimited driving for $0 and stage a revolt should the vanguard elite suggest that unlimited driving for $0 might not be good thing.
The decision by either would face the same trade off - an increase in costs that their customers/patrons may not care about or be willing to pay for.
The answer for both is the same - price externalities so that the decision to pollute less is economic rather than moral.
To be clear, I think you’ve got the right direction – free stuff for humans up to a point and then market rate for everyone/everything after that. I just think it’s silly to pretend that companies are polluting for shits and giggles. They’re polluting for us.
I think that pricing pollution is the right way to go, I just know that the outcome isn’t going to be some magical world where companies pay for pollution but consumer don’t. The only way it works is that the costs get passed on and the consumer pays.