cadlin

Just because that's true for you doesn't mean it is for everyone. If an institution I'm associated with or deal with regularly is doing/has done something unethical, I have no problem with people inconveniencing me to raise awareness of that. I would rather support justice rather than convenience.

It's not like MIT has apologized for this, either.

>As it has been historically, this will almost certainly be due to a combination of a losing war, the rapid economic decline of national economies during a losing war, and finally terrible civil unrest and something like revolution.

Not trying to be argumentative, but what historical hegemonies do you have in mind that have crumbled like this?

I think it mostly comes down to countries that were part of the Soviet bloc vs those that weren't.

The graph in the post indicates that unemployment in all sectors went up after the financial crash, some were just hit by it more than others. Specifically, those who worked in construction suffered the worst from a collapse in real estate.

Also, that jobs that require "worthless" college degrees and/or oversaturated professional degrees (e.g. law grads) still have more job security than those with little to no post-secondary education.

It would be interesting to see a similar graph-by-occupation when the dot-com bubble burst. Would you see the exact opposite trend?

Ford received a loan that was an order of magnitude larger than what Tesla received. You're arguing from your biases and not from facts.

>"too many liberal arts degrees and too few agribusiness BAs"

This is a silly meme. If you look at government data on college degrees (which only goes up to 2004 as far as I can tell), humanities aren't over-represented at all, but account for between 8 and 12 percent of Bachelor degrees awarded[1]. That's History, English, Philosophy, etc. combined[2].

It would be more accurate to say that more people in business should focus on agribusiness instead of finance, or that social science majors should switch to agribusiness[2].

And the percentage of humanity degrees awarded is lower than it was forty years ago, and has been trending down for most of that forty years[3].

Finally, it's rather odd that the author would write that, considering he has both an undergraduate degree and graduate degree in the classics, of all things[4].

[1] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[2] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[3] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[4]http://www.victorhanson.com/Author/index.html

>Since we provide police protection to unemployed people, should that also mean we provide them ponies? What are the limits of this argument you're attempting to make regarding "providing unemployed people things for free since they get police protection"?

You never answered the question about providing police protection. Instead you changed the subject.

Any system of decision making is arbitrary at some point. "Letting the market decide" is no different, it just absolves society from culpability of life outcomes. In many ways, it's not that different from people who claim things happen because of "God's will."

And one of the benefits of democratic government is that society gets to answer these questions. You can see the very different solutions countries like Denmark and the US have come to (and Denmark has done more for unemployed people than the US has without resorting to giving them ponies).

>You're assuming that it's humane to teach people to not be self-sufficient. I would argue that the cycle of dependency created by not incentivizing people to get up and go work for a living every day is inhumane. Often, it is done by politicians who benefit from the perpetuation of that cycle for reasons of maintaining their power base.

This is a straw man argument. There is incentive for people to get up and go work for a living. Denmark has an unemployment rate is 6%, and their welfare state is far, far more generous than that of the US. I would suggest your anger at unemployment benefits is misdirected.

I think the article is alluding to the fact that charging users gives a business an incentive to milk those users.

It's similar to the debate about customer support as an avenue for sales or as an expense. The business's incentive is to provide the worst customer support it can without making users drop the service.

Another example would be video games and DLC. Companies can wall off features that should be "in the game" and force their customers to pay extra for it.

I don't necessarily buy his argument, but it's not entirely black and white.

This:

>I am not arguing with you about these claims. I am just going on what you say to me. The combination of those claims LOGICALLY ENTAILS that unemployment, being driven by weak demand in every sector, and NOT just by weak demand for certain skills in specific sectors, MUST be driven by weak demand for labor overall, across sectors;

Does not entail this:

>in other words, every single sector does not need any more labor of any kind.

If there is weak demand for labor overall, then there will be a weak demand for labor, not zero demand. Additionally, labor does not follow normal supply and demand models, and if you're not aware of the evidence for this I'd suggest you read an economics textbook.

Your argument is similar to that of people saying that because North Dakota has low unemployment due to its energy boom, a massive energy boom would cure unemployment. But North Dakota's energy boom only has such a visible effect because of the state's small population; Pennsylvania has added a similar number of jobs and it has barely changed the unemployment rates, as the the state has a much larger overall population.

Likewise lack of skilled employees in, e.g. the technology sector does not necessarily indicate unemployment is caused by structural shifts in unemployment, unless the tech industry is looking for millions of new employees and can't find them.

Between December 2007 and October 2008 the unemployment rate doubled. It seems far more likely that the United States hasn't yet recovered from the financial crash rather than experiencing an unprecedented shift in its economy at exactly the same time.

Unemployment didn't slowly rise during the boom times, it spiked because of a financial crash and has been slowly declining since. Any claims of a structural shift require extraordinary evidence, and all you've provided are non-sequiturs.

The author of that blog (or one of them anyway), is Tao Lin, and he's a notorious writer/hipster troll. His posts are a satire of a very narrow slice of said subculture, and are worthless if you're not part of it or not interested in learning about it. Honestly, HN would be about the last place on the internet I'd expect to find a link to HRO.

He is a more annoying, hipster version of Penny Arcade.

It's nice that you question his personal experience because if it's something you haven't heard of, then it obviously must be both bullshit and a consequence of poor parenting.

A little digging on the internet (curiosity over blithe ignorance, oh no!) would return this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome

And guess what? Cooking produce probably does help him because it denatures the proteins present in the food. Your post is nothing besides internet tough guy posturing, which I do find entertaining, if a bit annoying.

The more you know!