modo_mario

I disagree but a major factor is attraction and incentives. Last year i was dating and could fill every day with a date. Keeping an initial convo that was personal but keeping it short hit the sweetspot and it was remarkable how little friction there was. This was most pronounced with one specific app though.

few years prior to that i was also in the dating game and it was a world of difference. Not only did i have notably fewer matches those same matches were very difficult to translate into real world contact. it really felt like i was both less appealing and was also fighting the apps trying to keep me in their pool of potential payers.

Part of this can be attributed to me changing but part of this also to the incentives of the apps. If you could keep people matched up mostly within their bounds of non superficialy visible compatibility (life goals, kids, desired living location, etc) and also within their league as far as attractiveness goes to put it crudely (Don't have to be scanning faces the behaviour of the other sex does give these algorithms the required clues so good profiles do have an advantage) with no incentives to keep people in the cycle....

Then I think people would be remarkably quick to go out. Much of it can be boiled down to quantity and the same goes for active dates.

And if nobody has a moat the current valuations and costs are not going to be justifiable in the slightest.

>There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.

That was exactly what govs did here in western europe for our mines (to strikebreak) and what they do for harbour workers and few other industries still. It also incidentally makes up most of the migrants coming in even if they aren't technically imported. Sufficient open doors, incentives and looking the other way to form the expectation of likely settlement ends up amounting to the same though.

>The "yield" from crying babies is not 100%. Some will die before their productive years, some will succumb to disabilities, addictions, delinquency, or simply choose not to study and work. Importing an immigrant cuts away all that "shrinkage", at zero cost to the receiving country (their country of birth bore that cost). It's such a good deal it's a no brainer, basically like planting a tree that grows money. Not to mention it's immediate. Crying babies have a 18-22 year lag time.

I can only feel utter disgust at that kind of rethoric. The idea that a state works for it's citizens and a nationstate advances it's nation(s) is anathema replaced with treating people like fungibles economic tokens.

It also doesn't hold up since the lifetime contribution of your average non-eu migrant ends up negative in more expansive studies. (With extreme variance between origins.)

What's next? Are we going to have shortsighted economists pushing citizens to emigrate again when they don't fill their desired economic roles (like the UK did during windrush times) and replace from abroad to maximise their average economic output?

>Neither the US nor European countries have been "homogenous" for centuries.

Europe has been rather damn homogenous. The attempts to reframe that by putting a magnifying glass on the exceptions just end up standing out and sometimes being weird. It's also only ever people from more diverse cities who seem to think differently. Here in Belgium a rather damn urbanised country now i can get you a municipal census list from 300 years ago that just happens to feature almost all the same family names that i went to school with. This same census yields very different results if you go more west. One kid on that school was and looked african among hundreds. It is not the same today. At the next school i went to there were only 2 Russian kids and my generation already saw manifold more of this long distance migration than there once was. On the other hand in the bigger cities such as the capital there was more diversity but even there in living memory different parts still had different dialects tied into socioeconomics. Today it speaks mostly a different language, has different ethnic zones and belgians make up 20% or less of the population. Turns out this changes how people see it's funding.

yes there's exceptions in the balkans and among other ethnic borders but many people today wouldn't even call that diverse. Disregarding exceptions the average working class people were not quite as mobile. 32andme and the like would have been out of business from the start if that weren't the case. My grandmother cried when she took 2 busses for her first job. It was such a shocking distance to her and everyone she knew down her family line had been farmers in that area. She can also still describe ever old person in the wider area if not trough name then trough very extended family ties. We didn't have the language unifying drive of france and the netherlands so their dialects are all very very local.

The US has always been much more diverse and the people more mobile from my understanding but it's not like it did not have major demographic shifts either in places like new york.

>The underclass always existed, especially in the US.

There was an underclass but when there's no sectarianism and everyone essentially self identifies as the same "tribe" i dare say it's easier to tackle. From easier unionisation to no influx of distinct people without little generational wealth earning less on average and doing less attractive jobs by design. The US and anglo world in general actually do better on this front. Trough distance and other factors they attract wealthier, more educated and less religious migrants who more easily assimilate in a larger cultural sphere and in the case of the US can't really lean on a social safety net. Comparatively here there's muti generational issues.

>Have you, by any chance, fallen for the "great replacement" BS that is constantly being peddled by the far-right and Russia? Because your entire argument reads just like it.

What? I can see, have a memory and there's plenty of demographic data?

Hell the original comment that got my one line response is particularly contrasting: Most of our new cars are SUV's and crossovers now. There's now a more easily visible demographic difference in who uses which mode of transportation. (we have a company car system so incentivise car use for the upper middle class too whilst the poor can get cheaper or free public transport) It should be no suprise then that public transport is very gradually getting less coverage as it's being defunded whilst there's an entire growing issue with violence towards personel. Whilst gated communities are indeed not a thing i'd dispute that we don't have an equivalent among the richest. Go to Knokke or the south of Brussels,etc

>Come to Europe.

I find increasing evidence that we're heading the same way as migration is used in a way that creates an underclass and the previously homogenous high trust society dismantles ever so slowly as resource constraints (graying of the population) puts pressure.

>Again as mentioned above I'd strongly recommend using an LLM to search for some info from this era. These systems were all considered extremely addictive.

Which is so relative it's meaningless. Cigarettes are also extremely addictive but i'm not about to compare it to TV

>I'm certain it increases addiction

Then what's the discussion about? Companies incentivised and given the technological means to create a more addictive product create a more addictive product. Don't tell me it's by hapenstance or that it's just an insconsequential increase on an addictive baseline when the difference is so easily noticed and the things only wielding the addictive baseline are comparatively abandoned if not for societal innertia.

>I also don't think TikTok really 'won' because of their algorithm. Facebook is now for parents and grandparents,

There I think it's actually both. It's both the new things away from the old and the algorithm was actually good whilst youtube's was garbage in comparison. There were other contenders and ones that died (vine) so i think their execution was also part of it. For all the outrage about slop, dances and dangerous and short form addictive content if the tiktok algorithm detected you liked ....let's say science and gardening videos in medium to long form it would give you exactly that and would only deviate enough (unless you searched on went on your own tangent) to see if your prefrences deviated but in a way that wouldnt be bothersome. In the meantime youtube was putting the same recommended unappealing vids among others in the sidebar for more than a year straight. It had all the annoying incentives that led to clickbait titles, thumbnails, intros, fillers. I deleted tiktok because i have an addictive personality and it was too good at giving me both that dopamine fix and what i actually wanted in the moment. Oh and as a 3rd factor it had less and less intrusive ads.

>Having lived through it, participated in it, and being able to personally contrast people then and now. It's not particularly different, outside of the fact that in the past you had 0.1% of people (if that) using these services, whereas now you have the majority of humanity doing so, so all that's really changed is scale.

Having lived trough all the same i'd say the exact opposite and i'd even add that phones add a constant presence element that is a differernt factor but still i'd say theres a very noticable difference.

And if we look past our own experiences the reason why is fairly straightforward. The whole point of the algorithm is to make it more addictive. All those companies would not spend their time and effort on it otherwise if it did not help on this front. And the fact that they spent quite a lot of research on it and make it quite intricate with lots of computation involved and the fact that it is quoted plenty as the reason for new players such as tiktok coming to prominence should tell you it's a quite impactfull one.

>When you personalize by algorithm, it's an implicit fine-grained choice by the individual

I'd argue it's not so much a choice by the individual in that the individual often isn't consciously aware and may actually choose to use the same thing without the algorithm that pushes them towards things such as bubbles if that were even a clearly presented option.

Indeed tho we of course also have rare examples of what happens when someone does stab someone which keeps the memory fresh and spain did get the state department and USTR pressure in the past, sweden nearly ended up on the 301 Watchlist. The cia did both use foreign/multinational media for it's goals and defended it's interests, etc

It never gets to that in countries already deeply aligned.

They all agree on this because it will be a hidden sticking point for some others, If that's not an impediment some lobyists will make it so. If that doesn't work us ambassadors, state departments and/or USTR will pressure or even put you on a trade watchlist. If that doesn't work some 3 letter agency folks will land on a domestic airfield and have some talks. If that doesn't work some media might peculiarly shift it's tone. etc

How are you quantifying it?

This is like saying short form content scrolling apps are adictive but it's just the same as TV back in the day. Yeah there were studies on TV addiction. Yeah it was a discussed topic. No they're not equally addictive. It's not even close.

>The idea that you could have brewers trying to pay for everything in beer doesn't resemble anything that did or could have happened.

Why not? Tho i suggest only within small communities which made up a larger share of human life at some point and trade beyond them over larger distances would more often be facilitated by certain nonperishable and not too bulky comodities. We have plenty of evidence for such bartering trade even when currency was already more common. (salt for pelts, etc)

Salt was similarly used as a currency. It didn't expire, could be weighed, had inherent value in it's role for food preservation, etc

Typically that was not the case as far as I'm aware. It's why the black plague gave them so much leverage. They could go to a different lord.

But often the land belonged to the lords or at least they could take it within their region at their pleasing. There were not that much "neutral locations". That wilderness was common land or hunting grounds belonging to someone.

They did not limit migration across the board. Those losing firms compete for workers with non losing firms.

>But settling in that particular country, makes it seem like he didn't do it from pureness of his heart.

It was not the original intent from what i understand.

But also, what country could protect him from the US other than Russia or China and wouldn't hand him over?

>Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame.

Obviously yes. Your effort to equate the ability to scale down of billionaires to people who struggle to afford a shoebox appartment and lifesaving procedures if they were to fall ill is ghoulish. "

A lot of those a bit above the minimum do indeed spend more on what were historically luxuries because those luxuries now cost a fraction of their historical price whilst housing and such has typically gotten more expensive.

>That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living".

It is not in any way shape or form the same because billionaires can go lower.

> it is not the "minimum".

The alternative is no housing (or often moving in with parents) so i'd argue it is. i'll remind you that a tent on the sidewalk isn't exactly legal everywhere.

>A lack of originality can make things boring. Don't let your personal choices get in the way of objectively analyzing things.

It can but originality is not the end of aesthetics. What's more the modernist architecture is globalised so the "unique" building's style gets recreated and seen in every single corner of the world where they all try to be avant garde in the exact same ways. There's no vernacular architecture elements anymore which give a sense of place. Not even much of ones that make sense due to origin in environmental factors such as rain/snow in the nordics or heat in gulfstates.

>You can't honestly say the modern building I linked above lacks originality. How many other buildings have anodized scales on the outside which change colors based on the lighting?

I'll plainly say it. It lacks originality. I'd rather it have a painting on it than a trying to be the equivalent of a shiny TCG card the novelty of which will wear of very quick.

Depends on the era and place. Very old farm houses generally had low ceilings but hey, the people were shorter and you cooked under an open chimney so better have a small space to heat.

Later classic buildings especially in cities had higher ceilings and consequentially a more roomy vibe than modern residential buildings.

There are some rules to classical architecture styles regarding windows and window size going upwards that the ones on the right do follow more.

It's not even always cheaper. https://youtu.be/y5w4REl_Few

Often not even that. There's loads of examples of ornamental classical construction being cheaper or the same price than modernist equivalent with even smaller floorspace and that's without economies of scale for a lot of that ornamentation.

Hell the Sears Roebuck houses someone else mentioned had a lot more ornamentation than your average new built

There's also the issue that the names they're actually disproportionally told and taught about are people who "innovated". Who pushed a marginally new style.

It becomes change and following avant garde for the sake of it and a group of people trying to be different in all the same boring ways.

> but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes

Not american but I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing is proportionally more expensive and the price inflexible because smaller or shitier quite frankly doens't exist or is illegal.

>I can't argue on specifics because you only mention a "set of opinions",

I kept it broad since it applies broadly. Region specific separatism and struggles for self determination, migration, covid response, etc I have piles of experiences so think this discussion is better had with some wide framing which is hard to do candidly over text without writing a book (and putting out too much personal info for more eyes) but I'd love to hop on a call some time if you'd like. I find that it also makes people more receptive to eachothers points and ideas if they see/hear a living breathing human with often similar fundamentals.

> but have you entertained the idea that some opinions held by someone who doesn't necessarily identify as bigoted/hateful/illwilling can still be weaponized as such?

I agree but i don't consider this a onesided thing. In fact it becomes very evident when essentially the same positions are firmly branded left wing or right wing depending on the country and context.

>Personally I think very few of them were racists or fascists, but yet their votes were what led to "Nazi Germany".

I agree and not only were they as human as you and me and shaped and misled by their circumstances I think this kind of stuff applies much more broadly than this popular extreme pivotal point around which a lot of western viewpoints revolve. From a consequentialist perspective it's remarkably common to see people actively pushing towards outcomes they don't want or towards extremes they don't quite support trough nothing but innapropriate tying togheter of ideas or the power of words.

> that "woke" people are rightfully upset by this.

On some fronts they are. On others I've found that people weren't exactly pulled towards their respective (extreme) political bubble. They were shoved towards it by people who consider themselves very righteous and on occasion would "prefer a pagan to a heretic" or by reality not bending towards pure expectations and kneejerk reactions when faced with that.

>Could you elaborate on this disproportionality?

It's disproportional in that it's more than the swedish would want to give since they'd rather invest it domestically (in energy production and those prices).

>By the same token, we should stop exporting fish and oil – that'd be sure to lower the price of both commodities domestically.

It would and I suspect you might take issue if your consumer prices were relatively higher and you were told you could not build a sovereign wealth fund to the same extent and should instead give much of that money so the eu can build bigger pipelines so germanies prices can remain relatively low.

If you have a set of opinions and people who vehemently oppose them start pushing a bandwagon where they twist your words to make them sound more extreme and typify them with the worst descriptors they can think of (nazi, antivaxer, etc) , spread all this around and then call for boycots of you and anyone that associates with you what would you call that?

I disagree with some of his views but can see it across the board. One doesn't have to agree with him or others to take note and this doesn't affect only some well known rich people. It's far more pervasive and from my perspective it is pushing self-censorship and conformity under a pervasive reputation economy. That is social cooling and it's often done purposefully.

Once one of your oppinions sticks out and bumps into this wall it becomes very easy to see how often it actually applies. How falling too much out of line on one front creates all kinds of connected assumptions about anything else you might say. From there it is easily visible how it pushes a lot of people to political fringes (helped by the social media bubbles) and has other consequences.

>so we do indeed get something for the export

It appears to be higher electricity prices whilst the compensation given doesn't adequately match and goes disproportionally to what's essentially a middleman.

Is it then not better for the population to essentially reward it's investment in energy production and keep prices low domestically?

Nowhere did I write I don't give a shit about this. I said I don't give a shit about attempts to force social cooling anymore. Your reading comprehension is lacking.

>I think caution re cultural integration.... are two different things.

I was called similar for much milder views and past caution. I stood by in discussion further in the past when people got attacked in that way lest id be perceived badly and out of line with my ohter progressive views. No caution was had. Now it's too late. You can't reasonably wish to undo most of it. (Denaturalising people who are abusing or comiting crime is not that) I honestly see my culture as a dead one down the line. All so we could supress wages and pretend to hold up a pyramid scheme whilst doing some social signaling.

That doesn't mean i should forget, forgive myself and others and go along. I've developed a strong dislike for the social cooling that got us there in conflict with the opinions of the majority of the public. I no longer want to be overly nuanced and I am more than able to remember and throw back every past claim and defense regarding all this i read countless times a decade or 2 ago.

> vs talking about shooting wolves and calling for deportations using a word regarded as a slur

It's a stupid analogy. That said deportations within the law of foreign nationals that have no permission to be there is a historic normality the world over. The slur i can see tho i also don't give it much weight because I think it's one squarely on the euphemism threadmil. I used to argue your very point roughly a decade ago alongside an american against a polish friend who was very much opposed to them. Putting his grandma in the hospital over a bike, killing a mates dog along the whole cultural chasm with forced marriages and attitudes towards education and authority really didn't sit well which i could see. But i thought words have power and will worsen the situation and generalisation. But in the end the word gypsies will be forced out of the vocab, zigeuner/cigany will go as well and then roma will be used with those conotations all whilst useful change is sidestepped. I think Slavoj Žižek had a good bit on this.

>Remember one of the tactics is to sound reasonable, while stretching what is acceptable speech. This lets those who approach with bad faith defend the statements while approving of what they imply or lead to.

And the opposite has happened as well and has had far far more impact. Curtailing what is acceptable speech to defend in bad faith and hide what it's all leading to.