booly @ booly @sh.itjust.works

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487

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2 yr. ago

I don't disagree, but I don't see the relevance of these particular flaws of unrestrained capitalism to this specific stated problem: that there might not be enough copper to be able to continue to use it as we always have.

There are lots of flaws to capitalism. Running out of useful copper, while copper is being used in wasteful ways, doesn't really implicate the main weaknesses of capitalism systems.

This is an article about scarcity, insufficient supply to meet demand.

Artificial demand creation isn't necessary, or even productive, when the existing demand already outstrips supply.

And if it is the case that demand is much higher than supply, that's a baked in financial incentive that rewards people for efficient recycling.

Capitalism is bad at pricing in externalities. It's pretty good at using price signals to allocate finite resources to more productive uses.

This article does a lot of speculation from few facts but is truly compelling.

I appreciate the clarity the article uses in the factual support for the ultimate theory, building on each inferential step that seems pretty obviously correct. The stuff that's actually presented as being fairly certain:

• The fossil record shows many lines of archaic homo sapiens whose physical features don't share modern homo sapiens' "juvenile" baby face characteristics.
• The dating of those fossils and the migration patterns of our known ancestors suggests that these archaic homo sapiens aren't actually our ancestors, but were outcompeted by our branch.
• The anthropological record shows that these archaic homo sapiens weren't as dominant as our ancestor branch, but were close and could hold their own. Apparently the ancestors of modern humans never lost territory, even if it took millennia to displace other hominids.
• These archaic branches had some limited tool use, and some evidence of trade and ceremonial burial.

The article presents theories about our branch being less violent, having less aggression, able to build lasting alliances with larger groups of tribes. But it's grounded in some interesting facts that are interesting, in themselves.

Looking around the article actually posted, I'd place my bets on more control/restraint on violence, for the coordination to be able to form social networks that could overcome any threats of skirmish level, inter-tribal violence:

Paradoxically, low aggression may have been a massive advantage in intertribal warfare. Low aggression could have helped us to form big social groups – tribes of hundreds and thousands. And modern humans don’t just form huge groups, we’re unique among animals in being able to form peace treaties between different groups, and alliances between groups to defend or attack territory. What made modern Homo sapiens so uniquely dangerous might not have been a tendency towards violence and aggression, but friendliness, and the ability to forge alliances. The ability to create groups and social networks, and hold off fighting – at least, until we’re in a position to win – could have given us a decisive edge.

It's an interesting article, worth reading in its entirety.

It's complicated, and people can have different philosophical approaches to the goals and purposes of criminal punishment. But my argument is that people should be internally consistent in their views. If people believe that the consequences of a crime should be considered when sentencing for that crime, then emotional consequences should count, too, because emotional harm is real harm.

I didn't think I'd ever agree with Hawley

Hawley represents the future of the Republican party, in my opinion: populist conservatism that is willing to bend on party orthodoxy on how taxes and regulations shouldn't be captured by big corporate interests, but is just completely abhorrent on cultural issues (and whether the government should be involved in those issues).

In an earlier political era, there would be opportunities for cross-party dialogue on the issues that the parties have deemed non-partisan (where divisions don't fall within party lines and party leadership doesn't care that their members hold a diversity of views on), but the number of issues that fall within that category have plummeted in the last 20 years.

Why do we punish based on consequences caused by the crime, then?

A drunk driver is punished much more severely if they hit and kill a person, than if they hit and hurt a person, than if they hit a tree, than if they don't crash at all.

As long as we're punishing people based on the actual impact of their crimes, then emotional impact should count.

why evidence rules exist in court.

Sure, but not for victim impact statements. Hearsay, speculation, etc. have always been fair game for victim impact statements, and victim statements aren't even under oath. Plus the other side isn't allowed to cross examine them. It's not evidence, and it's not "testimony" in a formal sense (because it's not under oath or under penalty of perjury).

I'd argue that emotions are a legitimate factor to consider in sentencing.

It's a bit more obvious with living victims of non-homicide crimes, but the emotional impact of crime is itself a cost borne by society. A victim of a romance scam having trouble trusting again, a victim of a shooting having PTSD with episodes triggered by loud noises, a victim of sexual assault dealing with anxiety or depression after, etc.

It's a legitimate position to say that punishment shouldn't be a goal of criminal sentencing (focusing instead of deterrence and rehabilitation), or that punishment should be some sort of goal based entirely on the criminal's state of mind and not the factors out of their own control, but I'd disagree. The emotional aftermath of a crime is part of the crime, and although there's some unpredictable variance involved, we already tolerate that in other contexts, like punishing a successful murder more than an attempted murder.

Along the same lines, from the same writer/creator, Armando Iannucci, there's The Death of Stalin. The absurdity of how the inner circle navigated the politics around Stalin, including after his death, is hilarious but also a good look at how these power dynamics work in an authoritarian, despotic government.

Or also from Iannucci, Avenue 5, which basically is set in the future where all of this political nonsense continues, and is in the background of a comedy about a space cruise ship.

Everyone has their own reasons. If you disagree with their management, then you should celebrate other people choosing to leave, even if for different reasons than your own.

Republicans killed a COVID era $3600/year child tax credit, letting it lapse in 2023 back to the 2018 amount of $2000, which was increased from $1000 as a replacement for the $5050 tax exemption parents used to be able to get before the 2017 Trump tax reforms. For a married couple whose combined income was between $75k and $150k, that $5k tax exemption was worth about $1250, so it was a bad trade for them (or anyone making more).

If Republicans were serious about financially incentivizing having children, they'll need to support the kids throughout the entire life cycle: healthcare for pregnant women, including through labor and deliver and post partum, support for families with young children (including parental leave mandates), subsidized daycare, good schools, parks and libraries, and economic stability (including in housing costs).

But they're not, so here we are.

I don't brush anything under the rug. I actively shared the Tweet that started this hole BS.

I get that. But my point is that you can't claim that Proton's CEO is acting independently of the Proton corporation itself when Proton's official corporate accounts chimed in on his side on this.

Both of the American parties are a shitshow

Not on antitrust. The Biden administration was one of the strongest advocates for consumers on antitrust issues we've seen since Robert Bork convinced Reagan to tear it all down.

Anyone who says otherwise is trying to lie to the American public about it, and should be called out for actively advocating for false MAGA propaganda. Andy Yen did it, and Proton agreed with it.

Proton didn't decide anything, Andy Yen posted ONE tweet and then doubled down on it with the Proton Reddit account which was deleted.

How are you going to say that Proton didn't say anything and then acknowledge that the official Proton social media accounts were making statements like this:

Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses

That's the context you keep brushing under the rug. The official Proton position is not just that Trump made a good choice, on this one thing, it's that you should vote for Republicans over Democrats.

Yes, it was official corporate Proton position to delete that comment. But it was the official Proton position to make that comment in the first place.

OpenAI’s commercial entity

They should never be allowed to call this a "non-profit"

They never did. The nonprofit parent owned shares in a for-profit subsidiary, which was structured in a way that investors in the for-profit subsidiary could never control the company (the nonprofit would own a controlling share) and had their gains capped at 100x.

Andy Yen went out of his way to criticize Democrats on antitrust, which is how you can tell it's actually a pro-Trump position unsupported by the actual facts.

I like Gail Slater. She's possibly the best choice among people who Trump likes, to head DOJ's Antitrust Division. She has bipartisan bona fides.

But to say that Democrats, after 4 years of Lina Khan leading the FTC, and a bunch of the reforms that the Biden FTC and DOJ made to merger standards and their willingness to sue/seek big penalties for antitrust violations, aren't more serious than Republicans about reining in big tech consolidation and about stronger enforcement of antitrust principles, completely flips around the history and is a bad faith argument.

Andy Yen could've praised Gail Slater, and that would be that. Instead, he took a post by Trump that didn't even mention Democrats, and made it about how the Democrats are bad on taking on big tech. That's the problem everyone had with it.

That's not an outrageous medical bill. It's an outrageous bill for clawing back government benefits for those whose full time care for family members prevents them from working.

school gun team

This fucking country, man.

Oh wow, windows! I don't think I can afford this place.

Relatively speaking? Appliances are cheaper than they were before.

Here's a Sears catalog from 1991. Appliances are at the end, past page 800 or so. Stoves are $400 or $500. Washer is $400, and a dryer is $300.

By official inflation numbers, things are about 2.3x as expensive now as in late 1991.

Median rent, the rent that the average person was paying, was around $450. Median rent today is about $1500, more than 3 times as much.

Today, a stove that looks like one of those things in the 1991 catalog costs about $500, maybe $600. Washing machines cost about the same. That's only a 25-50% increase, when overall prices have increased by 130% and rents have increased by 200% since 1991.

So yeah, when a stove was worth a whole month's rent, it was comparatively a bigger deal than today, when a stove is worth less than half a month's rent.

The same is broadly true of furniture and other home goods, too: prices have gone up slower than inflation, so in theory we could store more stuff in our cramped homes.