Dienervent

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Now, do the calculation again, but by gender.

And then do it again, and this time use race AND gender.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Deflation is bad because you can "invest" by just keeping cash around. Which means investors aren't contributing to economic activity.

A small amount of inflation helps, because investors understand that if they're not investing the cash they have, then they're essentially losing money.

High levels of inflation is bad, because prices can change so fast that it makes commerce too difficult with prices changing too frequently.

But that's for stable levels. Salaries tend to be very vulnerable to unexpected changes in inflation/deflation because they don't change that often and they're not pegged to inflation. Which means if the money unexpectedly devalues by 20%, then you effectively get a 20% pay cut and it might not be easy to negation a rectification with your employer and meanwhile you're still underpaid.

The reverse is true with unexpected deflation, you get an effective 20% pay raise and your employer can't do anything about it except fire you or go bankrupt. This is how deflation can lead to unemployment.

So deflation might help make a bit of wealth transfer from the capitalist class to the working class. But it's very temporary and would likely come at a great cost to the overall economy.

If you want to fix wealth inequality it's really simple: tax the rich, regulate monopolies and oligopolies.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago

And he's a fucking genius. Because, as far as I can tell, all of his trans jokes are really funny or nuanced. But his handicap jokes, some of them are just downright lame and insulting.

And everyone's coming after him for his trans jokes, not his handicap jokes.

You can't punch down on transpeople, their propaganda reach is massive. People are AFRAID to say the littlest bit negative about them.

That's why the handicap jokes. He wanted to show what actually happens when you punch down: nothing. No one gives a shit.

Anyway, that's my headcanon. Otherwise, some of these handicap jokes are completely inexcusable and don't live up to the standard set by his trans jokes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person's freedom is another person's slavery.

If you bring it back to the roots of life's purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.

You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like "your rights stops where my nose begin". At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.

But "on an evolutionary level" isn't really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.

It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.

But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.

From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.

When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they'll feel free but others won't.

You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you're looking for is one where you'll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.

The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power [...[.

That's part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).

But going back to the corruption thing. It's not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc....

Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.

What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.

Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.

The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.

Eventually, the "democracy + regulation" does get captured, and while it's pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.

If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.

As for Libertarian, I don't know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don't know what "True" libertarian is. When there's actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.

But the few discussions I've had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that's a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won't even deny it if you straight up ask them. They're sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.

But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There's no way this won't immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person's freedom is another person's slavery.

If you bring it back to the roots of life's purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.

You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like "your rights stops where my nose begin". At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.

But "on an evolutionary level" isn't really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.

It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.

But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.

From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.

When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they'll feel free but others won't.

You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you're looking for is one where you'll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.

The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power [...[.

That's part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).

But going back to the corruption thing. It's not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc....

Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.

What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.

Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.

The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.

Eventually, the "democracy + regulation" does get captured, and while it's pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.

If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.

As for Libertarian, I don't know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don't know what "True" libertarian is. When there's actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.

But the few discussions I've had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that's a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won't even deny it if you straight up ask them. They're sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.

But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There's no way this won't immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I just don't understand the logic here. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of abolishing the Duluth Model and the requirement to incarcerate someone on a domestic violence call.

But neither this situation, nor the story you linked to seems to have much to do with that policy.

In both situations, the police acted completely out of bounds. It is a completely different problem.

The story on the website was written in 2014 about an incident that happened in 1999, that's almost 25 years ago. It can't be considered relevant today. If there's a real systemic problem of this kind, you should have at least a dozen cases like this every single year.

Hopefully, in this most recent case we'll get some body cam footage released so we find out what really happened.

And also hopefully, the body cams is what will put this guy off the force forever. It's the second time he seems to have done something like this, but I'd bet that the first time, body cams were not standard practice yet.

Seems to me that the solution to stop this kind of thing from being a common problem is body cams, and that's what we have.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I look at it as the AI we build is humanity's child. It will outgrow us. And we will age out and die.

On a cosmic scale, an AI can operate in ways humans never could.

Even if you use the augmented humans path, eventually, all the human will be augmented out of existence until only the AI is left.

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