All very salutary, but I remain curious to know what you think of Huemer's (relatively simple!) arguments about corporations and government. Do you disagree with any one of his numbered headings in particular? For what it's worth, he hates Trump. I observe that The Trump Organization is a corporation, one I can avoid with ease, aside from seeing the name on large buildings now and then. Trump the politician, however, has gathered power using democracy (as it is practiced, which matters more than how one might wish it worked) and this power is harder to avoid. DEC 21, 2018 Trump is your fault FEB 29, 2020 A Right-Wing, Populist Critique of President Trump JAN 16, 2021 What's So Bad About Storming the Capitol? DEC 30, 2023 Saving Democracy from the Voters JUN 24, 2023 Who Can Best Destroy America? I wonder how much left-wing intellectuals have contributed to the rise of Trump and the alt-right.
Trump does not encourage respect for our country.... President Trump does not make America strong. He weakens America, in several ways.... Trump’s trade war is estimated to cost average Americans about $1300 a year... When he dies, Mr. Trump will go to his grave laughing at all the people he scammed in his life, not least of all the American voters.
What matters is, if they had somehow succeeded in getting Congress to install Trump as President (which I think had about zero chance of happening), the result would have been a collapse of social order in America. There is no way in hell that the other half of the country would have accepted it. There would have been a civil war.
His remarks on January 6 were intended to intimidate Congress and Mike Pence into going along with his plan. Attempting to overturn an election using threats of violence sounds like “engaging in insurrection” to me.
If you’re a Woke ideologue, antifa member, or member of ISIS, you should vote for Donald Trump in the next election, because he will do the most to accelerate America’s destruction.
I don't see the word "trust" in either of those articles, so I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Scale should be permitted to offer jobs to whoever they wish, but I don't think it's a a mistake to believe that merit (i.e. ability to contribute value to Scale) and diversity are somewhat in tension. No age group has a monopoly on excellence, but would not be surprising if almost all of the Scale workforce is drawn from the 20-39 year old age bracket, which makes up 30% of the population. If Scale hires solely on merit, staff will show some variety in various demographic dimensions, but it won't be a strictly population-balanced representation.There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.
Philosophy Bro, as Hubski dubbed Michael Huemer, has moved to Substack. I Love Corporations is archived. This was a great discussion. Further reading: The Basic Social Problem Humans are selfish. Some actions harm others but benefit the agent. Prediction from 1+2: There is going to be a lot of extremely net-harmful behavior. 2 Solutions Individual Retaliation The Fantasy Solution: Let’s just teach people to be nice. Government Anarcho-Capitalism Now, what sucks about the first three solutions? The Basic Problem of Government Government officials are selfish. Some government actions harm other people but benefit government officials. Prediction: There is going to be a lot of net-harmful government behavior. Here are four solutions, from the same post: Meta-Government Separation of Powers Constitutions Democracy Let’s think about why each of these are weak solutions. If you would like to have a conversation about these, post one up here.1 The Fundamental Social Problem
The basic problem of government, from my previous post:
The same could be said of its opponents; capitalism makes civilized life possible. Prices, including wages, are not "set" by market players. Prices come about as a result of buyers and sellers interacting. Sellers can choose any price at which they are willing to sell, and buyers can choose any price at which they are willing to buy, but a sale only occurs (and a market price decided) when the two sides meet and agree on the same price. Customers are the primary driver of technical change. You can still buy a typewriter, but most customers demand keyboards and touchscreens. Public choice theory is a discipline of economics that considers how political actors are influenced by incentives like anyone else. I don't see ethics and welfare being neglected, but there are many new avenues to explore. In recent decades the abundance of data and software has enabled a boom in econometrics while Adam Smith had to rely more on intuition and almanacs. What other discipline tries to carefully measure what matters to people? How else could you do it, if not by paying close attention to how they spend resources like money, time and attention? The base of Maslow's pyramid is formed of goods consumed in exchange for money. The opposite of efficiency is waste, from which no one benefits. A concrete example of upward redistribution (not the result of government action) would be helpful. Social justice and liberty? These are political considerations, not economic. Indeed, this is simply a misquote of the original essay:economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates
Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game.
In contrast to economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx through John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and even Milton Friedman, we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being.
We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people.
Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators. But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder.
Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty.
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty.
Very possible, and hard to conclude anything based on unreliable self-reported data, apparently not even asking if the person is using a time restricted diet, but just guessing based on two days of reported eating habits.
Larger sample size would merely increase confidence in the misleading association. • Wearing body armor linked to ER visits for gunshot wounds! • Nicotine replacement therapy users 70% more likely to get lung cancer! • Parachute owners die of massive impact trauma 10× as often!
O, Veni! A study says intermittent fasting is making people drop dead. Oh, come on
From the poster: “Eight-hour TRE was significantly associated with higher risk of cardiovascular mortality in the general population” People who restrict their eating to eight hours per day may be more likely to have extra weight they hope to lose, and that extra weight may put them at greater risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to the general population. “Surely they controlled for weight” one thinks, before clicking on the link…
The bird business is very memorable, but the work is somewhat spoiled by the very precise but implausible image of a tiny spider (and even the spider webs) casting distinct shadows from a street light, "Gigantically projected against the street". From The Scholar's Library, a worthy collection of "required reading for the human race." Davy Crockett, Not Yours to Give Thomas Sowell, Abstract People Thomas Sowell, Government-Sanctioned Pyramid Schemes Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience Tom Wolfe, Commencement Address at Boston University Charlton Heston, Winning The Cultural War "The Short Fiction Reading Room" section looks very promising, full of all-time classic short stores.The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be trusted to man.
Why the United States of America needs to vindicate itself in the eyes of the despotic and failing governments that make up much of the rest of the world is a mystery.
When the baby boomers retire, that will be the moment of truth—or of more artful lies. Just like Enron.
That government is best which governs not at all.
there’s a very fashionable idea right now that each people, each culture, has its own integrity, has its own validity, which must be respected and must have its day in the sun. I don’t think anybody will bother to argue with that. But what I think you’re going to find fairly soon, as you head out into the world, are two things: first, that it’s irrelevant...
Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?
Agassi’s book suggests that a life of tranquility and satisfaction, “barbecues and ballgames,” is not compatible with high achievement. All the tennis stars are obsessed with their game, they never say “I’m good enough.” That gloom, the sticky paste of frustration and yearning to achieve our dreams, satisfy our absent fathers, make a lasting impact, be remembered, it can pull you down and it’s also what propels you forward. Onward!
Depends on whose expectations you look at. One source says the "skeptic" forecasters "have generally done rather poorly, universally predicting less warming than has been observed" whereas "global warming predictions made by mainstream climate scientists have all fared reasonably well, with the exception of Kellogg's in 1979, whose linear nature we found puzzling." Depends on who "we" are. CO2 emissions in the United States peaked in 2007. Global emissions were not much higher in 2022 than 2019, and the increase was smaller than global GDP growth. China is by far the biggest contributor now, and per capita emissions remain much lower than in the U.S. and Canada. For a while I expect growth there will offset reductions elsewhere, but they face the same incentives as anyone to get away from coal. China is aggressively adding nuclear capacity.Global temp is cruising up ahead of expectations
I don't see any reason to think that we will lower CO2 emissions
Preliminary numbers are in for 2023.
Counting Guns in Early America First hit for query “ how many oeople.owned guns in 1787”Gun ownership is particularly high compared to other common items. For example, in 813 itemized male inventories from the 1774 Jones national database, guns are listed in 54% of estates, compared to only 30% of estates listing any cash, 14% listing swords or edged weapons, 25% listing Bibles, 62% listing any book, and 79% listing any clothes.
After 96 hours and 400 miles, eight runners remain in. BEL 2 Merijn Geerts USA 5 Harvey Lewis JPN 13 Terumichi Morishita USA 20 Jon Noll CAN 24 Ihor Verys BEL 25 Frank Gielen POL 32 Bartosz Fudali They are tied in first place, all having completed 96 "yards," the 4.17-mile course. They are now on yard 97, running on the difficult daytime trail course, having survived 11 hours of the tedious nighttime road course. Bib numbers are assigned by previous longest distance, with Phil Gore leading at 102 yards (425 miles). live video live results AUS 1 Phil Gore
I agree the fishsplaining is not very persuasive. Shooting an Elephant is similarly disturbing but at least the narrator feels bad about it.If the fish is hooked in the bony part of the mouth I am sure the hook hurts him no more than the harness hurts the angler.
I understand the point of the article to be that it's interesting when artifacts evolve and previously functional elements are retained for a purely decorative purpose. I take your point to be that it's not so interesting. Consider that a typical Kindle contains dozens of books, so it is more like a bookshelf than a single book. The original design intent was for the device to "get out of the way and disappear so you can enter the author’s world." The display may have a page-turning animation, or a dog-ear icon indicating a bookmark, or adjustable margins, but outside of the reading interface I don't see book-like structural features, certainly not a spine to hold the pages together and display the title while the book is shelved. A cover is a functional accessory "to keep clean and avoid problems with the screen" and not a merely decorative replacement for a formerly functional element. Hardback books have dust jackets that also have a functional purpose: to protect (and decorate) the book. I don't see the relevance of the floppy disk or save button. Storage media has evolved considerably, from flexible plastic disks to hard platters in metal enclosures, shiny CD-ROMs and DVDs, and now solid state flash memory. At no point was a previously functional element retained for decorative purposes. The GUI happened to become popular when the 3.5-inch disk was in service, the save button adopted that image as an icon and has not evolved since. Indeed, that must be why I was looking for dentils in my photo, but I forgot by the time I got to the nitpick-Devac stage. "Vestigial" is probably a better fit, but it implies uselessness so maybe we are stuck with "skeuomorphic."The OP said that.
A Kindle doesn't look much like a book, it looks more like a tablet computer. The only similarity is a rectangular area of text, which is the bare essence of a tool used for reading, also present in the Kindle web app and street signs. The floppy disk is not the predecessor of the save button; they existed together for many years and the button image persists because it is a familiar way to represent an abstract concept. I don't know anything about architecture, and when I read this article I searched my phone for pictures of buildings and found one that showed the row of small blocks along a top edge. These are called dentils because they resemble teeth. I think they look nice, and it's interesting that they are now decorative elements with an atavistic function, like the non-closing shutters on the front of my house.The Roman architect Vitruvius (iv. 2) states that the dentil represents the end of a rafter (asser). It occurs in its most pronounced form in the Ionic temples of Asia Minor, the Lycian tombs and the porticoes and tombs of Persia, where it clearly represents the reproduction in stone of timber construction.
I read The Old Man and the Sea in April and always hear Hemingway's prose in the voice of Wolfram Kandinsky. "On the Blue Water" contains just a paragraph about the old man and the sea.Hemingway wrote more than 30 stories for Esquire. These included detailed analyses of marlin behavior that were dry even for angling aficionados. But one told the true story of a man out fishing alone who caught an immense marlin that was destroyed by sharks. Decades later, it evolved into The Old Man and the Sea. The story—simple, direct, no dreaming of lions—may be better than the book.
The strategy of giving up on "determination, grit, self-confidence, desire" might be more relevant to the typical NYT reader if the author were not already an expert climber with decades of experience. The Everything Store has a preview of his book, The Zen of Climbing, in which he recounts this episode in more detail. The route, "a soft 5.13a/7c+, but not a gimme" is in fact the highest expert level, just before Super Expert, Elite, Super Elite, and Aliens. He did not give up on his hard-earned skills, nor the physical capability developed over years. "When I took away (the desire for success), my body moved with greater fluidity and naturalness." One wonders why he would even make a second attempt if there was no desire for success, but I think this implies a relaxing of the standard for success, not simply getting to the top but facing the challenge and learning from it. This sounds like good advice for someone who has reached the level of mastery at which "nerves" have become the biggest obstacle.I wasn't mad, but for the first time in my life, after climbing for nearly 30 years, it struck me that the desire to climb the route had actually been the thing preventing me from doing so. That was the beginning of a massive shift in my perspective.
Your only goal is to breathe, and stay there, each move by each move. Just execute. Try hard, but not too hard. But don't panic. Relaxed aggression. Poised, but with nothing to lose. Listen to exactly what your body needs. Respond as quickly as possible. Make good decisions.
I wonder how many people can explain how a toilet works. You're sitting there every day, you have the ultimate information machine in your hand. It seems like you can almost reason it out from first principles. Start with a hole in the ground. Problem: poop is smelly, the hole fills up and you have to dig a new hole. Improvement: Throw the poop in the river. Problem: The river is far away, you have to walk in the rain. Improvement: Build a structure to live in, throw the poop out the window, let the rain wash it away. This technique was state of the art for a long time. People kept a container under the bed and in the morning someone, a servant if you were better off, would fling the "night soil" out the window. In the English-speaking world, it was a courtesy to shout a cute warning before spraying passers-by with human waste. I had to look it up. In Edinburgh residents of tenement buildings would shout "gardyloo," short for “Prenez garde a l’eau!” before dumping their chamber pots out the window, possibly the source of the word loo. Imagine getting up early to fetch the day's water from the village pump before a line forms, and you have to dodge a cascade of falling filth, and you appreciate that your neighbor was kind enough to let you know to get out of the way. Eventually John Snow worked out that the village pump was killing people with cholera, so drainage was improved with sewers, open channels at first and buried pipes later. Water treatment is more advanced today, but sewers still rely mainly on dependable gravity. I'm not sure what happens when the toilet is too far from the water treatment plant to allow a continuous downhill grade; there must be some kind of poop elevator somewhere. Even here in the affluent D.C. area, I believe raw sewage is flushed into the river during heavy rains, because toilet waste and storm drains go through the same tunnels. To save the trouble of handling waste, the sewer pipe can be extended into the home. A further convenience is a supply of drinkable water which can be used to flush the sticky mess down the pipe. I don't understand how the water supply works, I think I know where in the Potomac River my house water comes from, but I don't know where it goes after that. They add "chlorine" and "fluorine" but not the pure chemical elements, they pump it through undergroud pipes which sometimes rupture, water towers located at high places also provide pressure and reliable gravity flow. What steps are taken to prevent poisoning the treated water? How risky is polluted water? There was that building in New York City that had a murder victim floating in the rooftop tank for months and nobody (else) died. We are almost at the modern toilet. For comfort, it is shaped like a chair, though some cultures still practice squatting. It's made out of porcelain, which makes it very heavy and subject to breaking. Why not lightweight plastic or fiberglass? Porcelain can be thoroughly cleaned and holds up to scrubbing. A removable seat is made of plastic or wood which absorbs heat more slowly so it does not feel as cold even when it is the same temperature as the porcelain. There is still the problem of getting the waste to go down the pipe, and the problem of stinky sewer gas coming up the pipe. The clever solution is the P-trap, which is actually shaped more like a U, and also appears under sinks. Water fills the U and blocks sewer gas from coming up. And when poop drops into the water, it might be less likely to adhere to the toilet and the water can reduce odor. Now we just need a supply of water we can quickly dump on top of the mess to shove it down the pipe. A bucket would work, but rather than taking time to fill a bucket we attach a tank behind or above the toilet and use a float switch to let it fill up, then turn off the water supply. When you yank the chain or push the lever, a flapper flips up from covering a hole in the tank and the water gushes down to hopefully send the waste away. The flapper has a clever design which holds enough air -- I realize I don't quite understand how it works but when the tank is full the water pressure holds the flapper down, then a chain attached to the handle pulls it up and out of the way until the tank water completely drains, and some water inside the flapper pulls it back down in place. Our more modern toilets have pushbuttons on the top for small and big jobs, there is a float attached to a column under the buttons, and I don't know how the water flow is controlled. Like many newer technologies, the function is more opaque and when there are problems I am more likely to replace the whole thing rather than a part. In Japan the poop is teleported. I remember what seemed like a ridiculous social quarrel when a new law restricted the amount of water a toiled could use per flush. People complained that they would have to flush twice, and they bought up the supply of toilets made before the limit, or imported Canadian toilets. Now that I'm older and grumpier, I am more inclined to complain. The only justification for the water limit is to save water. I find myself often flushing twice, or more. The smaller landing zone makes it more likely that waste will stick to the sides, requiring annoying brush work and yet another flush. I think it's reasonable to doubt whether any water has been saved, and to ask if it's possible that more water is used now than before, in addition to annoying people. I've taken many flow restrictors out of shower heads, and out of public faucets when I can. Those faucet restrictors may save water, because using them is so annoying more people will skip washing their hands. Switch the handles for a semi-reliable motion sensor and replace paper towels with a noisy electric blower and we're back in the John Snow era.Okay look I thought I knew how a computer works but I really don’t. That’s the illusion of explanatory depth. I have it for everything: toilets (the water goes whoosh and the poop goes away; I have no idea how this happens), cars (gasoline makes the pistons go up and down and something something the car moves), and capitalism (people sell stuff and people buy stuff and this is bad, I guess?).
What do you think is going on? Do you suggest that insurance companies are refusing to issue policies on subsidized housing which they believe would be just as profitable as policies issued to non-subsidized housing?
There's a statement from an insurance industry representative in the article. It sounds to me that insurance companies have learned that some customers tend to receive more benefits in claims payouts than others. In order to make money on a policy, the companies try to limit the number of the more expensive insured parties they are willing to cover. Is it plausible that buildings with more subsidized housing will have more costly claims? I imagine these buildings are more likely to be located in neighborhoods with relatively higher crime, and perhaps slower emergency response. Tenants receiving subsidies might be less likely to change batteries in smoke detectors or purchase more reliable appliances. Managers of buildings with more subsidized housing might be less responsible about safety maintenance. On the other hand, wealthier tenants might have higher claims as well, because they own more valuable property. If the insurance company could "discriminate" to identify buildings that have more tenants with expensive stereos, or valuable artwork, they could charge higher premiums or decline to offer insurance to them as well. I expect they use location as a proxy for these factors. Student housing is included in the 25% limit. The article suggests this is because it is "transient" like a bed and breakfast. That doesn't make much sense, a student is likely to stay six months to a year like many other rental tenants. I suspect that student housing is likely to lead to more claims. Gary Becker argued that discrimination is costly to firms. If a firm seeks solely to maximize profits, it can't afford to indulge in discrimination against factors that do not affect the bottom line. A firm that passes on profitable opportunities in order to indulge a prejudice will be less competitive.deafening silence
That phrase has been on money since the Civil War era.
100 miles in Crocs. 100 miles. In Crocs.
Yep, dirt and decay are minor nuisances, vermin can be a headache, but water is the enemy. I give about 1% of my attention to the sump pump. I don’t trust the float switch, so I put a security camera in there and manually run the pump when the water gets high, and monitor it while on vacation. Supply hoses for the washing machine get one day closer to failure every 24 hours. Good luck with the roof! Tending to Maslow Level 1 issues is a good way to satisfy higher-level needs.
