As someone who actually did punch people I perceived as bullies in the mouth for a long time, I don't recommend it.
Everyone glamorizes violence against people we don't like, but it's really short-sighted. And what if you're wrong and you're just being neurotic against someone innocent of what you think they're guilty of? Looking back I realized how meaningless it was, and that's one reason why in The Graysonian Ethic I specifically recommend against using violence as anything but an absolute last resort because it's almost never the answer and almost never ends the way you'd like it to.
Everyone glamorizes violence against people we don't like, but it's really short-sighted. And what if you're wrong and you're just being neurotic against someone innocent of what you think they're guilty of? Looking back I realized how meaningless it was, and that's one reason why in The Graysonian Ethic I specifically recommend against using violence as anything but an absolute last resort because it's almost never the answer and almost never ends the way you'd like it to.
I think studies I've seen "proving" UBI works have a number of major flaws.
For one, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying Universal Basic Income.
You might go "what? They gave people money, didn't they?" And that's true, but it wasn't universal. A friend of mine ended up selected for a UBI study.... But then was deselected when they discovered he had a middle class job. This means that these studies didn't look at the effects of universal basic income, but rather the effects of a means tested social welfare program, which is a different thing.
Universal Basic Income will have a potentially universal impact. It will affect the poor, but it can also have effects on the middle class and the rich, and if you're not looking at the whole picture, you aren't getting the whole picture.
Second, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a government program of universal basic income.
They're studying what happens when a magic money fairy drops cash on people.
There are countries that has this through the magic of colonialism. Basically, you send people to go steal the wealth of the colonies and bring it home, making many people fabulously wealthy without any consequences for the people receiving the wealth.
Unfortunately the age of colonialism is over so you can't just go taking over other continents and nicking their shit, so a massive welfare program like this has to be paid for somehow, and mathematically it would have to be through massive tax increases on the entire working class. So to measure the effects of UBI you'd need to massively increase the taxes on the people who make money in your study to pay for the money you're handing out.
Some people think that you can tax just the rich to pay for it, and that's just a fantasy. Mathematically there isn't enough wealth to pay for UBI by just taxing the rich.
Some people you'll get more money back by cutting other government programs, and that's also a fantasy for two reasons. First, if you try to stop programs like medicare and medicaid to pay for UBI, you'll find out awfully quickly that you can't cut those programs (and I suspect social security would have similar challenges). Other programs like TANF are extremely limited and you'll find they simply don't have enough money to put even a tiny dent in the amount of money required for UBI.
Thirdly, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a permanent program of universal basic income.
These studies have a fixed term. Maybe they're 6 months, or a year, or a few years, but there is a limited amount of grant money. This has a distinct effect on the behavioral effects you'd expect to see.
Consider yourself: If I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month for the next 12 months", what would you do? Well, knowing that the money has a time limit, I'd predict you'd use the money in ways that understand that the money is limited in scope. You might use it to go back to school, or you might use it to pay down debts, or maybe invest it. Now by contrast, if I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month and that's just how your life works now", would you treat that money differently? Would the reduced time pressure push you to consider looking at whether you really needed to be as productive in your life since you could potentially just get together with a few people and live a decent life under one roof? I feel like if my wife and I both had 1000 a month forever, I'd quite quickly be looking at what I could cut to just retire, and I'm a pretty high achiever. I bet a lot of other people would decide to do the same, especially if their jobs just had a massive pay cut because taxes rose like crazy.
Fourth, "universal basic income" studies can't predict society-wide consequences.
While it is undebatable that it wasn't quite the same thing due to direct supply-side disruptions, the COVID-19 Pandemic response sent massive amounts of money to individuals. This is part of why there has been high inflation for the past couple years, because people had more money but there was no commensurate increase in productivity (and in fact a drop). If we give productive members of society punishment for being productive, and we reward unproductive members of society for being unproductive, guess what sort of person you're going to build more of? And if I'm right and we'd see lower overall productivity,
Finally, there are studies that show "Universal Basic Income" isn't necessarily so great for the people getting it anyway.
Data published by Vivalt et. al. found Moderate decreases in labor supply (ie. people worked fewer hours by 1-2 hours per week), No significant impact on employment quality, No significant effect on entrepreneurship, Increased spending on healthcare (ie. people were able to spend money on healthcare they required, likely a positive), but ultimately it's likely that such a cash redistribution scheme would ultimate lead to more money in the hands of the ultra-rich and increasing poverty. https://reason.com/2024/07/25/bad-news-for-universal-basic-income/
From an economic standpoint you have to be very careful because "the map is not the territory" and money is not wealth, and wealth is not a static thing. You can give me a cup of sand, and if I'm skilled I can turn that worthless cup of sand into an expensive crystal vase worth thousands of times its original material cost. If I don't know how or I'm not willing to, then it will remain sand. In that way, wealth can be created by people from something that does not constitute wealth, and it can be destroyed of course, particularly if nobody is willing to maintain something that constitutes wealth or something that creates wealth.
There's a reason so many tech billionaires want UBI, and it's not because they're such wonderful and altruistic people (or they'd pay for it themselves). I suspect it's becuase they know UBI would stratify society into 3 classes of people: The ultra rich on the top who end up getting the money from UBI as people spend at their stores or on their platforms, the working class who end up getting taxed to death, and the underclass who would be getting free money every month and don't try to do much else. This social stratification would mean the already rich become much richer (even the taxes basically just go right back in their pockets), and the poor will become perpetually poor, and the middle class has a giant deus ex machina thumb on their back until the empire collapses.
For one, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying Universal Basic Income.
You might go "what? They gave people money, didn't they?" And that's true, but it wasn't universal. A friend of mine ended up selected for a UBI study.... But then was deselected when they discovered he had a middle class job. This means that these studies didn't look at the effects of universal basic income, but rather the effects of a means tested social welfare program, which is a different thing.
Universal Basic Income will have a potentially universal impact. It will affect the poor, but it can also have effects on the middle class and the rich, and if you're not looking at the whole picture, you aren't getting the whole picture.
Second, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a government program of universal basic income.
They're studying what happens when a magic money fairy drops cash on people.
There are countries that has this through the magic of colonialism. Basically, you send people to go steal the wealth of the colonies and bring it home, making many people fabulously wealthy without any consequences for the people receiving the wealth.
Unfortunately the age of colonialism is over so you can't just go taking over other continents and nicking their shit, so a massive welfare program like this has to be paid for somehow, and mathematically it would have to be through massive tax increases on the entire working class. So to measure the effects of UBI you'd need to massively increase the taxes on the people who make money in your study to pay for the money you're handing out.
Some people think that you can tax just the rich to pay for it, and that's just a fantasy. Mathematically there isn't enough wealth to pay for UBI by just taxing the rich.
Some people you'll get more money back by cutting other government programs, and that's also a fantasy for two reasons. First, if you try to stop programs like medicare and medicaid to pay for UBI, you'll find out awfully quickly that you can't cut those programs (and I suspect social security would have similar challenges). Other programs like TANF are extremely limited and you'll find they simply don't have enough money to put even a tiny dent in the amount of money required for UBI.
Thirdly, "universal basic income" studies aren't studying a permanent program of universal basic income.
These studies have a fixed term. Maybe they're 6 months, or a year, or a few years, but there is a limited amount of grant money. This has a distinct effect on the behavioral effects you'd expect to see.
Consider yourself: If I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month for the next 12 months", what would you do? Well, knowing that the money has a time limit, I'd predict you'd use the money in ways that understand that the money is limited in scope. You might use it to go back to school, or you might use it to pay down debts, or maybe invest it. Now by contrast, if I said to you: "You're going to get $1000 a month and that's just how your life works now", would you treat that money differently? Would the reduced time pressure push you to consider looking at whether you really needed to be as productive in your life since you could potentially just get together with a few people and live a decent life under one roof? I feel like if my wife and I both had 1000 a month forever, I'd quite quickly be looking at what I could cut to just retire, and I'm a pretty high achiever. I bet a lot of other people would decide to do the same, especially if their jobs just had a massive pay cut because taxes rose like crazy.
Fourth, "universal basic income" studies can't predict society-wide consequences.
While it is undebatable that it wasn't quite the same thing due to direct supply-side disruptions, the COVID-19 Pandemic response sent massive amounts of money to individuals. This is part of why there has been high inflation for the past couple years, because people had more money but there was no commensurate increase in productivity (and in fact a drop). If we give productive members of society punishment for being productive, and we reward unproductive members of society for being unproductive, guess what sort of person you're going to build more of? And if I'm right and we'd see lower overall productivity,
Finally, there are studies that show "Universal Basic Income" isn't necessarily so great for the people getting it anyway.
Data published by Vivalt et. al. found Moderate decreases in labor supply (ie. people worked fewer hours by 1-2 hours per week), No significant impact on employment quality, No significant effect on entrepreneurship, Increased spending on healthcare (ie. people were able to spend money on healthcare they required, likely a positive), but ultimately it's likely that such a cash redistribution scheme would ultimate lead to more money in the hands of the ultra-rich and increasing poverty. https://reason.com/2024/07/25/bad-news-for-universal-basic-income/
From an economic standpoint you have to be very careful because "the map is not the territory" and money is not wealth, and wealth is not a static thing. You can give me a cup of sand, and if I'm skilled I can turn that worthless cup of sand into an expensive crystal vase worth thousands of times its original material cost. If I don't know how or I'm not willing to, then it will remain sand. In that way, wealth can be created by people from something that does not constitute wealth, and it can be destroyed of course, particularly if nobody is willing to maintain something that constitutes wealth or something that creates wealth.
There's a reason so many tech billionaires want UBI, and it's not because they're such wonderful and altruistic people (or they'd pay for it themselves). I suspect it's becuase they know UBI would stratify society into 3 classes of people: The ultra rich on the top who end up getting the money from UBI as people spend at their stores or on their platforms, the working class who end up getting taxed to death, and the underclass who would be getting free money every month and don't try to do much else. This social stratification would mean the already rich become much richer (even the taxes basically just go right back in their pockets), and the poor will become perpetually poor, and the middle class has a giant deus ex machina thumb on their back until the empire collapses.
[Admin Mode] I swear, I comment on a controversial post and the bots come out. Refreshed DNS a couple times, but the big change was enabling mod_evasive for now. It'll cause some faulty error messages (request is a legal request), but compared to the whole network being down it's fine -- and usually I can shut it off after a bit.
I saw some of the posts from that account in a news article yesterday, and it was unequivocally Democrat supporting posts. Honestly, the posts surprised me as being quite eloquent for a 14 year old who later became a murderer.
It's hard to remember this, but the left used to be fun. They used to party. They liked pretty girls in skimpy outfits. They made jokes that were funny and they often weren't even about politics. Around the same time period, the right looked really stiff, anti-fun, like anything you did would be judged. That I think is why things used to look the way they did.
I wouldn't say that things have completely flipped around, because back then there was a reason to be partying, times were relatively good. Today things are hard for a lot of good men, and we need to buckle down and do the right things to cultivate the future, but even so people whistle while they work and want to have some fun while cultivating the future with our team, and nobody wants to feel like they're standing in the path of a whip that'll come cracking down the moment we say the wrong thing.
I wouldn't say that things have completely flipped around, because back then there was a reason to be partying, times were relatively good. Today things are hard for a lot of good men, and we need to buckle down and do the right things to cultivate the future, but even so people whistle while they work and want to have some fun while cultivating the future with our team, and nobody wants to feel like they're standing in the path of a whip that'll come cracking down the moment we say the wrong thing.
There's a good reason she was kept on the sidelines this whole time, anyone sees her talk immediately starts to realize they don't like her, and her gaffes make Biden look like Obama.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/wait-how-much-have-groceries-gone-up-5677597
Most of us don't have a butler to do our shopping so we know full well nobody's seeing 2% Y-o-Y on anything that matters.
Most of us don't have a butler to do our shopping so we know full well nobody's seeing 2% Y-o-Y on anything that matters.
Your generation and my son's generation are on the hook for every penny both parties rack up on the intergenerational credit card. Meanwhile, my generation demands more spending we aren't paying for while attacking the boomers as greedy.
So thanks for the dough, I guess....
So thanks for the dough, I guess....
https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-andrew-tate-announces-conversion-islam
I feel like the only winning move with a guy like that is not to play. It's like making fun of the Kardashians -- even if you win, what exactly do you expect to achieve?
I feel like the only winning move with a guy like that is not to play. It's like making fun of the Kardashians -- even if you win, what exactly do you expect to achieve?
Doesn't matter anyway except insofar as he's putting up legislation that won't pass so his party can pretend they would have passed it but for the other team not voting for it. They'll get Congress and the Senate and it'll be deafening how silent they'll be on these topics.
There's some stuff they seem to have done right, considering the etymological roots of algebra, alchemy, and alcohol. The Islamic golden age and it's aftermath should be a lesson but our ruling class doesn't read history.
I'm more interested in the idea of this ancient work surviving for millennia elsewhere and then triggering a literal Renaissance when it comes back.
The story of the arabs curating Greek writings then those coming back is one of the most interesting out there.
[admin mode] restarted everything and changed IP addresses about an hour ago. It helped, but I think there's some regional connectivity issues going on.
I tend to agree with you that the likelihood of a full mad Max civilizational collapse is pretty limited. If you have a region that is fully capable of maintaining its own electricity using resources such as solar or hydroelectric as well as maintaining its own food supplies, and doing a reasonable job of internal defense and external defense, then there's no reason to believe that such a region won't be able to maintain itself. The places that are most at risk are going to be the big cities that rely on other regions to jam them full of material resources. In scenarios like the bronze age collapse, the code orders were just fine, and even the nation of Egypt continued to bump along, but other civilizations such as the Minoans were completely erased from history for millennia.
I tend to think that the places that will be hardest hit in an apocalypse scenario will be the ones that can't actually sustain themselves. Mortality rates in overpopulated regions will be astronomical since there won't be anything nearby to deal with all of the people to feed. For parallel to that, you can look at the Harappan civilization, also known as the Indus valley Civilization which collapsed leaving basically nothing. That occurred in part because of changes to the climate and also degradation of the soil. There seem to be evidence of the Harappan civilization in the stories of Hindu, which does suggest that somebody made it out alive, as far as I know even today that region is barren and unpopulated.
I don't think we can make predictions as to which currency might be in use. Over the past 8000 years gold has been something that kept its value, but many things that were also considered valuable stopped being valuable. My favorite example is aluminum which was once a precious metal more valuable than gold and today we make disposable drink containers out of it. I tend to think that the Internet functioning to the extent cryptos would need it to is likely a bit aspirational even in a mild collapse scenario as international infrastructure would be the first thing to stop working, since regional conflicts would likely not desire a global network to allow tactical and strategic information to sieve through.
I tend to think that the places that will be hardest hit in an apocalypse scenario will be the ones that can't actually sustain themselves. Mortality rates in overpopulated regions will be astronomical since there won't be anything nearby to deal with all of the people to feed. For parallel to that, you can look at the Harappan civilization, also known as the Indus valley Civilization which collapsed leaving basically nothing. That occurred in part because of changes to the climate and also degradation of the soil. There seem to be evidence of the Harappan civilization in the stories of Hindu, which does suggest that somebody made it out alive, as far as I know even today that region is barren and unpopulated.
I don't think we can make predictions as to which currency might be in use. Over the past 8000 years gold has been something that kept its value, but many things that were also considered valuable stopped being valuable. My favorite example is aluminum which was once a precious metal more valuable than gold and today we make disposable drink containers out of it. I tend to think that the Internet functioning to the extent cryptos would need it to is likely a bit aspirational even in a mild collapse scenario as international infrastructure would be the first thing to stop working, since regional conflicts would likely not desire a global network to allow tactical and strategic information to sieve through.
For years I've been warning about the limitations of EVs, and I was told I'm stupid or I'm lying or I'm wrong. The thing is, the real world doesn't care about arguments, it cares about whether the thing does what it needs to do how it does it.