9 ms·

Why assessing the state of the world is harder than it sounds

94 points by imartin2k 8y ago

Const-me 8y ago
> I just could not see anything in my memories that had to deal with collectivization, killings, political trials, endless bread lines, imprisoned free thinkers The author’s memory is OK. There were little to no such things in communist Yugoslavia. Unlike Warsaw bloc countries, Russian army did not occupy Yugoslavia. The country remained independent, and human rights situation was much better than in Russia. > he had mainly good memories—of “long dinners discussing politics,” the “excitement of new books,” “languid sunsets, whole-night concerts, epic soccer games, girls in miniskirts.” In soviet Russia, a long dinner discussing politics would cause the participants to be sent to Siberia, there were no whole-night concerts, and miniskirts only appeared on girls after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
- citation_please 8y ago
  Should we interpret your comment as support that it doesn't necessarily matter what the leading political ideology of the country is, rather who is the one enforcing it?
  - Const-me 8y ago
    I don’t know the answer to your question. The history is more complicated than that. I think what matters most is the culture. It’s much deeper, and much harder to change, than ideology or politics. Historically, people living here were free, and they were and still are willing to fight for their freedom. They accidentally started WW1 this way, but that’s another story. I think that’s the root cause why Yugoslavia refused to become a satellite state of USSR. And also why the regime here was way more relaxed: the borders were open, small businesses remained in private hands, it was OK to discuss politics, miniskirts were available, etc… Another reason is west and international politics came in. It was politically beneficial for the west to maintain good relations with Yugoslavia despite the ideology.
    - omgomgomg2 8y ago
      Sure, culture matters, but it’s small fish once money gets involved. The above are all economic questions with economic answers. Communism is not a political structure, but an economic and social structure. You are both thinking far too American.
  - omgomgomg2 8y ago
    No! But it might mean that it doesn’t necessarily matter what the leading political ideology of the country is, rather the economic system enforcing it.
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      It's very clear you think money is the primary shaper of societies, but this simply isn't true. There are multiple forms of social capital which can be equally, if not more so, disruptive, than pure economics. A political ideology is only as strong as the society that enforces it. That includes the economic framework and all its superstituous nuances defining feedback loops of behavior being accepted dogmatically as the backbone of a society. If it aligns with your values, literally, of course it's going to be something you see as true, because questioning it would be too challenging to manage. But there are plenty of intelligent people out there who can afford to question it, and it doesn't imply a breakdown in society. It can imply progress. But only if you want to see things that way. That honestly depends on whether you can hit the middle understanding that your philosophy on societies and all the fears that are attached as a consequence of an economic loop you believe you have control over are actually true. Lots of people don't have control over it. They aren't stupid or lacking in skill. Assuming they are is flawed. Assuming you aren't being taken advantage of because you've been indoctrinated into believing the economy is the strongest principle defining a society is additionally, flawed. These things actually matter when the economy is the only thing guiding a society and there is a literal breakdown of morality, ethics, values, belief systems coming from the head. They influence behavior, which influences beliefs, which influences awareness, which influences actions. All of this propagates across all the smaller 'heads' of a society when those are the rules that define and enforce ideologies. That is a breakdown in society and it happens because people have nothing besides finances to hold onto to tell them about their own self. Who wants to feel like a bag of money and then just die? Who actually wants that to be a life? There is no problem with a hierarchy. Not every person has the experience to know how to lead and not every person has the desire to own that responsibility. There is a BIG BIG BIG problem with it when it sends the wrong message.
- BerislavLopac 8y ago
  The memory is OK, but his reality was quite painted by state management of information. Many elements of totalitarian control were definitely present -- collectivism, single party, total control of media, education and international travel, Goli Otok, suppression of certain civil movements etc -- but overall it was definitely better than in Soviet Union at the time.
  - Const-me 8y ago
    > but overall it was definitely better than in Soviet Union at the time. Yes, dramatically better. I grew up in Soviet Union, but I’ve been living here in Montenegro for many years already, and I have friends who remember life in SFRJ. That’s how I can compare things.
  - extralego 8y ago
    >Many elements of totalitarian control were definitely present. This is misleading. It was not a totalitarian state. Benevolent dictatorship is even an exaggeration. Yugoslavia had a very liberal socialist economy. Trade with the west was very common. International travel was allowed. Collectivism was common but it’s misleading to suggest this is an element of totalitarianism. Strikes were more legal in communist Yugoslavia than they are in present-day United States. Control over the media is accurate. It’s off topic but citizens also had free access to healthcare.
    - BerislavLopac 8y ago
      > It was not a totalitarian state. It most definitely was, without any doubt. However, it was achieved not by physical force like in most other cases, but by management of ideological education and control of all aspects of life, carefully choosing what will be allowed and how. This control was very subtle and by necessity needed to be carefully adapted with time, but without it the country would have fallen apart much sooner than it actually did, with catastrophic consequences. Everything you write is exactly the result of this information control, and is what things seemed like at the surface.
      - 8y ago
rwallace 8y ago
There is some truth in this article, but a critical point is being missed. > per-capita income has more than doubled since 1972 Actually, per capita income has plummeted since 1972. To correctly assess income, you have to know the rate of inflation, and the official inflation figures are effectively lies because they focus on consumer goods, which have indeed become cheaper, while ignoring housing (and in America, college fees and health insurance), which has become drastically more expensive thanks to artificial scarcity created by zoning laws combined with the shortage of remote or rural jobs. That sounds like only one factor of many, but I think it accounts for much of the rest. Real income falling every decade creates negative anticipation which has difficulty finding something to latch onto because we keep being told we are getting continually richer, hence the miasma of fear and hate constantly looking for targets. Nor is the fear unfounded. For centuries, we tried to figure out what destroyed the Roman Empire. Answer: the Romans were not destroyed by any external force. They were wiped out by their own ruling class, via abuse of land ownership law. As for what to do about it, my first suggestion would be to start voting single-issue on repeal of zoning laws.
- extradego 8y ago
  Because money is, among other things, a massively abstract commodity, determining well-being by monetary measurements is massively contingent, nearly useless, and entirely theoretical.
- omgomgomg2 8y ago
  Money is a massively abstract commodity, and as such, monetary distribution is an abstract measure of potential commodities. In concrete terms, this has a highly contingent relationship to well-being. Collective wealth is, of course, subject to the same limitations but respectively less precise.
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  For anyone interested in the facts of what goes into the cpi-u (or -w) basket rather than opinion, here is a breakdown of the weights going into the basket of goods and services. The date is a bit stale, from 2015-2016, but good nonetheless. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#Archived%20Relative%20Importance%20Data https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#... notably, top-level breakdowns are: Food and beverages 14.359 Housing 41.772 Apparel 3.018 Recreation 5.737 Transportation 16.537 Medical care 8.673 Education and communication 6.707 Other goods and services 3.198 Interestingly, if you dig into the data, you can see some interesting patterns of consumer spending. For example, women's and girl's apparel spending is 66% larger than men's and boy's apparel! Also, motor vehicle maintenance and repair is only weighted as 1.123% of spending, which is a lot less than I would have guessed given people's horror stories. Breaking down the housing category, the combined values of rent and owner's equivalent of rent make up more than 30% of the basket. This has risen by about 5% (of the whole basket) since 1987. I doubt that that category is being evaluated too low in a substantial way. Rent by itself is only 7.8% of the basket, which may mean that the basket is fairly insensitive to people being gouged by their landlords. If you live in a fancy metro, your rent will be above average compared to the nation. This is to be expected. I am surprised that medical is only 8-9%. This has risen from 5.8% in 1987. I expect that the reason it is so low is that the average person spends 80% of their life having tiny medical bills and 20% of their life having huge ones. By looking at which categories have shrunk in their weightings over time, you can get a feel for what goods/services are cheaper now than in the past OR that people now choose substitute goods instead of. Certain categories have no substitute, i.e. medical. If you squint at the data real hard you can eke out where you personally are getting reamed more than past-you would have. Some actionable advice would be to consider which services have gotten more expensive due to Baumol's Cost Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease) and do your best to DIY them.
ahje 8y ago
Could it be caused by the fact that the middle class of the Western World seem to be shrinking all over the board, with job security and a smaller ration of home owners as the result? When I grew up in the early 80's most kids would have expected to be home-owners at 25, have a steady job and a few kids with an optimistic look at the future. Instead, most woke up into a reality where they would have to partake in an obvious real-estate bubble, or rent a smaller-than-expected apartment in a downtrodden neigborhood, and where jobs were hard to come by due to outsourcing and automation, or to the older generations simply not wanting to retire. Most of those I grew up with now seem to be amongst the people with a very pessimistic world view. Have the World become a better place for the majority of the World's population? Definitely! For the middle class in Europe and North America? I'm not so sure.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Branco Milanovik's "elephant chart". https://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/branko-milanovice-global-inequality-elephant-curve.png https://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/branko-milano... https://blog.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/the-western-middle-classes-decline-stagnation-or-rise/ https://blog.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/the-western-middle-c...
alexandercrohde 8y ago
Can I just point out I love the audio feature. I don't own an iphone so I'm never going to purchase, but I'd happily pay for it.
bad_user 8y ago
> Yet many people, like Milanović, have fond memories of bygone years, and wonder if reports of their awfulness have been exaggerated. I was born in Romania in ‘82 and was 7 when communism fell. Yet I can remember vividly that ... We were suffering of cold in winter, as the centralized heat was on and off, we had regular electricity blackouts and my parents, both with university degrees, had jobs and working their asses off on lower salaries than factory workers and couldn’t find or afford a babysitter so at 4 years old I was left alone at home, during blackouts so in the dark at around 19:00 o’clock too. In those days people relied on families in such situations of course, grandparents making the best babysitters, however the communists forcibly moved a lot of people to the cities and distributed people where they were supposedly needed, so a lot of families were uprooted and split. I also remember my parents listening to Radio Free Europe, with the volume barely audible, in order for the neighbors to not hear us. Paranoia of “informants” was at an all time high and any resistance and conflicting opinions were long since crushed. You know, “1948” the book is actually boring me, compared to what actually happened in real life. Turns out that in order to do massive surveillance of the population you don’t need technology at all, as you can recruit a massive army of informants that can listen and send regular reports on their neighbors for free. And it doesn’t need to be efficient either, all that matters is for paranoia to set in, which will ensure compliance of the population. My father was a party member of course, you had to be insane to not be one. But in private he hated communists with all his heart, just like his father before him; my grandfather who fought in WWII and then had his land confiscated. The communists were responsible for raising the standards of living somewhat, compared with the period between the two world wars, plus there’s this myth around that everyone had a roof over his head back then; which is why some old people feel nostalgic. It was all in a global context of economic growth of course, progress being inevitable. But people remembering miniskirts were in a position of privilege. Yes, we had happy moments and life went on, but at least during the eighties there was this constant tension and hunger that you could feel, so thick that you could almost cut it with a knife. Then the revolution came and we killed our dictators. Unfortunately people are dumb sheep and power was grabbed by former communists. We are far better off today, we have a better quality of life, we are part of the EU, but unfortunately this wave of populism has hit us as well and the ruling administration seems determined to destroy all progress we’ve made in the last 28 years. And people being stupid, still vote for them, just like they were cheering during our former communist congresses. Sometimes my cynicism takes over and I’m thinking that we deserve whatever is coming.
SJWDisagree111 8y ago
I can tell this article isn't worth reading due to its stupid title. Why would anyone think assessing the state of the world is not difficult?

94 points by imartin2k 8y ago

> I just could not see anything in my memories that had to deal with collectivization, killings, political trials, endless bread lines, imprisoned free thinkers The author’s memory is OK. There were little to no such things in communist Yugoslavia. Unlike Warsaw bloc countries, Russian army did not occupy Yugoslavia. The country remained independent, and human rights situation was much better than in Russia. > he had mainly good memories—of “long dinners discussing politics,” the “excitement of new books,” “languid sunsets, whole-night concerts, epic soccer games, girls in miniskirts.” In soviet Russia, a long dinner discussing politics would cause the participants to be sent to Siberia, there were no whole-night concerts, and miniskirts only appeared on girls after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

citation_please 8y ago
Should we interpret your comment as support that it doesn't necessarily matter what the leading political ideology of the country is, rather who is the one enforcing it?
- Const-me 8y ago
  I don’t know the answer to your question. The history is more complicated than that. I think what matters most is the culture. It’s much deeper, and much harder to change, than ideology or politics. Historically, people living here were free, and they were and still are willing to fight for their freedom. They accidentally started WW1 this way, but that’s another story. I think that’s the root cause why Yugoslavia refused to become a satellite state of USSR. And also why the regime here was way more relaxed: the borders were open, small businesses remained in private hands, it was OK to discuss politics, miniskirts were available, etc… Another reason is west and international politics came in. It was politically beneficial for the west to maintain good relations with Yugoslavia despite the ideology.
  - omgomgomg2 8y ago
    Sure, culture matters, but it’s small fish once money gets involved. The above are all economic questions with economic answers. Communism is not a political structure, but an economic and social structure. You are both thinking far too American.
- omgomgomg2 8y ago
  No! But it might mean that it doesn’t necessarily matter what the leading political ideology of the country is, rather the economic system enforcing it.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    It's very clear you think money is the primary shaper of societies, but this simply isn't true. There are multiple forms of social capital which can be equally, if not more so, disruptive, than pure economics. A political ideology is only as strong as the society that enforces it. That includes the economic framework and all its superstituous nuances defining feedback loops of behavior being accepted dogmatically as the backbone of a society. If it aligns with your values, literally, of course it's going to be something you see as true, because questioning it would be too challenging to manage. But there are plenty of intelligent people out there who can afford to question it, and it doesn't imply a breakdown in society. It can imply progress. But only if you want to see things that way. That honestly depends on whether you can hit the middle understanding that your philosophy on societies and all the fears that are attached as a consequence of an economic loop you believe you have control over are actually true. Lots of people don't have control over it. They aren't stupid or lacking in skill. Assuming they are is flawed. Assuming you aren't being taken advantage of because you've been indoctrinated into believing the economy is the strongest principle defining a society is additionally, flawed. These things actually matter when the economy is the only thing guiding a society and there is a literal breakdown of morality, ethics, values, belief systems coming from the head. They influence behavior, which influences beliefs, which influences awareness, which influences actions. All of this propagates across all the smaller 'heads' of a society when those are the rules that define and enforce ideologies. That is a breakdown in society and it happens because people have nothing besides finances to hold onto to tell them about their own self. Who wants to feel like a bag of money and then just die? Who actually wants that to be a life? There is no problem with a hierarchy. Not every person has the experience to know how to lead and not every person has the desire to own that responsibility. There is a BIG BIG BIG problem with it when it sends the wrong message.
BerislavLopac 8y ago
The memory is OK, but his reality was quite painted by state management of information. Many elements of totalitarian control were definitely present -- collectivism, single party, total control of media, education and international travel, Goli Otok, suppression of certain civil movements etc -- but overall it was definitely better than in Soviet Union at the time.
- Const-me 8y ago
  > but overall it was definitely better than in Soviet Union at the time. Yes, dramatically better. I grew up in Soviet Union, but I’ve been living here in Montenegro for many years already, and I have friends who remember life in SFRJ. That’s how I can compare things.
- extralego 8y ago
  >Many elements of totalitarian control were definitely present. This is misleading. It was not a totalitarian state. Benevolent dictatorship is even an exaggeration. Yugoslavia had a very liberal socialist economy. Trade with the west was very common. International travel was allowed. Collectivism was common but it’s misleading to suggest this is an element of totalitarianism. Strikes were more legal in communist Yugoslavia than they are in present-day United States. Control over the media is accurate. It’s off topic but citizens also had free access to healthcare.
  - BerislavLopac 8y ago
    > It was not a totalitarian state. It most definitely was, without any doubt. However, it was achieved not by physical force like in most other cases, but by management of ideological education and control of all aspects of life, carefully choosing what will be allowed and how. This control was very subtle and by necessity needed to be carefully adapted with time, but without it the country would have fallen apart much sooner than it actually did, with catastrophic consequences. Everything you write is exactly the result of this information control, and is what things seemed like at the surface.
    - 8y ago

rwallace 8y ago

There is some truth in this article, but a critical point is being missed. > per-capita income has more than doubled since 1972 Actually, per capita income has plummeted since 1972. To correctly assess income, you have to know the rate of inflation, and the official inflation figures are effectively lies because they focus on consumer goods, which have indeed become cheaper, while ignoring housing (and in America, college fees and health insurance), which has become drastically more expensive thanks to artificial scarcity created by zoning laws combined with the shortage of remote or rural jobs. That sounds like only one factor of many, but I think it accounts for much of the rest. Real income falling every decade creates negative anticipation which has difficulty finding something to latch onto because we keep being told we are getting continually richer, hence the miasma of fear and hate constantly looking for targets. Nor is the fear unfounded. For centuries, we tried to figure out what destroyed the Roman Empire. Answer: the Romans were not destroyed by any external force. They were wiped out by their own ruling class, via abuse of land ownership law. As for what to do about it, my first suggestion would be to start voting single-issue on repeal of zoning laws.

extradego 8y ago
Because money is, among other things, a massively abstract commodity, determining well-being by monetary measurements is massively contingent, nearly useless, and entirely theoretical.
omgomgomg2 8y ago
Money is a massively abstract commodity, and as such, monetary distribution is an abstract measure of potential commodities. In concrete terms, this has a highly contingent relationship to well-being. Collective wealth is, of course, subject to the same limitations but respectively less precise.
CompelTechnic 8y ago
For anyone interested in the facts of what goes into the cpi-u (or -w) basket rather than opinion, here is a breakdown of the weights going into the basket of goods and services. The date is a bit stale, from 2015-2016, but good nonetheless. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#Archived%20Relative%20Importance%20Data https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#... notably, top-level breakdowns are: Food and beverages 14.359 Housing 41.772 Apparel 3.018 Recreation 5.737 Transportation 16.537 Medical care 8.673 Education and communication 6.707 Other goods and services 3.198 Interestingly, if you dig into the data, you can see some interesting patterns of consumer spending. For example, women's and girl's apparel spending is 66% larger than men's and boy's apparel! Also, motor vehicle maintenance and repair is only weighted as 1.123% of spending, which is a lot less than I would have guessed given people's horror stories. Breaking down the housing category, the combined values of rent and owner's equivalent of rent make up more than 30% of the basket. This has risen by about 5% (of the whole basket) since 1987. I doubt that that category is being evaluated too low in a substantial way. Rent by itself is only 7.8% of the basket, which may mean that the basket is fairly insensitive to people being gouged by their landlords. If you live in a fancy metro, your rent will be above average compared to the nation. This is to be expected. I am surprised that medical is only 8-9%. This has risen from 5.8% in 1987. I expect that the reason it is so low is that the average person spends 80% of their life having tiny medical bills and 20% of their life having huge ones. By looking at which categories have shrunk in their weightings over time, you can get a feel for what goods/services are cheaper now than in the past OR that people now choose substitute goods instead of. Certain categories have no substitute, i.e. medical. If you squint at the data real hard you can eke out where you personally are getting reamed more than past-you would have. Some actionable advice would be to consider which services have gotten more expensive due to Baumol's Cost Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease) and do your best to DIY them.

ahje 8y ago

Could it be caused by the fact that the middle class of the Western World seem to be shrinking all over the board, with job security and a smaller ration of home owners as the result? When I grew up in the early 80's most kids would have expected to be home-owners at 25, have a steady job and a few kids with an optimistic look at the future. Instead, most woke up into a reality where they would have to partake in an obvious real-estate bubble, or rent a smaller-than-expected apartment in a downtrodden neigborhood, and where jobs were hard to come by due to outsourcing and automation, or to the older generations simply not wanting to retire. Most of those I grew up with now seem to be amongst the people with a very pessimistic world view. Have the World become a better place for the majority of the World's population? Definitely! For the middle class in Europe and North America? I'm not so sure.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Branco Milanovik's "elephant chart". https://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/branko-milanovice-global-inequality-elephant-curve.png https://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/branko-milano... https://blog.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/the-western-middle-classes-decline-stagnation-or-rise/ https://blog.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/the-western-middle-c...

alexandercrohde 8y ago

Can I just point out I love the audio feature. I don't own an iphone so I'm never going to purchase, but I'd happily pay for it.

bad_user 8y ago

> Yet many people, like Milanović, have fond memories of bygone years, and wonder if reports of their awfulness have been exaggerated. I was born in Romania in ‘82 and was 7 when communism fell. Yet I can remember vividly that ... We were suffering of cold in winter, as the centralized heat was on and off, we had regular electricity blackouts and my parents, both with university degrees, had jobs and working their asses off on lower salaries than factory workers and couldn’t find or afford a babysitter so at 4 years old I was left alone at home, during blackouts so in the dark at around 19:00 o’clock too. In those days people relied on families in such situations of course, grandparents making the best babysitters, however the communists forcibly moved a lot of people to the cities and distributed people where they were supposedly needed, so a lot of families were uprooted and split. I also remember my parents listening to Radio Free Europe, with the volume barely audible, in order for the neighbors to not hear us. Paranoia of “informants” was at an all time high and any resistance and conflicting opinions were long since crushed. You know, “1948” the book is actually boring me, compared to what actually happened in real life. Turns out that in order to do massive surveillance of the population you don’t need technology at all, as you can recruit a massive army of informants that can listen and send regular reports on their neighbors for free. And it doesn’t need to be efficient either, all that matters is for paranoia to set in, which will ensure compliance of the population. My father was a party member of course, you had to be insane to not be one. But in private he hated communists with all his heart, just like his father before him; my grandfather who fought in WWII and then had his land confiscated. The communists were responsible for raising the standards of living somewhat, compared with the period between the two world wars, plus there’s this myth around that everyone had a roof over his head back then; which is why some old people feel nostalgic. It was all in a global context of economic growth of course, progress being inevitable. But people remembering miniskirts were in a position of privilege. Yes, we had happy moments and life went on, but at least during the eighties there was this constant tension and hunger that you could feel, so thick that you could almost cut it with a knife. Then the revolution came and we killed our dictators. Unfortunately people are dumb sheep and power was grabbed by former communists. We are far better off today, we have a better quality of life, we are part of the EU, but unfortunately this wave of populism has hit us as well and the ruling administration seems determined to destroy all progress we’ve made in the last 28 years. And people being stupid, still vote for them, just like they were cheering during our former communist congresses. Sometimes my cynicism takes over and I’m thinking that we deserve whatever is coming.

SJWDisagree111 8y ago

I can tell this article isn't worth reading due to its stupid title. Why would anyone think assessing the state of the world is not difficult?