4 ms·

History paints a pretty clear picture of the tradeoff: * Profits now and violence later OR * Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier Unfortunately we’

History paints a pretty clear picture of the tradeoff: * Profits now and violence later OR * Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier Unfortunately we’ve developed such a myopic, “FYGM” society that it’s explicitly the former option for the time being.

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
Every possible example of “progress” have either an individual or a state power purpose behind it there is only one possible “egalitarian” forward looking investments that paid off for everybody I think the only exception to this is vaccines…and you saw how all that worked during Covid Everything else from the semiconductor to the vacuum cleaner the automobile airplanes steam engines I don’t care what it is you pick something it was developed in order to give a small group and advantage over all the other groups it is always been this case it will always be this case because fundamentally at the root nature of humanity they do not care about the externalities- good or bad
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  COVID has cured me (hah!) of the notion that humanity will be able to pull together when faced with a common enemy. That means global warming or the next pandemic are going to happen and we will not be able to stop it from happening because a solid percentage can't wait to jump off the ledge, and they'll push you off too.
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    Yeah buddy we agree
  - jpadkins 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - yifanl 8mo ago
      Great zinger buddy, you really showed off your wit.
    - Nevermark 8mo ago
      It is so easy to critique the response in hindsight. Or at the time. But critiques like that ignore uncertainty, risk, and unavoidably getting it "wrong" (on any and all dimensions), no matter what anyone did. With a new virus successfully circumnavigating the globe in a very short period of time, with billions of potential brand new hosts to infect and adapt within, and no way to know ahead of time how virulent and deadly it could quickly evolve to be, the only sane response is to treat it as extremely high risk. There is no book for that. Nobody here or anywhere knows the "right" response to a rapidly spreading (and killing) virus, unresponsive to current remedies. Because it is impossible to know ahead of time. If you actually have an answer for that, you need to write that book. And take into account, that a lot of people involved in the last response, are very cognizant that we/they can learn from what worked, what didn't, etc. That is the valuable kind of 20-20 vision. A lot of at-risk people made it to the vaccines before getting COVID. The ones I know are very happy about everything that reduced their risk. They are happy not to have died, despite those who wanted to let the disease to "take its natural course". And those that died, including people I know, might argue we could have done more, acted as a better team. But they don't get to. No un-nuanced view of the situation has merit. The most significant thing we learned: a lot of humanity is preparing to be a problem if the next pandemic proves ultimately deadlier. A lot of humanity doesn't understand risk, and doesn't care, if doing so requires cooperative efforts from individuals.
      - jacquesm 8mo ago
        It's usually the same people that would have been the loudest to shout if it had not worked as well as it did...
        mrguyorama 8mo ago
        It's the same people who don't even notice that we don't talk about acid rain anymore, because we solved it with government regulation for pretty cheap. They even indignantly mention the Ozone layer, insisting that "Look, liberals told you to care but its not a problem anymore", ignorant entirely of the immense global effort to fix that.
- ghurtado 8mo ago
  If you edit your comment to add punctuation, please let me know: I would like to read that final pile of words. I did try, I promise.
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    Ok here: Everything from the semiconductor through the vacuum cleaner, automobile, airplanes and steam engines was developed to give a small group an advantage over all the other groups. It has always been the case, it will always be the case. Fundamentally, at the root nature of humanity, humans do not care about the externalities, either good or bad.
    - tim333 8mo ago
      That's a slightly odd way of looking at it. I'm guessing the people developing airplanes or whatever thought of a number of things including - hey this would be cool to do - and - maybe we can make some money - and - maybe this will help people travel - and - maybe it'll impress the girls - and probably some other things too. At least that's roughly how I've thought when I make stuff, never this will give a small group an advantage.
      - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
        But the whole point is embedded in the task otherwise you wouldn’t do it If somebody is using monetary resources to buy NFT‘s instead of handing out food to the homeless then you get less food for the homeless All of the things listed are competitive task situations and you’re looking for some advantage that makes it easier for you well if it makes it easier for you then it could make it easier for somebody else which means you’re crowding out other options in that action space That is to say the pie is fixed for resources on this planet in terms of energy and resource utilization across the lifespan of a human
    - jacquesm 8mo ago
      Vacuum cleaner -> sell appliances -> sell electric motors But there was a clear advantage in quality of life for a lot of people too. Automobile -> part of industrialization of transport -> faster transport, faster world Arguably also a big increase in quality of life but it didn't scale that well and has also reduced the quality of life. If all that money had gone into public transport then that would likely have been a lot better. Airplanes -> yes, definitely, but they were also clearly seen as an advantage in war, in fact that was always a major driver behind inventions. Steam engine -> the mother of all prime movers and the beginnings of the fossil fuel debacle (coal). Definitely a quality of life change but also the cause of the bigger problems we are suffering from today. The 'coffin corner' (one of my hobby horses) is a real danger, we have, as a society, achieved a certain velocity, if we slow down too much we will crash, if we speed up the plane will come apart. Managing these transitions is extremely delicate work and it does not look as though 'delicate' is in the vocabulary of a lot of people in the driving seats.
jpadkins 8mo ago
Do you have a historical example of "Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier"? I can't think of any.
- nine_k 8mo ago
  If you replace "taxes" with more general "investment", it's everywhere. A good example is Amazon that has reworked itself from an online bookstore into a global supplier of everything by ruthlessly reinvesting the profits. Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA. If you're looking for periods of high taxes and growing prosperity, 1950s in the US is a popular example. It's not a great example though, because the US was the principal winner of WWII, the only large industrial country relatively unscathed by it.
  - PaulHoule 8mo ago
    With the odd story that we paid the price for it in the long term. This book https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibilities-Change/dp/0465085881 https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi... tells the compelling story that the Mellon family teamed up with the steelworker's union to use protectionism to protect the American steel industry's investments in obsolete open hearth steel furnaces that couldn't compete on a fair market with the basic oxygen furnace process adopted by countries that had their obsolete furnaces blown up. The rest of US industry, such as our car industry, were dragged down by this because they were using expensive and inferior materials. I think this book had a huge impact in terms of convincing policymakers everywhere that tariffs are bad. Funny the Mellon family went on to further political mischief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife#Opposition_to_Bill_Clinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife#Oppositi...
    - vondur 8mo ago
      Ha, we gutted our manufacturing base, so if we bring it back it will now be state of the art! Not sure if that will work out for us, but hey their is some precedence.
lbreakjai 8mo ago
Violence was a moderating factor when people on each side were equally armed, and number was a deciding factor. Nowadays you could squash an uprising with a few operators piloting drones remotely.
- elictronic 8mo ago
  Flying a drone around is easy. Identifying who is on the in group and out group and then moving them is the hard part. I’m not sure you have really thought out what the drone part is meant to do. Militaries gave outgunned populaces for decades at this point. You don’t need drones to kill civilians.
  - lbreakjai 8mo ago
    It's actually quite easy. Whoever isn't in the bunker is the outgroup. You only needed to tell people apart when you needed some meatware to man the factories and work the fields. Militaries can side with the crowd, or more likely decide to keep the power for themselves.
    - Radim 8mo ago
      Yeah ruling juntas do need to "man the fields & factories" (1st order meatware), in order to produce and maintain those drones. Or nukes, or whatever "deciding factor beyond numbers" put them in power. But they also need 2nd order meatware to support that 1st order: teachers, doctors, merchants… You need scientists to advance your technology against other militaries… You need leaders (3rd order) to keep the first two populations quiet and productive since that turns out to be more cost-effective than fear control through extermination… Hell you need a certain level of genetic diversity so your own kids don't come out weird. Give evolution a little more credit. The required number of humans for the in-group to be self-sustainable is definitely not billions, plus it's been shrinking with automation. But we are where we are for a reason – lots of alternative arrangements have been tried over millenia and found wanting. "Keep my bunker + my drone factory and some farmers, kill the rest" leaves rulers with terrible quality of life (bad) and the next-door-junta taking over pretty quickly (also bad). It is a self-defeating, poor long-term strategy. Automation tips the power balance further: fewer humans needed, more local autonomy. Which is, I suspect, why the ruling class are so terribly excited about AI, more so than some market valuations. Fewer pesky humans across all levels. Genetic diversity of bloodline remains the primary concern (unless you manage to live forever, which happens to be another evergreen of power ghouls).
mlrtime 8mo ago
We have taxes now though, how much is enough? Hint: The answer for the government is, it's never enough. "little bit of taxes" is never what we had. Seriously though, I wouldn't mind "little bit of taxes" if there were guaranteed ways to stop funding something when it's a failed experiment, which is difficult in government. Because "a little bit more" is always wanted.
- CodeMage 8mo ago
  Every time I hear an argument like this one, it's always phrased in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore taxes are bad" and never in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore our systems of controlling our government are not good enough".
  - mlrtime 8mo ago
    I didn't actually say they are greedy or incompetent. Government starts a new program and funds it with taxes. First, it is difficult to prove if the program is doing what it set out to do effectively. Second, there is 0 incentive to ever shut it down. The people working there don't want to, the group who started it also don't want to. The people funding it have 0 insight or say if it should continue.

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago

Every possible example of “progress” have either an individual or a state power purpose behind it there is only one possible “egalitarian” forward looking investments that paid off for everybody I think the only exception to this is vaccines…and you saw how all that worked during Covid Everything else from the semiconductor to the vacuum cleaner the automobile airplanes steam engines I don’t care what it is you pick something it was developed in order to give a small group and advantage over all the other groups it is always been this case it will always be this case because fundamentally at the root nature of humanity they do not care about the externalities- good or bad

jacquesm 8mo ago
COVID has cured me (hah!) of the notion that humanity will be able to pull together when faced with a common enemy. That means global warming or the next pandemic are going to happen and we will not be able to stop it from happening because a solid percentage can't wait to jump off the ledge, and they'll push you off too.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  Yeah buddy we agree
- jpadkins 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - yifanl 8mo ago
    Great zinger buddy, you really showed off your wit.
  - Nevermark 8mo ago
    It is so easy to critique the response in hindsight. Or at the time. But critiques like that ignore uncertainty, risk, and unavoidably getting it "wrong" (on any and all dimensions), no matter what anyone did. With a new virus successfully circumnavigating the globe in a very short period of time, with billions of potential brand new hosts to infect and adapt within, and no way to know ahead of time how virulent and deadly it could quickly evolve to be, the only sane response is to treat it as extremely high risk. There is no book for that. Nobody here or anywhere knows the "right" response to a rapidly spreading (and killing) virus, unresponsive to current remedies. Because it is impossible to know ahead of time. If you actually have an answer for that, you need to write that book. And take into account, that a lot of people involved in the last response, are very cognizant that we/they can learn from what worked, what didn't, etc. That is the valuable kind of 20-20 vision. A lot of at-risk people made it to the vaccines before getting COVID. The ones I know are very happy about everything that reduced their risk. They are happy not to have died, despite those who wanted to let the disease to "take its natural course". And those that died, including people I know, might argue we could have done more, acted as a better team. But they don't get to. No un-nuanced view of the situation has merit. The most significant thing we learned: a lot of humanity is preparing to be a problem if the next pandemic proves ultimately deadlier. A lot of humanity doesn't understand risk, and doesn't care, if doing so requires cooperative efforts from individuals.
    - jacquesm 8mo ago
      It's usually the same people that would have been the loudest to shout if it had not worked as well as it did...
      - mrguyorama 8mo ago
        It's the same people who don't even notice that we don't talk about acid rain anymore, because we solved it with government regulation for pretty cheap. They even indignantly mention the Ozone layer, insisting that "Look, liberals told you to care but its not a problem anymore", ignorant entirely of the immense global effort to fix that.
ghurtado 8mo ago
If you edit your comment to add punctuation, please let me know: I would like to read that final pile of words. I did try, I promise.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  Ok here: Everything from the semiconductor through the vacuum cleaner, automobile, airplanes and steam engines was developed to give a small group an advantage over all the other groups. It has always been the case, it will always be the case. Fundamentally, at the root nature of humanity, humans do not care about the externalities, either good or bad.
  - tim333 8mo ago
    That's a slightly odd way of looking at it. I'm guessing the people developing airplanes or whatever thought of a number of things including - hey this would be cool to do - and - maybe we can make some money - and - maybe this will help people travel - and - maybe it'll impress the girls - and probably some other things too. At least that's roughly how I've thought when I make stuff, never this will give a small group an advantage.
    - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
      But the whole point is embedded in the task otherwise you wouldn’t do it If somebody is using monetary resources to buy NFT‘s instead of handing out food to the homeless then you get less food for the homeless All of the things listed are competitive task situations and you’re looking for some advantage that makes it easier for you well if it makes it easier for you then it could make it easier for somebody else which means you’re crowding out other options in that action space That is to say the pie is fixed for resources on this planet in terms of energy and resource utilization across the lifespan of a human
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    Vacuum cleaner -> sell appliances -> sell electric motors But there was a clear advantage in quality of life for a lot of people too. Automobile -> part of industrialization of transport -> faster transport, faster world Arguably also a big increase in quality of life but it didn't scale that well and has also reduced the quality of life. If all that money had gone into public transport then that would likely have been a lot better. Airplanes -> yes, definitely, but they were also clearly seen as an advantage in war, in fact that was always a major driver behind inventions. Steam engine -> the mother of all prime movers and the beginnings of the fossil fuel debacle (coal). Definitely a quality of life change but also the cause of the bigger problems we are suffering from today. The 'coffin corner' (one of my hobby horses) is a real danger, we have, as a society, achieved a certain velocity, if we slow down too much we will crash, if we speed up the plane will come apart. Managing these transitions is extremely delicate work and it does not look as though 'delicate' is in the vocabulary of a lot of people in the driving seats.

jpadkins 8mo ago

Do you have a historical example of "Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier"? I can't think of any.

nine_k 8mo ago
If you replace "taxes" with more general "investment", it's everywhere. A good example is Amazon that has reworked itself from an online bookstore into a global supplier of everything by ruthlessly reinvesting the profits. Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA. If you're looking for periods of high taxes and growing prosperity, 1950s in the US is a popular example. It's not a great example though, because the US was the principal winner of WWII, the only large industrial country relatively unscathed by it.
- PaulHoule 8mo ago
  With the odd story that we paid the price for it in the long term. This book https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibilities-Change/dp/0465085881 https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi... tells the compelling story that the Mellon family teamed up with the steelworker's union to use protectionism to protect the American steel industry's investments in obsolete open hearth steel furnaces that couldn't compete on a fair market with the basic oxygen furnace process adopted by countries that had their obsolete furnaces blown up. The rest of US industry, such as our car industry, were dragged down by this because they were using expensive and inferior materials. I think this book had a huge impact in terms of convincing policymakers everywhere that tariffs are bad. Funny the Mellon family went on to further political mischief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife#Opposition_to_Bill_Clinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife#Oppositi...
  - vondur 8mo ago
    Ha, we gutted our manufacturing base, so if we bring it back it will now be state of the art! Not sure if that will work out for us, but hey their is some precedence.

lbreakjai 8mo ago

Violence was a moderating factor when people on each side were equally armed, and number was a deciding factor. Nowadays you could squash an uprising with a few operators piloting drones remotely.

elictronic 8mo ago
Flying a drone around is easy. Identifying who is on the in group and out group and then moving them is the hard part. I’m not sure you have really thought out what the drone part is meant to do. Militaries gave outgunned populaces for decades at this point. You don’t need drones to kill civilians.
- lbreakjai 8mo ago
  It's actually quite easy. Whoever isn't in the bunker is the outgroup. You only needed to tell people apart when you needed some meatware to man the factories and work the fields. Militaries can side with the crowd, or more likely decide to keep the power for themselves.
  - Radim 8mo ago
    Yeah ruling juntas do need to "man the fields & factories" (1st order meatware), in order to produce and maintain those drones. Or nukes, or whatever "deciding factor beyond numbers" put them in power. But they also need 2nd order meatware to support that 1st order: teachers, doctors, merchants… You need scientists to advance your technology against other militaries… You need leaders (3rd order) to keep the first two populations quiet and productive since that turns out to be more cost-effective than fear control through extermination… Hell you need a certain level of genetic diversity so your own kids don't come out weird. Give evolution a little more credit. The required number of humans for the in-group to be self-sustainable is definitely not billions, plus it's been shrinking with automation. But we are where we are for a reason – lots of alternative arrangements have been tried over millenia and found wanting. "Keep my bunker + my drone factory and some farmers, kill the rest" leaves rulers with terrible quality of life (bad) and the next-door-junta taking over pretty quickly (also bad). It is a self-defeating, poor long-term strategy. Automation tips the power balance further: fewer humans needed, more local autonomy. Which is, I suspect, why the ruling class are so terribly excited about AI, more so than some market valuations. Fewer pesky humans across all levels. Genetic diversity of bloodline remains the primary concern (unless you manage to live forever, which happens to be another evergreen of power ghouls).

mlrtime 8mo ago

We have taxes now though, how much is enough? Hint: The answer for the government is, it's never enough. "little bit of taxes" is never what we had. Seriously though, I wouldn't mind "little bit of taxes" if there were guaranteed ways to stop funding something when it's a failed experiment, which is difficult in government. Because "a little bit more" is always wanted.

CodeMage 8mo ago
Every time I hear an argument like this one, it's always phrased in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore taxes are bad" and never in terms of "the government is greedy and/or incompetent, therefore our systems of controlling our government are not good enough".
- mlrtime 8mo ago
  I didn't actually say they are greedy or incompetent. Government starts a new program and funds it with taxes. First, it is difficult to prove if the program is doing what it set out to do effectively. Second, there is 0 incentive to ever shut it down. The people working there don't want to, the group who started it also don't want to. The people funding it have 0 insight or say if it should continue.