iguy

9 ms·

31.
by iguy 6y ago
Thanks, that's a useful map.
32.
by iguy 6y ago
Trade seems fine, it is being dependent which is potentially dangerous. In the cold war, it was the USSR which was more dependent. Without food grown in North America, they were (IIRC) looking at WWII levels of rationing, in the 80s, which
33.
by iguy 6y ago
I have literally never looked up these numbers before, so it's entirely possible I messed it up. But I think you might be missing a conversion factor, as it appears that tankers quote liquid volume, while pipelines quote gas (at 1 atm
34.
by iguy 6y ago
> As soon as Russian gas stops, ... Germany can almost instantly get American gas. Is it really so simple? Even if the domestic infrastructure is identical, you need the port facilities (at both ends, with spare capacity), and you need s
35.
by iguy 6y ago
You mean after WWI. But yes, both to having colonies, but being a smaller player than others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonization_of_Africa
36.
by iguy 6y ago
Lots of "unskilled" immigrants certainly find useful things to do. And live better lives than they would have at home. But I think the counter-argument is something like this. Countries with an unlimited pool of low-skill labor ha
37.
by iguy 6y ago
2nd line of TFA: "among Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists, [im]migrants [...]" These people might be under-paid, relative to silicon valley, but "slave wages" is pushing it. And while they are not a group known fo
38.
by iguy 6y ago
Different era. "Up until about the late 70s" makes it sound like this was the eternal state of affairs, but it wasn't. It was a few postwar decades.
39.
by iguy 6y ago
If they were just smaller that would be one thing, but the change in what they get paid for is bigger, I think. A paper supported by the big department store's ads is incentivised to be broad, because the store wants to sell to everyon
40.
by iguy 6y ago
And do you know where the web got invented? At one of the biggest cathedrals ever built to the idea that bringing lots of scientists into close proximity to work on hard problems tends to produce neat stuff. Sure, on some level he could hav
41.
by iguy 6y ago
What happens in the alternative universe where the west crushes Germany in 1935? It seems really hard to guess these things. Do they have the attention span to keep it divided for another half-century until things cool down, or do the hawks
42.
by iguy 6y ago
I think you're talking about networking for money, and that's a thing. But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is
43.
by iguy 6y ago
Maybe. But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. Maybe we'd see the opposite, people leaving a stable
44.
by iguy 6y ago
But we do have lots of housing, it's just located in places people don't want to live. Rents are high in places they do want to be, and that's partly a positional thing -- if you want to live where the top-10% of earners li
45.
by iguy 6y ago
This is true, and both make a difference. But worth knowing that the murder rate dropped, over centuries, to be extremely low around 1900 say. At this point medicine wasn't very useful at saving lives, and while guns (even machine-guns
46.
by iguy 6y ago
Even ignoring time spent doing non-work things we don't do, free time has increased a lot over a century. We have good data on this. Factory shifts circa 1900 were long, and 2-day weekends rare. Unless "centuries ago" means s
47.
by iguy 6y ago
There's also room for causality the other way, here. If feel you have a lot in common with your compatriots, and generally trust them, then you are (I claim) more likely to support paying taxes to support those who are having a rough t
48.
by iguy 6y ago
And there is https://www.proforhobo.com ...
49.
by iguy 6y ago
While I am horrified by the sums of money, I think there's a slightly less cynical take than the congressional districts one. If you want to have an industry of people who make X, then there need to be people employed making X, every y
50.
by iguy 6y ago
There is distaste for clan-like behaviour even when no crimes are committed. For example, most westerners would not like to work in an organisation where your family connection to important people is valued over your work. Few would accept
51.
by iguy 6y ago
This is (crudely speaking) because the Catholic church stamped out such things in the core of Europe 1000 years ago. (Or perhaps that sentence should be the other way around.) Many edges of Europe skipped this process -- Sicily (under the S
52.
by iguy 6y ago
Interesting that Thailand is in 5th place on that list, 80% the US rate. And about 65% the murder rate (placing them pretty close together on the world scale): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentio
53.
by iguy 6y ago
Doesn't blasphemy by definition target a non-existent person?
54.
by iguy 6y ago
It sounds more like they have a military government, who claim to act in the name of a king. And hence claim that any criticism of them is criticism of him. Against which there are both strong laws (even if these were seldom applied so stro
55.
by iguy 6y ago
In the UK, presumably the NHS is precisely the "distribution and vaccination system already in place", which the government re-used? Although I don't actually know whether they handle the flu vaccine, or if this is something
56.
by iguy 6y ago
Sure, lots of places. Ask the Kurds how much say they used to have in Turkish elections. Or ask the Welsh what they think about Westminster.
57.
by iguy 6y ago
Dry ice is indeed routine, but I think usually used to ship things which need to stay below -10C, not below -60C. So there has been some work in figuring out better shipping boxes, tracking devices, procedures for breaking down large shipme
58.
by iguy 6y ago
Yes this is an interesting contrast. But besides public/private, it's also about delivering some concrete physical thing, vs. some virtual service. At least for the tracing part, I mean... a massive call-center roll-out just seems
59.
by iguy 6y ago
There's a lot of truth in this, but one catch is that the "zillion pharmacies" aren't set up for -70C storage. Although delivering each of them a small box of vaccine to be injected that same day sounds like a problem fo
60.
by iguy 6y ago
> he presents the timings as 50 minutes as against 10 Yes, but again this is his rhetorical strategy. You absolutely can skim an hour's material in 10 minutes. Many are tempted to try. But if it's new to you, you won't lea

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