merpnderp

12 ms·

91.
by merpnderp 4y ago
The value of a worker 50 years ago is surely far less to me today than it was to his employers back then. Yet if we had deflation his work would be worth more today than back then. Why should I value a road builder’s work today when that ro
92.
by merpnderp 4y ago
Couple that with the massive drawdown in Chinese imports and no wonder inflation is blowing up. United States Imports from China: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-from-chin...
93.
by merpnderp 5y ago
By working for the government. People must be rewarded for taking jobs that pay more on average, have better benefits on average, and are much harder to be separated from on average.
94.
by merpnderp 5y ago
Any of your masters programs cover the tragedy of the commons?
95.
by merpnderp 5y ago
What would Germany’s energy prices be if they’d transitioned away from cheap Russian natgas starting back in 2014? What will they be if Russia shuts down exports tomorrow? France is in a much better position.
96.
by merpnderp 5y ago
It wasn't hard. Freedom Fries was a response to France not cooperating with pretty sketchy intelligence used to start a war. Even people who supported freedom fries were mostly tongue in cheek. I faintly remember people being much more
97.
by merpnderp 5y ago
The site was broken for me, likely because of blockers. So they didn’t give me results but I didn’t give them real data. Fair trade.
98.
by merpnderp 5y ago
The future has zero mass, thus has zero energy, thus most likely doesn't exist yet. It's a really long gamble to say that it does.
99.
by merpnderp 5y ago
I keep telling people this and people seem bewildered. But how many times has this already happened in the last 80 years? We already know there’s nothing they can do to trigger a war.
100.
by merpnderp 5y ago
How can anyone intervene when Russia has 6,400 nuclear weapons? It will provide no comfort in our final moments to know Russia is facing the same fate.
101.
by merpnderp 5y ago
They could have just thrown breakers at junctions or cut the power lines. No need to set the reactor on fire.
102.
by merpnderp 5y ago
I mean don't we all have enough data on this? When I lived in apartments, the neighbor's babies crying through the walls definitely kept me up. People making babies make it hard to sleep. Barking dogs definitely make it hard to sl
103.
by merpnderp 5y ago
Hasn’t the US just gone through 6 years of protests against the government that have been a lot more violent than this, and I don’t recall anyone being fired for donating. If the rule is you can’t use civil disobedience and be employed by t
104.
by merpnderp 5y ago
There is no good reason a kid should go hungry in the US. Federal, state, school, charity food programs make it possible for every kid to eat. But a parent who would steal his kids coat to pay his medical bills (your scenario not mine or li
105.
by merpnderp 5y ago
It’s not a lack of resources it’s a lack of will. You can’t force parents to use the food programs. Hell around where I live you can’t stop the parents from stealing from their kids to buy drugs. Send a coat home with a kid on Friday, Monda
106.
by merpnderp 5y ago
A few of those people getting access to a submarine or just building a robot to go down there is a lot more likely than them building a vehicle and equipment to land on Mars and assault the habitat there.
107.
by merpnderp 5y ago
Except 8 billion starving desperate people trying to get it. For instance if people were starving or hiding from fallout, those doomsday shelters the rich are building for themselves would likely be overran by the locals who helped build th
108.
by merpnderp 5y ago
"industry is better at organizing capital and labor to deliver a product/service than government" At some level this is always true. Are there any countries with competitive industries that don't have corporations doing
109.
by merpnderp 5y ago
The idea of making the government smaller is pretty much dead politically. The idea of choosing to inflict even small amounts of economic pain in order to correct gross social and political ills is too much for people. That boat has sailed.
110.
by merpnderp 5y ago
You only have to look at how the US faired in high inflation periods in the past to realize how awful this is for normal working people. I'm amazed at how many people are so flippant about something with hard data showing how destructi
111.
by merpnderp 5y ago
"The latter is much harder and absolutely needs informed - ideally effective and professional - handling of public presentation and messaging." That sounds like a ton of work.
112.
by merpnderp 5y ago
If our threshold for badness is X and we apply that to alcohol, but don't apply that to drugs, then we're being inconsistent with how we apply our threshold for badness. You just had to take your argument a step further to see the
113.
by merpnderp 5y ago
This kind of reasoning is perfect. You remember when alcohol was made illegal in the US? Remember the harm that caused from gangs, uneven police crackdowns on illegal bars, and such rampant criminality that alcohol was quickly re-legalized?
114.
by merpnderp 5y ago
If you think things got worse for people since the 1980s, maybe you should start by digging a little deeper into how bad it used to be. And why would you think race has stopped being on the minds of any people? Do you have any evidence of t
115.
by merpnderp 5y ago
But even Native American tribes mostly care about people who are culturally present in their tribes as members versus being of Native American race. For example those whose ancestors didn't partake in the Dawes Roles are generally excl
116.
by merpnderp 5y ago
But in this case they are enforcing the law. The prosecutors and courts are the ones not putting them in prison. And to the people saying UP just needs more cops, they wouldn't need more cops if as criminals were caught they were taken
117.
by merpnderp 5y ago
If they see an explosion of immigration, it’s because of the illegal immigrant labor market created by the massive spike in wages and massive decline in available labor. The governments can’t keep people out but also can’t make the new peop
118.
by merpnderp 5y ago
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make but keep in mind that most slaves in human history looked exactly like those enslaving them.
119.
by merpnderp 5y ago
Slavery is a scourge on humanity. But it was a scourge on humanity for 99.999% of our existence. I’d sure like to think it wasn’t our natural state, but it sure feels like if society broke down, that’s what we’d default to.
120.
by merpnderp 5y ago
I’m interested in this worst performing stat. By what measure? Because I’ve always read that when controlling for the relative poor health of the us population regarding diseases related to poor eating and exercise habits, the US was a top

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