mikem170

41 ms·

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by mikem170 5y ago
I thought this was interesting: > According to the Captured Economy project at the centrist Niskanen Center, “today, around 25 percent of American workers need a state license to do their job — up from 10 percent in 1970.” These regulati
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by mikem170 5y ago
> rule by opinion poll Democracy doesn't have to be 51% majority rule. That would be quite unfair to the loosing minority. Consensus democracy is one alternative, preventing a majority from imposing on a minority. There's thing
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by mikem170 5y ago
> I am not here for health theater That's how I've felt about restaurants, where you're supposed to wear a mask when walking to your table but don't have to while sitting. Follow the science, supposedly... </s
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by mikem170 5y ago
> I mean, if you don't believe that the people who actually reside, work and live their lives permanently in an area are more deserving An area like the beach is an interesting. Do the limited set of people who happened to move ther
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by mikem170 5y ago
Couldn't you say that city planners are to blame for not providing enough supply to meet the demand? Also, I wonder if maybe lots of people don't like existing hotels for some reason? It seems the locals get forced out wherever de
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by mikem170 5y ago
This is true, zoning in Japan [0] makes a lot of sense. Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes, even a percentage of space dedicated to a low-impact business (like hair stylist, etc). They have setback rules so that you can&#x2
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by mikem170 5y ago
> Just mix it into the tear gas canisters at the protests. Problem solved, either the anti vaxxers stay home or get vaxxed. I got a chuckle out of your comment, because it's kind of funny/clever. But I hope you were not seriou
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by mikem170 5y ago
I don't disagree with your point that money corrupts politics. I was responding specifically to your questioning of why the equivalency of money and free speech came up.
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by mikem170 5y ago
Or they search the bags in front of passengers, so passengers can unlock the bags themselves? (just saying there are other alternatives, not just as-is or nothing)
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by mikem170 5y ago
> The unstated part of what I'm trying to read in good faith is that you are saying that money is speech? The U.S. Supreme Court took that position, in their famous Citizens United ruling: "The court held that the free speech c
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by mikem170 5y ago
I've always felt we should have put more effort into supporting those who are feel they are vulnerable, rather than punishing those who are not. I've felt especially bad for young people who are at minimal risk from covid, having
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by mikem170 5y ago
Your example was interesting. There are more laws protecting worker safety than there are laws protecting restaurant patrons. For the purposes of covid I'm not sure if that is a black and white situation legally, at least in the U.S. N
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by mikem170 5y ago
85% sounds a lot better to me than a 51% majority, which was partially my point. Your point about the minority dictating policy by attrition is interesting to think about. Conservatives might tend to like that feature, not adding new laws u
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by mikem170 5y ago
> These are luxuries not rights. You don't have the right to go to a bar. Does that mean that the government has the right to deny the population anything not spelled out as a right in the constitution? That sounds unlimited to me.
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by mikem170 5y ago
The 51% percent shouldn't get to do anything they want to the other 49%. Democracy can/should be more nuanced than simple majority/mob rule. Super majorities, local rule, and consensus are all ways of achieving that. Ideally
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by mikem170 5y ago
I'd add that the decades after WW2 were boom times for the Unites States. So many other industrialized nations were reduced to rubble. The effects of having to rebuild lasted decades. Post-WW2 the U.S. made up about half the world&#x27
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by mikem170 5y ago
> There are places that do employ such monitoring, but they're a corner case. Don't amazon warehouses already monitor workers in this much detail? Just yesterday I read someone talking about how managers get reports containing
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by mikem170 5y ago
> In a democracy of three, two people can vote to kill the third. It depends on the specific rules of their democracy. Majority democracy would allow the majority to kill the minority, as in your example. I heard this goes back to Roman
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by mikem170 5y ago
But the studies in the article, from multiple places, say that masking children didn't make a difference in local covid rates.
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by mikem170 5y ago
I would agree that it is not irrelevant. My language there may have been too strong. I was probably thinking that the other factors (personal protection, hospital capacity, and the political question of mandates) seem so much more significa
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by mikem170 5y ago
> We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination. I know that we eradicated smallpox, but only because there are no animal hosts. Covid has many animal hosts [0]. You'd have to vaccinate them all to eliminate covid, that inclu
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by mikem170 5y ago
> Thus, if a large part of the population remains unvaccinated, the virus has more room room to evolve than necessary given we have easy access to effective and safe vaccines. Word was that Omicron diverged from an earlier version of co
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by mikem170 5y ago
It's my understanding that long covid is not something new and unexpected. Apparently any virus attacking the organs can cause problems. These problems usually go away after some time. Long flu is definitely a thing. I saw a meta study
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by mikem170 5y ago
This guy put together a great analysis of over two dozen ivermectin studies [0] and he found that the studies done in countries where intestinal worms are common giving ivermectin showed a benefit against covid, and that in countries where
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by mikem170 5y ago
This guy [0] made a detailed good case that ivermectin shows positive results only in studies done in parts of the world where intestinal worms are very common, likely because intestinal worms and their interactions with the microbiome caus
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by mikem170 5y ago
The federal fannie/freddie/etc subsidies should be addressed, also. These tax payer subsidies for only single family homes make housing less affordable. It was nice that Trump raised the standard tax deduction, making the home int
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by mikem170 5y ago
Autoimmune issues, including those related to vaccines, are not well understood. I looked into this when I saw that many people were having covid-like adverse reactions to the vaccines. The only thing I found was that when the immune system
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by mikem170 5y ago
It is my understanding (based on what I know of Germany) that only certain degrees (mostly STEM) are free, and available to students who qualify (academically).
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by mikem170 5y ago
Playing devil's advocate: If we are considering maturity as a pre-requisite to vote, perhaps we should test for that? Some 15 years olds are very mature, and some 30+ years olds are not. Also, maybe it is wrong to disenfranchise immatu
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by mikem170 5y ago
Agreed. And potentially the age and health of the population going into the pandemic. There's a study comparing Sweden and Norways mortality over the pandemic and the four years proceeding it, which concluded: > "Our study show

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