rayiner

30 ms·

901.
by rayiner 5mo ago
The paper has a section listing their controls, including income, poverty rate, race, etc: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35310/w353... . It's on page 11.
902.
by rayiner 5mo ago
That ignores higher order effects--how theft changes primary behavior. In your example, fear of pick pocketing may reduce the degree to which people carry around and spend money with vendors. Your rapacity index makes little sense: by your
903.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Theft is a very inefficient tax on civilization.
904.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Education is considered a local issue pretty much everywhere. Even Sweden, which is a unitary state the size of Virginia, has principles of decentralization that places primary responsibility for education in the municipal governments.
905.
by rayiner 5mo ago
> Small government for topics we don't care about, like education. Every federal system has a division of responsibility between the federal government and sub-national governments. And education is assigned to the sub-national gove
906.
by rayiner 5mo ago
The founders' conception of "freedom" was different than the modern "anything goes" version. It was closer to the idea that moral and disciplined people could be trusted with freedom. As John Adams said: "Our C
907.
by rayiner 5mo ago
I think Wickard was wrongly decided.
908.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Moral regulation is the domain of the states, so that example is in fact different.
909.
by rayiner 5mo ago
“Control” of what? The type of thing is relevant. E.g. Nobody says regulating trains or airlines belongs to states. Similarly, nobody says the internet should be regulated by states.
910.
by rayiner 5mo ago
> Its one of the most celebrated intersectional cities merging the identities of three different major regions The Chinese population share in Singapore is similar to the white population share in Nebraska (75%). And Singapore has mainta
911.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Many post-colonial societies (Arabs, Indians, etc.) puff up their supposed past wealth and success, but that’s the real propaganda. Even when these countries were on important trade routes or whatever, the per-capita GDP of these places nev
912.
by rayiner 5mo ago
> Essentially, you must have be a bone-headed to screw up Singapore The place that is now Singapore had less than 1,000 people when Raffles got there. So what happened? There’s lots of places with strategic locations or natural resources
913.
by rayiner 5mo ago
It absolutely was: https://davidoks.blog/p/why-china-got-rich-and-india-didnt (“In 1987, median purchasing-power adjusted income in China was $1.88 per day, compared to $2.94 per day in India. Chinese median wages surp
914.
by rayiner 5mo ago
By what definition was LKY “racist?” He presided over growing prosperity for a multi-ethnic country of Chinese, Malays, and Indians. I’d submit that, if LKY fits within your “definitions of racism,” that’s not a useful definition.
915.
by rayiner 5mo ago
I’m using “neoliberal” because it’s the closest American term for someone who supports free markets and free trade. He was an admirer of Friedrich Hayek’s economic ideas while diverging from Hayek’s views on individual liberty. A better com
916.
by rayiner 5mo ago
The location is good, but there are many strategically well located places that are poor today. The people aren’t meaningfully different than the countries around Singapore. A 75% Chinese supermajority, maintained for decades through select
917.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Then you die and go into the history books.
918.
by rayiner 5mo ago
I edited because I realized Rome was a much easier example. But at least according to Wikipedia, chittagong was one of the major seaports of the ancient world and appeared on Ptolemy’s world map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
919.
by rayiner 5mo ago
That’s a different kind of misleading narrative, the “$PLACE was rich in pre-modern times” narrative. Places decline. Heck, by the middle ages, Rome’s population had dropped to just 30,000.
920.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Most marketing these days is that kind of pernicious Mad Men style feelings-based marketing. If ads were informational, like “here is a new product you might like from the makers of this other product you already use,” that would be differe
921.
by rayiner 5mo ago
This is a weird premise. India (and Bangladesh) has virtually 100% access to electricity and adequate generation capacity. The concept of temperatures exceeding the wet bulb temperature makes for a scary fiction novel. But I bet even my dad
922.
by rayiner 5mo ago
The U.S. has lots of social people with guns: police, guards, military, etc. We have a system where we draw a line around certain social people with guns and call them “the government.” But governments didn’t spring out of thin air. They re
923.
by rayiner 5mo ago
We have a real-life example of the second point playing out in modern times. The relevant observation is that it's important for armed citizens to be able start a conflict in order to put other forces in play. During Bangladesh'
924.
by rayiner 5mo ago
In the absence of firearms, the person who has the next most dangerous weapon can easily dominate everyone else. The country where I'm from was disarmed by the British to keep us from fighting them. But armed gangs still terrorize peop
925.
by rayiner 5mo ago
> However, the declaration argues math is more than a machine for producing correct answers. The discipline, its authors believe, is a deeply human endeavor built on creativity, understanding, collaboration Mathematicians of all people s
926.
by rayiner 5mo ago
You’re not wrong. Gen Z brings their parents to interviews. How can they self govern? I’m pessimistic—I think the the de tocqueville model of democracy may have been a local optimum that’s no longer viable given changed conditions.
927.
by rayiner 5mo ago
I’m quite impressed by China’s current authoritarian capitalist system. I was talking about the brutality and incompetence of China’s Maoist communism. Ironically, China proves that “democratic socialism” is exactly the wrong thing for a de
928.
by rayiner 5mo ago
> There's no intrinsic reason why a publicly-owned utility should be better or worse at its job than privately-owned utility. At scale, why would utilities be different than other government services, such as schools or transit? I’m
929.
by rayiner 5mo ago
Municipal broadband has never been banned in Maryland, where I live. Or in New York, Delaware, or Georgia, where I’ve also lived. Where are the great municipal broadband networks in these state?
930.
by rayiner 5mo ago
“Wealth transfer” implies that there’s a pile of money in one place that’s moved to another place. That’s not what happened with India. At first, the EIC was a very profitable middleman. It was like Ticketmaster—it made a profit on a trade

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