@Phil @adamgurri i guess we have very different experiences. i was in Europe (Romania) 6 weeks this summer, we did colonoscopies, endoscopies, MRIs, dentistry there rather than here, still cheaper despite paying what seems to me quite a lot for health insurance here.
@Phil @adamgurri i think what we do here is quite perverse, we let ~20% become “winners” for whom life is reasonably secure and comfortable, and encourage stories like “gumption” and anyone could have done what i did. but it’s a game of musical chairs, structurally the winners rely on the availability of losers, and the percentage we can collectively afford as winners diminishes. still, from the perspective of a winner it looks good. from a broad human welfare perspective, i say it’s bad.
@Phil @adamgurri (i am very glad whatever your brush with cancer was at 22 left you still ornery and with us at what i imagine is a much more seasoned age!)
@dodgytheories @phillmv @adamgurri the road to hell is thick with roads not taken.
@Phil @adamgurri if you want your own wood shop and classic car and three car garage you may be better off here. toys are not my thing, and i’m glad to work in shared spaces for any creative hobbies (in practice my creative hobbies are mostly virtual). but spaces are mostly better there, higher quality both physically and socially, even if you get fewer sq ft. i like to be able to walk to people and places. 1/
@Phil @adamgurri some stuff costs more there, but the stuff that really kills me, especially heath care, costs much much less. public school quality is high. (my kid’s public elementary schools were great, both in CA and FL, but that gets harder to ensure at higher grade levels here.) i do have a garage full of crap sentimental attachments render it difficult to be rid of. mostly i think i’d be better off if i’d never accumulated it. /fin
@dodgytheories @phillmv @adamgurri yup. a revolt against the establishment. about half took it towards Sanders-ish politics, the other half took it straight to MAGA.
@Phil @adamgurri I have been to those places. Yes, things are expensive because of the steep VAT, but ordinary pay is much better too, everything is better, and a big garage full of crap is not my idea of a good life.
They are overall much more successful countries than we are. It’s only hard to become affluent if you define affluent by distinction, in relative terms. Nearly everyone there enjoys the kind of security that only unusual affluence can purchase in the US.
@admitsWrongIfProven people have tried some open-source hardware, some-variant-of-linux-running phones, right? (obviously i haven’t.)
one perhaps saving grace is that smartphones are so prominent and essential that regulatory and antitrust authorities take note and sometimes act, especially in Europe (less corrupted by Apple and Google and claims of being a home-team champion).
however begrudgingly, one has to hand the administration some credit for finally securing the northern border. no one crosses it into the United States anymore.
@admitsWrongIfProven yeah, i agree, ultimately architecture is destiny and profit-motivated, centralized, near-monopoly platforms are destined to enshittify.
i don't know that any service has enjoyed an enshittification arc quite as steep as meetup.com, which briefly seemed like a revolutionary and essential utility and now seems like a scammy, spammy backwater.
i'm sorry for it too, because in its heyday i think it genuinely did lubricate and encourage in-person civil society. nothing as convenient and effective has emerged to supersede it.
@Phil @adamgurri i really like what’s been tried in Norway and Finland and Denmark, and to lesser degrees elsewhere. nothing lasts forever without continual supervision and renewal, but the virtues of those systems have outlasted the virtues of ours (of which i was quite fond in my younger days, i once had views not so different from yours, but as you say, it is good to actually observe the consequences of what has been tried).
@Phil @adamgurri Better corrupt and evil government than evil private power that is only not corrupt because it can be openly predatory without having to pretend to serve a public interest.
I don’t think well of your opinions (though it’s fun to chat!) either, but I’ll try to refrain from the insults.
@Phil @adamgurri As I say, we agree its disagreeable when in our name and with our resources government does what we abhor. But I think it most disagreeable to allow private power to concentrate and act without fetters. Government is like fire, a technology that if incautiously applied will burn your house down, but you tame it, don’t abjure it, because you require it to keep you warm. Or, in the case of government, to keep you free from the depredations of concentrated private power.
@Phil @adamgurri I agree that the way out is dispersal of power. But since I view money as the primary source and marker of power in a society like ours, dispersing power means reducing and preventing wealth concentration, and government, for all its difficulties and pathologies, is the only institution capable of achieving that.
@Phil @adamgurri No one accepts or applauds a complete lack of personal virtue. But it’s pretty dumb to build a system that depends upon its omnipresence. I know that’s not what you are advocating. You know I am not advocating discounting personal virtue, we should all strive for it individually and among those we support in positions of respect or authority. But that doesn’t get us out of the work of building systems either resilient to its absence or ensuring of its presence.
@Phil @adamgurri I have rarely felt abused by the government but feel constantly at the mercy of private monopoly and power. Our feelings and personal experiences of these things won’t take us very far. The danger I experience is the danger of the society we have actually become, the one that elevated people you support to power, to do awful things you support and I do not. It is unsurprising we don’t find common ground, because things you think good I think quite evil, and I’m sure vice versa.
@admitsWrongIfProven don’t worry, the simulation is only simulated, we needn’t take it so seriously.
@Phil @adamgurri I live in the world. I would love to be able to rely upon people having honor and virtue impervious to pecuniary and other influence, but I have observed human behavior and history and understand that human behavior varies dramatically based on institutions and circumstance, and relying on personal virtue to construct a social, political, or economic system is a fool’s errand. we thrive or die based on institutions and systems. 1/
@Phil @adamgurri Money is power. That is all that it is. Absent government to constrain the monied, it is violent and coercive power. You will have heard the expression “warlord”. That refers to the coincidence of wealth and violent coercion that emerges when states fail. Government is corrupt, and private power is not, only because self-interestedness is the expected nature of private power. Only govt is corruptible because it aspires to, sometimes imperfectly achieves, something better. /fin
@Phil @adamgurri money is power, nothing more or less. it doesn’t “buy things”, it only influences human behavior. influencing human behavior is the very role and purpose of money. none of us should be shocked that it influences the behavior of legislators through a variety of channels. if you have institutional suggestions about how to insulate them from influence, we’re all ears. if your solution is less government, well that leaves only money as power, even worse.
@GuerillaOntologist i agree that the current system selects pathologically. i disagree that sortition under anything like existing institutions would be much better. selection effects would be replaced by capture effects, the selected would very quickly cease to be representative by virtue of their selection and ensuing experience, and not just in desirable ways like learning to act in their new roles on behalf of the public.
@phillmv @adamgurri it hasn’t aged like fine wine.
@admitsWrongIfProven whatever it is, we are irredeemably within it and have little choice but to work our way through it.