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@FLRW
I wouldn’t characterize myself as left-wing:
- I like free trade.
- I support abolishing most occupational licensing, regulations on building market-rate housing, price controls (including on pharmaceuticals) and rent control, and lots of regulations on businesses. (I do like some other regulations though.)
- In the U.S., I oppose a lot of policy priorities that progressives generally share, including a wealth tax, single-payer healthcare (e.g., Medicare for All), a Green New Deal (at least, the version advocated by the more left-wing Democrats), auditing the Fed, free college, and student debt cancellation.
- I support increasing investments in police departments and hiring more police officers.
I agree that I’m quite liberal, both on social issues and economic policy. I’m not quite sure where the line between “liberal” and “left-wing” is. Honestly, I’m pretty close to Biden on a lot of policy issues -- I dunno if you’d characterize him as left-wing.
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@Danielle
Yeah, it's true Dems can't abolish the filibuster because of those two peeps (and I just realized my typo from my last post -- I meant to say put back the filibuster in the end, I think). I don't agree that the Senate is necessarily an un undemocratic institution, although I see what you mean in the sense of majority rule. But I do think the Senate is good for checks and balances and specifically a check against majority rule. Sinema and Manchin are just doing what their constituents want them to do. It's not like W Virginians are super liberal.
In the abstract, a check against majority rule is good, but I think the Senate is a pretty poor check, because it empowers an arbitrarily selected minority. I don’t think the solution to majoritarianism is to unequally and unfairly give overwhelming political power to a randomly selected group of citizens based on the region they live, unless said group has a history of significant disadvantage due to majority rule.
It’s like, among a group of a 100 people, you give 10 randomly-selected people three times the vote of the other 90, with the logic of a “check against majority rule.” Personally, I think that’s a sufficient injustice that a check against majority rule doesn’t justify it, especially if it’s the same small group of people getting additional political power year on year.
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@Danielle
If Democrats had the shameless will to win like the Republicans do, they would #1 get rid of the filibuster; #2 make Washington DC and Puerto Rico states; #3 pack the court; and finally #4 overturn the filibuster.
On the filibuster, they’re mostly constrained by the median Democrats being pretty much center-right (Sinema and Manchin), because the Senate is structurally biased against Democrats -- meaning even when the Democrats do control the Senate, they rely on conservative Democrats as the median voters.
The Senate honestly needs to be abolished or significantly reformed. It’s an absurdly undemocratic institution.
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@secularmerlin
Inflation is a tool of the state used to correct any time the market begins to favor the workforce. When people are paid high wages and cannot afford to improve their living standards you know that inflation is working.
You keep switching between different claims about inflation, but you haven’t provided any evidence for them!
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@secularmerlin
Money is not an end in itself it is the means to an end
I agree, of course. Money is just an exchange rate on stuff that’s actually valuable. However, over short timeframes, people imagine money has value, and that leads to the weird outcome that the quantity of money in the economy affects real stuff.
Inflation is not a bug of capitalism it is a feature.As a feature of capitalism inflation can be used by the ultra rich in the same way they use money and towards the same end. To concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible.
Inflation is pretty bad for capital, actually. In part, it’s bad for creditors, because sufficiently high inflation means that nominal interest rates are insufficient to compensate creditors for losses. And in credible monetary policy regimes, it leads to tightening -- stock markets aren’t doing very well right now.
I’m also uncompelled by the idea that inflation is occurring due entirely to corporate greed. For one, if my (empirically justifiable) claims about excess demand in the economy are correct, the alternative to the prices of goods and services increasing would be shortages of stuff. Either way, people would suffer. Besides, capitalism is a constant, but inflation has increased -- inflation was very low (dangerously low, arguably) in the post-2008 period, despite the economy still being a capitalistic one. Here’s a more rigorously argued set of empirical arguments for why things like monopoly power are probably not the main driver of current high inflation.
Honestly any "liberal" who supports capitalism is actually supporting meritocracy and exploitation. You cannot have capitalism without those.
I don’t think meritocracy is a bad thing. I support it, on balance.
I agree that capitalism leads to exploitative situations, often. I nonetheless think capitalism -- broadly defined -- does more good than harm, and is preferable to any feasible alternatives.
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@thett3
When do you think they shoudve raised rates? They needed some “dry powder” didn’t they? That wouldn’t have helped with our current inflation tho
Not sure what “dry powder” means here -- do you just mean the cash they’d get by selling securities? Not sure why that was necessary/urgent then -- I’d argue reducing the pain of excessively tight policy in 2015-16, getting the economy to full employment between 2017-18, averting a recession in 2019 and responding to market indicators like the inverted yield curve, and softening the blow of the COVID recession in 2020 was the priority.
They could’ve raised rates a quarter earlier. I don’t think the delayed rate hikes get at the heart of the problem, to be honest, though (in part, because earlier rate hikes may have just delayed inevitable inflation from the stimulus). I think (1) they needed to taper asset purchases quicker and (2), most importantly, they needed to re-anchor expectations -- clearly articulate that they understood higher inflation was, in significant part, a result of higher nominal spending, make it clear that rates would likely be on an upward trend throughout 2022 (unless, say, unemployment was above 4% or inflation was less than expected) even back in 2021. The Fed’s credibility is a serious part of medium-term inflation expectations -- even if this has only a small influence on medium-term inflation, it makes rate hikes less painful for the economy. The Fed claimed it was adopting flexible average inflation target, but it was okay to let inflation overshoot quite a bit without averaging it out, which is bad.
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@thett3
Core inflation has fallen for two months, so rate hikes seem to be working somewhat.
Perhaps one path out of all of this is if the Fed credibly commits to raise rates as high as necessary if push comes to shove (e.g., this Jason Furman tweet). Feels like the “hike rates” version of “credibly committing to being irresponsible” (the Krugman aphorism that led to ResponsiblyIrresponsible’s DDO username, though Krugman was talking about credibly committing to increase the money supply to prevent a deflationary spiral during the Great Recession).
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@thett3
That said the American rescue plan was definitely too big. At the time the vaccine was rolling out rapidly (and we didn’t actually know there would be so many breakthrough infections), we knew that consumer savings were huge, we knew supply chain issues were coming (did the bill do anything to address these? I don’t remember), the incredibly generous unemployment benefits were extended way too long… I am wary of making predictions on this sort of thing but I knew immediately that inflation was going to come. There was simply so much money sloshing around. Now the fed has to raise rates during a recession :(
This is all fair :/
I do think part of the recession is induced by expectations that the Fed will raise rates (i.e. I think the Fed, unfortunately, has to essentially induce a small recession), but yeah, sucks. Sad. I hope not too many people lose their jobs or fall back into poverty...
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@thett3
To be fair, everyone got inflation wrong for quite a while other than dedicated fiscal conservatives. And they got it wrong in the opposite direction so often that they were basically the boy who cried wolf at this point. And Trump bears some responsibility for blatantly pressuring the fed not to raise interest rates in 2017-19 when they absolutely needed to and had the opportunity to. I don’t feel bad for him because I hate him but it is objectively true that to some extent Biden got caught holding the bag for a mess Trump made
I strongly disagree that the Fed needed to raise rates 2017-19, I think the Fed being expansionary then actually averted a recession in 2019, and I think Fed policy was solid in 2020 as well -- if anything, I think Trump screaming at the Fed 2017-19 to keep policy loose, even though I think was a bad precedent Fed independence-wise, was necessary to ensure the strong pre-Covid economy (with inflation still well below 2%). I think the problem is the Fed didn’t follow average inflation targeting in 2021, and way overcompensated for its past failures on inflation, despite warnings from folks like Summers and Blanchard in the other direction; aggregate demand right now is quite a bit higher than in 2019 (and I also don’t view the effects of Fed policy in 2019 to be as persistent as you seem to).
For what it’s worth, I’d actually rather the status quo than a world where Powell behaved like Yellen and raised rates 2017–19. Inflation is bad, real wages falling is bad, but we aren’t in an inflationary spiral (10-year inflation expectations look fine), and more importantly, (1) the 2017–19 economy actually recovered from a bunch of serious problems that, during the 2016 election cycle, were blamed on trade and automation, and (2) the pandemic was not nearly as bad on the economy as it could’ve been without Powell’s actions.
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@cristo71
By “the wrong way,” do you mean not far enough in the proper direction? If not, I’m not getting what you’re saying…
I mean the Fed actively tightened policy when they should have been loosening (no, “cutting rates” isn't loosening, because the natural rate of interest fell sharply during the recession, so insofar as you keep the rate above the natural rate, you’re actively reducing how much money there is in the economy relative to a counterfactual where the Fed “did nothing”), for a brief period.
It sure is— I wasn’t saying that I predicted inflation would occur in the Spring of 2020. To be clear, I was saying that in the Spring of 2020, I was predicting high inflation would occur later— which is now.
Okay; I thought you meant you predicted inflation in late 2020, which was Caplan’s prediction.
I still think this is less useful than someone seeing the specific policy that was passed, and predicting later inflation due to it.
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@zedvictor4
I would suggest that inflation is fuelled by global events.
I’ve got to catch a flight, so I’ll respond to this in more detail soon, but while the invasion of Ukraine and supply chain pressures have some influence on inflation, I’d say “aggregate demand is too high” is the primary factor. In specific, I think the Fed’s monetary policy has been much too loose, and hence, it hasn’t offset the effects of inflation brought on by increases in government spending.
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@cristo71
Seeing as how I predicted inflation in Spring of 2020, I must disagree with your claim of fact.
Don’t think this is a prediction of 2021–22 inflation though. Bryan Caplan also thought the COVID recession would primarily be a “real business cycle,” and shock inflation upward alongside a reduction in output. Instead, throughout 2020, we saw inflation well below the Fed’s 2% target.
But yeah, I agree it was very much predictable -- Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard predicted it. I will say that their models were still a bit off, because they also predicted much lower unemployment than actually materialized.
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@cristo71
During the stimulus and quantitative easing of the Obama administration, I was hearing talk of inflation… inflation which never materialized. Looking back, I think that is because Obama was dealing with a general weakness in demand from the Great Recession and its high unemployment.What has happened during the COVID era is totally different— demand has been artificially and temporarily restrained, like a compressed spring. Meanwhile, production slowed down immensely from lockdowns, artificially low demand, and labor illnesses. Governments were literally paying people not to produce— a perfect storm for inflation: low supply and demand just waiting to be freed from lockdown.The Biden admin mistook the COVID economy for the Great Recession economy, and the results speak for themselves.
This is a fair point.
In fact, I'd say the Obama Administration and particularly the Fed went the wrong way during the Great Recession. Christy Romer recommended a larger stimulus, which was only necessary because the Fed’s monetary policy was excessively tight for a large fraction of the period.
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I’m socially progressive, and lean center-left on economic policy. In fact, I’m with Biden on most U.S. policy issues (despite what I view to be the massive failure in Afghanistan).
I supported the American Rescue Plan, despite warnings from folks like Larry Summers, Olivier Blanchard, and Jason Furman that it might be inflationary:
- I thought the plan was mostly relief—rather than leading to an unprecedented spike in nominal spending, it would probably just be used to pay off debt and supplement savings.
- I thought it was pretty plausible the output gap (the gap between how much the economy could produce and how much it was actually producing -- if the gap is big, closing the gap wouldn’t cause inflation to increase) was being underestimated. After all, high inflation was pretty much unprecedented post-2008; it seemed like some combination of a global savings glut and a productivity slowdown meant consumers weren’t spending as much, while economists consistently underestimated how much more employment the economy could take without causing much inflation. I didn’t trust traditional economic models as much.
- Even if it was stimulus, I suspected that monetary policy would successfully partially offset its effect on an output gap, without too much hassle or major rate hikes.
- I thought some of Blanchard’s predictions, like <2% unemployment to accompany the high inflation, just seemed pretty intuitively implausible. This turns out to be a problem with traditional models in general: the U.S. has >3% unemployment, but still has pretty high core inflation.
In three of these four areas (#1, #2, and #3), I was dead wrong. So were many other liberals and progressives -- we vastly overestimated the economy’s ability to take money, as well as how expansionary the Fed was gonna continue being. It was a tough psychological shift for me. I was pretty frustrated in ~2017-18 with the apparent unwillingness of U.S. policymakers to push really hard for full employment; I attributed some of Trump’s victory, and the frustration of blue-collar workers, to insufficient willingness to spend in the economy (rather than more structural issues, like trade policy) -- and I continue to believe this. I thought, and continue to think, that the Fed being expansionary in 2019 averted a small recession, and the Fed’s response to COVID in 2020 was fantastic (as was the first relief bill, which caused poverty to decline in 2020). So now, on seeing high inflation -- which, more and more, wasn’t seeming like a transitory thing, nor a response to merely supply chain issues or gas prices -- I had to reckon with the downsides of deficit spending.
This is a real potential cost of the Democrats moving further left. Even though, on some margins, I welcome it (e.g., taking clean energy investments and R&D seriously, wanting more immigration, pushing for anti-poverty measures, and, relative to -- say -- 2015-16, a more pro-worker monetary policy), it’s undeniable that it’s time for the Fed to tighten (and the warnings of progressives like Elizabeth Warren against this terrify me) and for the U.S. deficit to reduce (as someone who hasn’t been particularly worried about deficits before). Moderate Democrats, by reigning in inflation, could be electorally stronger in an entirely different way now.
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@Greyparrot
You suggest "output" as a fundamental property of demand side economics when it clearly is a secondary property.
Demand-side economics, when economists say it, generally means trying to boost production by increasing “aggregate demand” (some measure of how much people and businesses want to buy things -- I like to think of it as nominal GDP) rather than by increasing productivity. For example, if the Fed cuts rates during a downturn, that’s also demand-side economics.
While this trickle down approach to "output" is clearly beset with all sorts of historical problems regarding individual human choice vs central planners (think recently of the Covid stimulus where people didn't spend the money like the government planned)...
This is a criticism that applies to only one flavor of demand-side economics – government spending as a form of fiscal policy.
In the context of the COVID-19 spending, I’d argue that a large number of people not spending the money meant a significant part of the package was focused on relief, not stimulus. To that extent, it met its objective.
More generally, I think there are two common ways fiscal policy fails in its prediction of human behavior:
- Overestimating the size of the output gap (the difference between real GDP and potential). If the economy isn’t significantly below potential, that means spending hasn’t decreased (or it has decreased because of supply-side problems), so people might not spend when they get the money. However, if you are correct about the output gap, then you’re fixing a “gap” in spending (since it seems like most recessions are demand-side/caused by people and firms not spending enough, rather than due to real or structural problems in the economy).
- Failing to gauge the reaction of monetary policy (e.g., a central bank tightens a bit in response to a stimulus package, if it’s committed to a particular inflation target), which could “offset” the fiscal stimulus.
These aren’t problems with demand-side spending in general, as much as common ways policymakers do one specific type of it poorly.
The proven factor that drives consumers to choose to spend money that directly creates the necessary supply is a select rising price due to scarcity. Printing money and distributing dollars to consumers further delays that targeted spending because the consumer has no incentive to reward any one individual supplier. So you have the scenario where an entire grocery bill is high despite the fact that 90% of the shelves are full. In a supply side economic model, only the producers working on filling the empty shelves are rewarded.
Obviously, COVID-19 was a once-in-a-generation large-scale supply-side shock.
But most recessions, historically, in developed countries, are primarily demand-side rather than supply-side. The simple evidence for this: If the problem was scarcity, a recession wouldn’t be accompanied by low inflation (because scarcity causes a fall in production, but also an increase in prices). However, most recessions in the U.S. in the past three decades have been accompanied by low inflation. Here’s some simple correlational data, showing that inflation seems to generally move in the same direction as GDP growth.
Another piece of evidence (a bit of a restatement of the above point, to be honest): if the problem were about supply in most recessions, we wouldn’t expect nominal GDP to change much (we’d expect nominal GDP to match nominal GDP expectations). We’d only expect changes to real GDP. However, nominal GDP and nominal GDP expectations tend to diverge during recessions. Here’s David Beckworth presenting some data on the NDGP gap.
More generally, the idea that business cycles are driven by supply-side issues – often called real business cycle theory – is rejected by most economists, and doesn’t have a solid empirical foundation.
But then again this all goes to the inherent problems of central planning, which can't possibly know what exact section of the supply chain needs the most help fixing the supply chain issues as a person in DC cannot possibly know exactly what the suppliers all the way in California need. The best policy regardless of demand side (gifts to the public) or supply side (welfare to corporate suppliers) is often no policy so that the invisible hand Friedman refers to can work freely with no constraints as thousands of Californians decide through their own incentives regarding price and profits what the supply chain really needs instead of a handful of people way out in DC.
I don’t have a comment about ongoing supply chain issues. I agree they can’t be fixed simply by demand-side economics. In the abstract, I don’t think demand-side economics helps fix supply-side problems.
However, I disagree that the market simply “solves” demand-side problems. The fact that recessions even exist for fairly prolonged periods of time is evidence that there are sometimes large-scale coordination failures that markets are bad at adapting to. For example, unemployment wouldn’t be very high for any long period of time, because workers looking for work would simply accept lower wages, and the invisible hand of the market would either find them jobs or cause them to quit the labor force (rather than stay unemployed and looking for work). And before you blame minimum wages for this, this is a phenomenon in places where the market wage – even during a recession – is much higher than local minimum wages, but wages simply don’t fall due to factors like long-term labor contracts.
To be sure, I’m all for free markets and deregulation in many contexts. For instance, I think most occupational licensing should be abolished, and that zoning regulations in major coastal U.S. cities are among the most significant factors driving costs of living that shut off economic opportunity to the middle class. I don’t think “not putting up a response to a crisis” is a good idea, though. Whether that response should come in the form of stimulus spending is a different question.
I guess you could argue that in a world with free banking, the market’s rate of interest would become the actual interest rate, and maybe that’d make prices way more flexible. I’m not sure how you feel about the existence of central banks, but my intuition is that free banking would be pretty bad (even if I think central banks are often not responding to market signals fast enough and end up accidentally being too tight/too loose, hence essentially “causing” many recessions).
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@Discipulus_Didicit
It seems plausible to me that an AI could self-improve until it becomes much more advanced.
I’m unclear how quickly such a takeoff would happen, though.
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@thett3
I think India is actually below replacement already. Isn't that crazy? The post-2015 crash in births throughout a lot much of the world was incredibly swift. It could reverse, but so far there isn't really a precedent for that.
Last I checked, TFR in India was like 2.1, and it was predicted to be below replacement by 2030, though maybe something changed since I last checked.
I suspect the crash in births was mostly just a consequence of countries growing? Like the current birthrate is probably the “natural rate” at current income levels, holding constant pre-2015 culture or something.
I agree with almost everything you said in the highlighted bit, those policies do seem to help a bit but overall its a cultural thing. Fascinating to think what the world could look like if trends don't change. Of course they will, but how much and when? Who will inherit the Earth? On immigration what I find really interesting is that because migration is now global (instead of mostly to only a few countries) and with birth rates crashing I think the remaining net emigration countries are going to drain incredibly quickly over the next 20 years. Look at places like Romania or Bulgaria, they are just so hollowed out. A lot of countries like USA or UK or France have decent birth rates and can make up any gaps in the labor market with small (comparatively) amounts of immigration but I don't see how countries like Italy or South Korea can possibly recover when the boomers retire. How is this anything other than death? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/South_Korea_Population_Pyramid.svg/1200px-South_Korea_Population_Pyramid.svg.png
Yeah. I’m more worried, actually, about the implications on long-run economic growth than on deficits or the size of the labor force. Chad Jones has a paper on this, in which he models the effect of declining populations on growth. It doesn’t look good.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
It really isn't, which means that boringly enough we seem to mostly agree.
I still feel a bit uncertain.
In general, it seems like:
- There are limits to economic growth (e.g. fundamental physical limits) in the next ~500 years (until we figure out how to beat those limits)
- Once capital starts to depreciate and diminishing marginal returns of physical capital set in, per capita economic growth is primarily driven by technological change
- Population growth brings a significant share of economic growth driven by technological progress
- A sufficiently advanced AI can “replicate” the effect of population growth, increasing the rate of growth enough to reach the limit much earlier than generally expected
So I find this type of argument plausible. And maybe it’s a steelman of the “technological singularity” folks.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I would describe myself as much more of an AGI skeptic than most people concerned about AGI (e.g., Bostrom), but much more concerned about AGI than the median ordinary person.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I think people tend to overstate how quickly and how much of an effect AGI will have.
I think rapid economic growth is plausible if an AGI successfully uncovers how to simulate distinct and intelligent humans (in the same way we have kids, albeit on a computer), because then, models of growth that tie exponential growth to population may come true. I don't think an AGI will figure out how to do that especially quickly.
I'm unclear how fast the takeoff from human-level intelligence to transformative AI will be, but I think TAI (i.e., AGI that has the capacity to bring about large-scale social/economic change) seems likely to happen this century (for example, that's roughly the estimate of forecasting TAI using biological anchors). I don't think that means a technological singularity happens this century (and I'm uncertain about whether that's even a coherent concept). I don't think TAI will immediately bring us to a ridiculous futuristic utopia; I think it's more likely to be on the scale of many other significant technological changes over the past two centuries.
However, I think there's a very real risk of TAI killing us all, or locking in bad institutions, or bringing about massive economic inequality. I think it takes much less to do that than to bring about a technological singularity.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
But for what it’s worth, I think it is:
- Pretty unlikely
- Still likely enough to worry, because extinction or a similar catastrophe would be so bad even a small probability of it merits massive concern
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Hmm yeah I would maybe debate that. Admittedly I'd be constrained by my lack of knowledge about ML/computer science, so maybe this would be better suited to a conversation than a debate.
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@Lunatic
@DeprecatoryLogistician
Here’s our debate for round 1: https://www.debateart.com/debates/3313-governments-should-subsidize-animal-product-alternatives-e-g-plant-based-meat
We agreed to the topic via the “Questions” section on DeprecatoryLogistician’s profile.
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@Lunatic
Oh, that's my bad -- I completely missed that the 1st round was for acceptance in the original post.
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@Lunatic
@airmax1227
Would you be open to debates being three rather than four rounds (or at least leaving the choice between three and four up to the debaters)?
Four rounds here is like five rounds on DDO, and I’d say there’s some disadvantages:
- Four round debates could potentially extend the tournament well past February. The maximum possible time for a four-round debate is 72*4*2 = 576 hours, so a single debate could end up lasting 24 days. I’d imagine people, especially if they’re busy, would use most of the 72 hours, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the typical debate lasted ~20 days.
- Four rounds could disincentivize judges/raise the cost on judges. In fact, it could be pretty significant, because it’s not just “one more round to read” -- it’s an entire set of new responses on the flow to keep track of, which probably increases the time investment for judges by more than 25%.
I’d say three rounds is all you need for a reasonable “no new arguments in the final round” rule to continue working.
Of course, it’s your tournament, and this is just a random thought from a participant (and it won’t affect whether I continue to participate or anything -- I’ve already signed up!). Thanks again for organizing this! <3
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@airmax1227
I’m down.
1) RationalMadman2) Tejretics3)4)5)6)7)8)
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@Kasmic
I’d love to debate either of those topics! Which one do you prefer?
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I generally score ~97 WPM. The specific number 97 appears very commonly whenever I take typing tests, across websites.
My peak score is ~116, though I doubt I could replicate it if I tried now.
I type pretty weirdly (using my index fingers way more than any other finger). It works for me, efficiency-wise, though.
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Exactly seven years ago, on January 25, 2015, I joined DDO as a thirteen-year-old.
My life would be so radically different if I hadn’t. I would probably be in a different college, in a different country, and not know any of my closest friends (friends I made through competitive debate IRL, which I wouldn’t have gone into if not for DDO). It’s wild for a website to influence a person’s life trajectory that much, but I know there’s people who married someone they met on DDO, so maybe mine isn’t even the biggest case.
I came there pretty uneducated and stupid. I like to think I gained maturity and grew both intellectually and emotionally on DDO. Some of it was from straight up copying people. I’m sure Spacetime has enough examples off the top of his head of me writing debate arguments that were pretty much rewritten photocopies of, among others, 16K, FourTrouble, and Bsh1. Honestly, though, that made me smarter too – I started reading the sources they cited, coming up with ones of my own, and started producing original arguments (first through the ~45 or so “God exists” debates I did, and then further in debates about torture and capital punishment).
I was also quite a bad person, at many points, when I was active on DDO. I did one or two live debates and was... uh... pretty d*ckish, I ain’t gonna lie. I try to be kind to people now, and I don’t think this personal growth would have been possible without the community.
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@Wylted
My issue with that, is the institutio. Or nation that is first to create a super AI will rule the world, assuming it is controllable. If we take safety measures I to account than China could beat us to the Super AI, as they have no such problems throwing ethics out of the window to win .
That’s quite reasonable. But I don’t think resources spent on averting an AI-related catastrophe has to involve slowing its development in the U.S. down. For example, I’d consider supporting things like export restrictions on semiconductor parts to China in order to slow down AI development there.
I’m uncertain how I feel about the pace of AI progress. I share your concerns about China developing an AGI first.
Also, a super AI will likely be able to cure death as we know it. Given that millions of people die each day, if we slow down this advancement, even by as much as 1 day. That is a million lives unnecessarily lost.
I think averting an existential catastrophe is probably more important in expected value. I’m unclear how much slowing down AGI would slow down anti-aging research (though I do think anti-aging research is important).
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@spacetime
Let's do it.
Sure. I'll send you a challenge.
Looking forward to it!
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@thett3
You should read this thread, I would be interested in a neoliberal perspective on this as I think the global fertility decline throws some unexpected road blocks to a lot of the policies supported by “the establishment” https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/7083-the-political-consequences-of-low-birthrates
I’ll read it and post there later today! But for what it’s worth, in developed countries especially, I think low birthrates are concerning. I think they’re especially concerning for long-run economic growth. More people means more ideas and more technological progress, which is the path to economic growth in countries where simply “catching up” through capital accumulation is no longer possible.
I like policy proposals such as child allowances that make it easier to have kids. I also like policy proposals by liberals to lower the cost of living, like building a lot more market-rate housing. I’m uncertain about how to change culture in ways that makes having kids more widely-accepted. I also like a lot more immigration, to temporarily mitigate some of the consequences of low birthrates. It isn’t quite a permanent solution, though, and it doesn’t fix the problem at its root.
I think the picture in developing countries is a bit more complicated, because the relevant question is how it affects catch-up growth. India’s TFR looks likely to drop below replacement by 2030, which seems like losing an important “demographic dividend” to engage in labor-intensive manufacturing, which is scary. On the other hand, there’s some research – such as this one, by David Weil and others – suggesting that increases in population density hurt people’s quality of life in developing countries.
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@Bones
I was quoting from Michael J. Scandal and admittedly, I didn't do a very good job. Here's the exact statementSeizing the results of someones labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. If people force you to do certain work, or unrewarded work, for a certain period of time, they decide what you are to do and what purposes your work is to serve apart from your decisions. This makes them a part owner of you; it gives them a property right in you.
I'm not sure how this answers my question! Seems like this applies to a flat tax as well.
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@Wylted
I’m uncertain.
My guess is: More of society’s total resources should be focused on global warming, but since ensuring AI advancements don’t threaten humanity is so neglected, perhaps additional resources would be better placed in AI. I don’t have a strong view, though. Both are very important.
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@Bones
- Taxing X person a higher percentage Y person means you are taking a larger portion of money from X person. X person's money was acquired through work. Work requires time, therefore, if you do not have X's permission yet you take more of X's money, you are taking their work which is taking their time which is slavery.
Doesn’t this argument prove too much? It seems like:
- It applies to a flat tax as well. 10% of someone with an income of $100,000 is $10,000. 10% of someone with an income of $20,000 is $2,000. If both worked to get their money, taking a larger amount of the first person’s money, by your logic, would be unjust. There’s no reason your principle only applies to proportions and not to amounts.
- It maybe even applies to all taxation, regardless of the amount. If the government is forcibly taking money from you that was acquired through work, without your consent, then you’re taking their work, and that’s equivalent to theft.
Personally, I don’t buy this argument at all. I don’t put much faith into the notion that people “deserve” things, and I don’t think the playing field that people start from is even. But I don’t think your argument supports a flat tax, as much as either the abolition of taxation or, at the very least, taxing everyone the same amount (which is absurd).
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@gugigor
I guess they could. It wouldn't be the focus of my case from Pro.
Not sure why those are kritiks, though!
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@Wylted
I might be interested in at least talking about it with you.
Sure, that sounds good.
People would literally starve and die without factory farming
As long as it’s phased out, I doubt that this is true. Factory farming is generally a pretty inefficient use of resources to produce food. I’m happy to talk about my understanding of this -- which could be wrong -- in more detail.
Maybe it’s deja vu, but I vaguely recall you having this discussion with Raisor on DDO a few years ago/Raisor made the same point that I’m making.
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I’m looking to get back into online debate. Debate me!
The format I prefer:
- Three rounds
- 8,000–10,000 character limit
- ≥ 72 hours per speech
- No pre-fiat kritiks
Here’s the topics I want to debate. To copy and paste that list here:
- Artificial intelligence poses a higher risk of causing human extinction than climate change. (Pro)
- Central banks should replace inflation targeting with nominal GDP level targeting. (Pro)
- Countries should adopt taxes on carbon emissions. (Pro)
- Developing countries should engage in the large-scale redistribution of agricultural land. (Pro)
- Factory farming should be illegal. (Pro)
- Gentrification does more harm than good. (Con)
- Governments should ban the production and sale of fur-based clothing. (Pro)
- Governments should subsidize non-meat protein alternatives (e.g., plant-based meat). (Pro)
- In times of widespread epidemics, governments should allow the use of “human challenge trials” to test the effectiveness of vaccines and/or treatments. (Pro)
- Inclusionary zoning requirements should be abolished. (Pro)
- India should pursue export-oriented development rather than Atmanirbhar Bharat (a set of policies, such as tariff increases, aimed at making the Indian economy self-reliant and using domestic demand to grow rather than exports). (Pro)
- India should implement its proposed ban on crypto. (Con)
- It would be preferable to the status quo if the sale of human organs was legal. (Pro)
- Large coastal cities in the U.S. should substantially decrease regulations that curtail the development of market-rate housing. (Pro)
- The U.S. should ban fracking. (Con)
- The U.S. should substantially reduce restrictions on legal immigration to the United States. (Pro)
- The benefits of urbanization in India outweigh the harms. (Pro)
- Widespread price controls should be adopted as a response to high inflation. (Con)
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@Lunatic
Thanks TUF! Glad to see you around here. Those were good days!
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@whiteflame
Appreciate it, Whiteflame!
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Hi! I’m Tejretics. I was this site’s Voting Moderator back in 2018, and have voted on a bunch of debates both here and on DDO. I’m a college student studying math and economics.
I’m hoping to vote on a few (4-5) high quality (no forfeits) debates on here in the next two weeks. DM me or reply to this forum post if you’d like a vote on a debate! In case you’d like to get a feel for me as a judge, check out my RFDs on these debates:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/2736-it-is-in-the-best-interest-of-humanity-that-we-attempt-to-transition-toward-veganism (RFD)
I’ve got a fair bit of experience judging formal/competitive debate, primarily in parli formats. Some notes on me as a judge:
- I tend to be quicker to discount bare assertions than many other judges on here. Some people think that’s a good application of tabula rasa judging. Others don’t.
- I don’t default to utilitarianism when weighing arguments. I’m personally pretty consequentialist, but what ethical framework to use is up for debate, and I won’t insert my ethics into it.
- I think good debating involves having clear, logical warrants for arguments and having empirical evidence. The two aren’t substitutes for each other: they’re complements. Lots of judges will vote on a statistic. I might vote on a well-defended study, but I’m unlikely to vote on a single statistic.
- I will read your sources. If you cite a source and claim it says something it doesn’t, I’ll treat it as a bare assertion. However, I won’t credit you for anything you don’t say in the debate (e.g. if your source makes a different argument, or if your study has something in-built which preempts your opponent’s challenge to the study, I won’t credit it unless you bring that up to defend the source).
- I’m less likely than the median judge to vote on a pre-fiat argument, such as a K. I’m willing to do it, but you probably have to meet a higher bar with me (at least unconsciously) than most other judges. If you’d like to win me over as a judge on a balanced topic, the best way to do so is to make clearly topical arguments.
- In normative resolutions, I’ll default to assuming the BOP is shared unless stated otherwise in the rules or discussed in the debate. In fact-based resolutions, I’ll assume the BOP is on the side making the fact claim unless stated otherwise in the rules or discussed in the debate. However, I treat the burden of proof as up for debate: if you convince me the BOP is on one side, I’ll vote that way. I’ll note that debaters on DDO/DART tend to overrate the importance of who has the BOP – the BOP will only ever decide a debate if it’s basically a draw. In general, it’s a good idea to have offense regardless of who the BOP is on – because if you have no offense whatsoever, any standing piece of offense from the other side is enough for you to lose even if they have the burden of proof.
- I will flow the debate, and read the entire thing (not just skim).
- I will not assume a debate takes place in the U.S. unless it’s in the resolution, the rules, or (implicitly or explicitly) agreed upon by the debaters.
If you’re fine with this, hit me up with a request to vote on something!
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In the spirit of it having been ~seven years since I joined DDO, I’ve started a new debate! I haven’t done an online debate (in-text) in nearly four years.
You can find it here. The resolution is: “Central banks should adopt nominal GDP level targeting rather than target inflation.”
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@Greyparrot
The general claim of demand-side economics is that there is a coordination problem that prevents output from reaching an economy's potential.
The broken window fallacy says, given some level of resources, we shouldn't be creating additional demand, because that'd simply be redirecting resources from one place to another. So if you break a window, given some level of resources, you're simply diverting investment from something else to fixing a window. In the context of macroeconomics, this could describe one of two phenomena:
- For an economy at potential, more aggregate demand simply means more inflation, so all it does is divert resources within the economy.
- Government spending, in particular – which is not all of demand-side economics, demand-side economic policy is generally monetary policy – drives up interest rates and hence crowds out other private investment.
The latter effect is easily empirically studied. Lots of research accounts for this "crowding out" when aiming to estimate a fiscal multiplier.
The former effect misses the point of demand-side economics. That there's often coordination problems, where even if an economy has some potential output, the real output falls below that potential (for example, nominal GDP falls below nominal GDP expectations). So the economy as a whole is capable of producing some amount, but there's a "market failure" (albeit in every market) of sorts that calls it to fall below that potential. As for what causes these shortfalls, that's a big conversation – I recommend chapter 2 of the book The Undercover Economist Strikes Back for a very small-scale example of this. If output falls below potential, then bringing it back up, in theory, shouldn't cause much inflation. That was the reality in the U.S. in much of 2019 and pre-COVID 2020 – some combination of expansionary monetary policy and government spending (e.g. spending projects approved by the Trump administration) led to a situation of very low unemployment, but relatively stable inflation as well, because the U.S. economy was getting pretty close to its "full employment" potential.
Currently, in the U.S., it seems like nominal GDP is roughly at its trendline, but it seems likely to overshoot soon, suggesting that maybe there's "too much" demand in the economy. It's hard to separate this from structural problems, though, like supply chain issues.
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@David
@whiteflame
Sad to see you go. I’m not too active on this site, but you’ve done a splendid job. Good luck with your bachelor’s degree!
When I became this website’s (I think first?) vote mod briefly in 2018, I looked to Whiteflame’s incredible job moderating votes on DDO for a model to follow, and am so glad to see him back at the role on here.
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@Lemming
Somehow Colin's post seems odd, to me.
This thread is three years old, which makes it odder.
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@thett3
I'm not either, but I do think the level they've grown to here in the past couple of years isn't sustainable...but because tax rates really are quite low I think things will be okay in the end. It'll suck to have to pay more in taxes but we could probably get to a reasonable deficit or occasional surplus without getting close to what taxes are like in other western countries
Right. I don’t really think economists understand deficits too well, but my impression is that most macroeconomists aren’t very concerned about it right now.
That's the wrong way to look at it, though. SOMEONE is consuming military spending, the rational way is to divide it up between each citizen. If you do that, it is certain that the numbers are a lot less rosy. I also don't know if military spending is truly fixed and unrelated to the population but even if we grant that
I think the relevant concern isn’t average spending, but marginal spending. The question being asked is: How much does an increase in immigration require us to pay more in taxes or take on debt?
Imagine if you share a house with three housemates. Your fixed cost is rent, your variable costs are utilities, food, etc. If you take in a new housemate, your portion of the fixed cost should go DOWN! Is this what's happening with immigration to the US? I doubt it. It's not right to say "well sure they are now consuming common resources, but lets not count that because the price was fixed anyway, at least there's a 50/50 chance they pay for their utilities"
The difference, I think, is between public goods and common resources. More immigrants doesn’t reduce how much defense is capable of protecting any given American, while more people in a house might reduce how much each current resident is able to enjoy the house because of crowding. If the addition of a person to a house, on net, improved that house, then rents would be negative (i.e., you’d pay someone to live there if they improve the environment) – in general, they don’t.
As for the more general question of whether, by paying taxes to subsidize existing defense spending, the proportion Americans have to pay in taxes (including future Americans, through deficits) to finance military spending goes down – that’s probably a significant factor behind the positive NPVs.
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