Tejretics

I would consider it, is it one of those books that hold paleolithic societies as superior to "civilization?" That idea seems to be a recently popular trend in the study of history. 

Regarding conditions, the average peasant in medieval Europe worked less hours than we do today, enjoying more overall free time.

You just assert that there's no difference between land rent and a wage; I think that's a bit crazy. They couldn't be farther apart: in the case of a land wage, you have control over the material means by which you produce that rent, which also provides you with your own basic needs: food, shelter, water. In the case of a wage, you explicitly do not have any of those things, it is your labor itself which you sell, NOT the product of your labor, which does not belong to you.

However, the poorest of people in stable agrarian societies generally lived a more comfortable life as they were self reliant off growing their own food.

My new opinion on this is that nobody knows anything and nothing matters.

Some kind of negative income tax or some income-based solution which tries to make up the difference might be useful. Suppose we assess that a person needs to make $40,000 a year. If you make $0, the government should give you $40,000. If you make $20,000, the government should give you $20,000. If you make $39,000, it should give you $1,000. If you make $40,000, you should not get the rebate. I like this better than a UBI, because it's arguable more targeted to those who need it most. Bill Gates doesn't need UBI checks.

In January 1921, a daily newspaper in Germany cost 0.30 marks. Less than two years later, in November 1922, the same newspaper cost 70,000,000 marks. All other prices in the economy rose by similar amounts. This episode is one of history’s most spectacular examples of inflation, an increase in the overall level of prices in the economy.

Although the United States has never experienced inflation even close to that of Germany in the 1920s, inflation has at times been an economic problem. During the 1970s, for instance, when the overall level of prices more than doubled, President Gerald Ford called inflation “public enemy number one.” By contrast, inflation in the first decade of the 21st century ran about 2½ percent per year; at this rate, it would take almost 30 years for prices to double. Because high inflation imposes various costs on society, keeping inflation at a low level is a goal of economic policymakers around the world.

What causes inflation? In almost all cases of large or persistent inflation, the culprit is growth in the quantity of money. When a government creates large quantities of the nation’s money, the value of the money falls. In Germany in the early 1920s, when prices were on average tripling every month, the quantity of money was also tripling every month. Although less dramatic, the economic history of the United States points to a similar conclusion: The high inflation of the 1970s was associated with rapid growth in the quantity of money, and the return of low inflation in the 1980s was associated with slower growth in the quantity of money.

Yes, economic policy can be useful but sometimes policy goes awry, for instance, when inflation gets out of hand. Inflation, one of the most common problems in macroeconomics, refers to an increase in the general level of prices. Inflation makes people feel poorer but, perhaps more important, rising andespecially volatile prices make it harder for people to figure out the real values of goods, services, and investments. For these and other reasons, most people (and economists) dislike inflation.

But where does inflation come from? The answer is simple: Inflation comesabout when there is a sustained increase in the supply of money. When peoplehave more money, they spend it, and without an increase in the supply of goods, prices must rise. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once wrote: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

The United States, like other advanced economies, has a central bank; in the United States that bank is called the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has the power and the responsibility to regulate the supply of money in the American economy. This power can be used for good, such as when the Federal Reserve holds off or minimizes a recession. But the poweralso can be used for great harm if the Federal Reserve encourages too much growth in the supply of money. The result will be inflation and economic disruption.

In Zimbabwe, the government ran the printing presses at full speed for many years. By the end of 2007, prices were rising at an astonishing rate of 150,000 percent per year. The United States has never had a problem of this scope or anything close to it but inflation remains a common concern.

Amazingly, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe kept rising. In January of 2008, the government had to issue a 10-million-dollar bank note (worth about 4 U.S. dollars), and a year later they announced a 20-trillion-dollar note that bought about what 10 million dollars had a year earlier. In early 2009, the inflation rate leaped to billions of percent per month! Finally, in April of 2009 the government stopped issuing the Zimbabwean dollar altogether and permitted trade using foreign currencies such as the South African rand and U.S. dollar.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there actually were benefits. I believe that multicultural spaces have their place and should exist, I just don’t think it’s a viable model for entire countries/societies.

Most research on diversity, or any social science research in general, is so political that if it isn’t completely fraudulent it’s at the very least intellectually dishonest.

It's why they supported school integration despite studies showing that it had no positive effect on education outcomes

Innocent until proven guilty.  If the liberals won't punish a murderer without proof, they also shouldn't punish rapists without proof.

>Should, for example, a baker be required to fulfill a client’s request to bake a cake with a pro-marriage equality message on it? (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/10/uk-supreme-court-backs-bakery-that-refused-to-make-gay-wedding-cake) For clarity, this is different than a baker refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. 

There is, indeed, a difference between refusing to bake a cake for use at a gay wedding that is materially indistinguishable from a cake that would be used at a heterosexual wedding (beyond, say, trivialities like plastic figures on top); and refusing to bake a cake for use at a gay wedding that IS materially distinguishable from a cake that would be used at a heterosexual wedding.  The former implicates immutable quality based discrimination, whereas the latter implicates what you might call "a right of professional discretion" implicated in one's profession. 

Recently, I was watching a documentary on YouTube about tattoo artists, and the subject of this part of the documentary was about he tattoos that tattoo artists declined to perform.  Different people had different lines as it relates to what they would or would not do.  For example, one person said that he would not apply a face tattoo to someone who had not had their face tattooed before, because the long term implications of that would be unreasonably harmful.  That's an excellent thing to do.  Another person said that they would not apply a particular tree tattoo on someone's forehead, because the tattoo was associated with violence against women.  That is another excellent reason to decline to apply a tattoo.  A third person refused to do Nazi tattoos, or anything associated with Hitler or the Third Reich (no iron crosses, nazi-eagles, etc.).  That seemed perfectly reasonable to me as well.  None of them ever said that they refused to apply a tattoo on someone because a prospective customer was gay, a woman, a minority race, etc. 

When we are talking about 'the content applied to a cake', rather than a cake itself, is similar to the difference in "refusing to apply a tattoo to a person because of who or what the person was" in contrast with "refusing to apply a particular tattoo because of objections to the tattoo's contents".  I would have a problem with the former, because doing otherwise would be to legitimize discrimination under the pretext of professional discretion.  However, the latter implicates issues that go beyond discrimination, and implicate higher and more individualized questions of professional ethical decisions that, if regulated, would fall into the territory of "compelled speech".  

I have serious reservations about Modi, and Hundu nationalism in general.   

1. What do you mean by “white privilege”?
   
2. If you were to be convinced of its existence, what evidence would people who believed that it existed have to present? (Asking for examples of evidence—for instance, “if this statistic x came out, it would make a strong case, even if it didn’t convince me entirely, for white privilege’s existence, insofar as that statistic was backed by a plurality of the evidence.”)
   
3. Why do you think it doesn’t exist?
   

Thoughts on unpaid internships?

I'm sure others have suggested this elsewhere but I strongly believe that the first forfeit in any debate should garner an automatic loss- no voting, no waiting.   This would really process through a lot of debates with lower interest levels, experiments, absences, etc and help focus the audience on debates where both sides are engaged.  Yes, that means a much smaller set of debates running but I think it would increase the number of debates & interest in them over time.

I like the idea of weekly themes or key words to encourage people to talk about the same things.  The more topical the better.

I like the idea of more frequent, low value recognition:  have a thread where people nominate best forum topic & response  of the week/ best debate/ best RFD, etc.  Last week's winner chooses this week's winner, etc.  Something like this can get little support in the beginning but even if it's lame in the beginning it incentivizes good writing, research, and calls attention to posts that inspire the next week.  I think something like DDO's Olympics was a good idea but the timeframes were killing interest.  I think you're better off doing quick cycles with a few participants that might potentially grow over iteration.  

More women.  Ask more women about how to attract more women.  Women are the majority of society- no social activity can be said to be really buzzing without a lot on interest & content from and for women.  A site like might always be dude-heavy but if we want something interesting here, we need to be always trying to improve the ration of women to men.

If a category of forum or debate isn't getting a lot of love, axe it.  If a category is getting most of the attention, divide it.  Right now the cars forum has 5 topics and 42 posts.  Why not stick those threads under technology

I like him as a person. But the centerpiece of the platform is UBI, which I don't support anymore. 

Tucker Carlson. He has a healthy skepticism of laissez-faire economics (without taking it too far as many Democrats do). He has non-interventionist instincts on foreign policy. He's one of the only mainstream figures who's willing to talk about the negative sociological impacts of immigration. And of course, he fully rejects identity politics. That's everything I'm looking for in a presidential candidate.

I was a fan of Richard Ojeda (the only Democrat who didn't seem obsessed with identity politics), but he dropped out, so I guess that leaves me with Trump.