Comment on When you want to be Meta, but you just a Beta
goldenballs@wolfballs.com 2 years agoThe NHS is shit though. It's like a religious cult. Constantly used by Labour (a mix between Canadian Liberals and NDP) as a political football. The mantra "free at the point of use" and always using it to justify immigration. They used the 2012 olympics to push the holy church of the nhs, but it"s been in the red ever since. Like we should be taxed to pay for sex change bullshit. Part-privatising healthcare in some way (by adding insurance and up front payments) is essential to correctly price risky behaviour. Only a few core expensive things like cancer and brain surgery should be public funded. Too many fatties, fogies, and faggots overuse the system. The last time i used it was when i was 4, apart from borths, where i'm not really the user. Getting rid of the BBC is the first step to freedom, getting rid of the NHS is second, and then purging the schools and police of far left political activists. There are groups working on all of these 4 problems. Brexit was just the beginning.
I would say that the lower end energy cost impacts are more a function of general inflation and income disparity, due to low interest rates, qe, and immigration, keeping wages down and costs up. Now that atagflation is coming globally, we're all going to feel that across the developed world.
Yes we agree on energy costs, but what i'm saying is that there's a lot more tax in Europe than in North America already, and a lot of govt spending is supported by that already. The point of tax cartots and sticks is usually meant to direct behaviour. I mean if you want to protect something, you usually have to pay to enforce regulations anyway, and tax is used as a force multiplier to distort or change market behaviour. You wouldn't get rapid development in some areas without it. Without seeing the whole cost benefit anakysus spreadsheet on this, i can't be sure. I certainly know that pushing it will create plenty of losers and harm, and its just a question of how much worse that us than not doing it, or delaying it. This is where the argument over models and justifications comes in. To my mind, there are simply too many people, but reducing population (as is happinging in Japan and China) prompts economic contraction by definition.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
You nailed it. We need to know what data justifies all this misery for the poor. Its the same govt opaqueness, inefficiency, corruption etc during Covid. The avg. age of Covid death according to ONS in January was ABOVE life expectancy, i.e. 83 years in 2021. In spite of this, there were all the heavy handed restrictions. This should tell you how bad govt is at making data driven decisions.
RE: modelling, you are aware of the SAGE controversy that broke ~3 weeks ago, where the modellers admitted to only making the absolute worst possible case, because the govt asked them, regarding Omicron. Climate modelling is the same, make the worst predictions, with a little '*' next to it and in the footnotes you find all the caveats, i.e. total bullshit. For example, a prediction that there would be a 10% decline in agricultural output by 2030, while the footnote says that there could also be a +45% increase.
I think govt always was this corrupt and inefficient. Its just the internet and smartphones allow us to experience this in real time now.
goldenballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
You are preaching to the converted with most of that.
I won't buy into the "covid modelling is bad therefore climate change modelling is bad" analogy. I work in this area, i get the data, i see the real shit, i know what the problems are. That doesn't mean i dismiss what you say out of hand, but i do have first hand exposure to this stuff. There are real environmental problems, but they are lumpier and more complex than presented. I do model-driven engineering for AI, i am aware of the limitations of models
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I am not saying researchers are incapable of ethical modelling. I am pointing out the intense corruption in the past 2 years, where SAGE modellers presented whatever the govt required to justify their insane decisions.
In "Climate science", there are 2 truths 1) The only "data" is the past. Everyone agrees on last 50 years temperatures and rise of ~1C. 2) All govt actions are based on extending trend line for the next 100 years. This is foolish. Even if we throw the world's GDP into climate modelling, you cannot account for the infinite complexities of our planet. Modelling is not "data". Its plugging a limited number of variables into an equation and hoping it simulates "everything" - horseshit
Not even getting into the predicted effects of a 1 - 2C increase, because that is all delusions
goldenballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
All that is true, but it is not insane to imagine that increasing the numbers of orofices on the planet, or excessively using plastics, won't have deleterious effects.