WoodScientist
@WoodScientist@lemmy.world
- Comment on It's great to see a politician that's progressive and Not a Millionaire. 3 days ago:
All I’m saying is government at all levels today does a hell of a lot more than governments did in the 19th century. We simply ask more from our governments than we used to. And the more a government does, the more legislation will be necessary.
- Comment on It's great to see a politician that's progressive and Not a Millionaire. 3 days ago:
The difference is that in ye olden days there was simply much less need for full time legislators. In an era where 90% of the population lived on largely self-sufficient family farms, and large scale economic regulation wasn’t widespread, part time legislators made a lot more sense.
- Comment on It's great to see a politician that's progressive and Not a Millionaire. 3 days ago:
Anyone have a link to the actual disclosure document? This doesn’t seem to pass the smell test. She’s making a salary of $174k per year and has been in Congress for 7 years. I wonder if this excludes retirement accounts like 401ks and IRAs. That would make sense. But I would expect her to have at least $100k in a retirement account by now. I mean she did go from working as a bartender to being a member of Congress. That kind of jump in pay usually lets one really up their retirement savings at least.
- Comment on Money doesn't solve everything, but it helps. 5 days ago:
Yeah, it is actually very difficult to manage. It’s called the two-income trap for a reason. But my partner and I do this. We at least try to keep our mandatory expenses under one income. If we have a long duration job loss and savings aren’t enough, we can at least cover our basics - mortgage, food, property taxes, health insurance, etc. off one income. That might require pausing all retirement savings, cutting out all eating out and any subscription services, and not traveling anywhere. But we try to at least keep our bare survival expenses below either of our incomes.
And we’ve just planned our life around this. For example, we could easily afford a much nicer house than we currently have…if we were willing to be dependent on both our incomes to cover the mortgage. But then you’re in trouble if either of you loses a job. Instead of providing stability, the extra income actually compounds your risk!
I know many, perhaps most, people can’t do this even with great frugality. But if you can manage to do it, it is a life hack that brings such an incredible amount of peace, stability, and safety to your life that, to me at least, no fancier home could ever be worth giving up that safety to obtain.
- Comment on No amount of groveling will be enough for the nepo baby wing of the Democratic Party. They should just become Republicans. 6 days ago:
It’s also the obvious problem with equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism. If you make the Jewish identity inseparable from the Israeli nation, then every Jewish person becomes morally culpable for Israel’s actions.
- Comment on is it weird to have your own religious beliefs system 6 days ago:
You’re referring to Syncretism, and it’s extremely common in the Western world. 25% of American Christians report believing in reincarnation.
- Comment on Money doesn't solve everything, but it helps. 1 week ago:
It’s honestly one of the best benefits of marriage if you can manage it. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to keep your mandatory expenses below either of your individual incomes, you both gain tremendous leverage against employers. There is no more powerful negotiating tool than having the ability to walk away.
- Comment on Money doesn't solve everything, but it helps. 1 week ago:
Seriously. I’m someone that’s had a background in engineering but has really struggled in office jobs due to what I now know to be AuDHD related. I’m currently exploring a mid career transition to K12 teaching. I’ve had prior experience in education, just not K12 classroom teaching. But I have real reason to believe this would work a lot better with my neurology.
But frankly, the only reason I’m able to explore this is because I have a partner, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to get by on their income alone. We both need to be working for us to really make progress on our savings and retirement goals, and I owe it to them to do all I can to pull my own weight. So I can just not work. But I have the luxury of being able to try to find work that works for me.
With as rocky as a career history as I have had? If I hadn’t been with my partner, I would have probably had to make a living on my back or end up living on the street. I certainly never would have had the luxury of being able to take the time to explore alternate career paths. It’s that bad.
I have struggled with very real career impediments from this. And having a bit of money has made all the difference. We’re not rich. But just having enough to have a stable home situation and the ability to afford treatment is life changing.
- Comment on Money doesn't solve everything, but it helps. 1 week ago:
We’re not talking about printing money and giving it away. We’re talking about taxing and spending. This doesn’t cause inflation as resources are devoted from the pet projects of the wealthy to the needs of ordinary people.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
You’re dancing around my core question.
I’m talking about the past, not the future. I’m specifically asking about the past. I don’t want to hear about all the great things China promises to do. I want to know why they chose to create billionaires. I want to know why China is the way it is now. I don’t want to hear glittering promises about what it will become.
I ask you again. Why the billionaires? Why did a nominally socialist country not design its market economy (which it built from scratch) to be more equitable from the start?
I’m not talking about what China may change into. I’m asking why they didn’t plan this from the start. The CCP has in its ranks literally millions of people formally educated in the theories of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and others. They know class struggle and the inevitable outcomes of unregulated capitalism. It’s not like they couldn’t easily predict that a market economy would lead to billionaires. If anyone could be expected to design their market economy in an equitable way, it’s the CCP. And there wasn’t a class of wealthy businessmen that took over the government and forced them to adopt these economic policies. They created their market economy from scratch; they could have built it on a worker co-op model. They CHOSE the current model.
China’s existing market economy did not evolve spontaneously. The old pre-Communist market economy was destroyed in the Revolution and during the Mao era. China’s billionaires aren’t just the wealthy inheritors of Qing-era nobles. They’re all new money; they made their fortunes in the economy Deng and others created. The post-Mao leaders of China created a market economy from scratch, and they could have made it any way they wanted. They chose a model that allows for billionaires.
I want to know why they made that choice. Why didn’t Deng and others build the new Chinese market economy with hard wealth caps or around worker-owned co-ops?
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
I’m not really asking about capital circulation. I’m interested specifically in the billionaires. So why the billionaires?
I can understand the logic of having a market-based economy. It’s a very effective means of achieving compound economic growth. But a market economy does not require billionaires. There are numerous more equitable models that China could have built its system around. For example, they could have built their market economy based entirely around worker-owned co-ops. Co-ops can compete just fine in markets. Or, they could have gone with the current structure, but put in place a wealth cap. That’s been proposed before even in the US.
Why couldn’t China build a market economy, but just have a hard rule of “no one is allowed to amass more than X amount?” Even if people couldn’t hoard more than say, $100 million, that still gives people plenty of incentive to start new businesses, get an education, work hard, etc.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
You linked a source repeating your earlier claim about the raw number of people lifted out of poverty. Again, I ask, what about per-capita income?
This is a ridiculous comparison. Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland, while the PRC was subject to a massive economic embargo.
China received extensive aid from the USSR.
That… what? I don’t follow what you’re saying here at all.
Do you understand what “per capita” means? It would be far more impressive for a country of one million people to lift 950,000 people out of poverty than for a nation of 1 billion people to lift 800 million people out of poverty.
It’s much easier for a small country to modernize in a short period of time, especially with outside help. It’s very difficult to reach all the people in all the rural areas of China, it means more infrastructure has to be built, more people have to be educated, etc.
Why? I see no reason for this. Larger countries have more resources. Everything you need to lift people out of poverty scales with population. If anything, it’s actually EASIER for large countries to lift themselves out of poverty. A tiny micro-nation with a population of 10,000 isn’t going to be building an aircraft factory. There’s a lot of minimum-size requirements on certain national infrastructure. If anything, the bigger, the easier it is to modernize. Yes, the larger population creates greater needs, but you also have more people to address those needs.
And China was not unique in having disconnected rural populations. Small countries and big countries both have isolated rural areas.
I don’t agree that per-capita is the relevent statistic for the above reasons.
It’s the only meaningful way to compare countries. Otherwise you just end up making brain-dead conclusions like, “the big country has the big number. Therefore it’s better.”
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Why the billionaires though? Sure, you can argue that China needed to adopt a largely market-based economy in order to grow its economic base. But a market economy does not require billionaires. Why couldn’t China do exactly what it’s doing now with worker-owned cooperatives? Why does there have to be one rich guy at the top hoarding all the money?
What’s stopping China right now from instituting a maximum wealth cap?
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Tankie (n): a Fox News Republican with a progressive streak.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Words have different meanings in different contexts. Yes, China isn’t the perfect theoretical communist utopia predicted by Marx. But in the English language, people call the type of government system used by Stalin and Mao “Communist.” A word was needed for their systems, as it was clearly different from capitalist countries. And Stalin and Mao themselves called their systems Communist. And their systems aspired to the vision of Marx. They both considered themselves to be Communist and fully identified with the term. So we call that system Communist. Whether it actually lives up to the theoretical model of Communism is irrelevant. When people use the word “Communist,” they are referring to the type of government created by Stalin, Mao, etc. This is theoretical vs applied communism. You want to only apply to the word to theoretical communism. But the English language uses it to apply to both theoretical and applied communism.
Capitalism looks very little like the theoretical models crafted by people like Adam Smith, yet we still call Western governments capitalist. Often the theoretical proves impossible to implement, so the label gets applied to the practical implementation, not the theoretical ideal.
When you say, “but China isn’t Communist!” you’re not actually accomplishing anything. You’re just arguing that a definition that has been commonly and widely used for over a century at this point is invalid. People have been using “Communism” to refer to both applied and theoretical Communism since at least the 1920s. I know you want to only use the word to apply to theoretical Communism, but the whole world moved on from your viewpoint a long time ago.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Unfortunately the “no standing army” thing was a product of a certain age. When the fastest an army could move is via sail or a trotting horse, you can get away with not having a standing army. In the months it took your enemy to reach you, you could train and prepare. Standing armies always had some advantage, but it was actually possible to maintain a viable defense without one.
But today? The enemy army will be occupying your capital before you can even send all the draft notices out. Imagine if Ukraine had had no standing army when Russia invaded. And that’s just with how quick ground armies can move. We haven’t even mentioned aircraft and paratroopers!
Sure, there are a handful of countries with no standing army today, but they’re countries that simply don’t need a credible defense. Iceland has no army. But an Iceland without an army would perform in war only slightly worse than an Iceland that was as devoted to war as the historical Spartans. Iceland could tax themselves into oblivion and put every citizen they could in uniform, but they just don’t have the population to credibly deter an invasion by a major power. The only countries without standing armies today are very small countries that, due to their population, are completely dependent on outside allies for their defense.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
And yet, China has delivered substantially lower average incomes than its peers. It’s not even close. The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources? I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
“The ends justify the means.”
Surely that’s never caused any problems…
- Comment on Going Back ↪️🏨 1 week ago:
The basic problem of AirBNB was that it was never going to scale. Individual condo owners will never be able to compete with the efficiencies of scale of hotels. Having cleaning staff have to drive from building to building can never compete with a bunch of rooms in a single hallway.
The AirBNB concept does make sense for a few niche applications:
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Small rental units in locations where big hotels aren’t viable. (Think remote mountain cabins.)
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Actual lived-in homes for people who are traveling and don’t mind strangers staying in their house while they’re away.
Neither of these scale. Cabin rentals can compete because it’s not viable to build a hundred unit hotel on top of a remote mountain. But that market can’t scale. Cabin rentals already have their own rental networks, and there are only so many of them. People renting out their actual residences can compete with hotels. You already have to pay your mortgage anyway, bringing in a short-term renter adds little marginal cost. But this model can’t scale, as very few people actually want to rent out their own homes while they’re out.
But AirBNB pulled the usual Silicon Valley bait-and-switch. Corner a market with unsustainably low prices, then raise them. The bait got many people to purchase rental units with the goal of renting them on AirBNB. But this was never going to be sustainable. Once AirBNB stopped subsidizing the rentals, the landlords have to raise the costs (both monetary and policy costs) to actually make the business profitable. And they simply cannot compete with the economies of scale of hotels.
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- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
There is legal precedent!
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
The future is going to be very strange indeed. Humanity is taking up more and more of the world’s land surface. More and more of the available habitats are inside human territory. Wildlife can live within human cities and suburbs, but it requires a great deal of adaptation. Imagine a future where hundreds of species are as adapted to living in our cities as pigeons or raccoons are. If we don’t blow ourselves up in atomic fire or fall in an ecological collapse, this is a likely future for our species.
Cities are a habitat. They offer certain opportunities for resources such as food and water. They offer spaces for nesting and reproduction. Cities represent one of the few ecological niches on this planet that hasn’t been fully exploited by evolution. And nature abhors a vacuum. Any ecological niche will be filled eventually. They do require extensive adaptation however. Behaviors that are adaptive in the wild are maladaptive in cities.
If we manage to somehow keep our crazy way of life going, I imagine in a few millennia our cities will be swarming with dozens of semi-domesticated species similar to raccoons and pigeons. And I imagine they will exhibit any number of clever and surprising adaptive behaviors like this coyote here.
Hell, people may even find ways to harness this wildlife. Maybe instead of hiring people to pick up trash, we could train crows to collect it for us. Maybe you could train crows to gather up trash, take it to a bin, and have the bin dispense a treat for the crow.
I hope the future will be strange indeed.
- Comment on "Digital Signatures" just ask you to type your name into a box now. Am I right in thinking this almost-completely defeats the purpose of a signature? 1 week ago:
How’s your cuneiform? Do you know how to use a quill pen? Do you know how to bleach a peace of expensive parchment so that it can be reused?
- Comment on is there any language that doesn't have four basic directions? 2 weeks ago:
Also the Sun moves in one direction across the sky, along with everything else on the Ecliptic. So that defines one axis, with the perpendicular being another.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 2 weeks ago:
It’s a hard problem. It’s also what prevents meaningful criminal justice reform. Some people just have a very hard time accepting that bad things are going to happen. If you make the justice system less punitive, yes, you’re going to get some number of extra crimes, as some people who should have stayed locked up will be freed. People have a very hard time grasping the concept that you need to do a cost benefit analysis for any policy. Sure, criminal justice reform will result in some small number of additional crime victims, but it will prevent orders of magnitude more people from being victimized by overly punitive laws and extreme jail sentences.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 2 weeks ago:
Yeah people fall for it. Hell, look at the mass downvoting of my comment here.
I’m a leftist myself, but folks on the left are just as vulnerable to knee jerk reactionary thinking as conservatives. They see someone saying that regulations can be bad, and their mind immediately jumps to the conclusion, “THIS PERSON MUST BE A REPUBLICAN!!!” and all thought ceases.
Regulations can just as easily be a tool of big business as they are a tool to protect the public. And the easiest way for governments to take away people’s rights or for big business to stifle competition via regulation is “think of the children.”
- Comment on Netflix is garbage 2 weeks ago:
If you’re feeling generous, sign up for the cheapest plan and then pirate everything.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 2 weeks ago:
Yes, but more for nursing home care.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 2 weeks ago:
We need to make it far easier for people to operate businesses out of their homes. So many of these costs disappear if you can use the structure you already have to pay for.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 2 weeks ago:
I’m no libertarian, but a major problem is that a lot of our industries are severely over regulated. Regulations are usually a good thing, but often they are pushed by big business to prevent future competition. If the only way to comply with the law is to retain a staff of lawyers, then it becomes impossible for individuals to set up small operations.
For example, there’s no reason we couldn’t have micro nursing homes set up in individual private homes. Maybe a trio of licensed nurses can operate one out of a home. Maybe they can care for up to half a dozen patients.
Yes, this does induce additional risk of abuse and neglect, but I would argue that is probably less likely to occur at such a human facility than one run by a big corporation. And maybe accepting a bit more risk is worth it if it allows people to get card they otherwise would be shut out from.
- Comment on Today is my 25th birthday 2 weeks ago:
Better than aging backwards. Benjamin Button disease takes far too many lives.