The difference is that “outcome by merit” means the most qualified person gets the job (for example), based upon n the merits of their qualifications. “Equal outcome” is not concerned with merit or qualification in this context, but with making sure their is a diverse range of race/gender etc regardless of qualifications/merit. — DingoJones

How do we know that "equal outcome" isn't concerned with merit or qualification? Equality is a value judgement. It can and usually does include considerations for qualifications and experience. Is there any mainstream view which espouses a strict quota system based on some form of identity without consideration of merit?

And on the flip side, what is considered "merit" is also a value judgement which, in principle, isn't different from equality.

The point being made I think is that equality of outcome is more problematic because it doesn’t filter out incompetence or any other undesirable traits, where equality of opportunity does while at the same time is an explicit effort to make sure no one is left out do to race/gender etc. — DingoJones

I'm very sceptical regarding this claim, as I don't see how it would be possible a priori to know whether a given system actually filters out only "undesirable traits". In my view, the only way to check is by looking at the output and comparing it with other metrics to figure out whether or not the process works. "Equality of opportunity" a judgement of an outcome, the term does not describe any specific method.

Think of selecting a panel of doctors to save a loved ones life. You want the panel to have the best doctors right? If you gathered the best and it turns out it’s majority black, white, straight, gay or whatever then equality of outcome demands that some of the best doctors be swapped out so that the panel is diverse. — DingoJones

I think you're ascribing a specific goal to equality, based on a political usage of the word, which is not inherent in the term. If you want a panel of the best doctors, then the only reasonable application of the term equality is that people on the panel should have the highest qualification possible, regardless of other factors. In other words all factors except qualification should be considered equal (you don't care about their marital status etc).

That's how equality always operates - you select one or more dimensions of relevance, such as qualification, income, etc. and then the "equal" outcome is the one where those - and only those - dimensions are expressed in the outcome.

Merit purports to do something similar, but merit tends to come with an existing list of which circumstances imply merit and which do not, and that list is politically and ideologically motivated (usually to favour existing elites).

The Left is constantly pushing their "inclusion" meme which I take as meaning that each GROUP needs to be represented according to their percentage in the population. Merit is of secondary importance. — synthesis

What's the difference between "outcome by merit" and "equal outcome"? "Merit" is not the name of a physical law or constant.

Capitalism is the only economic system there is. — synthesis

Err, what?

The problem for these types of theories is that slavery, extremely high rates of violence, human sacrifice, and cannibalism show up in every human habitat if you look back far enough. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do they? That seems to be the kind of vaguely plausible claim people like to use when they have no actual knowledge on the matter.

Arguments tend to hinge on Europeans becoming the heirs to wealthy countries with high levels of technological development and low levels of violence due to their oppressing other peoples and extracting wealth from abroad. However, the development of thought that would lead to the scientific revolution pre-dates European colonization. The Spanish and Ottoman Empires continued to colonize more lands and take more slaves as they declined, while northern Europe, without a legacy of colonies, became the most developed region. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's just a list of claims connected by a theme, but not an actual argument. The exact causes for Europe's leap ahead of the global average are a topic of some debate. What's pretty clear is that once that lead was established, much of Europe's wealth in subsequent centuries was the result of intentionally exploitative policies.

The whole concept of Whiteness itself has to start around the 1930s, as the prior peak in US immigration levels two decades earlier, overwhelmingly from Europe, produced a massive backlash against immigration, and by far and away the harshest restrictions on immigration the US ever had. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because Whiteness could not have existed outside the US?

However, probably the largest factor was the dramatic cut off of immigration under US law. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Probably" as in "I assume it is".

The implication being that one of the best things the US could do right now to solve racial divisions is to dramatically curtail immigration, — Count Timothy von Icarus

How would that contribute to solving racial divisions between people whose grandparents were already born in the US, but with different skin colours?

Since immigration necissarily increases inequality due to the fact that most immigrants are coming from developing countries, and since demand for unskilled labor is plummeting, this would also help to assuage class divisions, and yet CRT generally posits that restrictions on immigration are definitionally racist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps CRT isn't interested in merely "assuaging" divisions in some way? After all racism isn't primarily wrong because it's not a solution to some given problem, but because it is morally wrong.

The quote you cite is emblematic of another problem, which is the trend towards labeling everything that correlates with racial disparities as racist. The problem is that some of the beaurocratic systems, designed to treat people equally in all cases, which are essential to high functioning states, can also help produce feedback loops of racial inequality. This does not mean those essential systems need to be dismantled however. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Labeling something as racist is not the same as calling for it to be dismantled.

At its worst, CRT advocates for the neopatromonial politics common to African nations, where elected leaders main role is to represent their own ethnic group above all else, and bring resources back to them, which is a relationship that is the hallmark of failing states, not high functioning ones. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wonder what made you chose Africa, of all places, for this example.

For example, now standardized tests are racist, where once they were a method for excluding bias in university or job selection. How do we know they are racist? Because there is a test score gap. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well how else would we know? The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes. Everything else is a value judgement. There has to be some reason there is a test score gap. Prima facie, racism is a possible one.

And yet, if questions on a test are loaded with racial bias, as with the famous "regatta" SAT question, we can identify those with statistical analysis. Indeed, test do employ these methods, and remove from scoring those questions whose answer rate has too strong a correlation with race, and subjects those to further examination for identifying potential sources of bias. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's precisely the same kind of analysis that leads to the argument that the entire standardized test is racist - the test results (supposedly) have too strong a correlation with race. What should then follow is an examination for identifying potential sources for that bias.

You'd do a lot better looking at how schools are funded than trying to get rid of standardized tests, but I suppose they are low hanging fruit. Indeed, it's ironic since standardized tests are a great way to identify talented individuals who might be preforming well because they are in poor school enviornments, it's exactly the sort of thing you don't want to get rid of. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So someone came to a wrong conclusion regarding the source of the problem. What's the relation with CRT here? No doubt many wrong things are said by proponents of CRT, but that doesn't necessarily tell me anything about the theoretical framework itself.

Yes, because you are enslaving and denying the rights of individuals. — NOS4A2

So are the individuals who stop our would-be overlord. If everyone is just individuals, then prima facie, any motivation is equivalent, and preventing a murder is equivalent to murdering someone.

I think it’s evident individuals do and should cooperate. I just don’t think any person should be sacrificed for an idea, whether it’s the “greater good”, the nation, the party, humanity itself. — NOS4A2

Even if the idea is individualism?

Like if I had some kind of weapon that allowed me to capture and control the minds of large masses of people and cause them to establish some kind of tyranny, would the prevention of that tyranny be grounds to sacrifice me as an individual?

I don't mind the concept of laissez-faire because it implies the state keeping their hands off of private affairs. But when corporations seek favor from state power my defense ends. — NOS4A2

Aren't all affairs private affairs from a strict individualist perspective?

Didn't we agree that the woman born into a Islamic fundamentalist society is not morally indebted to that society simply by virtue of dependency? — Tzeentch

Even if you're indebted to a society, you can still be justified in rejecting it. Those are not mutually exclusive.

As I said, bit off from actual monetary policy. But I guess what is considered and accepted as money is monetary policy in the broader sense. — ssu

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. I understand it more as trying to impact the real economy by regulating the flow of money, but it's difficult to really pin down the difference between money and currency, because we always think of money in terms of a specific currency.

Those measures start from what is legal tender. — ssu

Arguably, yes. Though I find it hard to treat bitcoing as "being suppressed" given it's popularity.

Oh you would prefer 18th Century style dealings where your employer would pay your salary with his own currency, which you can use in your employers shops?

There's many negative aspects to private currencies also, you know. — ssu

I think we have a misunderstanding here, I dont see the connection to what I wanted to say. I just wanted to say that being able to avoid taxes is not necessarily a good thing.

Well, the structure how it uses a peer-to-peer network and blockchain might be things on the plus side to it. — ssu

I agree. The technology is interesting and may have important future applications.

Likely it's the Western Central banks that may look at this. — ssu

Given the recent competence of western governments, I wouldn't be too worried.

Ok, perhaps here it's good to remind you that money in your country is a foreign currency in other countries. And this is how US monetary policy can indeed effect the price of milk in the Netherlands. And this is why actually the "demise of the Dollar" thanks to reckless spending isn't at all a clear cut case as the US is part of the global economy...and everything effects everything. — ssu

Sure, that's another scenario where a "currency barrier" doesn't stop the effects of a crisis. My point was that while something like bitcoin is in and of itself immune to inflation, it's not decoupled from the monetary system as a whole, which today is global and, as you say, everything affects everything.

This isn't far fetched as during the financial crises Switzerland suddenly found itself as a "safe haven" currency having it's franc roughly revaluing +20% towards the dollar and the euro. They had to go to negative interest rates (that people have to pay them for holding Swiss francs) and increase their monetary base, because the +20% jump in the Swiss franc was killing the important export market in a situation when the global market was already in a recession. — ssu

Interesting. Did this have anything to do with the swiss economy / banking sector or was it merely the perception that the swiss franc was "safe" because of the reputation of the swiss banking sector?

OK, good, we've established you don't know what you're talking about. I can stop investing time in this. — Benkei

You could educate me. I haven't argued in bad faith here. If I'm wrong, I'd like to find out.

Ok, explain the mechanism to me how monetary policy in the US affects the price of buying milk in the Netherlands. If you can say this with such conviction you certainly have this figured out. — Benkei

There isn't one precise mechanism, but e.g. a loose money policy leads to more money going into speculative investments like futures, which affect global pricing / supply and demand. So if feed prices go up due to futures, the cost of producing milk goes up globally, affecting milk prices in the Netherlands.

You can't divide post stamps to reflect the exact value you need to pay for something else. They're physical too. There's not enough of them to go around, they can be easily counterfeited. Etc. — Benkei

That's true, cryptocurrency is much more sophisticated. I just wonder whether it's worth the negative side effects.

The "monetary policy" in Bitcoin is a) do governments allow it or not and b) do those using it believe in it's value or not. — ssu

Those have nothing to do with "monetary policy" the way I understand it. And governments cannot practically suppress currencies without some very draconian measures (which would also work against bitcoin) anyways.

There's no government able to tax it's citizens behind it or any physical aspects that metals have. — ssu

That seems pretty much strictly negative from a social point of view.

In many countries buying and selling isn't so easy as in Western countries. Holding foreign currency can be limited and the banking system a joke. There having bitcoin can be truly helpful in the role of medium of change. Yet it's extremely lousy as a unit of account as it goes up and down in price like a delirious rabbit. It's basically more of a medium of speculation than "store of value", but then again this is the time of the "everything bubble" where all "stores of value" are going up and down. — ssu

Sure. But then people have been pretty creative with that before bitcoin as well. You can use cigarrettes as currency if you have to.

It's really an interesting discussion if bitcoin is truly a "safe haven" investment or not — ssu

I'd argue it's not an investment in the traditional sense at all. It's purely speculative with no commodification attached.

The real risk with any so-called "safe havens", be it gold, the swiss franc or bitcoin is that IF there's a bursting of this bubble, all financial vehicles go down simply because people need to take cash from where ever they have them. The wonderful aspect of a margin call or as others call the phenomenon, asset deflation. Governments going after bitcoin is a typical thing in Third World countries, where the government has little control of the economy and desperately want's income. It could possibly happen here too, but then a lot has to happen before that. — ssu

At least gold would still be useable, and the swiss franc might still pay your taxes. But to be sure I'm not saying that speculating with Bitcoin is a terrible, no good idea on an individual level. I'm not an expert on investment or speculation strategies. I question the wisdom of elevating such speculation as a virtuous or subversive act.

Far more likely "threat" to Bitcoin is that it is replaced by a more "acceptable" cryptocurrency by those in power, which is then taken to use by the masses. I don't think that the majority of people have cryptocurrencies of today. Just like they can control the internet today, even if earlier people viewed the net as this bastion of freedom. — ssu

Possible, but bitcoin is already pretty well established. Though the chinese government will certainly be able to do something like this.

It's affected because exchanging from one crypto to another asset class requires the currency managed by the relevant central bank. — Benkei

So long as you don't conduct your entire business in bitcoin, it'll be tied to the monetary system of the rest of the world. With global financial capitalism, there's basically no way to have an unaffected currency unless you also want to run an entirely separate economy (which arguably is what happens in black market economies running on bitcoin).

Monetary policy of the US doesn't directly affect the purchasing power of EUR in Europe though. — Benkei

Not directly, but the effects will travel through the interconnected real economy to the EU regardless.

So having a currency that would be unaffected by central bank policies would be of value to many. — Benkei

For what purpose, exactly? It's not like anyone can stop you from using whatever you want as currency. Bitcoin is more sophisticated than trading postage stamps, but it's not in principle different as far as I can tell.

I don't really see the connection. Monetary policy affects bitcoin just as well, regardless of the "alternative" label. It's after all a big part of the reason it's market value is so high.

A different currency isn't the same as a different monetary system.

For now, cryptos aren't going to fulfil the role of an alternative currency as envisaged but are just another asset class. — Benkei

I'm also wondering just why there is a need for an "alternative" currency.

Cryptocurrencies aren't a fad or rubbish, they are something genuinely important. — ssu

I guess the question is: what are they important for, exactly. Sure the technology is interesting, and it's certainly useful if you want untraceable transactions. That's not purely a positive though.

Apart from that, I get the feeling lots of the conversation about cryptocurrency misunderstands how money works and sounds a lot like Americans talking about how they need their guns in case the government suddenly turns tyrannical.

I'm very aware of the environmental impact of crypto. The reality is that anything involving computing power affects the environment, including this forum (and yes, the surge in crypto is affecting it in a much larger way). — Noble Dust

That seems like a cop-out. Yes writing on this forum has an environmental impact, and this has to be assessed against the individual and social value of the activity. What's the individual or social value of NFTs?

Today's crypto-blows to the environment may be balanced by tomorrow's crypto-bandages. Or not. Who's to say? The market is so volatile. — Noble Dust

Err, what? Polluting the environment is ok because "the future will happen"?

So anyway, back to me; should I mint an NFT or nah? — Noble Dust

What is your reason for wanting to do so?

I still think Kojeve is roughly right, but I consider this one a matter of opinion. — j0e

I think it's a matter of framing, specifically whether or not you consider death to be part of life, or whether you consider it the end / absence of life.

One problem I have with the "death is part of life" notion is the performative contradiction it entails. Moment to moment, the vast majority of people wants to live, regardless of age. Sure, rational suicide exists, but is usually accompanied with significant physical deteoriation of body or mind.

So it's very weird to see all these people claiming they wouldn't want the pill when all evidence suggests that if you asked them at any point "would you like to die today" the answer would almost always be "no!".

How many grains does it take to make a heap? — j0e

This is kinda the problem, yeah. A "full life" is a rhetorical construct, a category we talk about. It doesn't correspond to any actual age.

I do wonder whether people would converge toward a single personality. Would this take 10,000 years? 100,000 years? Or would people diverge in ways I can't imagine? — j0e

Hard to say what would happen to the brain if it just kept absorbing new information. I think personalities might change significantly over long periods of time, but probably not freely, but constrained by whatever basic structure was created early in development.

It seems likely that there is an upper limit to the amount of experiences a brain can contain, though it's unlikely to work like storage space on a harddrive. More like some memories slowly evolving into other memories, until the original no longer has any part in the current person.

Kojeve makes the point that an immortal can get around to all paths, so I think mortality does have a place here. — j0e

I don't think that's convincing. Whenever you make a decision, that excludes all other decisions you could have taken. Being in a similar situation and deciding differently in the future won't change that. So in order to say that someone with an arbitrarily long lifespan experiences "all paths" is tantamount to saying that there is some set number of different lifes, with a set duration, you can live.

Lifespans have already lengthened considerably. Someone who lives for 100 years doesn't live two lifes of a 50-year-old. So it doesn't make sense to me to draw some arbitrary line at X years and declare that this is the maximum amount of years anyone can live without loosing "meaning" or "stakes" or gets bored etc.

One can discuss what true immortality would actually be like, but that's not the scenario of the OP. Just an arbitrarily long (but never infinite) lifespan.

Another example, if death were truly so terrible, then it seems like people would be much more focused on preventing it. — darthbarracuda

I think this is a really bad argument, because it's plainly obvious that there are a bunch of thing everybody knows are bad ideas and people still do it.

For example, it seems to me that death in itself is not a bad thing. — darthbarracuda

What's your definition of "bad"? You seem to equate it with negative feelings here, and in that sense that statement is true, but then most people would say spending 10 years in a coma is "bad" even when you don't strictly speaking experience anything negative during that time.

I think what the pro-pill argument misses is that, by excising any ultimate stake, life loses all its emotional shading and heft and becomes flat and sterile — csalisbury

This seems to assume that people constantly contrast their experiences with death on offer to give them stakes and texture, and that seems very wrong.

Life has stakes because of the different paths it can take, not because it has an end.

Oh good, I guess we can then tax any profit with 97% as well then since we paid for it? Wtf... — Benkei

We can do that regardless, if we only wanted to...

This seems like a good place to vent about the utter collapse of the German Coronavirus policy. Wtf has happened? After doing somewhat well during the first wave, Germany's policy in the last couple of months has been nothing short of disastrous. Everyone knows it, everyone is angry, but not a single high ranking politician seems able to do something about it. Even Merkel looks powerless, which is really absurd. Utter incompetence unveiled for all to see.

Is it the same in the other European nations? France seems to have similar problems, but I'm not really aware of the internal politics.

Don't these people care about the real victims, those of use with copies of Cyberpunk 2077 collecting dust on our shelves because our hardware can't run it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I know this is a joke, but the resource consumption of cryptocurrency and NFTs is a real concern. The amount of processing power uses a lot of energy and causes a lot of pollution, for something that's arguably not very different in principle from collecting bottle caps or postage stamps (in that there is zero actual value being generated).

Any thoughts? Criticisms? Am I horrible person for potentially jumping into this fray? — Noble Dust

See above. It's arguably the most destructive way to play pretend.

For instance, is there a reason why it had to be a bang? How about an extremely slow, insidious creep — James Riley

The reason here is the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background. A slow formation would have given the matter/energy in the universe time to interact and form large scale structures. Since we don't see evidence of those, the theory is that the expansion was very fast initially.

It makes sense to have some allegiance and affinity to the territory in which you reside, the languages, history and institutions of the people who reside there. These are meaningful things in the world which contribute to any life.

It makes no sense to have allegiance or affinity to a race, which is devoid of such content. — NOS4A2

Is that really true though? White supremacists would certainly disagree and say that being "white", however we want to define that precisely, is very much associated with a specific history, culture and institutions. That's after all why they keep using the term "western culture" in place of "white supremacy".

We easily dismiss this mode of making sense of the world as a transparent veil for racism. But we don't seem to apply that same scrutiny to nationalism.

It's also interesting to note that one might argue that both the concept of the nation and the concept of human races in it's modern form developed around the same time frame - the period when Europe transformed from a collection of fragmented kingdoms into nation states, which then started to colonise the globe.

It depends on what "you" we're talking about. From the perspective of the "you" stepping into the machine, every resulting copy is you. But as soon as more than one version steps out, they all diverge.

You're aware that the number of children is already stagnating, and thus the population will naturally peak around 11 Billion?

Money has value. — Benj96

I think the more accurate statement is that money represents value. It's the measuring stick by which we assess value.

But why? Where does it come from? The value of money is essentially psychological. It is a physical symbol of “trust” or “belief” in it by people. The more people that trust in a currency the more stable and useful it becomes. And the more stable/ useful it is the more valuable it is because it can be trusted more. It is less likely to fail. — Benj96

I don't see how money becomes "more valuable" when it is more stable. Currency does tend to be more valuable the more widely it is accepted, but currency is not the same as money. The reason a more trusted currency is worth more is simply that it is more likely to be acceptable to strangers, but this only matters if you're liable to trade with strangers.

Ultimately, it's not the money that we put trust in, but other people. We trust they'll accept our valuation of goods and accept a given currency.

Let’s consider a primitive community of 10 people who all agree for convenience to use one currency. It can appear stable for a time but it is not. One part of the community will be generally very satisfied with the currency and will trust it - these are likely the people who offer essential products/ have great command for pricing due to the importance of what they offer for example; architects and builders, doctors, soldiers etc. The other half will be less satisfied with the currency and trust it less - because what they offer isn’t as essential; Maybe artists, councillors, poets, etc. They don’t feel they are as valuable to the society and their income reflects this. — Benj96

This seems to be mixing money, currency and social status all in one. Why would they trust the currency less just because they have less of it?

Consider now that this portion (3 or 4 out of the ten) unhappy individuals decide to just go back to bartering between themselves instead of using the money. The others will witness that their currency can no longer buy the art, seek council or provide entertainment like it used to. — Benj96

What possible advantage would they get from bartering? And the way you set up your example, they need money to buy food, correct?

This generates distrust and fear. — Benj96

Of whom? What's happening to our community that they no longer trust each other?

No one wants to be the last one left with worthless coins that they received for trading all their valuables. — Benj96

But if the coins were worthless tokens to start with, why would you stop using them? They're tokens. It's not like you mistakenly believed they were made from valuable metal when they weren't. This is a symptom of confusing money (the system we use to compare values) with currency (tokens that represent value).

Usually, money and currency evolve in tandem, and the currency is a commodification of the money. That is to say the currency is itself a commodity (like precious metals), so it's never worthless.

Perhaps another sells off their coins and goes back to bartering. — Benj96

If the community is still intact, why would people barter? You only need to barter if you aren't sure the other person will honor their debts to you.

This is because the participants each have a big impact on the value of the currency because the group is small. They realise the money isn’t “real” enough or “objective” enough and therefore can’t rely on it to continue existing. — Benj96

This begs the question though why would they ever have thought the money is "objective"?

Let’s take this situation and apply it to the modern world. Imagine (though this would never happen) that a global ban was placed on exchanging or spending money. No one could observe the influence of money that comes with its exchange.
Suddenly all the assets in a wealthy mans bank are valueless because they can never be seen or used again, and suddenly the poor are no longer any poorer than anyone else. — Benj96

What about debt though? Like could you still borrow something and pay the value later? Because as long as that works, you have money.

Money only has value in the act of exchange. As the title of this post suggests. You may argue that money that isnt being spent (that sits in savings accounts Banks etc) also has value. But it only has value because the remaining “circulating” money is acting/ moving and bolstering “trust”. — Benj96

Money that sits in savings accounts is circulating. The banks don't just sit on it. Why do you think the stock market goes ever higher?

If all the money in the worlds banks were to flood out into the market and be spent simultaneously (for example in a global existential panic) Then the value of the currency would drop to nothing. There would be so much supply and very little incentive to take it as real world objects like food, housing etc. Are fundamentally always more important than money for survival. — Benj96

But this would not just happen in a vacuum. Loss of trust in a currency does not happen by itself, but is a symptom of another loss of trust - for example in the ability of debtors to pay back their loans.

That's of course assuming that the goal for the republicans is a return to relative "normalcy", with power switching hands between two parties at regular intervals.

Another way to read the events is that the GOP not trying to slowly ease out Trimpism, but instead slowly ease out the traditional idea of the conservative, as a way to deal with the ever dwindling number of these kinds of voters.

Yet, it would be incorrect to represent the event as the rise of the 'little guy,' as a revolt of the people. There are no just rules in the accelerating process of financial speculations. Redditors' way to skyrocket the price of GameStop is a kind of massive speculative action. It harms several hedge funds, but it does not threaten The Wall-Street's financial order. — Number2018

Agreed. This is an interesting event, and some schadenfreude towards the hedge funds in question is perhaps warranted. But to treat this as anything more than a short-lived prank and a lottery jackpot for a few people strikes me as odd. It's not like anything institutional has changed at Wallstreet, or the stock markets in general. I am seeing signs of people buying their own hype and treating GME stock as an investment rather than a lottery ticket. In the end, there'll be at least as many loosers as there are winners.

The best thing this could do is to expose the absurdity of unrestricted speculation. But the myth-making that's already starting will just obscure that message.

Sure, for Trump it makes sense, the more influence he can retain the better for him. But as for the Republicans, they're either very short sighted or just really don't care about how they get into power, so long as they do.

Trump is a traitor and a fool. Let's see if his Russian handlers let him live, now that he's useless to them. — Olivier5

Based on recent events, I'd say he is far from useless. He is a very useful figurehead, and it looks like the attempts of the more moderate republicans to extricate the party from the grasp of unrestrained populism have failed.

Right now, all signs point to more of the same, which given the trajectory can only mean authoritarian regime or bust.

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the usual suspects.It has always been obvious to me that the political spectrum is spherical such that the extremes of left and right coincide like East and West do. Is this an unusual view? I think Orwell explained it in Animal Farm — unenlightened

Fascism is a specific ideology, or set of ideologies. It's not just any authoritarianism. Different visions of society can all have a similar drive towards being enforced by absolute authority, but that doesn't make the visions the same.

One the one hand, this is a fun prank on the hedge funds, and a nice reductio ad absurdum of the current stock market.

On the other hand, isn't further pushing up the stock, knowing full well that it'll eventually crash again, like taking part in a pyramid scheme? Someone will loose eventually, and I doubt it'll be just the hedge funds.

I disagree on the idea that everyone stands to lose. Popping the speculative bubble will get the economy over the issue and get back on a healthy track. It will be past, not something that will have an effect decades later, just as now with the 2008. If it is not let to burst, many people will lose from the current malaise while the richest that can get the cheap money will become more richer. — ssu

Yet in the US, just to give an example, the most rapid economic growth happened during the gold standard in the 19th Century. — ssu

The gold standard is not directly related to fractional reserve banking, as you can have both. The gold standard only limits the primary currency, but banks and everyone can work with derived currencies just fine. But the gold standard does of course have an effect on the domestic money supply since it makes it much more apparent should virtual currencies run out of hand.

As for the economic growth, the 19th century was the century of rapid industrialisation and expansion for the US, so it's not clear to me how much monetary policy mattered.

My personal lay opinion (and this is just me soapboxing, I'm not addressing you personally) is that the power of monetary policy to affect actual production is often overstated. Money is not magic, nor is there a simple answer to the question of how virtual money should be. It's often assumed that virtual money is something new and dangerous. But it's actually a fairly normal thing in history. For example, after the collapse of the Western Roman empire, the successor states kept using Roman currency denominations to calculate debts, but the actual coins were no longer in circulation.

Well, everyone with easy access to power stands to loose. It's difficult to say what effect such a collapse would have on the overall economy, at least I don't feel confident making any judgement.

Free market mechanism, if it would be let to happen, would deal with the bursting of the bubble with a quick deflation and sharp recession that would give way then for a healthy recovery. — ssu

I'm not sure what free market mechanism this would be. The free market model says nothing about monetary policy, nor about limits to speculation.

So let it collapse. That's what needs to happen. Then you can re-start the economy based on sound money/policy. — synthesis

The problem is that the short time consequences are difficult to predict (for me, anyways) and might be catastrophic.

That might be an acceptable risk if we could be sure we had "sound money and policy" to go forward, but I am not confident that we do without some significant paradigm shift in the way we approach growth, debt and profit.

Going back to real money and no FRL (fractional reserve lending) will take care of many of the current issues we face.. — synthesis

Without FRL, the economy would collapse. For better or worse, FRL is a central engine of capitalism, as it facilitates investment and makes it cheaper (via inflation).



To me it looks like a constantly expanding bubble, kept from popping by continually low interest rates and constant access to easy money. Because money is so cheap, there is a lack of investment opportunities. The only strategy that offers ever higher returns the more money you pump into it is gambling, and one of the ways one can gamble is via the stock market.

Noone has any interest in popping the bubble because everyone stands to loose. The relationship between the bubble and the real economy is also not straightforward. In theory it doesn't matter how much money is in circulation, what matters is the distribution. But chances are the current situation, as usual, will cause money to flow upwards and, when the bubble pops, leave lots of people without their savings.

Can we both agree that by "the chain" we mean nothing but the total collection of contingent things? — BARAA

Well, no, because that's exactly the premise I challenged. There is a hidden premise in the argument to that effect.

1) contingent things exist.
2) a contingent existent needs an external cause to exist and if its cause is also contingent,it will also need a cause and so on.
3) the chain of contingent things either has a starting point or it doesn't have one.

You'd need a premise 2a) in here that states that there is a chain of contingent things that is nothing but the total collection of contingent things. But then the conclusion that there must be something necessary outside the collection of contingent things isn't very interesting. It doesn't rule out that the contingent things are part of some other whole (which is not the "chain" as defined here) which is necessary.

6)the chain is made up of each single one of its members,in other words,the existence of members causes the chain to exist, therefore the chain is can not be necessary. — BARAA

This premise is problematic. It treats the chain as composite, but it might instead merely be divisible. The divisions might even be illusory.

Which would mean the members of the chain are contingent on the chain's existence, which can then be necessary.

I don't see what's problematic in that assertion. You say that suffering is a personal experience. Yes, nothing I've said supposes otherwise. You say it is not a physical property. Again yes, but nothing I've said assumes otherwise.

Pain is essentially experienced. That is, it exists 'as' an experience. ("I'm experiencing some pain, but am I actually in pain?" makes no sense). — Bartricks

Yes. I wasn't intending to put words in your mouth. But I think here is an implicit premise in your argument that creating additional people also creates additional suffering. That is suffering is worse if there are more people.

What's relevant to my case is that a) pain often matters morally (that is, the fact an act will create some pain is often a fact about an act that has great moral significance), and b) that whether pain/pleasure is deserved or undeserved also makes a great difference to whether an act that promotes it is right or wrong. — Bartricks

But you need to get from here to the conclusion that creating people is creating pain, deserved or not.

I think you have the start of a good argument here. Yes, morally, only intentions can really be relevant, not least because we also need a moral judgement for our own conduct before we act.

But this does not eliminate the problem with consequentialism you outlined. Because intentions are aimed at at consequences, and so the problem repeats itself: how do we judge an intention, if the intended consequence gets lost in an indefinite causal chain?

Judging the intention purely based on the first consequence that is desired is obviously problematic. It seems clear that obvious further consequences are part of the equation. If you play Russian roulette, death is clearly an intended consequence, even if you don't know who will die when.

So we do need to ask how we ought to deal with distant consequences.

I think that intensionalism has the best prospect of being true as a moral theory, but it is also useless because of its extremely limited application (it's, at best, applicable when a person reflects on their own actions in private, and to a limited extent in interpersonal relationships in which there is trust). — baker

Well, a person reflecting on their own actions is the primary application of morality. Nevertheless, most legal systems deal extensively with the issue of establishing intent, so it is possible to judge.

Now to acts of procreation. It is undeniable that, by subjecting someone to a lifetime's existence in this world, one will be creating lots of undeserved suffering. — Bartricks

I think there is a problematic assertion here, which is present in most anti-natalist arguments, that by creating a person you thereby also create their eventual suffering. Of course suffering is a predictable consequence of existence as a human. However, suffering is a personal experience. It's not a physical property, of which it could be said that if another person has it, the total amount of suffering has therefore increased.

We wouldn't say that, the more people in the world that experience the colour red, the more redness there is. Suffering is bad, but suffering does not, by that token, get worse if someone else also experiences it.

Or do we just need robots and fast? I for one welcome etc. — Kenosha Kid

Robots don't consume though, and lack of consumers seems to be the more significant problem for modern capitalism.

The idea that capitalism destroys itself by driving down wages below the threshold required to sustain consumption of it's products is not a new one. So far, predictions to that effect have always underestimated capitalism's ability to simply outgrow the problem.

I'm not sure whether birthrates are just a symptom of that same problem - lack of resources does seem part of it, but it's not like it's a simple linear relationship. There also doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between the countries worst affected (which as far as I know are Japan and South Korea) and a certain kind of capitalist practice. There is clearly a cultural element playing into this.

I think the problem with birth rates might be less one of capitalism in theory, and more one of where capitalism has ended up in practice. Which is to say that the whole consumer culture might not be very conductive of optimism about long term prospects or the kind of mindset where you welcome children in your life as a new source of both challenges and happiness. Those are just shower thoughts though, I don't really have the background to judge that. What I am reasonably confident of is that most people no longer implicitly trust that their children will have it better than they will. That "american dream", seems very much dead. And that has an obvious implication for having children.

1. take capitalism seriously and let the banks fall, bringing down every saver, every mortgage payer, every business depending on provision of loans with them.
2. inject taxpayer money into the sector, allowing the banks time to recover and ride out their own wave of destruction. — Kenosha Kid

I know what you want to say here, just want to note that capitalism has always been backed up by the state in practice. The idea that capitalism represents a free economy in opposition to the state is a myth.

Healthy people, in general, don't die, or have symptoms when exposed to covid. Look at the actual statistics, and not the news that likes to hype the rare 'exceptions' to the rule. — Roger Gregoire

With 7 Billion people, rare exceptions still happen a lot.

But you don't really understand statistics, nor do you apparently care, seeing as you ignore any data that doesn't fit your theory.

a) We can't know if they will be equipped (that's more the approach of khaled, but I agree.. there is that 10% or whatever figure it is). Also, it is hard to really know how to judge this. At some points someone might be okay, others not, and then there is total evaluation which is separate than the individual experiences. Which version is it? I don't think we can say, and there are certainly times one someone would ideally rather not have had those experiences. — schopenhauer1

I think there is a really interesting discussion to be had here about just how we're supposed to deal with risk morally. All behaviours are risky, so there must be a way to distinguish permissible risks from impermissible ones. This cannot be either just some statistical probability, nor can it be merely that there is a risk-free alternative available, because both of these lead to unsolvable dilemmas that oblige us to travel down indefinite causal chains to calculate risks or find alternative paths.

What we usually do is only consider a specific group of risks, which we try to minimize. This is what traffic regulations are: They are meant to protect against specific kinds of risks, but not all possible risks (so the risk of arriving at the wrong time and place, for example, is ignored). What risks are relevant is then a normative question. What risks should we minimize? What can we ask everyone to do, without it becoming self-defeating or paralyzing? We can ask everyone to give raising kids their best shot. To inform themselves as to the relevant science, and to make sure there aren't any obvious barriers to following that advice. But we can't ask anyone to be perfect, or control outcomes exactly.

b) Even if I equipped someone, putting them in the game in the first place is wrong. — schopenhauer1

So you think, yes. But since in doing so I am not taking anything away from them, nor even withholding something I am capable to give, I struggle to see how what I do could nevertheless be wrong.

Everything material that we experience must have some mental correlate. It doesn't follow that in order for a thing to materially exist, there must be a mental thing to experience it. — Kenosha Kid

No, I didn't mean to say that it does. But "experience" itself is already the mental correlate. All experience is mental experience, and does not ever turn into anything but a mental phenomenon.

The other question is whether in order for a thing to experience anything, must it have a materialist existence. If the answer is Yes, then we're firmly pointed toward the material as having primacy (since an inexperienced material thing is not ruled out while an immaterial experiencer is). If No, then we're looking at dualism. — Kenosha Kid

And that's why I was saying there seem to be two contradictory statements which both seem obviously and necessarily true. I did not mean to imply that there are no solutions to this problem, only that it seems at the heart of the philosophical problem.

The likely answer depends heavily on how seriously you take empirical evidence over beliefs. If you believe immaterial consciousnesses exist, and the empirical evidence for the physical basis of consciousness doesn't move you, either dualism is true or material existence is false. If you take seriously the evidence that mental processes are physical, then either you need two qualitatively different ways of making a mind (material and immaterial) or else materialism is likely true. — Kenosha Kid

Sure, I get what you're saying. But I feel like the best way to resolve the dilemma is a compatibilist one. I consider my experience as if it was a true representation of a material world, but at the same time I take seriously my own experience of myself as an acting subject.

Edit: And I should perhaps add that the reason I take these stances is that I consider them pragmatic necessities, which is to say adopting other stances is theoretically possible, but leads to performative contradictions.

Firstly; There is a world of difference between killing millions of people and letting them die. I realize that most people would not understand, or appreciate, the distinction. — Book273

Yeah, because the distinction is arbitrary.

Secondly; The assumption that the lockdowns, social distancing and general fall out from the Covid response will not kill millions long term is laughable. I am impressed with your naivety. — Book273

For one, everyone dies "long term", so it does matter whether people die now or later.

For another, it being unsure whether or not the virus can ultimately be stopped is not an argument to not even try.

Thirdly; By not allowing natural selection to occur, through falsely propping up those who would otherwise fall, we weaken the species, thereby allowing an increase in future deaths to yet another virus. — Book273

You cannot "not allow natural selection to occur". Natural selection is precisely the selection that actually occurs, and nothing else. So any medicine, social distancing, whatever, is all part of "natural selection". Our brains are not somehow not part of nature.

And the idea we need to "strengthen" ourselves by letting people die is social Darwinist nonsense. That's what technology is for.