I guess I could opine that man is also the only creature that invests a great deal of effort in strategic virtue signaling in a vain attempt to fool other members of his own species and even himself, but I see the other commenters beat me to the punch...
Mel Brooks used to say "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into a manhole", or words to that effect. The concepts of "greed" and "fairness" are like that too. But it's only funny when most of the audience is too comfortable to care. Imagine what George Carlin would have to contend with if he were alive today, and making the same observations about human nature. He'd probly need to hire a bodyguard to go out in public. My only question for the people who can't wait to go after the billionaire class with torches and pitchforks: If you can't succeed in this cronyist version of society, what makes you think you'd do better in a society run by Teamster types? Aaand that's why I'm not invited to dinner parties or Thanksgiving anymore...
This morning I was watching a new Dad Saves America episode about the data center kerfuffle. I appreciate how he brought the appropriate level of nuance to a complex subject. I notice that certain issues tend to get siloed into reductive talky points of partisan groups, which is entirely unproductive. For instance, libertarians love defending data centers as much as leftists love denigrating them, for obvious reasons. The merits of Amazon are another such polarizing issue. But the annoying reality is that people and companies and government policies usually accomplish multiple objectives at once. And some of those are in conflict with others. Too bad the level of public debate seldom addresses the actual complexity even of what currently exists, much less what "we" would prefer, assuming there is a royal "we" that can achieve any meaningful consensus on anything important...
I'm currently watching this interesting analysis [from a year ago] on housing availability and its relationship to homelessness. I learned a few things that I did not know yesterday, which I always enjoy. One thing that surprised me was that possibility that rent-control policies, which I thought were entirely counter-productive, might actually be useful, in certain circumstances, provided they are small and localized. But there are a lot of things covered here that I hadn't thought about much before now...
All great topics. The Data center debte gets sidelined by the ‘water’ issue but without the simple understanding of how those cooling sytems work and how the water cycle operates or everything that uses / wastes water. The more you dig into any topic, the more you find just how little we all know.
Ain't it amusing how people love to apply moral frameworks to every logistical challenge, in order to put their thumb on the scale morally & politically? I think the mechanism of social taboos is too powerful for them to even admit to themselves that they're doing it. Thus we get the politicians we deserve.
Earning life is definitely something good to be striving towards but it has to be balanced against the value of what is being earned and how it ultimately stacks up. If you have to work twice as hard to achieve half as much, then you're not necessarily earning the same thing. The value of the life being earned is lesser. Particularly if the people who claim it has value often devalue the effort being put into earning it.
I was exploring this recently independently. The Price is Right has been running in some form since the 1950s. Back in the early years, the big showcases at the end were on average 5k and people would often bid that much. Even on big ticket items like cars.
Nowadays the big showcases have a price of 25k or more typically, with the average car costing 25k.
But people often complain about how “young people don’t drive” and “why aren’t people buying cars and achieving the freedom of the open road?” But if the average car costs 20k more than it did when you bought your car years ago, then why are you still confused about why young people don’t drive? Why are you complaining about how the problem is the motivation of the people?
You can’t solve the problem of earning life through positive thinking and platitudes about the need for resilience. It’s not a problem of young people not wanting to earn their lives. It’s a question of the value that life has.
Inflation between 1950 and now makes that number different because everything, including salaries, is inflation adjusted. Car aren’t more ‘expesnive’ the valuation of our dollar is down across the board. Running the inflation calculator, that ‘cheap’ $5K car was actually $69,284.65 in today’s dollars. So the car 1/3 the cost of the car back in the day.
Well this is part of what I mean about the value of things. I don't really care whether inflation adjustments make it the same. The fact that the value of the dollar is down across the board is the issue.
But people act like it's exactly the same because of "inflation adjustment".
Here's a simple metric by which I tend to measure the value of a thing. Does a starving person care about it? Does a starving person care whether you can inflation adjust something to make it the same value as it was back then? Does a starving person care what an analysis says?
The value of a thing isn't in the price necessarily. It's in the effort that it requires. I'm not making an anti-capitalist argument either. Just pointing out the obvious errors.
Does a person who has to work 3 jobs to make ends meet care what the inflation adjustment measure says about the value of their work? Do they care whether inflation has caused the value of things to be the same?
What they care about is how much they're struggling to make ends meet. They want a car to cost less.
I wonder what we would find if we ran an analysis of all mammals where we examined how likely it is that each species dies of old age (as opposed to starving to death or being killed by a predator). My guess is that humans would fare pretty well in that analysis.
In a way, I'd be okay with living off the land. Wild animals are more honest than most people. They'll warn you before they attacks. A rattler tries to warn you away before it strikes, a coyote growls a warning and tries to leave you alone. Even a bear or mountain lion try to warn you away before being forced to attack or defend.
Man is the only being on this world that routinely lies to your face.
Even when they don't lie to you, people don't listen to other people.
I can tell you how hard it is to prepare the land for planting, cultivation, and reaping. You don't always get back what you put into it.
When man is involved, you get less than you put into it for sure.
I get where you're coming from there, but the warning isn't always true. For example, a wolf doesn't growl, and a rattlesnake doesn't rattle when it's hunting for food. They just strike and eat. Now, the warning comes when the threat is at parity or otherwise. The rattlesnake warns the human and the dog because both can kill the rattlesnake much more easily than the snake can kill them.
Otherwise, I think you have good points, but it does open a new can of worms. Are humans a natural part of evolution?
You must not have read the post I wrote. Could you kindly copy the offending section that you think promotes suicide? Also, your attempt at shaming, suggesting I shouldn't be alive, that's what we call hypocritical. But I'm game for understanding this outburst.
I guess I could opine that man is also the only creature that invests a great deal of effort in strategic virtue signaling in a vain attempt to fool other members of his own species and even himself, but I see the other commenters beat me to the punch...
Lol. It’s still a good point!
Mel Brooks used to say "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into a manhole", or words to that effect. The concepts of "greed" and "fairness" are like that too. But it's only funny when most of the audience is too comfortable to care. Imagine what George Carlin would have to contend with if he were alive today, and making the same observations about human nature. He'd probly need to hire a bodyguard to go out in public. My only question for the people who can't wait to go after the billionaire class with torches and pitchforks: If you can't succeed in this cronyist version of society, what makes you think you'd do better in a society run by Teamster types? Aaand that's why I'm not invited to dinner parties or Thanksgiving anymore...
They never think that far ahead.
This morning I was watching a new Dad Saves America episode about the data center kerfuffle. I appreciate how he brought the appropriate level of nuance to a complex subject. I notice that certain issues tend to get siloed into reductive talky points of partisan groups, which is entirely unproductive. For instance, libertarians love defending data centers as much as leftists love denigrating them, for obvious reasons. The merits of Amazon are another such polarizing issue. But the annoying reality is that people and companies and government policies usually accomplish multiple objectives at once. And some of those are in conflict with others. Too bad the level of public debate seldom addresses the actual complexity even of what currently exists, much less what "we" would prefer, assuming there is a royal "we" that can achieve any meaningful consensus on anything important...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0NsK02MJds
I'm currently watching this interesting analysis [from a year ago] on housing availability and its relationship to homelessness. I learned a few things that I did not know yesterday, which I always enjoy. One thing that surprised me was that possibility that rent-control policies, which I thought were entirely counter-productive, might actually be useful, in certain circumstances, provided they are small and localized. But there are a lot of things covered here that I hadn't thought about much before now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc
All great topics. The Data center debte gets sidelined by the ‘water’ issue but without the simple understanding of how those cooling sytems work and how the water cycle operates or everything that uses / wastes water. The more you dig into any topic, the more you find just how little we all know.
Ain't it amusing how people love to apply moral frameworks to every logistical challenge, in order to put their thumb on the scale morally & politically? I think the mechanism of social taboos is too powerful for them to even admit to themselves that they're doing it. Thus we get the politicians we deserve.
Earning life is definitely something good to be striving towards but it has to be balanced against the value of what is being earned and how it ultimately stacks up. If you have to work twice as hard to achieve half as much, then you're not necessarily earning the same thing. The value of the life being earned is lesser. Particularly if the people who claim it has value often devalue the effort being put into earning it.
Good points.
I was exploring this recently independently. The Price is Right has been running in some form since the 1950s. Back in the early years, the big showcases at the end were on average 5k and people would often bid that much. Even on big ticket items like cars.
Nowadays the big showcases have a price of 25k or more typically, with the average car costing 25k.
But people often complain about how “young people don’t drive” and “why aren’t people buying cars and achieving the freedom of the open road?” But if the average car costs 20k more than it did when you bought your car years ago, then why are you still confused about why young people don’t drive? Why are you complaining about how the problem is the motivation of the people?
You can’t solve the problem of earning life through positive thinking and platitudes about the need for resilience. It’s not a problem of young people not wanting to earn their lives. It’s a question of the value that life has.
Inflation between 1950 and now makes that number different because everything, including salaries, is inflation adjusted. Car aren’t more ‘expesnive’ the valuation of our dollar is down across the board. Running the inflation calculator, that ‘cheap’ $5K car was actually $69,284.65 in today’s dollars. So the car 1/3 the cost of the car back in the day.
Gale Pooley does analysis on both the inflation and wage index for affordability:. Here’s a representative car example from the ‘50s till today: https://galepooley.substack.com/p/trade-a-56-chevy-for-a-25-tesla
Well this is part of what I mean about the value of things. I don't really care whether inflation adjustments make it the same. The fact that the value of the dollar is down across the board is the issue.
But people act like it's exactly the same because of "inflation adjustment".
Here's a simple metric by which I tend to measure the value of a thing. Does a starving person care about it? Does a starving person care whether you can inflation adjust something to make it the same value as it was back then? Does a starving person care what an analysis says?
The value of a thing isn't in the price necessarily. It's in the effort that it requires. I'm not making an anti-capitalist argument either. Just pointing out the obvious errors.
Does a person who has to work 3 jobs to make ends meet care what the inflation adjustment measure says about the value of their work? Do they care whether inflation has caused the value of things to be the same?
What they care about is how much they're struggling to make ends meet. They want a car to cost less.
The car does cost less. That's my point.
This has driven me nuts for years. Thank you for breaking this down.
It just amazes me just how fast it falls apart when you start thinking about it.
I wonder what we would find if we ran an analysis of all mammals where we examined how likely it is that each species dies of old age (as opposed to starving to death or being killed by a predator). My guess is that humans would fare pretty well in that analysis.
Now I'm going to have to look!
In a way, I'd be okay with living off the land. Wild animals are more honest than most people. They'll warn you before they attacks. A rattler tries to warn you away before it strikes, a coyote growls a warning and tries to leave you alone. Even a bear or mountain lion try to warn you away before being forced to attack or defend.
Man is the only being on this world that routinely lies to your face.
Even when they don't lie to you, people don't listen to other people.
I can tell you how hard it is to prepare the land for planting, cultivation, and reaping. You don't always get back what you put into it.
When man is involved, you get less than you put into it for sure.
I get where you're coming from there, but the warning isn't always true. For example, a wolf doesn't growl, and a rattlesnake doesn't rattle when it's hunting for food. They just strike and eat. Now, the warning comes when the threat is at parity or otherwise. The rattlesnake warns the human and the dog because both can kill the rattlesnake much more easily than the snake can kill them.
Otherwise, I think you have good points, but it does open a new can of worms. Are humans a natural part of evolution?
😵😵😵 🤔🤔🤔 ??? ...
Got a little confused by all the keys on your board ???...🤣🤣🤣
I'm honestly fluxomed as well. Not worried about being 'reported' at all here, though.
You must not have read the post I wrote. Could you kindly copy the offending section that you think promotes suicide? Also, your attempt at shaming, suggesting I shouldn't be alive, that's what we call hypocritical. But I'm game for understanding this outburst.
Wow… What ever this tantrum is… it seems out of place.
There's an irony there huh?