posted on October 24, 2020 01:23 AM by
u/completely-ineffable
65
u/flannyo54 pointsat 1603509965.000000
yud decision making: we gotta find the smartest, richest people and
ask them what they think we should do. they think we should do the thing
that keeps them rich. that’s because they’re very smart, not because
they are very rich
Well there is extensive literature proving it works, over centuries now, funded by the very rich for purposes of uhhhhh public education and fostering more sophisticated decisionmaking.
“Every government regulation, logically, has the opposite of its
intended effect” is the hallmark of a fundamentally unserious person,
motivated by reflexive conservative appeals futility and perversity
rather than reason.
Its like pulling teeth to get these people to admit that banning
child labor reduced child labor, safety regulations make products more
safe, or (the toughest of all) that giving people money makes them less
poor.
That's actually a great point. Successful regulation is a form of collective bargaining; individuals can't stand up to large players without acting together.
I don't know where you're getting this view that you're ascribing to me; I also don't care because you're an internet rando with a weird attitude problem.
I always wonder, where do you people fit assassination into this?
Assassination is obviously a service with supply, demand and some sort of clearing market. It's also criminalized literally everywhere, which is regarded by many people as a good thing and also would seem to have some effect on the prevalence of the practice.
But _obviously_ regulation can't work, so I must be missing something. Do laws punishing murder simply have no effect on prevalence of assassination? Do these laws actually increase assassinations and we'd all be safer if they were legal? Or do they have some other, even worse and entirely unforseseen effects?
According to David Friedman, even though every market transaction has externalities (in this case the externality being the assassinated person), in the long run you would expect a free market to distribute these negative effects broadly and evenly over a given population, so don't worry about it.
[This is seriously all he has.](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_15/PThy_Chap_15.html). His "plan" for all externalities (assassination, forced prostitution, nuclear war, child abuse, pollution) is to just let them happen, and you're a statist authoritarian busy-body if you think otherwise.
What's funny about it, is that it's true that people (freely engaging in transactions and alliances with one another) do actually solve those problems, by prohibiting assassinations and otherwise building the world we live in today.
They keep saying "free market", but their "free market" is something that would require a malevolent god to maintain (or barring that, a supremely skilled brainwasher who works for free and not in their own interest), *since people who are free to make alliances with one another just come together and agree to pay for shutting down assassinations*.
Their so called "free market" is a totalitarian state of affairs requiring some external party to prevent people from allying together. Of course, being rather delusional, they like to imagine it just happening all on it's own, despite empirical knowledge that people really really don't like this world order and end it as soon as they're able (see history of how laws come around).
I'm sure that they'd agree that if someone were to be willing to pay enough to assassinate them then the free market has decided they needed to die, so assassination is actually a public good. /s
One vital difference between state forced birth and the war on drugs on one side and most regulations on the other side is that the first two have a completely different purpose.
Legislation (or the promise of legislation) regulating pregnant people's bodies is intended as a rallying cry to get conservative Christians to vote for Republicans. This was pioneered by figures like Phyllis Schlafly. If Republicans were to _prevent_ abortions, rather than harass and endanger people when they need an abortion, they risk losing a powerful voting block. They need the Christians to be angry and outraged about abortions, because that's what motivates them to vote and vote Republican.
The war on drugs similarly needs people to use drugs to justify its existence.
> The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
-- John Ehrlichman, advisor to Richard Nixon on Domestic Affairs
By we I meant societally, that’s literally how economists define poverty. Income below the poverty line. Your last sentence is a tautology, but people receiving government benefits certainly could increase their wealth via savings if they have money over at the end of the month. People receiving the child tax credit and mortgage income tax deduction often build wealth off of those government benefits.
Seems like the what ifs apply equally to everyone regardless of where you get your income, no? Anyway, a wonderful benefit of the welfare state is that by guaranteeing an income to retired people you don’t have to depend on private wealth building to prevent elder poverty. I still have no clue what point you’re trying to make, would you mind stating it plainly?
You’re the one talking about wealth. I’m talking about income and consumption, the lack of which is the definition of poverty. If people lack income and the ability to consume, they’re poor; by giving them those things we can make them not poor. I agree that, like income inequality (which we could also call consumption inequality), wealth inequality is bad. Can you explain why you’re so focused on wealth specifically? Why does reducing poverty via increased income not matter?
This same "dependence" is true of literally everyone who doesn't own their own means of production (e.g., most people who work for a wage). And even then, this capital ownership would be predicated (dependent, if you will) on the legal recognition and protection by the state/general society.
Your standard of "you're only rich if you would still be so in an economic vacuum" is insane.
What ~~crank~~ econ website are you getting these ~~made-up~~ unusual definitions from? This is a novel argument and quite interesting to me, I would like to ~~amuse myself~~ learn more.
This just isn't how people usually use the word poor. If someone's father is a billionaire and they have all the luxuries they want we usually call them rich, regardless of how they aquired those luxuries.
Same with poverty. They might be dependent if they are supported by wellfare and are at greater risk of falling back into poverty, but while their needs are met they wouldn't be called poor.
Nice mental gymnastics.
Can you enlighten us on your definitions of "dependent" and "economic output". For bonus points, you may also provide your definitions of "freedom", "liberty" and "coercion".
Paying people's living expenses would help them save more than they consume. **<<<<<<< My Point**
Or are you going to complain that they'll just spend it all on drink, drugs and gambling?
> Or are you going to complain that they'll just spend it all on drink, drugs and gambling?
I'm complaining about this, they clearly should be spending it on sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll instead.
Legislating that every house has heat, electricity and flush toilets
also means marginally fewer people get houses… but also keeps people
from getting ripped off by slumlords.
Yeah that was some dumb ass analogy he made... we legislate the fuck out of how houses are built, and that fixed real issues with horrible housing, while the homelessness mostly involves poor mental health care.
Although with a rationalist when they see a homeless person they may very well think "ohh that guy doesn't have a house because houses are required to have toilets and the ceilings are required to be at least 7 feet tall". Or to see various things that everyone gets in most countries that are half as wealthy as the US, as the equivalent of a swimming pool. That's because they're this stupid, and in many cases, this insulated from having to have an actual job.
> while the homelessness mostly involves poor mental health care.
The majority of homeless people are homeless due to economic factors like the loss of a job or income, lack of affordable housing, etc. The fastest growing group of people becoming homeless are entire families, again, due to economic reasons.
Yeah covid + lack of adequate relief really fucked shit up to where its sliding towards third world style condition.
I feel the “lack of affordable housing” buys into the narrative though, like some new affordable housing has to be built, shifting focus from unaffordability of available houses to lack of some new housing that would for some reason not be so expensive. Then you get to techbroism with 3d printed houses.
There is a plenty of housing staying empty (More than the number of homeless), and the reason it is not affordable is that the money maximizers would rather rent out half of housing at >2x the price.
With covid it is particularly so; covid is not a hurricane destroying houses, and the increase of homelessness is entirely due to assholery.
I agree. "Lack of affordable housing" is a metric that has data collected for it, though, and can be referenced whenever HN and their ilk decide that institutionalizing homeless people sounds like a good idea, which is often.
Yeah I just mean it's the frigging rationalists we're talking about meaning this heads straight to libertarian crap like "lets get rid of building codes then there will be cheaper housing" or (a best case scenario) "effective altruism" in the form of a yet another 3d printing houses startup.
Mostly the issue is that existing housing isn't affordable, which has to do with issues like low pay, or companies bunching up on a narrow strip of land and demanding all workers relocate, or the like. Those Silicon Valley asbestos ridden piece of shit Eichler's in bad repair selling for 1.5 million a pop (while the same property in a normal location would be <100k) are more of a symptom than the cause here, since you can always overfill a narrow strip of land.
Zoning and various other regulations in the US definitely do prevent construction of housing.
How much empty housing is there in San Francisco? Little if any. The problem is that many people want to live there, but no one is allowed to build new housing.
> How much empty housing is there in San Francisco? Little if any.
In the bay area, [way more than there's homeless](https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/3/20993251/san-francisco-bay-area-vacant-homes-per-homeless-count).
The root of the problem is that tech companies for reasons unknown really love to force their workers to work locally there, and the only limit on theirs forcing their workers to move to their equivalent of a "company town" is housing prices; if they built rows and rows of 30 story tall apartment buildings, even though initially it can lower the prices (and would temporarily provide a bit of relief), the prices can just go up and up until no more tech workers can move there, at which point those apartment buildings won't be affordable either. And a bunch will stay empty, too, because that's the point of maximum revenue.
edit: And for some grimdark futurism: I think you can absolutely build a metro area akin to Moscow but with 40 million people in it (given that the US has >2x Russia's population) and no affordable housing. It'd be totally miserable, but I'm pretty sure tech companies could get that done, having more revenue than Russia's oil. I don't think that's likely to actually happen, but it's doable. edit: I feel a good plot coming up. Combine it with less regulation and an earthquake. Up to earthquake, the story reads like libertarian fiction drivel. After, post apocalyptic dark shit.
edit: I wonder if wealth inequality / executive compensation gap is a massive contributor to tech companies forcing tech workers into the bay area. With executive compensation being so much higher than that of actual workers, and with many owning houses, they have all the incentive to concentrate workers in the bay area, and essentially no pressure to prefer cheaper locations for themselves (there isn't much benefit to owning a 100 acre property).
If you want to use the fact that the number of vacant homes exceeds the number of homeless people, I don't think the correct conclusion is to blame the tech companies. Something like housing should simply be a human right. It should be illegal for landlords to rent out properties at exorbitant amounts when some are homeless.
I think those two are independent.
The underlying reason prices are outrageous is tech companies being assholes to their workers; if you cap the prices and force the housing to be utilized, tech companies will just make more job openings there and fewer elsewhere. You would have to somehow prevent that, and it is not an easy problem.
The point with the empty houses is that we physically do always maintain an excess of housing that is sufficient to house all the homeless several times over. Just for the sake of being jerks to one another.
Actually giving some of that housing to the homeless, however, is a difficult problem when theres very deeply pocketed players who can use up any conceivable increase in utilization or capacity, by simply choosing to restrict a few more jobs to SV.
Edit: also I am sure that placing jobs in SV is at least in part due to more senior management owning real estate there. It may not be the strongest conflict of interest, but it is a very omnipresent one.
But silicon valley is not the only place that has enough housing for everyone and refuses to house the homeless anyway. Homelessness is a problem everywhere. You can't blame the techies for LA's problems, or Boston's. The problem is using the free market to allocate housing in the first place.
SV is a particularly extreme example of "lack of affordable housing" narrative. It really is true in SV that the housing is >10x more expensive than it would be otherwise.
> The problem is using the free market to allocate housing in the first place.
True that. Thing is, even if all houses are sold at cost (of labor and materials for building a house), without social services for the homeless and providing housing for free, there will be homeless. To house the homeless the society has to charitably give away some housing (not as much housing as the society is willing to let sit idle).
The SV is a bit of a pathological case where you can have a house that is probably not worth even $50k in labor and materials, on a 1.5 million dollar plot of land. Scratch that, a house worth nothing in the sense that a nearby condemned house sells at the same price. There you really have no affordable housing, but that has essentially nothing to do with the quality standards on a house.
So are Silicon Valley tech companies just evil and want to make their employees miserable? It seems more likely that they just want to be where all the other tech companies are, so they can benefit from connections, VCs, the availability of qualified workers, etc. There are real advantages to starting a company in SV instead of Wyoming.
And besides, plenty of cities outside SV have housing problems. The real issue is that the supply of housing is restricted. Look at any American city on Google Maps – it's 90% suburbs. Real estate developers would be happy to build more housing, but they're stopped by zoning and NYMBYs.
> So are Silicon Valley tech companies just evil and want to make their employees miserable? It seems more likely that they just want to be where all the other tech companies are, so they can benefit from connections, VCs, the availability of qualified workers, etc. There are real advantages to starting a company in SV instead of Wyoming.
They're running that process on a narrow strip of land. That's going to be overfilled and make everyone miserable, absolutely regardless of the zoning laws (and that process would result in extreme crowding even on a plain even with apartment highrises, as it did in numerous foreign cities). Also, companies aren't actually persons; people inside companies determine on policies, largely due to their own interest, and upper management (which receives a large multiple of worker's pay) would of course rather stay in the valley.
>Real estate developers would be happy to build more housing, but they're stopped by zoning and NYMBYs.
They **have** in fact built extra housing - all that housing which is staying empty (and which is more numerous than the homeless) didn't just grow like mushrooms.
Because of regulations, no homes are built in the United States. This
is a well known fact. Companies would rather just throw their hands in
the air in disgust and do nothing, if they have to build houses for
slightly less money than they would otherwise.
People are profit maximizes who don’t leave a dollar sitting on the
ground, except for this one instance where it’s useful to advance my
argument.
His rationale ("The solution is for the government to fund its own damn social services and stop hanging more and more things on the employer-employee relationship") is a textbook example of making the Perfect the enemy of the Good.
Scott, the reason we have this janky-ass system in the US where the government unloads its social welfare role onto corporations via mandates and regulations, is because *you and your libertarian ilk have propagandized the public to despise even the most mild social-democratic forms of socialism*, so this dumb system is the best we can do.
Best to vote no. Here’s a more concrete comparison on exactly what
employees get relative to Prop 22 (or even less, ICs.)
Here’s a list of benefits Prop 22 offers that are ridiculously bad
compared to basic worker protections. Prop 22 introduces these new
inferior protections which does not exist for drivers now.
gives you an idea of just how exploitative they are.
Note the most important bit. The state already considers drivers
employees and expects everything below paid for by gigs like Uber. They
are suing to enforce this.
First understand what “engaged time” specified by Prop 22 is. They
will only count engaged time when drivers have a package or passenger
traveling to the destination. That’s substantial as they don’t count
standby times, meaning you’re not being paid for the full hour. As
competitors they naturally won’t be combining their times either, which
is very important since they list certain amount of “engaged hours” as
thresholds to meet benefits listed below.
First off the implications of engaged time plays out with minimum
wage. Normal minimum wage only cares about hours worked. Hour is an
hour, period. You have the app on that hour you get paid at
least minimum wage for that hour. Doesn’t matter that there were no
customers that hour, you were on standby that hour and are to be paid
at least minimum wage. It is not the driver’s job to find or
attract customers, it’s the employer’s. It is the same for say, cashiers
in low traffic. They still get paid that hour even if they don’t do
anything.
PTO. Optional but to avoid discrimination, plan must be the same
as what they offer other employees. In gigs case it would mean their
well compensated employee core. Versus nothing.
Overtime and Doubletime. Any day where hours a day is over 8 is
overtime (1.5x,) and any hours over 12 is double. Hours period. Not
“engaged hours.” Versus nothing.
Healthcare. We don’t want drivers avoiding doctors just because
they may get bankrupt off one hospital visit. Especially during a
pandemic and a confined space (vehicle.) Gigs here fail spectacularly
because they offer paltry 40%-80% compensation based off engaged
hours. Meaning if you have on average a third of your hours on
standby, to meet the 30 hour threshold for ACA requirements you’d need
nearly 50 hours working for one single app. Furthermore this is
for the basic protections. As an employee to avoid discrimination
lawsuits employers must offer you the same plan as they do other
employees, aka their managers and programmers.
Expenses. Employers must cover gas, car maintenance, and lease.
Lease being curious because employers typically don’t lease work
critical equipment to employees in order for their workers to perform
work. Sounds like something they provide. They can either fully provide
for the worker and provide a work vehicle, or compensate by mile. The
federal rate is 57 cents per mile, 58 for California. Prop 22 rate is 33
cents per engaged mile. Again, like “engaged time,” if they
have to mention engaged mile it’s inevitably less than the miles the
driver drove during that shift. Also note the employer would be
compensating per pay period or monthly. An independent contractor
accumulates these expenses until tax time.
Worker’s comp is quite important. It’s income while injured on
the job and unable to work. California is requiring worker’s comp paid
to anyone infected with COVID. Furthermore worker’s comp for employees
is no fault. No matter whether you were the cause of the injury or not
you’ll get it. Prop 22 is not no fault. It’s easier and possible for
them to deny worker’s comp if they find you were at fault (no
specification on percentage at fault either.) And if you’ve heard of how
insurance companies work……
8 weeks of paid family leave versus nothing. For a wedding,
funeral, paternity, maternity, etc.
Paid sick leave. 3 days and 10 in some cities of sick leave for
hospital visits, food poisoning, and other illnesses. If there’s a sick
leave policy for say, their programmers, same as above. Can’t
discriminate. Again versus nothing.
Unemployment insurance. Weeks of reduced income regardless of
fault, to keep you somewhat afloat as you pick yourself back up and find
something else. Versus…..nothing
Disability insurance. Driving can get pretty dangerous. DI
provides income regardless of whether you were injured/crippled/maimed
on the job or not. Federal minimum for employees is lifetime access to
wage replacement. Meanwhile Prop 22 caps this to 104 weeks, for a now
disabled driver.
Dental and vision. This one isn’t mandatory but like healthcare,
to avoid discrimination if they offer it to one employee (programmers
and managers) they have to offer it to all. This is important due to the
last bit below.
And as a final point, California appeals court has ruled on October
22, 2020 that gigs have been misclassifying employees into ICs. Gigs are
now liable to both the government and especially employees (drivers) for
back pay from Jan 1, 2020 to now. Back pay being everything mentioned
above they were withholding from drivers. It’s all considered wage
theft. Leave the state or not, once Prop 22 fails it’s money gigs like
Uber owes drivers they intentionally misclassified as ICs, so
don’t forget to file a wage claim at the CA Labor Department.
Here’s the website with instructions to file a wage claim.
Unrelated to this prop 22 thing, but did you know? In Ray Kurzweil’s
book the singularity is near, Yuds name is misspelled. “ELIEZER S.
YUDNOWSKY, STARING INTO THE SINGULARITY, 1996” (This typo has spread to
a hundred places online).
"Staring into the Singularity" is indeed hilarious.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20010606183250/http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20010606183250/http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html)
yud decision making: we gotta find the smartest, richest people and ask them what they think we should do. they think we should do the thing that keeps them rich. that’s because they’re very smart, not because they are very rich
Good news: Eliezer has finally decided to start listening to experts from a university
Bad news: It’s Prager U
“Every government regulation, logically, has the opposite of its intended effect” is the hallmark of a fundamentally unserious person, motivated by reflexive conservative appeals futility and perversity rather than reason.
Its like pulling teeth to get these people to admit that banning child labor reduced child labor, safety regulations make products more safe, or (the toughest of all) that giving people money makes them less poor.
Legislating that every house has heat, electricity and flush toilets also means marginally fewer people get houses… but also keeps people from getting ripped off by slumlords.
Because of regulations, no homes are built in the United States. This is a well known fact. Companies would rather just throw their hands in the air in disgust and do nothing, if they have to build houses for slightly less money than they would otherwise.
People are profit maximizes who don’t leave a dollar sitting on the ground, except for this one instance where it’s useful to advance my argument.
Scott also voted yes on 22, lol https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/j9kxl0/my_california_ballot_2020/
Best to vote no. Here’s a more concrete comparison on exactly what employees get relative to Prop 22 (or even less, ICs.)
Here’s a list of benefits Prop 22 offers that are ridiculously bad compared to basic worker protections. Prop 22 introduces these new inferior protections which does not exist for drivers now. gives you an idea of just how exploitative they are.
Note the most important bit. The state already considers drivers employees and expects everything below paid for by gigs like Uber. They are suing to enforce this.
First understand what “engaged time” specified by Prop 22 is. They will only count engaged time when drivers have a package or passenger traveling to the destination. That’s substantial as they don’t count standby times, meaning you’re not being paid for the full hour. As competitors they naturally won’t be combining their times either, which is very important since they list certain amount of “engaged hours” as thresholds to meet benefits listed below.
First off the implications of engaged time plays out with minimum wage. Normal minimum wage only cares about hours worked. Hour is an hour, period. You have the app on that hour you get paid at least minimum wage for that hour. Doesn’t matter that there were no customers that hour, you were on standby that hour and are to be paid at least minimum wage. It is not the driver’s job to find or attract customers, it’s the employer’s. It is the same for say, cashiers in low traffic. They still get paid that hour even if they don’t do anything.
PTO. Optional but to avoid discrimination, plan must be the same as what they offer other employees. In gigs case it would mean their well compensated employee core. Versus nothing.
Overtime and Doubletime. Any day where hours a day is over 8 is overtime (1.5x,) and any hours over 12 is double. Hours period. Not “engaged hours.” Versus nothing.
Healthcare. We don’t want drivers avoiding doctors just because they may get bankrupt off one hospital visit. Especially during a pandemic and a confined space (vehicle.) Gigs here fail spectacularly because they offer paltry 40%-80% compensation based off engaged hours. Meaning if you have on average a third of your hours on standby, to meet the 30 hour threshold for ACA requirements you’d need nearly 50 hours working for one single app. Furthermore this is for the basic protections. As an employee to avoid discrimination lawsuits employers must offer you the same plan as they do other employees, aka their managers and programmers.
Expenses. Employers must cover gas, car maintenance, and lease. Lease being curious because employers typically don’t lease work critical equipment to employees in order for their workers to perform work. Sounds like something they provide. They can either fully provide for the worker and provide a work vehicle, or compensate by mile. The federal rate is 57 cents per mile, 58 for California. Prop 22 rate is 33 cents per engaged mile. Again, like “engaged time,” if they have to mention engaged mile it’s inevitably less than the miles the driver drove during that shift. Also note the employer would be compensating per pay period or monthly. An independent contractor accumulates these expenses until tax time.
Worker’s comp is quite important. It’s income while injured on the job and unable to work. California is requiring worker’s comp paid to anyone infected with COVID. Furthermore worker’s comp for employees is no fault. No matter whether you were the cause of the injury or not you’ll get it. Prop 22 is not no fault. It’s easier and possible for them to deny worker’s comp if they find you were at fault (no specification on percentage at fault either.) And if you’ve heard of how insurance companies work……
8 weeks of paid family leave versus nothing. For a wedding, funeral, paternity, maternity, etc.
Paid sick leave. 3 days and 10 in some cities of sick leave for hospital visits, food poisoning, and other illnesses. If there’s a sick leave policy for say, their programmers, same as above. Can’t discriminate. Again versus nothing.
Unemployment insurance. Weeks of reduced income regardless of fault, to keep you somewhat afloat as you pick yourself back up and find something else. Versus…..nothing
Disability insurance. Driving can get pretty dangerous. DI provides income regardless of whether you were injured/crippled/maimed on the job or not. Federal minimum for employees is lifetime access to wage replacement. Meanwhile Prop 22 caps this to 104 weeks, for a now disabled driver.
Dental and vision. This one isn’t mandatory but like healthcare, to avoid discrimination if they offer it to one employee (programmers and managers) they have to offer it to all. This is important due to the last bit below.
And as a final point, California appeals court has ruled on October 22, 2020 that gigs have been misclassifying employees into ICs. Gigs are now liable to both the government and especially employees (drivers) for back pay from Jan 1, 2020 to now. Back pay being everything mentioned above they were withholding from drivers. It’s all considered wage theft. Leave the state or not, once Prop 22 fails it’s money gigs like Uber owes drivers they intentionally misclassified as ICs, so don’t forget to file a wage claim at the CA Labor Department.
Here’s the website with instructions to file a wage claim.
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/howtofilewageclaim.htm
Unrelated to this prop 22 thing, but did you know? In Ray Kurzweil’s book the singularity is near, Yuds name is misspelled. “ELIEZER S. YUDNOWSKY, STARING INTO THE SINGULARITY, 1996” (This typo has spread to a hundred places online).