Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week
- Thread starter Ender Rises
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Dak
mentat
Einherjar86
Active Member
The practice of quantifying value in this way (e.g. Molyneux's graph showing that borrowing has outpaced growth) is so illusory, in my opinion. I just don't see how we can even approach a verifiable number. I'm sure he gets his information from reputable sources, but those sources themselves have incentives to present the information in certain ways.
When we talk about borrowing today, we're talking about vast quantities of money that are not physically exchanged. We're talking about value as though it floats up in the firmament and is somehow moved around through telephone wires or bounced here and there via satellite. When we've reached the point where value itself (supposedly) generates more value, where people bet on other people's bets, then we've hypostatized value in what I can only describe as a Platonic ideal. I don't think anyone truly understands how to quantify or navigate such an abstract global market, even those who claim to be able to; I think some people, like Warren Buffet, just happen to have gotten very lucky and now have some instinctual understanding of how to "play the game."
None of this justifies a reactionary response. The idea that "the end of the West as we know it" looms before us is merely part of a historical narrative; in order for their to be an end, there must have been a beginning. There is no way to escape the abstraction of value, technological development, and the proliferation of complex global markets outside of utter and complete destruction, both physical and ideological. Rather than react in a doomsday fashion to our current situation, we need to try and understand the emergent consequences of such a situation and how they are actively changing us (something much contemporary thought and theory still fails to do). Calls to return to our "former greatness" are dangerous, not beneficial.
When we talk about borrowing today, we're talking about vast quantities of money that are not physically exchanged. We're talking about value as though it floats up in the firmament and is somehow moved around through telephone wires or bounced here and there via satellite. When we've reached the point where value itself (supposedly) generates more value, where people bet on other people's bets, then we've hypostatized value in what I can only describe as a Platonic ideal. I don't think anyone truly understands how to quantify or navigate such an abstract global market, even those who claim to be able to; I think some people, like Warren Buffet, just happen to have gotten very lucky and now have some instinctual understanding of how to "play the game."
None of this justifies a reactionary response. The idea that "the end of the West as we know it" looms before us is merely part of a historical narrative; in order for their to be an end, there must have been a beginning. There is no way to escape the abstraction of value, technological development, and the proliferation of complex global markets outside of utter and complete destruction, both physical and ideological. Rather than react in a doomsday fashion to our current situation, we need to try and understand the emergent consequences of such a situation and how they are actively changing us (something much contemporary thought and theory still fails to do). Calls to return to our "former greatness" are dangerous, not beneficial.
Dak
mentat
I have a couple of internet acquaintances that understand credit default swaps and derivatives and other such similar things quite well, and have worked in the financial industry. Bets on the outcomes of bets is a fairly accurate way of describing some of these "investments".
Traditionally, investment is seen as taking savings and funneling them towards production, which may or may not have sufficient return/demand. This is not the reality of the type of "investing" that has led to the recent economic meltdown. They are, more or less, a "bubble" caused by too much money with nowhere to go. The Fed made money readily available via low interest rates. So then you can borrow and invest/loan and have a reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. Well when everyone does this there is a lack of places for the money to go. So with all the existing and reasonably forseeable future games already booked, the banks began to make "side games", or games on games. Now we have a place for the money to go. The problem really enters when the money for some of these bets on bets are coming from other original bets. Basically once these start "unwinding", it turns out that the money to pay for one bet was coming from another bet that came from another bet, and all lost, and the orignail money was actually a loan to begin with, which was also used as collateral on other bets and so on. This was purely fictitious "value". Now what the Fed has done via the bailouts/QE etc is create reserve balance entries that backstops all that financial chicanery. The banks had to massively leverage to play the games (creating inflation in the process), and now all the Fed is doing is playing catchup in legitimizing the games.
Traditionally, investment is seen as taking savings and funneling them towards production, which may or may not have sufficient return/demand. This is not the reality of the type of "investing" that has led to the recent economic meltdown. They are, more or less, a "bubble" caused by too much money with nowhere to go. The Fed made money readily available via low interest rates. So then you can borrow and invest/loan and have a reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. Well when everyone does this there is a lack of places for the money to go. So with all the existing and reasonably forseeable future games already booked, the banks began to make "side games", or games on games. Now we have a place for the money to go. The problem really enters when the money for some of these bets on bets are coming from other original bets. Basically once these start "unwinding", it turns out that the money to pay for one bet was coming from another bet that came from another bet, and all lost, and the orignail money was actually a loan to begin with, which was also used as collateral on other bets and so on. This was purely fictitious "value". Now what the Fed has done via the bailouts/QE etc is create reserve balance entries that backstops all that financial chicanery. The banks had to massively leverage to play the games (creating inflation in the process), and now all the Fed is doing is playing catchup in legitimizing the games.
Prismatic Sphere
We Carouse
It's sisyphean. The stupids breed like rabbits, whereas the rationalists think twice.
Plus there's too many people anyway, most of whom, suck. Free up some parking spaces and abort some fetuses or don't breed at all, I say.
The Baby Trap by Ellen Peck sums it up better than I can.
Dak
mentat
http://voices.yahoo.com/questioning-motherhood-baby-trap-provides-2886446.html
If this writeup on that book is accurate, sounds like a steaming load of horseshit. Especially noted is that ridiculous figure of it taking $300,000 a year to raise a child. I see all sorts of these absurd lifetime cost figures thrown around in these sorts of discussion, inevitably by people who have never had kids. I have two and rounding up I think they are only costing me something like 2k per year (and I don't claim them on my taxes, so I don't get reimbursed for that). Now, that's only a dollar figure, and certainly doesn't take into account the various things my wife and I might like to do that we can't or can't do as much, like going out to eat/a movie as much etc.
The trade off is well worth it imo.
There are not "too many people", but from the point of view of most people, all the rest do more or less "suck". This consistency would indicate that the problem is just as much with ourselves and the culture as it is with "everyone else".
I don't advocate just popping out babies for the sake of procreation itself, but lending our lives ultimately to some "Idiocracy" outcome is certainly not admirable.
If this writeup on that book is accurate, sounds like a steaming load of horseshit. Especially noted is that ridiculous figure of it taking $300,000 a year to raise a child. I see all sorts of these absurd lifetime cost figures thrown around in these sorts of discussion, inevitably by people who have never had kids. I have two and rounding up I think they are only costing me something like 2k per year (and I don't claim them on my taxes, so I don't get reimbursed for that). Now, that's only a dollar figure, and certainly doesn't take into account the various things my wife and I might like to do that we can't or can't do as much, like going out to eat/a movie as much etc.
The trade off is well worth it imo.
There are not "too many people", but from the point of view of most people, all the rest do more or less "suck". This consistency would indicate that the problem is just as much with ourselves and the culture as it is with "everyone else".
I don't advocate just popping out babies for the sake of procreation itself, but lending our lives ultimately to some "Idiocracy" outcome is certainly not admirable.
Prismatic Sphere
We Carouse
Her basic message was THINK before you procreate. And it sounds like you did. Good for you, I hope. And she also points out how having babies kill the romance in many relationships and brings only more added tension. It would be interesting to examine if having kids has improved the romance in your marriage or not, but that may be getting too personal for you, but I digress.
In any case, see what a difference it has made for so many in the amazon reviews. Note how many claim it should be required reading for teens.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Baby-Trap...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
Also you, I, and the author are all in agreement on the problem of culture and its influence in this area. Culture is the problem which is why I simply don't understand the idea of bringing a newborn innocent into it.
And in this sort of race, outbreeding idiots, you can't win. They reproduce FAR more than any rationalist ever could, plus most people are only semi-rational at best. I'm all for homeschooling though, if you have done so and not put your kids through the indoctrination centers of public schools.
And the average cost of each kid from 0-18 is just shy of $250,000 last I looked.
Dak
mentat
I won't disagree that there are plenty of areas where having a baby is seen as an end to itself, and that viewpoint is certainly a problem. However, exaggerating the problems of parenthood is not helpful.
Your average person can only affect so many people in a lifetime, and by affect I mean to literally change the way they process information/act. Having children not only allows you to understand things from new perspectives, it also gives you (for some years anyway), a guaranteed audience. There's a reason the state wants control of the raising of the children.
They aren't school age yet but the plan is to homeschool. The idea re:breeding isn't to try and outbreed the LCD. It's to outbreed the rationalists who use their powers for "evil".
If you provided a child everything the "experts" say they require (which is nice, but completely unnecessary), plus factor in the lost returns on denied savings/investments from those funds, I could see a total cost in that range. Certainly not annually. Possibly a misprint in the article.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Rather than homeschooling, why not be active in your children's lives and simply question them about what they learn; challenge them, get them to think critically about it? I'm not saying homeschooling is bad, but I actually think it can't provide the same level of education as public/private schools combined with parent-child interaction.
Dak
mentat
Any kind of school can only be as good as the teachers and materials. That includes home schooling. With internet access and things like Khan Academy, the materials are there and of decent quality without having to cost a fortune.
There might be some private schools that provide a better or equivalent education, but I get regular updates of what my sister in law is doing in a public high school, and my brother went to a public high school, and it's a joke. In fact, it's worse than a joke, because it's downright harmful. Teaching kids to be little consumerist worker drones, if anything at all.
Prismatic Sphere
We Carouse
I think if I had a kid and wanted to be consistent with the idea of caring for them. I would spare them from the exposure to bullies, adult+child, and from the horrific idea that violence is okay to get what you want, which is taught routinely in schools shrouded in one form or another(governments, war, etc.). Not to mention the insidiousness of conformity, fear of authority, what-have-you.
Dak
mentat
Yeah, even if the education itself were top notch, those are all other legitimate concerns. Institutionalization, for kind of an overarching label.
Prismatic Sphere
We Carouse
Yeah. And there's just so much propaganda and it's thick, or more aptly, grotesquely layered.
Dak
mentat
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
They have also been saying for years that drinking Diet Soda "makes you fat" because when you drink the fake sugar you tend to try to indulge on REAL sugar later....which in turn could relate to troubles with losing weight...hence either contributing or furthering depression symptoms
Also, If you drink 4 or more cans of diet soda a day, you're probably already depressed heh
Also, If you drink 4 or more cans of diet soda a day, you're probably already depressed heh
Matt
Active Member
Well, as someone who experienced those things I would say if the proper parenting/support system is in place it is an excellent learning experience. Teaches you how to deal with stuff. A lot of the home schooled kids I have seen are fragile, and crumble when faced with any adversity.
It also depends on the area/school, though.
Dak
mentat
Adversity is a pretty ambiguous term. I grew sick of it through overuse during this last NFL season.
Krigloch the Furious
Pants full of poo
Dak
mentat
Einherjar86
Active Member
I'm transferring this from the pics thread:
Who's "they"? The NRA has made it fairly clear that they believe in absolute good and absolute evil.
This is pretty well-established:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html
Politics is already an abstraction. It doesn't grow out of the barrel of a gun; politics (pure and simple) is groups of people, large or small, congregating and deciding on parameters and regulations that best constitute a safe and effective society. As soon as you have like-minded people discussing and implementing how their commune will work, you have politics. These discussions and decisions are entirely arbitrary, as are the distinctions of "rights" that are decided upon.
Whether it's the NRA or GOA, it's politics.
Again, who's "they"? The government? The citizenry? The lobbying groups? How can you make a statement like that? Groups like the NRA and GOA are politically motivated, not ethically motivated; and part of their platform is less restrictions for gun owners, universal ownership if individuals so choose. If the NRA is so politically coordinated, as you seem to think, how is it that they continue to encourage individual gun ownership? Draw the lines from there: how is it that the government is getting closer to taking away our guns? That's a paranoiac belief. The government is far from denying private ownership of guns.
The hypocrisy that you're identifying obscures the real damaging hypocrisy, and it's an incredible political move. People actually think the government is coming to take away all privately owned firearms; but the government can't just do as it pleases. It does what the money says it can do; and the money dramatically supports private ownership.
Who's "they"? The NRA has made it fairly clear that they believe in absolute good and absolute evil.
This is pretty well-established:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html
Politics is already an abstraction. It doesn't grow out of the barrel of a gun; politics (pure and simple) is groups of people, large or small, congregating and deciding on parameters and regulations that best constitute a safe and effective society. As soon as you have like-minded people discussing and implementing how their commune will work, you have politics. These discussions and decisions are entirely arbitrary, as are the distinctions of "rights" that are decided upon.
Whether it's the NRA or GOA, it's politics.
Again, who's "they"? The government? The citizenry? The lobbying groups? How can you make a statement like that? Groups like the NRA and GOA are politically motivated, not ethically motivated; and part of their platform is less restrictions for gun owners, universal ownership if individuals so choose. If the NRA is so politically coordinated, as you seem to think, how is it that they continue to encourage individual gun ownership? Draw the lines from there: how is it that the government is getting closer to taking away our guns? That's a paranoiac belief. The government is far from denying private ownership of guns.
The hypocrisy that you're identifying obscures the real damaging hypocrisy, and it's an incredible political move. People actually think the government is coming to take away all privately owned firearms; but the government can't just do as it pleases. It does what the money says it can do; and the money dramatically supports private ownership.
