NO you see, we have to hate Chinese companies because they are unfair competitors since they get state funding from the Chinese government, unlike Intel, Micron, TSMC, ASML, Samsung who don't get state funding from the US, EU, Taiwan, ROK ... oh wait.
Scratch that, we have to hate Chinese companies because they do business with the Chinese military, unlike Intel, Nvidia, Samsung who don't do business with the US and ROK military ... oh wait.
I know you are being sarcastic but the reason why we have to hate Chinese is simply because the standard of living of Americans depends on China not succeeding, simple as that.
Does it, though? If anything it seems like the opposite: China's success had directly enabled my standard of living as an American to be as high as it is.
I suppose it'd be true that the standard of living of some Americans depends on China not succeeding — specifically, those Americans who own corporations competing with Chinese firms — but I think they'll survive just fine with only 10 yachts instead of 15.
Well then hey can just say THAT, instead of coming up with hypocritical BS that doesn't pass the smell test. People internationally have enough IQ to see through the double standards BS, especially since youtube is a thing.
And the standard of living of working class Americans has been on a steady decline since Reagan by the hand of US administrations, not by the hand of CHina.
This isn't defending anyone's standard of living, it's defending profits of domestic monopolies like Micron, who indulge in state subsidies from US taxpayers and then fuck then over on prices.
Professional labour value isn't synonymous with late stage capitalism without ethics or morals.
Now if you mean for own much one is willing to sell themselves to late stage capitalism, producing low quality products and entshtification, maybe that is the bang for buck right there.
How do you explain the low quality of software coming out of all of the other countries you have mentioned with protected titles?
The software is happening regardless of title and you haven’t given any examples of the value of where kissing the ring to get the certification has been critical to Canada/Germany/Switzerland producing better software.
>Now if you mean for own much one is willing to sell themselves to late stage capitalism
The government is the one selling you out to late stage capitalism through rampant inflation, business and fiscal regulations and deregulation, offshoring, and various nefarious policies on housing and labor migration.
People just adapt to survive by taking the best paying jobs, since voting clearly doesn't help them.
Don't tell me you're not developing SW for the highest bidder and would take the salary of a fast food worker out of class empathy just to stick it to the evil capitalist.
That is the difference between the US mentality of the winner takes it all that has given us late stage capitalism, entshitification and Trump, and most of the world.
Quality of life and health matters more than anything else.
After a certain point, more money doesn't bring any of that, one is not taking the money into the grave, other than build a mausoleum.
Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under your control, but ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try fix them if you want your situation to improve, since nobody else will.
I think this is true, but oof that's a heavy list. For one thing, food, alcohol, drugs, and stimulants, all have addictive properties that are almost certainly comorbid with depression. Dropping those is rough.
Exercise is perhaps one of the easier ones but, personally, I've found it incredible to reflect on how absolutely bad my childhood "gym" classes were. At no point did we actually... go to a gym. That was never normalized for us. We sort of just learned how to do jumping jacks when we were told to, that sort of thing, and it was all structured for us. There was no habit forming, no "how to do this once there's no one around to structure it for you". In my experience, people who go to the gym get "brought in" by someone in their life who can help them build that structure. For someone missing it, well, you're truly on your own in a rather stressful environment.
Sleep hygiene is good but, again, I suspect tricky here.
Regular social interactions, another heavy lift! What do you do to build up a network of people in your life? Social structures don't just magically appear, and once again, they're usually just handed to you for most of your life and once those fall away you're in quite a spot trying to recover or build anew.
I think the environmental stressors may be the roughest, hard to say. Eliminating financial stress is something that can take decades. Noise pollution? That's really quite out of my control.
All of these are great things to work on but I suppose my read of them is "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it".
You really don't have to go to a gym if you don't like it , or do something "hard" that many people dislike like running.
You can simply walk briskly for 150 minutes a week (which is the recommended dose, and which 80% of Americans and other Westerners don't meet). That is time outside (vitamin D) + moving your entire body - less chronic pain, better joints, better bones etc. I think even this alone without resistance training (which is important) could be enough to help most people with morbidities and depression. Our machine is simply not meant to remain stationary all day and be bombarded with social media and TV, there's no wonder neurosis is off the charts.
I actually do exercise. What I'm suggesting here is that there was never anyone helping me to build that habit forming, it has been entirely "self serve".
>You really don't have to go to a gym if you don't like it ... You can simply walk briskly for 150 minutes a week
I don't like flossing and brushing my teeth either, but yet I still do it regularly. In fact, I never met anyone who brushes they teeth out of enjoyment, but out of habit.
Similarly, the habit of exercise(and other health related activities) needs to be cultivated, you don't have to like it, you just do it because it's what's best for you.
If you take no accountability over your own actions and agency and expect life is about doing only the things you enjoy, then no amount of SSRIs or expensive therapy sessions will fix this.
Maybe I’m an odd duck, but my key trigger to brush my teeth is an aversion to how gross my mouth is if I don’t, not habit. The reward is immediate, and the task fast. Noticing my mouth is gross catches any failure of the habit of teeth brushing in my routines. The habit developed from repetition but is very much not necessary to get me to do it, there’s an actual, natural, reliable trigger for it independent of the habit.
I’ve tried various kinds of exercise over the years, and I think the key is to keep experimenting until you find something sustainable that you actually like.
And make it as frictionless (in terms of getting started) as possible.
I use a walking pad at home. Each night after dinner, I’ll go into that room and watch a movie (or half) on my iPad when I’m walking on it. I did over 3 miles last night (at a moderate pace), and that’s pretty typical. Not because I’m trying to work out, just because I’m into the movie and don’t want to stop. If I had friction of needing fresh gym clothes, having to drive somewhere, or thinking about if the weather is nice enough for an outside walk, I would probably be too lazy to walk most evenings. If I didn’t have the entertainment of the movie, I would probably find the exercise boring and not feel incentivised. I do it because I’m looking forward to the movie and I know I’ll feel great afterwards.
As they say, you need to design your habits for the laziest, most unmotivated version of yourself.
I'm with you up to a point.
If you have time watch Dr Liberman's video about why people resist exercise so much despite wanting to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vzS7-MtObo&
There's nothing new here, we all know this, but he brings the point home very well.
I think brisk walking is within the realm of possibilites for most people. Running and lifting - idk. I personally love it but so many people I know have such a huge psychological resistance to doing it. So I say lets get people to at least walk!
>why people resist exercise so much despite wanting to do it:
I don't need to watch a video, I can just do introspection and I know why I resit exercise. In fact, most people will watch the self help videos and learn the exact same things they already knew, if only they'd be honest with themselves about their issue and not try to avoid accountability. But it's easier to accept things when a professional specialist tells them to you, often for money.
The problem is many people want for someone to tell them that the issues they have are not their fault, so they can feel better about not doing anything to improve their situation.
> I think brisk walking is within the realm of possibilites for most people.
Walks are good except when you live in a concrete hellhole full with busy traffic. That's why I avoid telling people exactly what exercise they should do, as that depends on their health, location, financial situation and lifestyle.
> I don't need to watch a video, I can just do introspection and I know why I resit exercise
Well just if anyone reads this , Liberman's point is that we are biologically programmed to NOT want to exercise unless there's a clear biological incentive - like getting food, or a social incentive - like a tribe participating in a dance or children playing. Since for millions of years we couldn't tell when the next calory of food would come - exercising for the heck of it was insanity and you wouldn't survive. You expended so many calories just gathering and hunting you mostly rested when you could.
So basically our biology does not fit into the world of calory abundance we live in.
Because the concept of exercise is a very modern and unnatural thing for humans. We've been moving all day to make a living for most of our history, only when we switched to sedentary desk jobs did we discover the need to do exercise to maintain our health, but that's like the past 50+ years compared to 50K year history of being hunter gatherers. It doesn't take a prestigious scientist to connect these dots.
When you suffer from a clinical depression, no amount of accountability will fix this.
Also, when you are low on mental resources, don't try to do something that you dislike to begin with just because you believe it's optimal. Instead, do the thing that's potentially non optimal but sustainable.
For example, start to do regular walks instead of going to the gym.
To be honest, I am kind of shocked of the comments here on HN regarding this topic.
Yes, sorry, I think other posts are quite critical of yours so maybe you think this was me trying to be like "your post is bad". I think you're right (though I think that medication and therapy are often critical to help kickstart healthier habits, and it's worth noting how heavy a lift those things are), but it is just notable to me how hard those things are. I am not depressed, thankfully, because if I had to rebuild a social life or go to the gym to fix myself I'd be fucked.
I can't remember where I read it, but it always stuck with me: most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account.
A lot of the time, what is diagnosed as depression is actually a very valid reaction to being in a shitty situation. I myself ended up at a psychiatrist due to being stuck in a shitty job with me being too exhausted and anxious to do anything about it. What eventually 'cured' me wasn't any of the sessions with the shrink but being laid off in a company restructuring with a nice severance package that allowed me to take a couple of months to decompress and look for a job that was a better fit.
>most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account.
Yes, but actually not always. If you have someone overweight because they're only eating pizza, cheetos and cola everyday and you use a magic wand to give them Thor's physique, how long will their new physique last with their diet until they devolve back into a slug monster?
Money tends to run out, very quickly for some people. If you aren't able to keep your life in order when you're poor, you'll probably squander it all quickly too if you win the lottery. Like a friend of mine said "Thank God nobody gave me a million dollars when I was a drug addict, I would have OD's in a day".
People with self destructive tendencies don't need 20 million dollars, they need therapy, a stable job, and a loving caring community, something that fewer people have nowadays.
This is a pretty poor take. Everyone knows that it's easier to maintain fitness/muscle than build it. The same is true with money, it's much easier to coast or make moves financially when you have headroom. There's a type of financial self-sabotage people often commit when they're in an "unwinnable" situation called Doom Spending. I feel like the same psychological principles that convince a person in debt to finance their groceries also makes them lean into eating when overweight, lean into laziness when unemployed, etc. They always say that the hardest part is starting, but when it comes to money, fitness, employment, not everyone starts from the same place, and without being/having been at rock bottom you can't speak to the perspective of getting out of it. Agreed that a holistic approach is the only proper way though.
This is always what leaps out at me with this kind of “live better be happier” article. Yeah, if you’re sleeping well, eating well, working out regularly, spending quality time with friends, and have a healthy work life balance, you probably aren’t depressed. Might there be some possibility, perchance, that this is because any single one of those factors is almost impossible when in the pit of despair, let alone all of them at once? It’s like saying glasses cause short sightedness because hey, you almost never see someone with good eyesight wearing glasses.
And the ones that aren't simply "don't be depressed" are a lottery for anyone, even those not suffering depression. In the US, current projections are for 300 new jobs per state per month this year. Even accounting for retirees and deaths, last I looked at the numbers, there have been 2M more new additions to the workforce (people turning 18) than there are new jobs for those new additions, all competing with the large unemployed and laid off populations.
It's similarly often not easy to solve relationship stressors or noise pollution.
I agree we are headed into very unstable times, all the more reason for people to exercise. The stress relief effect is magical, and if you do it outside you get some fresh air and vitamin D. Exercise isn't a magic cure to make everyone honkey dorey but I do believe it should be seen as one of the best (and free) tools we have to maintain mental health.
No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression.
SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.
In my case it wasn't that they were hard to do, it was more that I just didn't have the motivation to do them.
The change needed was to actually have a reason to start doing any of them. For me, that started with being honest with myself. Deep down inside I knew the reason for my depression, I "just" had to be honest about it to be able to take control over it.
Once I did that I gained some motivation to do those things on that list, and so I started doing them. And slowly but surely I got out of my hole.
Every now and then I notice I'm halfway back down a hole. I stopped doing those things. Again I have to be honest with myself about why, and with that I can start the climb back out, starting exercising again, eating better etc.
I was typing something a bit snarky, but I went back and thought a little and I just want to say good for you on getting out of that hole and I hope you stay out of it!
I think GP's point is that "just do it" shows a lack of understanding that an inability to "just do X" is often a symptom of depression that leads to people not talking about it, because people who haven't experienced it think you must be lying about having decided to do something and not actually then doing it.
Consider: there was a study about a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down, who got an implant to bypass the injury, and with a year+ of walking with the implant, could eventually walk to a limited extent without the implant.[1]
This suggests walking can be used to treat loss of ability to walk. Unfortunately, there's a catch-22 there...
...and so too with inability to make yourself do anything.
Wait, I thought those things solved depression? Why are you hedging now? Did your initial analysis suck, and you're just now realizing it? Are you figuring out that maybe this is slightly more complex than "just be happy" and that maybe you're not the only person on the planet who's ever thought about this?
Why do you think I have the responsibility to "add substance" to your non-substantive load of shit?
You may not have said the literal words "be happy", but that is precisely what your "medical advice" amounted to. Perhaps it's time to stop having big, strident opinions about things you know you know absolutely nothing about?
Tread carefully friend, I agree this is a good list to _prevent_ the most common forms of depression, but some will think you are framing major clinical depression as a personal failing.
Some people slide into a hole of their own making. Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors. Grief, trauma, abuse, crises of repressed identity, poverty and poor prospects. Life can be brutal.
I highly, highly recommend The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (Solomon) for anyone that is interested in a comprehensive view of depression.
>Some people slide into a hole of their own making Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors.
Yes, true, a lot of the times it is from external factors (ask me how I know), but what people miss is that even in that case, it's still on you to get yourself out since SSRIs and therapy session won't fix the situation you fell into, nor will anyone else come to get you out, unless maybe you're lucky enough to have an incredible family, community or support network.
It's still your responsibility to get yourself out even when your situation is not your fault. That's the sad truth about life, you have to play the hand you're dealt, instead of being depressed you've been dealt a bad hand. It's not fair, but that's how it works.
From one internet stranger to another, both vaguely alluding to heavy things in our lived experience, I respectfully invite you to consider a "yes and".
Yes, we all must accept responsibility in changing our circumstances.
_And_ we all can accept responsibility for helping others do the same.
Some people need to hear the first part that you shared. Others need to hear the the second part that I am sharing.
This is exactly the kind of list that is both not true (solving depression is not a checklist) and COMPLETELY unhelpful to anyone actually dealing with depression. It's like saying "just make more money" to someone with financial struggles.
First of all exercise should be seen as one of the first lines of defense against not only depression but chronic health problems (which also lead to depression). So you shouldn't wait until you are depressed to start exercising - ideally it is something you do all the time.
Secondly - someone who's depressed is not keen on most things - including talking to a therapist , yet we still encourage them to do it. If you have the will power to pay hundreds of dollars a session to talk to a complete stranger, in theory you may have the willpower to walk birskly for 150 minutes a week. As a society we should simply encourage everyone no matter what age or state of mind to do that.
You just described causes of depression, like divorce, social isolation and being unemployed. I know there are people that can feel free in a place as horrible as a concentration camp, but most of us have some basic needs that have to be met to feel OK and have some hope.
Some people have actual neurotransmitter imbalances, but many of us just have monkey brains that don't know how to deal with (real, abstract) modern-day stressors that trigger a fight-or-flight response.
That's a dangerous take. People that suffer from a clinical depression oftentimes won't be able to do any of these things and this has nothing to do with responsibility and everything with suffering from a depression.
From what I have learned from friends working in the field, meds often work as an enabler, allowing people to do some of the things that are known to improve their condition further.
If you think you suffer from depression, don't keep trying to "just buckle up", don't keep trying to "just need to take responsibility". Go talk to professionals, therapists and/or psychiatrists. Mental disorders do things to a person outside of their control.
What absurdly thoughtless, shallow nonsense. What, specifically, is your background in depression research, that leads you to believe you've completed solved it for everyone? I'll wait. I'm sure it's fucking extensive.
All of what you describe besides environmental stressors are symptoms of depression. So, to solve depression, you must first solve depression.
And even the environmental stressors are something we could work with as a society though welfare, environment regulations, etc... But how people react to them is also a symptom. There are depressive people with the best of situations, and people who enjoy life in the worst of situations. What often strikes me in documentaries about warzones, places of repression and extreme poverty or crippling diseases is how "normal" people seem to be, they enjoy themselves as if everything was fine. So, while reducing environmental stressors work, it is not the end of it.
The take may be that treating the symptoms of depression could work in treating the root cause, a positive feedback loop. But if done through lifestyle change, unfortunately, the treatment is coercion, you can't rely on the willpower of people who have none because of the disease.
Every time this comes up the comments are the same. Just don't eat crap, just go to the gym, just make sure you get good sleep. It shows a total lack of understanding of depression. Of course these things work - and if people weren't depressed they might be able to try and do them. But when you have severe depression you literally have zero motivation. None. You suddenly can't sleep. You can barely get yourself out of bed. That's why things like pills are useful because they can help you get to the point where you can take the steps necessary to get your life into a state where it's less conducive to depression.
>> ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try fix them if you want your situation to improve, since nobody else will.
No. This is why doctors and psychologists etc exist. Not everything is fixable by you. Sometimes you need help from other people and blaming the depressed person for being depressed is fucking idiotic.
I started drinking herbal teas some years ago, I heavily enjoy hibiscus and ginger because of their strong taste, to a lesser degree also cinnamon, licorice and peppermint, but most teas seem very bland.
- Regular long walks at the park
- Climb stairs whenever possible instead of using the lift
- Good foot care
- Engage in social exercise like running clubs
- Wear good quality footwear, suitable for the activity that you're engaged in.
Of course, not all paraplegics can use their feet, but ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try to improve leg strength to the point of overcoming paraplegia, by doing the things that would have helped in improving leg strength, if only you could walk.
/s
(tbf, not fully disagreeing per se, and all analogies are flawed, but the above sarcasm is to point out that this model is overly simplistic. And it can lead to hidden but very real unconscious bias and discrimination once words like "responsibility" is thrown into the mix)
You're missing the point. That's exactly how democratic governments cloak fascist behavior everywhere: The punishment IS THE PROCESS.
People in Germany (and the UK and other places) have to self censor because they don't want to be visited by the police and then dragged through courts for months/years, even though it eventually gets thrown out and you get to walk away innocent, you still had to suffer the entire prosecution process, which nobody wants to, so they keep their mouth shut.
The stress toll of having to go through all that annoying grind through the legal system, even though you did nothing wrong and what the government is doing will be considered illegal, is how the government preemptively keeps people in line.
>That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power
Very rare?! Unless there's direct consequences with actual punishment on government officials for illegally abusing the legal system on citizens just because they hear stuff they don't like, then they will keep throwing prosecutions at innocent people just to keep them in check since currently they have nothing stopping them from this abuse turning from rare to being the norm.
Except for the Grote case you can very well criticize politicians, even in somewhat questionable language without LE raiding your home. That one case was an exception.
Just look at any political thread in any social media in German language. There is plenty of criticism or even insults regarding government officials, without them getting raided. It is only extreme cases (often with calls for violence) which trigger LE. So the chilling effect is missing or at least it has little influence.
Then you failed at education if a prompt can undo decades of education.
And the failure of education was an intentional feature, not a bug, since the government wants obedient tax cattle that will easily accept their propaganda at elections, not freethinkers that question everything because then they might notice your lies and corruption.
It's like building a backdoor into your system thinking you're the only one who gets to use it for the upper hand, but then throw fits when everyone else is using your backdoors to defeat you.
>Singapore has a regressive shock absorber model where something like half the country are immigrants that are ineligible for, say, public housing which even the better off citizens take advantage of in Singapore
It's similar in Vienna where only native Viennese are immediately eligible for social housing, but outsiders will end up paying into the system without being eligible.
This is a common arrangement in Europe. Ex-Europe foreigners contribute to, for example, unemployment insurance, but are generally not able to use it because they get their work licenses revoked if they become unemployed.
By definition, outsiders don't have to pay into the system since they already have a gov't somewhere else that is dedicated to them, just like the Viennese do.
>By definition, outsiders don't have to pay into the system
They absolutely do pay into the system when they move to and work in Vienna. By outsiders in this context I meant foreign workers. I assumed that was clear from the context of the discussion.
When you move to live and work in Vienna you become part of the system since you pay income + other taxes, just like the locals, except unlike the locals, you don't get social housing.
Unless of course ... your comment was just an anti immigration dogwhsitle from the start, in which case you should just said THAT instead, and not waste people's time with cumbersome allegories masquerading as arguments.
> When you move to live and work in Vienna you become part of the system
Your entire original complaint was that this doesn't happen. I agree. The difference is I don't think merely moving somewhere should give you political representation there, and the corresponding benefits you would get. You would need to gain citizenship.
"Paying taxes" has nothing to do with it. I pay taxes whenever I travel on anything I buy. I pay taxes when I export products. I don't magically get to vote or apply for social housing because of those taxes, because I'm not a citizen.
But I do have a place where I am a citizen, and if I'm upset about "my taxes" going to foreign political systems, get this, I can just choose to not pay them. No one is forcing me to travel or work in a foreign country or export products or pay taxes to people who don't represent me politically.
---
As to "anti-immigrant", my position is straightforward: citizens of Country A should not be treated as if they were citizens of Country B merely by voluntarily "paying taxes" to Country B, for goods, labor, visas, exports, or any other reason. They must actually be a citizen of a country to get the benefit of being a citizen of that country.
This is a rule that applies to every country and all people, whether an immigrant or not: you get the benefits of citizenship when you are a citizen, and not a day before.
That's pro-citizenship, not anti-immigrant. Hope that helps.
And in addition to farmers, a lot of companies/non-profits (for, e.g., logistics) were paid by USAID programs, as well as researchers for things like global health initiatives.
Yeah but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times, not the responsibility of the private sector to hold back progress and inefficiency just so more people can stay in employment even if they're not needed anymore.
The governments however have been and continue to be ill prepared to the rising increases of globalisation labor offshoring and automation.
There was a news article yesterday in my EU country about a 50 year old laid off CEO of a small company that continues to be unemployed after a year because nobody will hire him anymore so he lives off welfare and oddjobs and the government unemployment office has no solution.
What happens in the future when AI and offshoring culls more white collar jobs and there will be thousands or tens of thousands of unemployable 50 year old managers with outdated skills that nobody will want to hire or re-train due to various reasons, but they still need to keep working somehow till their 70s to qualify for retirement? Sure you then go to re-train yourself to become a licensed plumber or electrician, but who will want to hire you to gain experience when they can hire the 20-something fresher rather than the 50 year old with bad knees?
> but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times
I'd say those things are the job of the population itself, via a wide range of pluralistic institutions. The job of governments, which are just specific organizations within a much larger society, is primarily to maintain public order.
>I'd say those things are the job of the population itself, via a wide range of pluralistic institutions.
I'd agree ONLY IF I'd pay no taxes to the government. But since most middle class people pay 40%+ of their income to the state, then the state now has the responsibility to handle those challenges for us.
But if the state wants me to handle it, then sure I'd do it gladly, they just need to reimburse 90% of my tax payments so I'd have the financial resources to proactively invest in my future security.
But right now we have the worst of both worlds in the west: a huge tax burden on the middle class funding an incompetent state that takes your money, spends it like drunken sailors on bullshit, and when the shit hits the fan, just tells you it's your fault when you fall down, instead of having used your money for societal wide preemptive solutions.
> I'd agree ONLY IF I'd pay no taxes to the government. But since most middle class people pay 40%+ of their income to the state, then the state now has the responsibility to handle those challenges.
Well, no, we pay taxes for the government to fund the things government is supposed to do and is competent at. Paying the government doesn't make them responsible for or competent to handle anything every problem arising anywhere in society, any more than paying for a Netflix subscription makes Netflix responsible for or capable of handling those problems.
This is really important, because political institutions aren't just bad at handling complex social problems, but when made responsible for them, often get in the way of other individuals, communities, and institutions trying to solve those problems with much better approaches.
> But if the state wants me to handle it, then sure I'd do it gladly, they just need to reimburse all my tax payments so I'd have the financial resources to invest in my future.
Agreed. We should drastically lower taxes, and ensure that most of the resources necessary to improve society are left in the hands of society itself, and not monopolized by a single institution that's subject to perverse incentives.
But if we assume that we're stuck paying the same level of taxes for the time being, and treat those taxes merely as losses, the question reduces to whether we want a monopolistic organization run by people with ulterior motives exercising a controlling influence over our lives and livelihoods -- and often failing to solve those complex problems in the first place -- or whether we would still prefer to solve those problems for ourselves with the resources we have left. And to my mind, the latter is still preferable, even if unhelpful strangers are stealing a good chunk of my resources.
> But right now we have the worst of both worlds: a huge tax burden on the middle class funding an incompetent state that takes your money, spends it like drunken sailors on bullshit, and when the shit hits the fan just tells you it's your fault when you fall down, instead of having used your money for societal wide preemptive solutions.
Yes, that's all true. But to my point above, the only way out of this is not to expect that the incompetent grifters will somehow start behaving like competent philanthropists, but rather to contain them and minimize the grift -- either way, it's still on us to solve our own problems.
>Well, no, we pay taxes for the government to fund the things government is supposed to do and is competent at.
Which also includes the education system training you for the labor market. How is the state good at that if what they're training you for is now useless? Also includes the welfare safety net which is now failing to catch everyone falling.
>This is really important, because political institutions aren't just bad at handling complex social problems, but when made responsible for them, often get in the way of other individuals, communities, and institutions trying to solve those problems with much better approaches.
If we know they're bad at this and often responsible for the issues we have, why are we funding them so much?
Norway has their sovereign fund as a premprive solution in case the country hits a rough path in the future.
>but rather to contain them and minimize the grift
And this can only be done peacefully by defunding the incompetent state apparatus.
>either way, it's still on us to solve our own problems
Yeah but you need money for that. And we don't have money because the state is taking half of it.
> Which also includes the education system training you for the labor market.
Does it? That's an assumption many people make, but I'm not sure that this was either the original intent -- public schooling was driven largely as a tool for "liberal arts" and to assimilate immigrants -- nor something that public schooling has ever proven to be particularly good at.
> If we know they're bad at this and often responsible for the issues we have, why are we funding them so much?
Well, most people's main incentive for paying taxes is the threat of being punished for failing to do so.
> And this can only be done peacefully by defunding the incompetent state apparatus.
Agreed entirely.
> Yeah but you need money for that. And we don't have money because the state is taking half of it.
Agreed entirely, and doing away with confiscatory taxation is an important goal. But whether or not the state takes our money is not directly relevant to the question of whether the state is sufficiently trustworthy and competent to assign monopolistic control of critical aspects of our lives to.
And my position on that is that even if we can't roll back taxation, we still shouldn't trust the state with unilateral control over key aspects of our lives and livelihoods, and we'd be better off making do with the resources we retain despite taxation to provide those things for ourselves via other forms of organization or community.
>I fired up Win 3.11 in 1600x1200@256 mode to run SimAnt, and was pretty shocked at how much better it felt than most modern operating systems.
Maybe for older people who used it back then and have nostalgia for it, but I think at 35 even I'm too young to find that UI appealing for daily driving when linux has WMs/DEs targeted for minimalism, efficiency and productivity but in a modern way.
Scratch that, we have to hate Chinese companies because they do business with the Chinese military, unlike Intel, Nvidia, Samsung who don't do business with the US and ROK military ... oh wait.
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