I don't agree. Germany for example is pretty shameless beyond the shame border in USA. To give you a few maybe extreme examples (which does not apply to all people in Germany and not all this examples are sexual): Mixed saunas, swinger clubs, open relationships, no shame on being naked in designated nudity areas, topless DJs, a naked women is not a big skandal etc.

Yet Germany does not have the drug problems which Oregon has.

USA has a big shame problem (just look at IG) in sense of nudity and nipples (which is spreading around the globe thanks to US tech) yet you say shame is devalued in USA.

I think I just debunked your theory (sorry for that) but it's not shame.

You’re giving examples of where the German social norms allow things that are taboo under US social norms. That’s not what shame is about. Shame is a feeling that societies use to enforce social norms and taboos—whatever those norms happen to be.

America is a very individualistic society—people can violate social norms and they don’t feel shame, because they say “who cares what other people think?” My impression of Germany—which is second hand, my wife lived there and I know lots of Germans—is that it is a less individualistic society. Society might allow certain things, but where society doesn't allow those things, there is strong shame-based social pressure.

At least when my wife was living in east Germany in the early 2000s, drug use was one of those taboos. When she mentioned smoking marijuana—something that didn’t raise eyebrows among other teenagers at her rural Iowa high school—the reaction from German students was very negative.

I was born and raised in Germany and I give a f*ck what other people think (I care ZERO percent). But to be honest I also left Germany (because I'm fortunate enough to do that) because society is blind in sense of taxes, social insurance etc especially if you are an entrepreneur. Rich or wealthy people in Germany are considered to be thieves or inherits of something/somebody. Believe it or not but many Germans feel ashamed when being wealthy (or they do not speak about their wealth ever, keep it a secret).

My thinking is that shame is a very broad term and there are many societies on Earth which are more shameless than USA with relaxed drug laws and DO NOT HAVE that drug problem.

> Rich or wealthy people in Germany are considered to be thieves or inherits of something/somebody. Believe it or not but many Germans feel ashamed when being wealthy (or they do not speak about their wealth ever, keep it a secret).

Yay, another thing Germany (post-WWII) got right, in addition to mechanical and electrical engineering and the early use of synthesizers.

It is also utterly destructive for any industrial country to have a population which devalues being successful.

"Unreasonably wealthy" means able to buy a house, by the way.

Your equation of "successful" with "wealthy" is very much of a particular culture. It's not hard to imagine hypothetical societies (based in part on some real ones across human history) where there's no particular link between these things. You just have to define "success" in a different way (for example, based on esteem rather than income). (*)

A culture that devalues its own metrics for "success" is going through a significant transition. presumably towards different metrics. That's not "utterly destructive", though change is often accompanied by some destruction.

(*) for example, many tenured research scientists today earn more in real dollars and have more material wealth and comfort than almost any of the mid-20th century superstars. But who is the more successful scientist, Richard Feynman or someone you've never heard of with a great job at a big research university, lots of grant money flowing and a headstart from their upper-middle class parents?

Yes, success is a term different to all humans and varying among culture. So what?

>A culture that devalues its own metrics for "success" is going through a significant transition. presumably towards different metrics. That's not "utterly destructive", though change is often accompanied by some destruction.

Any modern western nation which sees a collpase of its industry will see its population quickly drift into poverty. It is an essential threat to disregard economic output.

Changing the definition of success in no way implies the "collapse of its industry".

It's just backdoor socialism. More and more people are constantly praddling on about how "the wealthy" are the problem, but that's utter nonsense, and IMO has no place in a democratic society.

As with anything else, the answer is to "raise everyone up", not "pull those down who have obtained something". And for the record, I am OK with taxing those with higher incomes at a higher rate. What I'm not OK with is the quite literally insane concept of "take all that money in one tax year", or "make sure no one can ever stay wealthy".

The absurd notion of "if you have more than $x, we'll take it ALL!" is pure socialism, lacks any idea of how monetary systems work, how taxation works, and how much value doing that brings.

For example, if you took every billionaire's liquid cash in the US, you'd barely notice it at the federal level, and then next year? There's be nothing to take.

This is primarily because to 'take that billionaire's net worth!!', you'd have to take ownership of a massive amount of stocks, commodities, and so on. Let's say billionaire G owns 70% of Big Corp H, and that ownership is worth $2B.

Great. So you 'tax' it. So how does that work?

Does the billionaire have to sell if off, and give cash? How does that happen? Remember, all other wealthy people are having their fortunes stripped, so who do you even sell it to?

And if you just hand over the shares to the government, what are they going to do with it? Sell it? To whom? No one has large amounts of disposable cash now, it's all been taken!

None of these weirdo comments about "fuck people with $10 in their pocket!" make sense.

To me it is always politics of envy. Of course nobody has some inherent qualities that make him "deserve" enormous amounts of money, but that isn't "fixable", it also is not particularly relevant if you cared about people having decent safety nets.

As an aside, I very much dislike progressive tax rates. It essentially punishes productivity, as each additional hour worked reduces your money earned. Most of the working population should have the same tax rate.

>And if you just hand over the shares to the government, what are they going to do with it?

In Europe many states are large shareholders into companies. In the US you have e.g. pension funds who own very large amounts of capital. In Europe you have many companies where regional governments own a lot of shares.

> Of course nobody has some inherent qualities that make him "deserve" enormous amounts of money, but that isn't "fixable",

It is trivially fixable, with taxes.

It is less trivially fixable via cultural changes such that in-organization compensation multiples are held below a relatively low number (I'm would lean in the range of 5-10x, but the precise value isn't as important).

> As an aside, I very much dislike progressive tax rates.

Progressive tax rates reflect the basic economic concept of the "marginal utility of money". If you earn $10k/yr, and extra $1k is a big deal, and can have profound impacts on your life. If you earn $100k/yr, an extra $1k is much less of a big deal. If you earn $1M/yr, an extra $1k is just noise.

So it is with taxes, but in reverse: the impact of taking $1k in taxes from the $10k/yr person is very large, but extremely small for the $1M/yr.

It would be preferable if we used a continuous function for this, rather than income brackets, but the concept is not hard to grasp: the impact of taxes, not the actual amount, should be the same for every $ earned. That requires progressive rates, because the impact of a 20% tax rate on the first (and only) $10k is huge, whereas the impact of a 20% tax rate on the final $10k of $1M is extremely small.

>> If you earn $10k/yr, and extra $1k is a big deal, and can have profound impacts on your life. If you earn $100k/yr, an extra $1k is much less of a big deal. If you earn $1M/yr, an extra $1k is just noise.

This an economic fallacy. It only makes sense if you believe the only utility of money is is to buy basic necessities and you can't imagine doing things that require larger amounts of capital to start.

> No, it is clearly not, not ever has it functioned. It is also destructive to do.

Most people would agree that the USA from about 1950-1975 functioned very well, if you can temporarily ignore the racism and sexism that made its success unevenly distributed. That was accompanied by (and partly explained by) high marginal tax rates.

You seem to either be using "progressive tax rates" to mean something different than it conventionally does, or to not understand how they work.

> As your hourly rate sinks with amount worked.

This is simply not true of progressive tax rates as conventionally defined.

> You even completely ignored my argument about progressive taxes devaluing work. As your hourly rate sinks with amount worked.

Progressive tax rates do not devalue work, they devalue excessive rates of compensation.

> Nobody pretends to want taxes as a fixed amount. That is some absurd thing you just made up

Actually, several US Republican presidential candidates over the past couple of decades have specifically proposed a flat rate of income tax.

HN requests that we avoid tone policing, but your insults are not appreciated nor necessary.

It seems that we have flown by each other with insufficiently precise terminology.

I agree that progressive taxation means that you receieve a lower after-tax hourly rate on income that puts you into higher tax brackets.

However, you continue to receive a higher after-tax income than the person who, for any reason, declined or did not perform that additional work (because the higher rate never reduces your effectively hourly rate for the last hourto zero)

Which is reflective of the precise point of progressive taxation. The dollars you earn that put you into each successively higher tax bracket would (if the brackets are designed correctly) be of less and less marginal utility to you, and thus the impact of you losing more of them to taxation is similarly reduced.

With the current tax brackets for the USA, you could annotate them as follows:

    0 - 13850 : critical income, no taxation

13850 - 24850 : 13850 wasn't even livable, so you pay only 10% on any extra

24850 - 58575 : 24850 was vaguely livable, so you pay 12% on the extra

58575 - 109225: 58575 was getting comfortable, so you pay 22% on the extra

109225 - 195950: you're now firmly into comfortable life, so you pay 24% on the extra

and so on, up to:

$591975: you've already more than 0.5M in income, any more is of near zero marginal utility so we tax the extra at (shock! horror!) 37%

The alternative - a flat rate - means that every extra dollar of income (over some standard deduction) is taxed at the same rate regardless of its marginal utility. By definition, this means that people with lower incomes "feel" the tax burden much more than people with higher incomes. The "last" $1000 they earn is of significant marginal utility to them, but is taxed at the same rate as someone for whom their last $1000 is of near-zero marginal utility.

That isn't a fair way to share tax burdens.

> That happens under a certain subset of progressive tax systems.

There is no tax rate system that will ever tax any income at more than 100%. If you earn an extra dollar, you may only ever take home $0.01 (because you owe $0.99 in taxes). You might even take home nothing in some hypothetical 100% marginal rate tax regime, but nobody has ever proposed a system where you owe more than $1 on any $1 of income.

> The real consequence of believing in the argument directly implies that nobody should earn more than X, for some amount of income X (like 50k) where after that the marginal utility is so low that it might as well can be given to the state to waste.

Yep, that's precisely the belief and it's well grounded in lots of research into happiness, utility and so forth. Now, as it turns out, nobody has the courage/conviction to actually impose a 100% tax rate for any income over $X, so the reality is that the tax systems at play in the real world do not in fact prevent anyone from earning more than $X. Given that even the highest rates ever imposed in western industrial democracies were far from that, this just seems like a strawman. Even at 90% (the highest US marginal tax rate), for every $1000 you nominally earn over the $X value, you take home $100, thus earning more than $X.

BTW, $X is much, much higher than $50k, but I suspect that this is just a typo on your part.

>There is no tax rate system that will ever tax any income at more than 100%. If you earn an extra dollar, you may only ever take home $0.01 (because you owe $0.99 in taxes). You might even take home nothing in some hypothetical 100% marginal rate tax regime, but nobody has ever proposed a system where you owe more than $1 on any $1 of income.

You didn't even read what I wrote. This was about income after taxes increasing when working less. Which happens in bracketted progressive tax systems.

>Yep, that's precisely the belief

I know. It is of course also the single easiest way to destroy any economy.

I really hate it if people like you just pretend to argue for something you don't really believe in.

> accused politicians of insane policies.

What I said: "several US Republican presidential candidates over the past couple of decades have specifically proposed a flat rate of income tax. "

This is 100% correct. From the 2015 primary season: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/business/economy/republic...

From 1999: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/14/us/flat-tax-goes-from-sna...

I suspect you misread what I wrote as "a flat income tax", which is ironic since it is the terminology actually used by these candidates, even though I understand it to imply a flate tax rate.

A flat tax rate means e.g. 10%.

You claimed it is "everyone pays the same amount".

>I suspect you misread what I wrote as "a flat income tax", which is ironic since it is the terminology actually used by these candidates, even though I understand it to imply a flate tax rate.

You are the one single person which doesn't understand that the politicians mean e.g. "10%". But instead you thought they meant everyone pays 1k. Just stop pretending.

user name checks out.

Flat tax rate, not a flat fixed-amount head tax. Those are way too different things, I don't think any politician who values their livelihood would propose a head tax.

why is being wealthy shameful? most people gain wealth by running successful business.

and if they instead inherit that wealth, there is nothing shameful about that either - though that doesn't mean you need to boast about it

> most people gain wealth by running successful business

In the USA, this is absolutely not true. The majority of the 1% earn their wealth through inheritance and investment, not running a business.

> if they instead inherit that wealth, there is nothing shameful about that either

Depends on whether you consider inter-generational wealth transfer completely valid, or the basis of most oligarchies. "I'm rich because my parents were rich" is thing that the US accepts as almost god-given, but it really is not if you look across time and space. The idea that I should just be able to transfer whatever wealth I have upon dying to my children is an idea very much promoted over the last couple of centuries by the wealthy, and is not "the natural order of things" (because there is no such natural order).

>> The idea that I should just be able to transfer whatever wealth I have upon dying to my children is an idea very much promoted over the last couple of centuries by the wealthy, and is not "the natural order of things" (because there is no such natural order).

Inheritance was a thing in ancient Egypt 5000 years ago and probably from the beginning of humanity (if every generation had to start from zero, we would still live in caves).

> if every generation had to start from zero, we would still live in caves).

We're not talking a generation starting from zero, but instead specific children within a family. If the wealth left over at death went to the state, the "generation" would not start from zero (and being realistic, it's not that likely that the deceased's offspring would either).

Also, inheritance may have been in ancient Egypt, but so were death taxes. Similarly for the Romans, and feudal Europe. Not that the rulers collecting these taxes were exactly the personification of righteous and just government.

> Believe it or not but many Germans feel ashamed when being wealthy (or they do not speak about their wealth ever, keep it a secret).

Sounds like (1) Germany does enforce social norms through shame; and (2) you do care what people think enough to move to a society where people don’t shame you for trying to get rich.

Being ashamed about nudity is i beieve a totally different thing. The shame op is talking about is feeling bad when you have cheated your neighbours, or being ashamed of doing something that lands you in jail i.e. caring about your reputation as a good human. Nudity in public is completely orthogonal to any of that imho, and is more of a cultural norm.

total nudity is in relation to reputation to being as a good human for many US Americans.

Of course there is also some value in your proposition but saying that a society is totally shameless yet keeps cultural norms very high (like USA with nudity) does contradict the initial claim. It's something else then.

I get what you are saying. Perhaps its a morphing of what exactly people find shameful is the thing OP was talking about then. Where he identifies a lack of shame, its really just the shame is concentrated on completely different actions, and it makes the culture seem strange and wrong to a person on the other side.

Your response misses the target the parent was getting at. There are laws that constrain behavior in public places derived from the taboos of the past. This is what you are referring to when you talk about limits to nudity and such. These laws may derive from shame culture of the past, but they have modern relevance largely due to the existence of laws.

There's another form of shame culture that isn't codified into law but constrains behavior due to the potential reduction in social status for breaking various taboos. Essentially part one's feelings of status is sourced externally and this provides a moderating effect on one's behavior. The problem is that modern society has seen a stark reduction in the effectiveness of this kind of shame culture. We've essentially devalued the prevailing culture in favor of various sub/counter cultures. Now every degenerate interest has a sub-culture formed around it that insulates anyone who identifies with it from the shame of going against the prevailing culture. The usefulness of shame for reinforcing social norms has been eliminated to disastrous effect.

It is not, in fact, different at all. Being seen naked in public affects your status. Being seen consuming drugs affects your status. All shame is, is degradation of your status.

The issue isn't about an external person's judgment, but one's sensitivity to an external person's judgment. The point is that mainstream culture has been devalued such that sensitivity to alterations in status as judged by people deemed "mainstream" is much less relevant to an average person these days, especially in younger folks. If there were no laws about public nudity, there are subcultures that absolutely would go around naked and would be immune to shame from mainstream culture.

I’ve been shamed for j-walking in Germany. Sorry, you didn’t debunk anything you just invited a bunch of puritanical nonsense to the nude beach.

Me too, but that goes to prove OP's point. Jay-walking isn't just a crime, it's basically a social faux in Germany, which is why it doesn't happen that often.

But in Germany, if you cut in line, huge shame. I’m in Israel, not as many orgy clubs (I assume?) but more people cut in line. There’s shame about different things.

How many social safety nets does Germany have compared to the US and Oregon. My guess is a lot more and probably a less isolated culture, more family friends around, cheaper cost of living too. This shame thing your all rambling seems to be a red herring

>I think I just debunked your theory (sorry for that) but it's not shame.

You didn't. It is even somewhat irrelevant, as being shamed for sexual perversion is utterly unrelated to not being ashamed of using drugs.

Nice article. What would Hugh Hefner say about this World (I think it was addressed in his magazine once or twice when it was still published).

We are censored and controlled by (US) political correctness World View of

* App Stores: Google and Apple

* Social media platforms from companies like Meta (no nipples in IG or Facebook). Try visit Playboy IG, it's a pixel joke.

* Payment (although Visa and Mastercard are not against porn totally)

* Infrastructure. Good luck running a porn site from common known cloud providers (btw. Cloudflare is an exception in this list).

Why it is 2022 and we are not allowed to see any nipples on Apple or Google devices (only exception reddit and twitter) unless it's on websites or transferred on my own on devices? I'm clearly old enough but US companies trying to protect me by basically enforcing CENSORSHIP here. It's nothing else.

To this day I cannot understand to see easily violence and horror things on all these platforms but beware we see ONE uncovered NIPPLE.

It's why I despair of smart phones dictating the course of the internet. These are platforms that are locked down to a degree that slowly strangles the rest of the internet. It's censorship not through the heavy hand of the state arresting people and confiscating servers, but creating a climate of fear and uncertainty over ruinous lawsuits and chasing advertising dollars. The censorship effect is obfuscated through so many apparently voluntary and open transactions that the public at large has no idea it is happening. It's extremely hard to talk about this with people in my life without sounding like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Well, same here. An old fan page, last updated 2003. Amazing that it is still up: http://augbunny.tripod.com even the gallery still works http://augbunny.tripod.com/Gallery.htm