I feel like the public, even in may 2022, just can’t grasp the basic concept of inflation. A better way than dropping cash out of helicopters, or mailing checks, is to give people tax money back in the form of a standard deduction. It’s almost like people have thought about this stuff already.
Banks can’t give out fake loans. They try to all the time and are rightfully regulated/fined/charged when they do.
Banks giving out bad loans caused the 2008 collapse. Student loans will one day cause a similar problem but it won’t be big banks going bankrupt, it will be us. Hearing that 20% are obvious fraud doesn’t even surprise anyone. Imagine a bank saying 20% of their loans are fraud but it’s “not their job” to check that loans are given to anonymous recipients who don’t bother to provide even a fake name!
It’s a crime. Like the banks, the people at the top are aware but profit off doing nothing. That they work for the taxpayers just makes it that much more criminal, not less!
Exactly the same incentives problem with EDD. The more fraud, the larger their budget gets and so there is only one metric they care about; increasing the total number of recipients. Similar issue with fake user counts in the tech world. User count = money.
Unfortunately the dominant party also benefits from all of this fraud, so it is ultimately a political problem. Until there is viable outside political competition, there will continue to be zero accountability and wide scale fraud and corruption. User count = money = political power/voters. Mainstream candidates are owned, and so the only solution involves draining the swamp so to speak and it’s pretty clear at this point, the swamp usually wins.
You should read about inflation. Efforts to fatten up the middle class with free giveaways to certain voting blocks has and will continue to spur inflation and make those same voters ever less wealthy. But voters are myopic, so they’ll vote for free money every time. Eventually you get Venezuela.
A better way would be to protect people by not making policy decisions that reward bad behavior and punish those who avoid debt and save. Rewarding terrible behavior may get you elected but it’s bad for society. Like giving candy to pacify a cranky baby.
But such opinions have become verboten now, and actually censored.
Another manifestation of problems in higher education. It’s not just software.
If you read up on the sociology of professional specialization you’ll learn that most technical complexity in a field is there for competitive purposes. Jargon exists more exclude and obscure than to facilitate.
So one predicts less productivity as competition increases lead to complexification of professions. This is all because higher education is broken. One of the functions of higher education, perhaps it’s most important function, is allocating human capital efficiently. It’s fully derelict in this, preferring instead to sell credentials to labor that labor doesn’t need, at the expense of the debt holders and students, to the delight of corporations. The result is zero productivity going back to the early 70’s.
“the question is whether you have large amounts of the kind of parasites that make you sick and more specifically, the kinds of parasites that can be treated with ivermectin.”
It would be a useful study, to the extent Covid remains a concern for public health agencies. If you are familiar with poverty in America, you wouldn’t think sanitation and parasites aren’t issues here. They just aren’t as common.
If anyone were in a position to know whether it’s possible, and how to do it, he’d be on the list.
I think, regardless of his history regarding open source, water under the bridge long ago, he is worth taking seriously if we want to be prepared for the next one, which may come soon.
Never been pro-ivermectin as a primary tool for Covid, but can you actually back up, “indeed, the argument for ivermectin in 1st world countries has been more or less demolished.”
I read Scott’s piece the day it was published and was over all impressed but don’t buy the conclusion. Westerners are filled with all sorts of parasites and as far as I’m aware we are not universally cleaner in that regard, for example with worms, than other places. That to me suggests that to the extent a significant fraction of the population would benefit from deworming, ivermectin’s widespread use in some of our hospitals during the pandemic was not entirely illfounded and may have even played a part in more than one life saving treatment regimen.
So I would love evidence that says clearly why it doesn’t work here but works in poorer places because somehow Americans are too good for parasites. My experience tells me this is wrong, and many Americans are carrying all sorts of bugs. Go read the Amazon reviews for proguard!
“folks from California and the Southwest wanting more water”
People don’t complain about Floridians or iowaians. It’s always the brown bodies from California “driving up prices” and “drinking all the water.” California is a dog whistle for anti-immigrant viewpoints. “Folks from California.” We know who you mean when you say that. Immigrants and other “water drinkers.”
Why not talk about nuclear war? It’s one of several elephants in the room. The full collapse of a nuclear super power is unprecedented. Who gets the weapons?
I want to generalize and say things that are round. Circles, whether the wheel or the phonograph, or a pulley, or lipid nano particles— circles are true magic.
Reuters is not a credible source, even if they’re right in this case. Leave peer review to peers, in journals where it belongs. Reuters is just another USA Today at this point. They should not be the arbiters of what constitutes valid science. We have scientists and a thing called The Scientific Process. It’s not something to discard out of fear or political anxiety. Another lesson, like inflation, we’re all going to have to suffer through because our elite ruling class didn’t do their homework.
Don’t question Dan. He gets results. Everybody loves his moderation, and if you don’t love the moderation then you should just leave. There’s always Reddit!