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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Yeah, that’s true, but that’s not the only way to run experiments. “Natural experiments” where experimental conditions happen naturally can be exploited for scientific aims.

    I think it should be treated similar to the medical field. They human body is super complex, and there’s competing mechanisms for all sorts of things. You could discover a mechanism by which a compound decreases blood pressure. There could be another mechanism by which the same compound increases blood pressure by a much larger amount. A lot of economists would just take that first mechanism as ground truth, and recommend giving the compound to a patient with high blood pressure.

    I think in lieu of perfect information (which is always the case for economy and medicine), it’s best to just go for whatever is the least abstract benefit. The way I was taught macroeconomics (as a teen, I definitely don’t have a degree in it or anything), a minimum wage places an artificial limit on the total amount of labor that will be done, and therefore decreases GDP, and therefore everyone is worse off. That could be the case (I don’t think it is), but it’s very abstract, so it needs an overwhelming amount of evidence. Contrast that to the fact that a person cannot survive off of $2/hr, which is not an abstract conclusion, and you have good rationale for a minimum wage.


  • A lot of macroeconomics in particular seems to follow aristotlian thinking, i.e. you can just logic your way from step to step. It is interesting in that pure mathematics does work this way in that you can start with a bunch of axioms/definitions and combine them and work with them until you reach a conclusion without any need for experimentation. For example, you don’t need to measure a bunch of triangles to show that the Pythagorean theorem is true.

    The way i was taught macroeconomics in school, it takes the mathematical approach of starting with a list of assumptions that seem to be true, and using mathematical logic to derive conclusions. The trouble is that: 1) many starting assumptions aren’t as true as you’d think, and 2) many of the “logical” steps also aren’t as logical as you’d think.

    Supply and demand is an easy example. The classic idea is that as supply goes up, price goes down, and vice versa, while as price goes up, demand goes down. The existence of Veblen goods (i.e., things that people want because they are expensive) shows that the demand part isn’t right.

    None of this would be a problem if it was just an intellectual exercise to help develop hypotheses for use with more sound scientific methods, but it’s used for policy directly.





  • This article mentions that they are trying to disenfranchise people with the citizenship proof requirements, and it also mentions that they specifically want to disenfranchise women, but it doesn’t draw a connection between the two. In order for those to be connected, women would have to have more difficulty in producing that proof than men (which may be the case, but the article doesn’t show that).

    To actually answer your question, though, at least from the conservative women I’ve talked to, they are fine with that. The conservative women I know are weak, and they essentially want to give up responsibility in exchange for freedoms. They actually want women to be second class citizens because it means that they don’t have to worry about anything (but they do have to just do what they are told).

    There are old, conservative women who spent their lives as housewives who feel threatened by working women, so they want to maintain/go back to the status quo of women staying in the home (ignoring the fact that working class women have always worked). On the other hand, there are young, conservative women who do work, who yearn for the pretend vision of white, upper-middle class 1950s, where they get to just stay home and do what they want all day.

    TL; DR: They essentially want to be like children, worry-free in exchange for less freedom.

    P.s., there are definitely plenty of conservative women too stupid or unwilling to admit to themselves that the conservative position is women as second class citizens, but I wanted to respond with the perspective I’ve heard from people who seemed to be more honest.




  • I definitely don’t want to make the impression that I don’t think immigrants are hard workers. I’ve certainly worked with a few.

    My main point is that the system is designed to keep undocumented immigrants in the “informal economy” by paying under the table. They can absolutely make equivalent (or even greater) wages because their employers save a lot of money by not paying all the right taxes and benefits. If employers were forced to provide the same working environment and benefits to all their employees, the system would fall apart.

    There’s also obviously plenty of, for lack of a better word, entrepreneurs. Unlicensed childcarers, contractors, landscapers, etc.


  • In all honesty, the plan is likely not mass deportation, it’s increased fear combined with pandering to racist fans. Mass deportation would hurt the bottom line of too many important people. Undocumented immigrants don’t “do the work legal citizens aren’t willing to do” or “work harder than legal citizens”. Those are both racist liberal talking points. The reason they appear to work harder and do jobs that others don’t want to do is that the whole ecosystem of fear is designed to keep immigrants working jobs below minimum wage and/or in appalling working conditions.

    If they really wanted to reduce illegal immigration, they could pass laws giving protection to any immigrants who report illegal working conditions. There would still end up being immigrants working in the “informal economy”, but at least big employers would have some risk.





  • Bunch of city people want to destroy rural people’s lifestyles.

    CAFOs are not “rural people’s lifestyle”. They are a relatively modern invention to create the largest amount of meat while employing the fewest people possible. Trying to defend them as “rural people’s lifestyle” is very disingenuous. If you want to defend them, there are reasonable arguments to make, like the price of food, the land use, water use, etc, compared to meat produced other ways.

    Even if somehow having a corporation own 100,000 chickens that they raise down the road from you was an important part of your lifestyle, I cannot stand the constant argument that somehow, rural folks’ way of life is more important to preserve than urban folks’. As we make the climate worse, and pump out more pollution, and have more kids, and create more technology, everyone’s life is going to change. Rural folks have significantly more kids than urban folks and they produce more burden on the environment, yet somehow, it’s on people who live it cities who are supposed to bear the costs because we can’t possibly do anything that affects people who live rurally?

    I, and most people, want small, family run operations to succeed. There’s no reason we have to protect Big Ag to keep small operations. Big Ag is the biggest threat to the little guys.