Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

Baker Mayfield > Geraldo. But, yes.

[Kapture1]

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[hack]

This is a good article with a historical construct applied that makes it's conclusions even more sound. It's not just about Erdogan and present politics in Turkey. IMO, the article was written to warn of the dangers of the Trump presidency. Hack, you'll enjoy this article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...ongman/570514/

No argument here. Important to also note that that early period of growth corresponds to the application of political and policy reforms carried out in hopes of joining the EU. The underlying racism of Germany and France in the early 00s kinda of torpedoed that membership, and, with it, Turkey's motivation to keep strengthening institutions at the cost of individual power. Not that this was what made Erdogan Erdogan, but it is an example of the West, for lack of a better term, failing to back its own BS and behave according to its own principles.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I don't know if the baseless accusations are changing this, but Kavanaugh has been polling with the worst favorability numbers for a Supreme Court nominee since Bork. And that was before this shitshow started. Worse than Harriet Miers and way below Gorsuch. So a lot of Independents were opposed to him weeks ago. Dunno if this stuff changes their minds.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/22/politics/brett-kavanaugh-least-popular/index.html

[hack]

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-13/unions-did-great-things-for-the-american-working-class

The long march from theory-driven economics to data-driven economics is maybe further along than I'd thought. People are using data to backfill some of the gaps and knock out more theories. What's interesting with this opinion piece in part is who it came from, and how it takes as a given that inequality is something to be fought through policy. Michael Bloomberg's revenue is directly correlated to the head count on Wall Street.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......Not that this was what made Erdogan Erdogan, but it is an example of the West, for lack of a better term, failing to back its own BS and behave according to its own principles.

Good point. I don't know if this relates but the Kavanaugh shit show going on right now can demonstrate why ascending competent leaders don't view taking leadership roles in government as appealing. Why submit your personal lives to untoward scrutiny that can take down whatever you were doing before making yourself available for hi-level government work?

It's pretty clear that democratic government's world-wide are being run by incompetent and mostly corrupt officials who lack any kind of demonstrable leadership qualities. They are largely compromisers who abandon a nation's core democratic values to strike bull-shit political deals nationally and internationally, if a deal is even made when considering kicking the can down the road is easier.

Trump is an outlier. His base considers him a strong leader and to a certain extent he has championed policy that is not altogether insane. He certainly embraces some of America's core values - or at least he pretends he does. Some of the policies he has championed are quite rational actually. But, at the same time, he possesses some of the least appealing qualities of the strong men that the article I linked to above lists. I have a hard time understanding, in light of this reality, why he has any supporters at all .... other than they like to be lead by tyrants because of the appearance that that is better than the alternative of democratic governance.

[hack]

I don't know if the baseless accusations are changing this, but Kavanaugh has been polling with the worst favorability numbers for a Supreme Court nominee since Bork. And that was before this shitshow started. Worse than Harriet Miers and way below Gorsuch. So a lot of Independents were opposed to him weeks ago. Dunno if this stuff changes their minds.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/22/polit...lar/index.html

Depending on the outcome of this, I think we could see a spike in revenue at businesses that teach martial arts to girls. Anyone want to get a venture-capital pool going with me?

[Kapture1]

Any male over the age of 12 needs to start documenting EVERYTHING starting today.

[hack]

It's pretty clear that democratic government's world-wide are being run by incompetent and mostly corrupt officials who lack any kind of demonstrable leadership qualities. They are largely compromisers who abandon a nation's core democratic values to strike bull-shit political deals nationally and internationally, if a deal is even made when considering kicking the can down the road is easier.

YES. THIS PRECISELY. The EU is an example of both the good and bad of this. Decisions in the hands of the politicians are exactly as you describe them. In other areas, where the pols really and truly leave it to Brussels, I have seen some interesting areas in which decisions are not compromised bullshit but in line with the democratic principles upon which these countries claim to have organized themselves. It's always hard for pols to cede little bits of sovereignty to a supranational organization, but when they really commit to it, and remind themselves of why they created these organizations in the first place, and refrain from using them as a fig-leaf for other motives, that's when truly good things happen. In very strict moderation, supranational organizations are the smoothing function that the state-centric global model of organization requires.

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the Bloomberg piece ..... I guess you could make the argument that federal policy promoting unions as a means of reducing wage inequality could reduce the head count on Wall Street, but that's besides the point.

While Bloomberg mentions globalization and the emerging economic power of China as reasons why unions may not be sustainable, he glosses over the implications of that view. As long as there is no consensus globally on wages, encouraging a greater role of unions in the US in raising wages/decreasing wage inequality here could be called a fools errand.

As I remember it, it was the UAW that, in large measure, was responsible for the decline in market share of the US auto industry as that industry bloomed internationally in an environment of significantly lower wages. That was, at the time, a complicated issue in that one could argue that corporate response to union demands led to their own decline.

[Hannibal]

There is no point in data-driven economics if people don't agree on what the important metric is. For Democrats, it is the redistribution of wealth. It is a purely ideological, zero-sum game strategy that is not data-based. The only data that is relevant is the degree to which the wealth has been redistributed. The same goes for the strategy of demographic replacement. It is a zero-sum game, at best. Whoever is in power trades the wealth of the current citizens in exchange for the votes of future citizens. A small demographic of business owners who can take advantage of cheap wages also benefits. It's really that simple. Once the current citizens wake up to this strategy they oppose it overwhelmingly, which leads not to data-driven discussions, but censorship.

There is also no point in data-driven policies if certain data is off limits or too taboo to discuss. Political correctness has kept all kinds of game-changing data out of the public eye for years. It's "hate speech" or "sexism". This is how nonsense myths like the "wage gap" are allowed to exist. The internet threatens to break a lot of these taboos but since all of the big tech companies are run by hardcore Leftists, this information is now being aggressively censored too.

[iam416]

It scares me when I agree with Hannibal. Pretty soon I'm going to be predicting M to go 4-8.

[hack]

So there's no point in arming ourselves with information because doing so isn't a perfect solution without any drawbacks? Seriously?

A data-driven approach is a good idea if it's better than the system it would replace. Is making informed decisions better than making uninformed ones? That's an easy question to answer.

[hack]

On the Bloomberg piece ..... I guess you could make the argument that federal policy promoting unions as a means of reducing wage inequality could reduce the head count on Wall Street, but that's besides the point.

While Bloomberg mentions globalization and the emerging economic power of China as reasons why unions may not be sustainable, he glosses over the implications of that view. As long as there is no consensus globally on wages, encouraging a greater role of unions in the US in raising wages/decreasing wage inequality here could be called a fools errand.

As I remember it, it was the UAW that, in large measure, was responsible for the decline in market share of the US auto industry as that industry bloomed internationally in an environment of significantly lower wages. That was, at the time, a complicated issue in that one could argue that corporate response to union demands led to their own decline.

A reduction in wage inequality is going to mean a reduction in capital-appreciation opportunities via financial engineering -- the sort of thing done by people who need a Bloomberg terminal on their desk. Fewer of those people means less revenue for Bloomberg.

I see your point about China, and it may or may not remain valid. Data show that companies are no longer building their supply chains based solely on costs. I've just been assigned a piece on reduced global mobility at the management level. The period in which companies would pursue any location to save any amount of money may have ended. The savings may have to be larger in the future to justify going overseas, for reasons including populism, legit policy priorities, global-taxation changes, climate change, rising wages in China, etc. Not that this is settled science or anything -- I'm just saying that this is what the numbers show these days, and with economics becoming more data-driven, thinking is changing.

[Hannibal]

So there's no point in arming ourselves with information because doing so isn't a perfect solution without any drawbacks? Seriously?

A data-driven approach is a good idea if it's better than the system it would replace. Is making informed decisions better than making uninformed ones? That's an easy question to answer.

I'm all for arming myself with information, but I would never vote for a candidate to which I am opposed ideologically. Ideology outweighs the importance of data when we have radically different ideologies.

And like I said, this approach will not work unless all data is fair game and nothing is taboo to discuss.