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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 12h

The solution is "pass permitting and interconnection reform ten years ago"

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 13h

"Lost autonomy to capital" What do you mean by that?

Somewhat dependent on the field but majority of engineers have arguably never had it better in terms of income, variety of employment opportunities, etc. Certainly doesn't feel like we have less autonomy than, say, 20 years ago

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 14h

If engineers don't stand to gain much from unionization personally, why would the average engineer support the labor movement?

As an engineer wage compression across my industry + higher consumer prices on goods/services outside my industry would reduce my QoL. Thank god for right to work!

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 17h

Obviously a lot of confounding factors but comparing the salary/benefits mix of the average engineer in the US vs unionized engineers in EU is not favorable to unionization

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 3d

"Why don't I get the auto insurance premium refunded if I don't get in a crash?"

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 4d

The closest paradigm we have for analyzing it is addictive drugs but it's not 1 to 1. We need more RCTs on how to successfully reduce screen time.

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 4d

Most of these calls for viewpoint diversity in print media come from college educated Rs who are not representative of the GOP base, who largely don't care.

Funny enough the college educated Rs are incredibly post-materialist and culture war obsessed based on what they do read (ex: The Free Press)

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 4d

My RSS feed is like WSJ, FT, Niskanen, National Affairs, R Street, etc and I'm a D+infinity voter lol.

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

What's the solution? Because the Chinese approach of forcibly directing investment away from infotech hasn't prevented slow TFP and employment growth.

Are we cursed to live in the max 2% GDP growth world?

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

The replies to this are another example of the innumeracy of the left. You would think getting majority of college ed voters would confer a decisive epistemic advantage but nope!

Public policy & econ are specialized fields that only a very small number of people are qualified to talk about.

Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 9d

“The problem with billionaires isn’t that they’re hoarding money that would otherwise pay for a Scandinavian social utopia. It’s that their money has become a source of wildly distorted political power that allows a few men with extremist views to wreak havoc on the rest of us.”

Billionaires Are Hoarding Power, Not Money

Billionaire money has become a source of wildly distorted political power that allows a few men with extremist views to wreak havoc on the rest of us.

www.liberalcurrents.com

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

The public yearns for Bill Clinton neoliberalism with Pat Buchanan characteristics

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

One reason the left is so focused on inequality these days is because the politics of welfare-expansion is impossible (broad based tax increases very unpopular + less urgency since poverty is way down vs 60s) but inequality is pretty low salience to blue collar workers anyway so 🤷

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

The welfare-expansion justification for higher taxes on billionaires is pretextual and everyone knows it. The DSA/Sanders left views soaking the rich as inherently valuable even if it doesn't improve QoL for workers.

This is why DSAism has failed to resurrect the New Deal coalition lol

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 8d

Seems not-great that monopolizing educated voters has not conferred that much of an epistemic advantage to the left.

"Data centers are consuming all the water!" misinfo is absolutely rampant in my (very progressive) social circle, for example

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 10d

DSA left: Focus on inequality (Eat the Rich) over absolute poverty/tax-and-transfers

"Woke" left: Embrace postmaterialism, culture war is insatiable unlike material needs

Abundance left: RETVRN to the left-of-center being Liberals/Whigs fighting protectionists & feudalists as in 19th C

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 10d

An underrated reason for Dem infighting is that project of welfare expansion that defined the left-of-center in the 20th C has run out of steam for various reasons (politics of tax increases, country much richer so less urgency) and there's no consensus on what should replace it.

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 10d

The politics of broad-based tax increases are so toxically unpopular that (to my knowledge) no socialist/DSA/progressive pol or candidate has proposed financing welfare expansion with a VAT/higher payroll tax.

It's always [narrow tax on billionaires that wouldn't be enough to pay for anything]

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 11d

An older farmer (like this guy) was likely around for the 80s farm crisis that drove a lot of farmers to the Dems.

Hicklib farmers in general are a dying breed more due to rural depopulation than polarization

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 11d

Neurotic upper middle class professionals who constantly self-flagellate about how conscientious their language is are the only group I trust to enforce social etiquette and moral norms more broadly.

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 12d

Most US social democrats have given up on broad-based tax increases as a way to finance welfare state expansion and have instead shifted to discretionary extortion of private market transactions since it's lower salience.

Left-NIMBY inclusionary zoning schemes are another example.

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 13d

Liberals shouldn't concede an inch on the hereditarian nonsense.

Universalizing chauvinism is the answer: all group differences are cultural, WASP culture is the apotheosis of human social forms, and anyone can become a WASP.

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 13d

The irony is that racialism/hereditarianism is to the right what Marxism is to the left: an entirely discredited relic of the 19th century that attracts failed elites and bums who couldn't hack it in the traditional ladder of success.

As Stephen Hawking said, only losers care about their IQ.

testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 13d

The new right are racialists that think outcomes are mostly determined by race and any attempt to change outcomes with policy is interfering with immutable inequalities (not unlike communism and economic inequality).

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 14d

Yea the net effect of Fox News isn't to literally brainwash but to smooth over differences in the conservative coalition that would otherwise act as wedge issues.

Dem media by contrast loves internecine fights.

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testotestotesto.bsky.social @testotestotesto.bsky.social · 15d

Open societies looking at the published stats of authoritarian governments: 😯

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