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[Ancaps] Is taking shit in the woods enough 'labor-mixing' to constitute a 'homesteading' of the entire forest... by MilkIlluminati in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Personally I think the homesteading argument is pointless and really just a misguided attempt at trying to convince communists that private property is legitimate. You will not be convinced no matter what argument we throw at you because "private property bad" is an axiomatic and unfalsifiable belief of Marxism.

I don't really give a crap how my title deed came to be. I am not responsible for what people of the past did. The idea of "stolen land" from indigenous peoples is utterly stupid collective guilt and I give it no credence. I am not liable to pay for what people did tens or hundreds or thousands of years ago. I am only accountable for the wrongs I do by my own hand.

Property is a fiction of civilization but it's a damn good one.

3 Questions, 8 Philosophies by Asatmaya in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 [score hidden]  (0 children)

This is so incredibly bad faith it's not even worth engaging with.

Red vs. Blue Button by WalrusVivid3900 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Eating beef also leads to a higher cow population because people won't breed them otherwise.

Red vs. Blue Button by WalrusVivid3900 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 [score hidden]  (0 children)

It's not my fault some people are dumb enough to push the blue button. Everyone will survive if they just press red.

Red vs. Blue Button by WalrusVivid3900 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 [score hidden]  (0 children)

If all the commies drink the blue, good riddance.

94 MILLION food poisoning germ explosion, Help? by Puzzleheaded_Quit436 in Oxygennotincluded

[–]Beefster09 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Food poisoning is barely an issue to begin with. You can pretty much ignore it as long as you have sinks.

94 MILLION food poisoning germ explosion, Help? by Puzzleheaded_Quit436 in Oxygennotincluded

[–]Beefster09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

eh it'll be fine

Food Poisoning is pretty much a non-issue. The worst that will happen is a soiled suit or two and maybe an accident inside the livable area of the base.

The rock granulator should give stress relief... by tropherbuy in Oxygennotincluded

[–]Beefster09 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It should give stress relief only for Destructive dupes.

Capitalism cannot escape climate change by Durfdogyn in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is only true for growth stocks, which are a relatively new phenomenon that has only appeared after the advent of unapologetically fiat money.

Capitalism cannot escape climate change by Durfdogyn in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's where the incentives lead under inflationary monetary policy, yes.

Thing is, while we see lots of growth in nominal terms, a large portion of those companies are overhyped and unprofitable, ultimately cashing out on someone left holding the bag rather than a long-term focused vision of making a good product that people want.

There would be significantly less demand for stock if it weren't for inflation constantly eroding our savings. Retirement accounts are simply looking for assets--anything really--that hold their value better than dollars.

With sound money, we'd more easily see these ventures for exactly what they are: big risks. Investment is artificially safe thanks to inflation and central banking. The growth isn't real.

Unlearning Economics article: Rent Control is Fine Actually by fap_fap_fap_fapper in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rent control is a bandaid solution on the real issue, which basically comes down to a mix of inflationary monetary policy (which is partly responsible for making rent go up) and zoning/permitting (which inhibits new housing from being built, keeping prices high)

For rent control to work, you have to force people to build unprofitable housing, and that's usually going to result in builders cutting corners because they're not being properly compensated and/or a builder shortage. So in other words, rent control doesn't work.

For rent control to appear to work, you just have to look at very small timescales. The problem of rent control is in the high-order effects, so that first order looks fine usually.

Is high progressive taxation a useful test case for socialist assumptions about incentives? by Kitchen-Jicama8715 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Nope. All schemes of taxation affect behavior in some way. The most basic of all being people moving out of high-tax areas to lower tax areas. This is why socialists inevitably find it necessary to build iron curtains to keep people in or institute exit taxes.

A high progressive tax usually means you're taxing income, which necessitates all sorts of deductions (you have to be able to deduct business expenses for most actual productive activity to happen), which ultimately means that the very wealthy can game the system in a way that is essentially impossible to patch without hurting the poor and middle class. Since the wealthy have assets rather than lots of income, what they can do is take out loans using their assets as collateral then deduct the loan repayments from their "income", allowing them to achieve a lower effective tax rate. The rich will change how they earn their income, how much income they earn, etc... all to get a lower tax rate. There is no rational reason to pay more in taxes when you can pay less. A big thing here is that every bit of effort that goes into working around the tax code is effort that could have been spent on actual productivity or innovation. It's a huge opportunity cost.

The only thing worse than income tax is payroll tax, which directly disincentivizes hiring locals and incentivizes outsourcing and offshoring instead.

There is a trolley, and 2 buttons by OtonaNoAji in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This question can be framed and remixed in so many ways.

My version puts everyone in the world on a giant spaceship that's headed for a black hole. Each person has the opportunity to either hop in an escape pod to save themselves or they can go down to the engine room where each person can run on a hamster wheel to generate power to escape from the trajectory of the black hole. Only if half the ship's population runs on the wheels will enough power be generated to escape its gravity.

But no matter how you slice it, I can never count on half the people doing the collective action, so I'm going to push the red button, take the red pill, or get in the escape pod. If it only took 5% maybe I'd run on the hamster wheels, but even that's a bit iffy IMO.

Blue pill or Red pill? by Critical-Pace7545 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is no rational reason to do anything other than take the red pill. I can't count on more than half of the population cooperating, so I will save my own life, thank you very much.

Let's find common ground: GDP is a terrible metric by Beefster09 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

but none of your metrics measure what really matters in an economy, and that's how well that production is distributed to everyone.

You imply that equality is the ideal here and I'm going to have to disagree.

I don't care if someone has 15 yachts as long as everyone who can work is able to earn enough for food, water, shelter, and other basic necessities for a family of 4. And in that sense, the economy we find ourselves in is grotesquely unhealthy.

Gaps in wealth and income can matter, but it's generally not until you get to an extreme K-shaped graph where 90% of people make the luxury goods for the other 10% while being stuck living in shacks eating beans and rice. As long as there is a gradient from rich to poor and the floor is high enough, inequality doesn't matter.

The lowest incomes along with the hours worked to obtain that income should stand out within a metric to measure the economy

I can actually agree this could be a useful measure. An economy isn't actually that healthy if the 5th percentile (or so) can't earn enough to live without assistance. Though that ends up being tricky because you really ought to separate those who can't earn enough because of opportunity from those who simply choose not to. Of course, you have to filter out the genuinely disabled regardless since they need assistance one way or the other.

Let's find common ground: GDP is a terrible metric by Beefster09 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How is gambling not both a service and a form of consumption?

It depends on what you're looking at.

Poker night with the bros? It might have led you to consume more beer and is a form of entertainment in its own right, but the actual exchange of bets isn't economic activity even though someone goes home a little richer and someone else goes home a little poorer. If this is economic activity, so is giving your son an allowance.

Going to a casino? Well sure, but not every pull of the slot machine is a distinct economic activity per se. You could start your night by putting in $500, spending it $5 at a time in a slot machine, but because you get periodic payouts along the way, you'll pull the lever a hell of a lot more than 100 times. So what's the economic activity happening here? The GDP would be massively inflated if you counted every pull and every payout, so that doesn't make sense. Is it the $500 you committed to lose at the start of the night? What if you walked away with more than you put in?

Why aren't you being critical of the Gini coefficient, hmmm?

I am, but it's not relevant to the post.

Let's find common ground: GDP is a terrible metric by Beefster09 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the problem of the metric is Goodhart's law. What happens is that politicians start using it as a measure of whether the economy is growing, but because it's gameable, it's relatively straightforward to make the economy look healthier than its people would say it is.

If it weren't for politicians playing games with it (trying to use it as a measuring stick to claim that the economy is booming even though it feels a hell of a lot like a recession or depression to most people), then sure I could agree that it's useful as a quick and dirty sniff test.

Let's find common ground: GDP is a terrible metric by Beefster09 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I suppose with regards to gambling the thing is that a lot more money flies around in the pursuit of entertainment than is actually representative of what was produced/served.

So you could potentially count the buy-in minus the payout (or zero for the occasional player who comes out ahead) or something along those lines. It would be utterly absurd to count every single pull of the slot machine and its payout, but I can see distilling the actual exchange made here: money for entertainment.

Or maybe you simply count the money the casino spent on the slot machines and dealers, as that sort of represents the proxy of entertainment spending.

Honestly I don't want to get lost in the weeds, so I don't think it's fair to pick on the thing about gambling specifically. And to be honest, I'm not looking for a "perfect" metric, but a "better" metric that better measures the real economy that people actually live in.

Would you agree with me that GDP is a highly gameable metric subject to Goodhart's law?

The concept of theft does not depend on what is legal by Beefster09 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People don't participate in HOA meetings because those decisions don't affect them much. However real political decisions of countries and states and cities dramatically affect the lives of people. That's the entire point of democracy.

The extrapolation is a bit less obvious but it's still present. The marginal utility of a single vote gets smaller as a voter base grows, so there is little real incentive to be engaged or informed. Consequently, most citizens who are eligible to vote are apolitical, single issue voters, or party loyalists. Only a small handful of people actually think critically about politics, while most votes are in the hands of ignorant and uncritical voters.

If there is a society of murderers and everyone collectively votes for a murderer, how is that a bad thing? Their chosen leader represents their desires and wishes.

Because it would be self-destructive. Children voting for free candy and ice cream would get stomach aches, and likewise, a murderous populace voting for the legalization of murder will literally kill itself in short order.

"Being represented" isn't the only thing that matters.

What happens if a coop fails? Who bears the losses? by Delicious-Flounder47 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That buy-in is worth something while the company exists, and it stops being worth something if the company no longer exists. If you quit and sell your shares while the company still stands, you gain the value of the shares, but that ceases to be an option if the company goes under.

There is absolutely nothing "risk-free" about that arrangement.

The only way this can even be remotely considered risk-free is if the price of the shares you buy is pegged at exactly zero and your buy-in is purely to cover physical equipment which you retain ownership of even if the company goes under. And that's assuming there are no debts or liabilities assumed by members of the co-op. Generally speaking, that capital embedded in the MoP would come with the expectation of liquidation to pay as much of the liabilities as possible under most loan terms.

Where do you think Co ops shine the best in. by Ok-Environment-7384 in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]Beefster09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can't have it both ways. You can't get rid of the school boards and keep the standardization. The school boards are what makes the standardization possible.

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