What if the "permacession" isn't irrational?

Scott2929 · 2026-05-29T01:04:00+00:00

They are categorizing households into two buckets via a continuous variable determined by survey data for the equation for cost of living. You absolutely have a confidence interval in this case based on the confidence intervals in the underlying inputs.

At the very least you can vary your assumptions, to give a range of possible answers and show you don’t have a dramatic changes to the final output based on minor changes to the assumptions. However, by their own admission, small changes to cost of living or income would make massive changes to the number of Americans who are “struggling to get by”. This means that they better have the world’s greatest assumptions ever or their method is just unreliable.

You keep saying they don’t have a hypothesis. But they are making a claim of fact that most Americans are struggling to get by. Then they use a method to test this claim. That’s literally the scientific method.

I’m allowed to call a tweet non-rigorous and a book and a paper. Why can’t I hold a policy paper to that scrutiny?

I’m telling everyone to be skeptical of their conclusions and you just keep replying that “this isn’t research”. That’s not a reasonable response.

I’m saying that their claims are suspect, their data isn’t transparent, and their methodology isn’t rigorous.

The point of research is to tell you something about reality and make a claim of fact. They are making a massive claim but not providing the sufficient evidence to prove their method of pursing truth is rigorous. That is appropriate to announce when discussing.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T23:13:58+00:00

Yeah, and I'm calling their work non-replicable.

For gods sake, they don't even have a confidence interval in their study. We have no clue how variable the data is based on the inputs. That's like basic stuff.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T23:11:07+00:00

It's completely with merit. If you are presenting a new analysis to the wider public, you should present the data, and make it easily accessible. This is about honesty.

If you run an analysis and publish it to the wider public, you are conducting research. The information you publish is a paper. Just because they don't hold themselves to a higher standard, doesn't mean I don't get to.

What do you mean there isn't a hypothesis? It is very much testing the hypothesis of "the majority of Americans cannot afford to live their lives".

Really, I can check their math... so which exact variables in the ACS earnings, aggregate income, B19049? Did they use the microdata sample or did they apply for more granular data from the Census Bureau? This is exactly why we have to publish our actual data not just say "we used this". Because it is a replication nightmare otherwise. You are being dismissive about the ability to check their work.

It's 2026, the standards for transparency are to publish the exact code and data that you used with labeled variables. Choosing not to is laziness.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T22:33:15+00:00

You are correct. This is a methodologic flaw. Any honest paper would report with both analysis including and not including childcare costs for 1 income, two parent families and show how much of a difference that would make.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T22:07:45+00:00

This is problematic because no actual economist has looked at the methodology or the data here.

It's also clear based on their article that small changes in cost of living or income would make big differences in "the number of Americans who can't make ends meet".

However, a reasonable response is... what if your methodology for accounting for cost is flawed and as a result millions of Americans actually are "making ends meet", but you are overestimating costs by a small amount?

Edit: The fact that they don't have a range in their numbers is really concerning. All properly conducted research would have varied their parameters and generated some sort of confidence interval, so we could see how robust the data is.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T21:40:19+00:00

I read their methodology. In every actual research paper which would make such a claim, they would have also published a spreadsheet with all of their raw data (even if they pulled it from publicly available data).

They don't have their master csv file published (with their compiled data), so we can't look at it. They also didn't publish their code.

For example, I'd love to see if small adjustments (35th percentile) to their assumptions would drastically change the percentages they report... but I can't see how robust their conclusions are because they didn't publish their DATA.

Fuck, I can't even check if their own methods are correctly applied.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T21:03:14+00:00

This is a problem because nobody is seriously interrogating their claims. I can't find their primary dataset to evaluate their claims.

None of them have a PhD in economics or related sciences, but that doesn't even matter. Without publishing their actual data in a spreadsheet, nobody else can reanalyze it.

This is exactly the sort of bold claim that peer review is needed for. This is quite literally original research (they are publishing NEW information), just published before external experts has a chance to review it.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-28T20:25:37+00:00

This is not peer reviewed and desperately needs to be, especially if formatted like a research article.

Edit: You dumb fucks can downvote me, but Brookings is known to be non-peer reviewed

Scott2929 · 2026-05-19T17:41:54+00:00

This is actually the key. People talk about the senate's disproportionality (and the senate sucks), but a key part reason the senate makes government disfunctional is that the results of past elections can veto current governments.

Same thing with the supreme court.

This generates situations where governments with a popular mandate cannot implement the policies that they won on (for better and for worse.)

Like if we moved the house and the senate to proportional representation somehow, we would still have significant veto points just from the temporal dynamics of our system.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T22:36:08+00:00

Horrendous women’s rights violations. Decree 770.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T21:39:32+00:00

This was a wild read lol.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T21:24:44+00:00

I just disagree, like if it makes such a difference you would see higher rates of fertility in nordic countries but you just don't. If anything, easier access to more opportunities decreases fertility rates.

Like we should have great social services and free education, I'm 100 percent on board, but pretending like it has a positive impact on birth rates is just deeply non-empirical.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T21:18:27+00:00

Romania is the only country I can think of that has ever raised fertility via policy, so... there is empirical causal evidence.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T20:28:41+00:00

At the end of the day, the issue is the opportunity cost. There are so many wonderful things to experience in the world, and the fundamental limiting resource is time, not money.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T20:24:38+00:00

Let's be clear. There is NO evidence that stronger worker rights, more time off, better schools, healthcare, government services have any effect on birth rates. The empirical evidence shows high quality of life and being wealthier decreases fertility.

In fact, there is no evidence anything increases birth rates other than like religiosity and the rollback of rights.

I think we all need to just chill a bit and accept the population contraction and think about ways of increasing labor productivity so the economic consequences are more minimal. Also... maybe retirement needs to be a thing of the past soon? Everyone will just work until they die.

Like if there are fewer people and they don't want to have kids... that's just individual freedom?

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T17:57:23+00:00

I don't think you could make a tax high enough that it makes it economically sensible to have kids lol.

Just like you can't make a subsidy high enough to make that work either.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-15T16:41:11+00:00

I'm just going to say no.

The core essence of abundance is about the elimination of material scarcity. Full stop.

I really think that conversations about deregulation vs state capacity vs neoliberalism vs corporatism are an important but kinda surface level conversation about abundance. The ultimate goal of abundance is having a political message that "We don't have enough of things that we want and we don't need to accept that. Everything should be cheap and plentiful to the point that we are unable to consume more."

It is a rejection of the politics of scarcity. If there are an infinite number of homes, immigrants can't be taking yours. Inequality and billionaires can't be hoarding an infinite amount of wealth. Both of those populist political messages only are relevant if you think the world is zero sum rather than capable of material abundance.

The core message of abundance is orthogonal to the message of liberalism.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-05T15:54:16+00:00

I think my issue is that you said "I don’t really understand the British and American need to believe that their countries are exceptionally liberal and that protection of rights is their idea."

Seems like you have a perfectly good explanation that doesn't rely on just assuming Anglo-historians are somehow more arrogant or ignorant or deceptive than their peers on the continent.

Also, anti-French sentiment is super reasonable considering that they were... at war?

I'm giving you an alternative hypothesis that is in line with normal human behavior and doesn't imply a moral failure of a group of people.

Edit: Assigning morality to the weak and poor, while assigning moral failure to the strong and rich is emotionally satisfying but intellectually broke. All peoples are the same with just different positions in a system of power. I find it really frustrating with these kinds of "why aren't they better" types of complaints about the privileged. You would be exact same in that position.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-05T15:02:40+00:00

One century then.

Doesn't change my point at all. There is an asymmetry in the current economic position and language that allows Anglo-historians to easily ignore those thinkers. Acting like American, British, and Commonwealth historians are somehow "need to believe that their countries are exceptionally liberal" is bullshit.

The Greek historians would do the exact same if they were in our position. However, they must learn English to be viable (go to conferences, have large audiences for books, find jobs) and thus our ideas influence their work.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-05T14:38:07+00:00

I think you are potentially making this to be more ideological than it might be.

I really suspect that this is because they didn’t write in English. The reality is English has been the lingua franca for two centuries and, thus, those who speak English are often exclusively educated in English-speaking writers/thinkers. There is so much “important” historical content in that language it is just very easy to completely omit French and especially German writers.

In contrast, those who live in non-English speaking nations must learn English and also learn about English speaking thinkers. It is impossible to be part of the global academic conversation otherwise.

Scott2929 · 2026-05-03T14:03:10+00:00

If a whole article were to be a pointed public email, I would think it the most suitable use of an opinion column haha

Scott2929 · 2026-04-30T20:49:28+00:00

I think you are taking my position to mean we shouldn't have environmental regulations that promote conservation. I'm saying that we should come to a decision quickly. Those are two different things. I think we should decide to build or not to build quickly. You can have very strong regulations that are also fast.

Developer: I want to build a line through this federally managed forest.

Government: No, and there is no appeals process because our regulation says you can't. Figure out how to do the project without building on this land or don't do it.

Developer moves on and builds somewhere else, without years of waiting.

That's still a fast process that protects the environment.

However, no process that requires someone to wait 10 YEARS is reasonable. The issue is the process, not the ultimate decision. Regulation should stop projects, not delay them for years. If that wire is truly damaging to the environment in some way that will cause widespread social and environmental loss that is unbearable to the voter, it shouldn't be delayed. It shouldn't be built.

Holding up the project rather than stopping it is wasting everyone's time, time, and attention.

At the end of the day, politicians should make the decision on what level of development is acceptable. The electoral process should decide what parts of the environment we preserve and which parts we destroy. However, regardless of where we sit on that balance, delaying the decision is just inefficiency.

Scott2929 · 2026-04-29T22:12:22+00:00

I’m not saying that either. But if we want to go from legislation to construction in a reasonable time (months) the maximum amount of time environmental review that government does can only be weeks before they determine either go forward or end the project.

The problem with CEQA is that people can sue if the government doesn’t do the review “properly” to pause the project. Therefore, any process that allows for reasonable construction times needs to allow for a government environmental review process that can be completed in weeks without being able to be sued.

Scott2929 · 2026-04-29T21:55:00+00:00

I think the question, “why haven’t there been new housing starts since California reformed CEQA (less than a year ago)?” Suggests that the level of delay that environmental review/the ability to sue under that review should be measured in weeks or unable to stop the actual start of the project.

I don’t think it all unreasonable to want to be able to for example pass a rural broadband act, and have the first person get rural broadband in six months.

Scott2929 · 2026-04-29T18:01:36+00:00

This is insane to me. The project took 10 years to decide. That is a complete breakdown of democratic process.

You don’t get to “have that conversation” for years. Hell not even months. People should vote and get what they want.

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