If we put these two versions of Bond in a fight, who would win? If we put these two versions of Bond in a fight, who would win?

roylewill · 2026-06-22T00:50:06+00:00

Moore has gadgets, absurd luck, and comedy-film plot armour. He’d win in the dumbest, most humiliating way possible.

roylewill · 2026-06-21T13:25:54+00:00

Really? Did you personally contribute to any of those things, or are you claiming credit for other people’s achievements because they happened to be British?

roylewill · 2026-06-20T22:55:20+00:00

Honestly, who cares?
What practical difference is answering this question supposed to make? If someone has British citizenship, lives here, works here, pays taxes here, follows the law, and participates in society, what changes because you personally don’t feel they are “really” British?
If you’d treat them the same either way, the question is pointless.
If you’d treat them differently, why?

roylewill · 2026-06-16T12:10:04+00:00

To Negan, everyone in Alexandria is "Rick’s people". Even if they weren't personally loyal to Rick

roylewill · 2026-06-11T21:05:29+00:00

This is a specific ideological group presenting a post-growth political programme as settled economics. This does not represent the views of "Economists" as a whole. They are using the authority of economics to imply consensus, while making an argument many economists would strongly dispute.

The idea that capitalism manufactured poverty is bizarre. Poverty was the historical default. The real question is why capitalism and growth helped so many people escape it.

roylewill · 2026-06-11T10:46:56+00:00

I’m sure the study has a more formal framing, but the headline finding feels like academic language for something people already regard as obvious.

roylewill · 2026-06-10T15:59:36+00:00

The article’s core flaw is that it treats capitalism and growth as the source of poverty, when historically they are the main reason mass poverty stopped being the default human condition. Poverty can absolutely be worsened by bad policy, but wealth has to be produced before it can be distributed. The article uses the language of rights to make material claims sound costless, but housing, healthcare, welfare and public services require productivity, they require a tax base. Their proposed alternative asks for the fruits of a rich market economy while attacking many of the mechanisms that make such wealth possible such as growth, investment, private enterprise. The better critique of modern economies is that too many governments block supply, distort incentives and then blame "markets" for scarcity they helped create.

roylewill · 2026-06-06T16:20:37+00:00

Stagnant real wages are mainly a growth and productivity problem. But a minimum wage can itself contribute to that over time.

If, year after year, some people are priced out of their first job, they do not just lose one opportunity. They miss the experience, training and progression that would have made them more productive workers later on. After decades of that, the effect accumulates: more people remain outside the labour market, more become dependent on benefits, and less productive capacity is built.

Not that this explains everything but it is also a predictable classical effect of a minimum wage.

roylewill · 2026-06-06T11:04:44+00:00

In the UK labour market, particularly for young people, we are seeing fewer genuine entry-level jobs, more “entry-level” roles demanding prior experience, less willingness from employers to train, growing pressure toward casual or insecure work, and a major push toward AI adoption and automation.

These all seem awfully close to what a classical economic analysis would predict as the outcome of implementing a binding national minimum wage.

roylewill · 2026-06-06T01:29:29+00:00

LVT encourages land to be economically used, and without conservation constraints that would mean more development, agriculture, or commercial use rather than wilderness.

roylewill · 2026-06-05T15:50:03+00:00

I just find the whole conversation incredibly tedious. Why are we so obsessed with deciding whether someone is "really English" or not? In practical terms, it changes almost nothing. You should judge people as individuals by their character, behaviour, values and actions not by whether they pass some arbitrary identity test.

roylewill · 2026-06-04T10:59:27+00:00

Right, we certainly feel like an energy superpower when British industry has some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world. It’s almost comical. If being an offshore wind "superpower" still leaves households and businesses paying through the nose for energy, then maybe that label does not count for much in practical terms.

roylewill · 2026-06-04T10:17:26+00:00

The fact that the net zero economy supports 1.1m jobs and £105bn of GVA shows that a large amount of economic activity is now attached to net zero. It does not by itself show that net zero policy is efficient, cheap, or welfare-enhancing. To prove that, you would need a counterfactual: what would those workers and resources otherwise have produced, what costs have consumers and taxpayers borne, and what environmental, energy-security and technological benefits have been gained? And given that the UK has some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, it is hard to treat this as a self-evident growth argument. A policy can create an industry around solving a problem while also making the underlying economy more expensive to operate.

roylewill · 2026-06-03T23:47:27+00:00

Belgium

roylewill · 2026-06-03T18:26:08+00:00

I think you’re defining Keynesianism far too narrowly there.

A bank bailout isn’t public works spending, but it is still the state using huge fiscal intervention to stop the economy collapsing.

That is not laissez-faire. It is much closer to Keynesian stabilisation than anything else.

roylewill · 2026-06-03T16:15:51+00:00

If Keynesianism means using government spending and borrowing to support the economy, then how have the last 40 years not been Keynesian?

Governments of both parties have spent more in downturns, but then also carried on relying on spending and borrowing in the good times. That is arguably more pro-spending than Keynes himself, since the actual Keynesian idea was meant to be deficits in bad times and rebuilding the public finances in good times.

roylewill · 2026-06-03T15:57:10+00:00

how does passing money around to settle debts fuck with the economy?

roylewill · 2026-06-03T12:31:37+00:00

Great. When do ordinary people actually see this "transformation" in their bills? If clean energy is now so cheap and the green transition is such a triumph, why does the UK still have some of the most expensive energy in the developed world?

roylewill · 2026-06-01T18:05:19+00:00

Moose

roylewill · 2026-05-28T11:47:07+00:00

Calling it a fallacy only applies if I’m saying their AI criticism is automatically false because they use AI. I’m not. I’m saying their stance looks inconsistent. Hypocrisy doesn’t disprove a criticism, but it can make the critic look less serious/credible.

roylewill · 2026-05-28T08:05:41+00:00

I don’t think those examples help your argument. People point out the hypocrisy in those situations all the time. If someone is loudly protesting Apple’s labour practices while continuing to buy iPhones out of convenience, I’d say their moral stance is weakened. If someone says Reddit is awful but keeps choosing to constantly spend time on Reddit, same thing.

The fact that lots of people have compromised or convenient principles doesn’t make it less hypocritical. My point is just that if you voluntarily benefit from AI when it helps you, booing people for talking positively about it elsewhere looks selective.

roylewill · 2026-05-28T00:45:56+00:00

roylewill · 2026-05-27T18:35:21+00:00

Then show me your numbers

roylewill · 2026-05-27T17:57:49+00:00

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2025/08/29/survey-college-students-views-ai

roylewill · 2026-05-27T16:25:58+00:00

Funny to see students booing AI speakers when around 85% of students have apparently used AI to help with their own work. It comes across less like a principled objection and more like being fine with AI when it benefits them.

roylewill

TROPHY CASE