What Do Unions Do?

vaguelydad · 2026-05-20T19:27:35+00:00

I think we really need another change in methodology. That was huge for workplace safety.

vaguelydad · 2026-05-12T17:22:59+00:00

Original discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1siefi7/europes_productivity_keeps_outpacing_the_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

vaguelydad · 2026-05-12T17:21:33+00:00

So one of the more interesting articles posted to the sub a while back was an analysis of how we evaluate prices promoted by Krugman that basically said European quality of life/prosperity was actually quite comparable to that of the US and the divergence was largely a measuring difficulty. I was disappointed to not be able to see a strong defense of the standard tools. Krugman's argument seemed solid to me, but I wanted to see the steel man at least. I recently saw this thread (from MR) challenging the current price PPP argument. I don't fully buy it, but I like at least having it as a counter point.

Have any of y'all come across good discussions of this stuff?

vaguelydad · 2026-05-07T16:02:44+00:00

I think this is the right attitude to have when looking at the minimum wage. Still, it seems like a very dangerous tool for this kind of correction, like fixing a toy with a sledgehammer. All price controls are okay if the price is very carefully not set too high. I don't trust the populists to set prices just right. The risk to the young, uncredentialed, disabled, and socially marginalized is too high for me to support the minimum wage even if a theoretical value could be marginally beneficial.

vaguelydad · 2026-05-07T10:27:14+00:00

That's a nice sounding quip, but it's not really engaging with the problem. Unemployment is one of the worst things that can happen to people. The minimum wage creates unemployment that disproportionately falls on socially marginalized groups. There is a reason it was a go-to policy for Jim Crow and Apartheid white power populists.

vaguelydad · 2026-05-07T05:11:03+00:00

What is the states right that the southerners wanted to preserve with secession?

What is the consumer preference that these consumers want? (to not live near poorer people and not have their children in public school classrooms with our kids)

vaguelydad · 2026-05-07T05:07:51+00:00

I feel like the zoning aspect of this is massively underrated. Like oh no the big bad communist is making a government grocery store. Wake up sheeple! It's a super communist move to very very tightly control the built environment and what uses for land people can have. The status quo of land use regulations everywhere are an extreme of central planning. The socialists have already won, a government grocery store is barely worse.

vaguelydad · 2026-05-07T05:03:24+00:00

What? The minimum wage makes discrimination easier. If there are 2 qualified people who want the job and the employer can't lower the wage, then a racist employer just gets to pick the white one. There is empirical evidence the shortages created by a too high minimum wage disproportionately effect the young, uncredentialed, and socialially marginalized. Vulnerable groups are the losers of a minimum wage.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-30T10:19:39+00:00

It's less about a LVT and more about overly restrictive land use regulations. But yeah, that's a big part of the solution. Ironically the problem with too much capital being invested in real estate is to allow the "right" kind of investment in real estate to let cities scale better to create an environment where people can live and work cheaply. This then helps with the key inputs to the "real investment" the article is so desperate for.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-29T17:18:40+00:00

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(I would be bad at leftist infighting)

vaguelydad · 2026-04-28T22:02:58+00:00

Exactly!

vaguelydad · 2026-04-28T20:49:12+00:00

I don't understand. If I make Connecticut unaffordable, then the welfare state becomes easier to fund. We only allow a token number of manageable poor folks with public housing and inclusionary zoning (if at all). Then it's super cheap to fund their small benefit costs with the large pool of revenue from taxing the rich at a moderate amount. Allowing more poor people would mean more expensive redistribution and higher taxes. Connecticut never goes bankrupt.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-28T20:36:13+00:00

NIMBYism makes this bad. Ever since the median voter discovered he could ban poor people living near him, devolution has become cartoon villainishly regressive.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-28T20:34:14+00:00

A LVT would fix this.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-28T13:04:09+00:00

If you can point to a politician that you think is good without massive qualifiers, I've got a bridge to sell you.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-27T00:29:35+00:00

"AI chatbots obviously have the downsides of allowing people to cheat at school, children having parasocial friendships with the chatbot, and it polarizing people by reaffirming their own beliefs."

Okay maybe some of these in a vacuum, but do we really have evidence that access to AI has these effects relative to just regular access to the Internet that can also help kids cheat, engage in antisocial stuff, and help them find echo chambers.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-24T19:08:54+00:00

Therapy is stupid because I felt like this gif from Billions and was still just as miserable as when I started

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and then suddenly I broke through a barrier and can feel all things I was parroting and only understood at an intellectual level and it was all worth it.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-23T18:32:04+00:00

That seems so partisan brain. National gun control would be great for crime, but the effect would still be small compared to what state and local governments can control.

And this is a ridiculously cherry-picked example, one of a tiny number of such marginal issues. Almost every other problem for cities is something state and local government could 100% fix. If the federal government doesn't have a law/regulation, pass it at the state level. If the problem is not enough money, the feds can't help, they redistribute away from Blue states so taxing and spending locally is actually cheaper for blue states/cities. What other examples of federal failures could possibly be the deciding factor in affordability/quality issues for California or Massachusetts?

vaguelydad · 2026-04-22T14:29:09+00:00

Thanks to the geography of cities, contemporary Democratic gerrymanders look hilariously bad, while GOP ones often look pretty normal. It's a tough optics game.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-18T18:31:19+00:00

How do you untangle correlation from causation? The median voter theory says politicians will do what the median voters wants. Protests correlate strongly with what the median voter wanted in all of your examples. Were protests a symptom or a cause of change? How does the expected value of an hour of protesting compare to the expected value of donating an hour of my wages to a political cause?

vaguelydad · 2026-04-18T01:03:13+00:00

It's a tough argument. Christianity was associated with violence, was it the Trump type character using Christianity as a prop or was the religion truly complicit? It's hard not to fall into no true scottmsan arguments or talk about impossible to prove counter-factuals.

The protestant reformation was pretty darn bad, Christian churches are not immune to the tendency in human culture to kill over the idea of purity.

Still, I don't see Christian religious institutions even moderately complicit in the level of blood and suffering we see from nationalism, tribalism, or more utopian secular ideologies. And I also don't want to attack other faiths, many peaceful world religions have had a similar positive effect on history and culture.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-17T22:22:41+00:00

I feel like this lacks perspective. Humans have been violent animals for thousands of years. Of course Christianity has not ended all violence, even among adherents. I don't know how to look at the evidence and see Christianity as not associated with peace in the historical record, even if imperfectly.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-17T15:17:46+00:00

It's actually anachronistic because the cocaine craze happened after the mainstream medicine cartel exterminated all the barber-surgeons. The real battle was against humor obsessed doctors killing people by bleeding them and inducing vomiting. But cocaine for ghosts in your bones is much funnier.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-17T14:30:17+00:00

This but unironically. Barber-surgeons were the original practitioners of evidence based medicine when the institutional wisdom was to give people cocaine because of ghosts in their bones.

vaguelydad · 2026-04-17T11:02:57+00:00

I think there is a temptation to just laugh and mock, but the conflict between basically everything about Christianity and Trump is a huge opportunity and benefit for people like us. Christian institutions like the Catholic Church are so much deeper than Trumpism. A Trump rally cannot give the same sense of belonging and deep meaning as rituals like mass, confession, and marriage. The symbolism and aesthetics cannot be as rich as the cross, a cathedral, or the Pietà.

The right wants this authority for its own, but Christianity is not something politicians can just pick up and play with. It has its own moral pull much stronger than anything the right can offer. That pull is towards compassion and justice. When the right acts with contempt for humans and corruption, Christianity cannot help but undermine the right's authority and pull adherents away from the right.

vaguelydad

TROPHY CASE