No, that doesn't follow. The alternative (and to me obviously correct answer) is that "austerity" is a trick and the only alternative to growing deficit spending is higher taxes. Precisely because it's not a transient problem, random unprincipled cuts cannot solve it; there's no baseline healthy budget that we can get back to if we just trim some excess.
The question of how someone who wants to lose weight should do so doesn't really have much to do with why people in general are more overweight than decades ago. People in the 80s and 90s had a lot of processed foods, didn't generally use food scales, and calorie counter apps hadn't been invented yet.
It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's usually much better for your career to have other people reorged into your team. Even if the reorg doesn't reset promotion progress for everyone who moves (which it often does!) that way you get to demonstrate leadership ramping the new folks up on how things work in your neck of the woods.
The Wikipedia article doesn't make it obvious, but even Munich itself wasn't able to migrate everyone off of the MS stack. One of the linkrotted sources (https://web.archive.org/web/20180516042059/https://www.techr...) says they had about 17% of computers running Windows after the migration "completed" because some required programs couldn't run on their Linux distro. It's not obvious whether the working model was that 17% of staff used Windows exclusively or all staff had to find a Windows box to do some of their work, but either one sounds pretty obnoxious to me.
I think it will be quite unpleasant for my peers and I if there's not enough working age adults around to produce goods and services for us when we're old.
Because you thought that this trend could have continued for centuries?
We built an economy based on the fact that resources and population could grown indefinitely and now we are surprised that we cannot cope with limits. Looks like we'll have to learn it the hard way.
What's desirable is not population expansion but neither is population collapse, it's population stability.
This also has nothing to do with Capitalism being built for perpetual growth: of course it is deemed to fail at some point in a finite world, but that's irrelevant to the topic of demography. If anything, the system will see the population decline as an opportunity, as it means fewer people to share the resources with.
I think that the crux of the problem is that populations are inherently unstable. There is only one point of equilibrium and that point is very hard to achieve, barring some kind of dystopian tyranny. There are just too many things that influence boom/bust dynamics (world wars, contraception, education, culture etc.)
There is only one point of stability and getting there is like placing a basketball atop of a flagpole.
You don't need exact stability though, having a fertility rate just above or just below replacement rate in periods wouldn't be too big of a deal.
But now we are facing a crisis. For instance the next South Korean generation is set to be half of the current one. And fertility declined strongly there over the past 10 years. Many countries are now at levels SK had ten years ago (well below the replacement rate by higher) and if the trend continue they may end up in the same situation as SK in a few years.
Halving your population over one generation is a catastrophic event.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
The GDP rise your talking about is to some extent an exchange rate phenonomena. Russia's currency collapsed in the early 90s, by the 00's it was able to strengthen and stabilize. Quality of life went down, but it was not proportionate to the collapse in GDP. Thinking about similar phenomenon occurring in the United States is kind of pointless, that would require a collapse in the dollars reserve currency status which would have dramatic ramifications world wide. The Dollar is the yardstick, if another currency became stronger, it would be the yardstick, and that's an entire regime change kind of for everybody. While Russia's currency can collapse in strength vis a vis the dollar, and then increase a great deal, but it was weaker than the dollar at every point. The collapse in its strength meant that it was difficult for the country to trade in that period. But Russia still had its domestic industry through the entire period, which wasn't affected to the degree that the collapse in trade and currency value would suggest,
Also the volatility of economic growth of smaller countries tends to be much higher than anything experienced by developed countries. When you start from a small scale, GDP jumps of 10x are hardly unheard of. While increases of such magnitude in an already developed country would be unprecedented.
Also, the Russian economy is just a series of frauds run by lawless oligarchs stacked on top of each other. The only limiting factor on them is when Putin randomly decides to throw one of them out of a window. It's a pure patrimonialist system, which is a system sustained by lawlessness, manipulation, and fraud. This is of course the truth of the fascist system itself, its simply an attempt to wrap the whole of society in one big patrimonialist network. There's a reason they had to invade Ukraine - the bills were coming due, and they knew the only way they could make good on promises they otherwise couldn't keep was a sustained program of national subjugation and exploitation. This was inevitable from the moment the system was set up. This system is inherently unstable.
The words of the participants in the system while it is ongoing are meaningless. They are wrapped in some kind of patrimonial network or another, supporting some kind of overhyped fraud or another that represents all their dreams and aspirations. They are censored, subject to constant manipulation, and deliberately manipulated with false flags and psy ops. Their whole society is designed as a giant cartwheel to shove people into various frauds. I can be sad for victims of fraud, yes, but that doesn't make them any easier to deal with before they give up on their expectations and stop believing the lies of the one who is defrauding them, who frequently sicks them on anyone who attempts to combat the fraud, telling them that "Actually that person is the one who's keeping you from getting your money!" Hitler arrayed millions of German youth upon fields of slaughter with such tactics once before, why would we expect any different outcome now? We should've known better.
The problem is that they also understand the benefits of technology. It's easy to limit "screen time" in the abstract, and not too hard to keep it going through toddlerhood if you want. It's much harder to tell your 12 year old that they're not allowed to stay connected with their friends when your own friends just sent you a meme in the group chat 5 minutes ago.
> Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet
This is not only untrue, it's actually the only worthwhile course.
I know that bans, rules, and technical solutions are not substitutes for parenting. This is why all the kids of the parents I know who have tried that are doing all the supposedly disallowed things secretly (and circumventing the technical restrictions with ease).
It's shocking to read opinions that kids would not «have that level of self-control». Children can display self-control... And of course they can.
(Just a tiny example: in many countries, we have them study since the age of five, sometimes earlier. They already have a sufficiently working anterior cingulate gyrus at and before that age; they have understanding of tradeoffs at and before that age.)
--
Ooooh, hitters that will probably reveal to be snipers. That just confirms the point: if some people think it normal to gesticulate and not formulate - well, that's them, not all... Some children will have a weaker will. Some will have a stronger one! And surely it can be educated.
Does that explain why most societies don't permit children to drive cars? Perhaps that's not based on development, but just being too short? I kid, but clearly we don't let children drive, vote, drink alcohol, have sex etc. because of general observations about their limits, including self-control.
We don't let children vote because they are not wise enough: we demand a threshold for accrued mental competence is gained. Similarly, cars give them a power similar to that of guns: hence the restriction past the threshold.
We don't let children damage themselves because it is plain indefensible. If they want to, they must have passed said formal threshold.
Technically in the US farmer's kids can drive at 12 without a license if they are on "farm business" including hauling massive loads, both with tractors and regular cars and trucks. If they wanted they could put an unsecured goat in the back seat of an unlicensed car and drive to town with it.
Somewhat relatedly, there are US states where the age of consent (for sex with an older partner) is 13 years old, and the age of consent for marriage is 16.
Define "sex with an older partner". I'm pretty sure that for sex with someone of arbitrary older age, the age of consent is 16-18 in every state. If you're counting limited age difference then you might be right but that phrasing is misleading
Right. The question is whether porn is poisonous, and many people (myself included) genuinely feel the answer is yes. Mature, responsible adults can often ration their consumption enough to avoid too many negative effects - as they do with alcohol - but even adults sometimes fail and for children it's much harder.
Well, social networks and *-toks are also poisonous for your dopaminergic system. As well as certain classes of games, I guess here's a spectrum.
But the best option I see is to educate _everyone_ including kids about mental hygiene. Rather than enforcing unenforceable restrictions.
With all due, some may want to advise you to check into that. It could be that it does strange things because of the way you are wired.
Please note (about similar corners) what I have already written in the page, "for some it brings a satisfaction and this is an outlet valve that reduces adverse social effects; for some it is a kindler and it will increase adverse social effects".
To some it will be the opposite of a poison - it will be constructive. It will depend.
The idea of porn as an outlet valve just sounds to me like the self-medication hypothesis for alcoholism. I have no doubt there's people who watch lots of porn and believe that it's helping them with some problem or another, but I'm more skeptical that it actually is helping and a lot more skeptical that it's so helpful as to make up for the negative consequences.
Well, doesn't porn-ish entertaiment fuck up ones reward system? I'm not talking of porn specificly, but about a range of products that turn people into "dopamine rats", constantly pressing a button for more bursts of novelty?
besides porn, things like facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit... generalising, it's everything that acts as a button "gib me more novelty" that one can press as much and as frequently as they want.
surely, not everybody is hooked by these things, and it's definitely possible to use them without harm, but sometimes it requires training and (self-)awareness.
But every source of pleasure could create addiction, so it is not valid to point to a specific one, and the requirement of self control and gratification delay remains generally fundamental.
Not every source of pleasure is equally addictive by its nature.
However, I'm not talking about _addiction_, but messing with the dopaminergic system. It's, I'd say a specific kind of "pleasure" with particular mechanisms to trigger.
The problem here is not that a person "is not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to them" (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-wha...). The problem is that the reward system gets broken. If a person is actually addicted to instagram scrolling, like people are addicted to smoking, it just adds another layer of complexity. As I observing from myself, "checking stuff on my phone" looks like a bad habit rather than an addiction.
So, it seems you are saying that there exist products that, giving "pleasure upon command", make people akin to Damasio's rats - they would constantly go to the pleasure trigger.
But people are not rats: they are or can be made aware that crude pleasure is a negligible factor. Duties and other values count much more.
The dopaminergic system is inferior to judgement.
If there are issue in managing the dopaminergic system, the issue is cultural - and has to be treated in that framework.
It's like with the cognitive disaster in many medical doctors, that seem to equate "quality of life" with "pleasure" (in their own twisted ignorant subdevelopment): health itself has an extremely high value, crude veneers like said pleasure have not or can be plain countervalues.
Following what you are writing, you misunderstood my post, Sitzkrieg.
I was not writing about alchool... I said that some controversial imagery may be neutral or even enriching to some - while alchool remains a poison (it physically is).
Which is relevant, because other resources (e.g. those relevant here) can reduce or abate sexual misconduct, for many, or maybe boost it for some - depending on the profile. Some will be satisfied (and stay at that), some other will be kindled.
>Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
but they won't. Alcohol restrictions are at least somewhat enforceable (although as a sidenote I also find them silly) but you can open a new tab, literally type "porn" into any search engine, and you'll get fifty thousand results.
And all of those sites are hosted in the middle of nowhere and do zero content moderation compared to Pornhub, so chances are on those sites adolescents will run into some genuinely abhorrent content. You've made it no less difficult, but much less safe.
It's so utterly meaningless even compared to other internet bans, it makes more sense to assume they just banned something so that people would stop talking about it. It's as if someone was on a crusade against video games, banned literally one video game
It just presumes a level of fixation in copyright law that I don’t think is realistic. There was a landmark lawsuit MAI v. Peak Computer in 1993, where judges determined that repairing a computer without the permission of the operating system’s author is copyright infringement, and it didn’t change the landscape at all because everyone immediately realized it’s not practical for things to work that way. There’s no realistic world where AI tools end up being extremely useful but nobody uses them because of a court ruling.
It didn't universally work fine. Every non-technical organization I know of in my circles remembers "the server" with huge disdain, and they're very glad that Google and/or Microsoft has allowed them to get rid of it.
reply