knieveltech

I'm sorry but I don't think the 80s are really something that can be explained to someone that didn't live through them, which I assume you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't be asking for clarification on Reaganomics.

Not sure what's expected here. I mean, this is hardly the format for 20 page dissertations on lived history. I'm guessing these downvotes are coming from folks that are missing context because they're in their 20's and don't actually know anything about Reaganomics, what was proposed vs what the actual observed outcomes were, etc.

These downvotes are unfortunate given this statement is objectively true.

O RLY. So you claim your average sixty year old with (in your example) 20 years of experience owning a personal computer, is somehow so technologically illiterate as to be unable to utilize browser bookmarks, desktop links, or write down a URL on a post-it note? Alternately, are we pretending that smartphones aren't utterly pervasive in all demographics, including people's grandparents? I mean, yeah, if you absolutely had to you could probably cruise the local K&R cafeteria for the odd outlier who is totally technologically illiterate, but that group is also unable to utilize social media to any extent either and so aren't particularly germane to the conversation. So no, outside of the minds of a handful of programmers, there is no real obstacle.

Rolling out "grandma" as a reason to not do N is a tired chestnut that is growing less relevant with every passing day. It's ageist. It also ignores the fact that all of the people you're casually dismissing lived through the creation of the web and remember a time when going to someone's web server to view their particular content was the norm. You also appear to overlook the utility of post-it notes in your claim that coaching and repetition are a required ingredient for success.

Quick question: in this hypothetical where China presents an existential threat to the US, what happens to the Chinese economy when they invade the largest consumer of their domestically produced goods and services?

If you want people to vote make it mandatory like Australia. Anything short of that seems incoherent.

Scandinavia and the entire Soviet Union spring to mind instantly. There's nothing particularly white or privileged about healthy skepticism of any system that hinges on labor arbitrage to accomplish it's goals. Go meditate on the econ definition of the word "exploitation" until enlightenment is achieved. Note, if you're planning on trying to muster McCarthyite arguments at this point you're going to have to overcome the fact that the first manmade object and the first person in space were both put there by communists.

Sure, but the argument is specious for all of the same reasons that philanthropy has a track record of exacerbating the social problems it intended to solve.

That an education should be pursued primarily or solely as a means to achieve employment is even more dubious. Unless, of course, you're trying to claim that having a highly educated populace isn't, in and of itself, a Social Good?

Letting "the market" decide what is and isn't valuable in terms of human knowledge seems dubious at best. We are talking about a system that prioritizes extraction of non-renewable resources to produce dumb shit like bluetooth toothbrushes.

There have been spontaneous demonstrations among the workers voicing their joy and gratitude at our happy new way of life. /s It seems pretty naive to assume that a handful of individuals being paid a fraction of the going rate for western labor is going to have a meaningful impact on the country's economy or lead to sweeping social changes.

Agreed, that is a particularly offensive line of bullshit. Labor arbitrage is a thing, sure, but it takes a special flavor of insipid shithead to try to unfurl that kind of tortured logic to handwave past the obvious exploitation taking place.

Poorly, if at all.

History isn't done yet. Your rosy prognosis appears to ignore current widespread ecosystem collapse and mass extinction, growing geopolitical instability, and the looming possibility of the biosphere becoming incompatible with human civilization as it is currently implemented.

An error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it.

I am saying that using economic activity to gauge positive impact on society is utterly misguided. Consider: we are currently living in an age of robust economic growth and international trade, historic levels of income inequality, and are in the midst of a global mass extinction event with the very real possibility of climate change rendering human civilization in it's current form impossible.

What is good for the economy (short term) and what is good for people (long term) are frequently not the same things.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a coworker six or seven years ago. Dude comes to me to get me to help him spec out a web-based "tool sharing" service. I told him that what he was proposing, first and foremost, automated discovery for would-be tool thieves and politely declined to involve myself in his project.

Average income hasn't even kept pace with inflation since the 70's, go take a look at a graph of income inequality over time if you're curious where all those productivity gains went, you prove my point regarding no measurable drop in food prices (incidentally a loaf of bread is closer to $2.00 here), and would anyone care to take a crack at the larger criticism, namely total economic collapse of vast swaths of rural America or is "well, actually" over the price of a fucking loaf of bread the best HN can do?

In theory. In practice, this has lead to collapse of rural economies, rampant poverty, and epidemic drug usage amongst rural populations. As to driving food costs down, that's trivially disprovable. Loaf of bread in 1950: 12 cents. Adjusted for inflation that's $1.26 currently. A cheap loaf of white bread costs substantially more than $1.26.

Edit: of course this gets downvoted, because econ gibberish is certainly more valid than observed reality.

ahem Income inequality suggests otherwise.

Then econ 201 clearly hasn't studied a graph of income inequality over time, and appears ready to ignore that the bulk of economic activity has shifted from manufacturing and other labor-intensive activities to the financial industry. But by all means, tell us more about how folks working "gigs", the pervasiveness of underemployment, and the frequency with which individuals have to work 3 or more jobs to survive isn't a societal problem.

And what is Econ 201's solution to pervasive unemployment, or lack of spending power due to underemployment? Is that also classified as "societal value"?

In heavy enough weather it's possible to drop sail entirely and still make way on a bare mast, so nah, they might act less like a sail, but they don't stop entirely.

I took this for a test drive this morning. In addition to producing a raft of errors trying to install globally, I ran into a number of issues where the documentation didn't exactly jive with observed reality. I threw up my hands and wandered off when pasting example code from the documentation into a template caused the server to crash. General impression: fun idea, not ready for prime time.

The guilty flee where none pursueth. You'll note my original post was carefully non-partisan. Your rush to bring conservative talking points into the discussion suggests some kind of bias, or perhaps a guilty conscience.

We have observed reality to draw conclusions from. Regardless of political affiliation, would anyone really argue that special interests haven't taken over the political process in the US, and made significant inroads in most if not all of the industrialized democracies throughout the world?

Considering the De Beers cartel basically fabricated the entire ritual around engagement rings from thin air through paid marketing and op-ed pieces this would hardly be surprising if true.

You claim a slur has been used? Please point it out.