is it not true that you're better off poor now than rich 100 years ago? maybe the statement alone is reductive, but most of "these" articles give justification via examples, too.
Sorry 'bout the delay. I didn't expect someone to even still be able to find the article after 5 hours much less reply to this.
Either way, the justifications are the point of my comment. He starts off with luxury homes being hard to travel between and traveling the world when many Americans don't travel internationally at all or even move out of their state.
I'd throw in that his first point was one I MOST agreed with all things considered. I can't deny A/C is important to all Americans, and basically makes the sunbelt hospitable to humans. And about 80% of Americans do fly so they might miss that (1) (however, should be noted about half fly less than once a year, it might be possible a lot of people only flew a long time ago in better times. I can't find the data though so that's the most I'll say).
For his other points:
Red Curry and Vindaloo Chicken? In a time where popping in the microwave or ordering fast food is at an all time high compared to preparing food or actually going out? A lot of people would be happy just to have a personal chef even if it's only local food.
The internet being gone? What a shame that people lose out on the largest source of depression in their lives! In 1916 you have the advantage of occupying yourself with activities modern society has stamped out, like English fox hunting or playing IRL Sims with a company town! Funny thing about that second part, since paternalism was already dead and towns in general was in decline, it kind of makes the argument that it would be better to be rich even further into the past.
Medicine's a bit of a wash. Modern Medicine is effective but you need to actually afford it in the first place. For a lot of people, it would just be a trade of actually having some treatment for not having as many vaccines. Speaking of which, 1916 was around the time anti-vaccination had lost in the original argument. Now its gaining steam again, so they might not even have that benefit soon. Dentistry is better, but its telling he only mentions the toothbrush. 22% actually floss, and its a bit telling the amount of people that getting a cavity before adulthood is the complement (2). I'd imagine a lot of people would be fine with dentures if it was still socially acceptable like it was in the past. They're already fine spending money to cosmetically have better teeth instead of actually taking care of them.
Overall, its a bit funny that, when you think about it, the article is basically written by a staunch right libertarian, but sounds like it was written for every stereotype of the "liberal coastal elite". Reminds me of that Popehat article where he realizes that while he's libertarian he's probably more "coastal elite" than the left overall.
A valid contract requires consideration. It also requires an understanding, by both parties, of the terms of the contract so, no you couldn't _force_ someone into _slavery_ if they _inadvertently_ blah blah blah. I'd say none of those words make sense in context of a valid contract.
> in the same way that "safe" Rust is a usable (if difficult to get used to) subset of "unsafe" Rust
Where did you get this idea that "safe" Rust is a subset of "unsafe" Rust? Your whole premise here perhaps qualifies as not even wrong: this is not how safety in Rust is conceived or conceptualized.
Yeah, that's my point. Even though, unlike C++, (safe) Rust was designed to be (memory) safe from the start, it's notable that Rust and C++ end up (or will soon end up) in the same place - a "usable" safe language and an unsafe superset of that language. It's notable because before C++11, memory safe subsets of C++ could be considered not really "usable". But since the advent of C++11, there are memory safe subsets of C++ that are comparable to Rust in usability and performance [1].
I should have said I think you are operating under false assumptions, are making invalid comparisons, and are therefore drawing unwarranted conclusions.
I think you might be confused about what Rust offers and from where Rust's safety is derived. There is no "safe subset" of Rust. As far as I know, that is a nonsense phrase.
I think nonsense is rather too strong: Rust-banning-`unsafe` is a subset of the full language accepted by the compiler, and is safe. It isn't rare that people talk about the subset of Rust ignoring `unsafe`.
Oddly enough, I don't own that. I must have about 30 Jarrett CDs, and quite a lot of Shostakovich (all the symphonies and string quartets), so there's really no excuse ;-)
No, but as I understand it, much of the "screw your neighbor" is things like "use low-end materials", "hold features out until the now iPhone release", or even "increase prices in current territory instead of expanding".
All of those, on some level, are affecting the consumer negatively for profit. They all fail in the long term, but are less expensive in the short term, making business easy for the people who can't run a business to save their life.
Government is not "industry". That word usually means "private sector".
If you receive low wages in the private sector, it might be an indication that you're not providing much value, and that your time and effort are probably better spent in some other endeavour. It could also be an indication of some artificial or temporary misallocation of resources. The same goes for high wages. You could be providing genuine value, or your profit could be due to some intervention or other.
In the meantime, people who can't make a living doing teaching shouldn't teach. Or they shouldn't do it as their day job. At the very least, they shouldn't demand other people subsidize their choices.
> At the very least, they shouldn't demand other people subsidize their choices.
This attitude is common, confusing, and misses the point.
The point is that when universities spend obscene amounts of money on administration and fancy facilities while side-lining actual teaching, we all lose. Students, Ad Junct Faculty, and the taxpayers who place trust in these institutions. The issue isn't that "anybody should be able to teach", but rather than "those who do teach should be compensated well, so that we have good teachers in the universities we subsidize".
If universities were being squeezed and cutting costs aggressively (as opposed to the exactly opposite), your attitude might make more sense.
It's really unfair to lump adjuncts into this pool. They are forcing themselves into the equation when they don't need to be there at all. They represent a very highly educated group of individuals that could likely earn a reasonable living elsewhere. Why do schools need adjuncts anymore than they need administrators?
Because if you cut half the administrators, after a bit of juggling no one would notice.
If you cut half the ad juncts, the school would absolutely be forced to go on a hiring spree for new FTE teaching positions, just to perform its most basic function.
No, I said if there supply of ad juncts halved or external motivators for not using ad juncts were strong enough (e.g., the public stops subsidizing your institution with tax dollars), then universities would hire more FTE positions.
In the status quo if half the ad juncts left the market, the supply wouldn't decrease. Bean counting schools would just lower their edu standards for ad juncts. Not hypothetical -- you can see this effect at schools in small towns.
The Liberty Fund doesn't engage in political advocacy. They primarily (re)publish literature important to classical liberalism and the moral case for liberty (and history and law, etc). They also put on occasional conferences, and they maintain online libraries.
If a Socialist site 'republished literature important to classical Socialism and the moral case for social equality' would you not consider it a political entity?
Insider trading is not fraud. If someone is merely trading based on insider knowledge (that is, they aren't also being fraudulent about it), there is no deception. A person ought to be able to dispose of their property when and how they see fit. Moreover, we should actually want insider trading to happen more often, since prices transmit knowledge, and more knowledge earlier is a good thing for markets.
This is why some people, myself included, believe insider trading is a victimless "crime" which should be decriminalized.
On the contrary, as Ambrose says (De Offic. iii, 10): "In all contracts the defects of the salable commodity must be stated; and unless the seller make them known, although the buyer has already acquired a right to them, the contract is voided on account of the fraudulent action."[0]
It is altogether sinful to have recourse to deceit in order to sell a thing for more than its just price, because this is to deceive one's neighbor so as to injure him.[1]
It seems to me, generally in the case of publicly traded securities, that you may assume that your counterparty in any trade has access to all the same information you do in making their decision to buy what you are selling or to sell what you are buying.
However, this assumption no longer holds if you knowingly make use of insider information in making a trade. In this case, it is more likely than not that the counterparty to your trade does not hold the same information that you do, and hence executing such a trade can rightly be called fraudulent.
An obvious exception would be that you can make the same trade, off-exchange, with someone you know personally and to whom you can privately relate the relevant insider information before making the trade. Is this the type of circumstance you meant when you said "merely trading based on insider knowledge... there is no deception"?
The point is that all investors should have equal access to information. Of course some investors are more able to fly a surveillance helicopter over a warehouse than others, but there's an equality in principle there: anyone with the money can hire their own helicopter.
If one investor has a friend inside the company and another doesn't, that's different. That's not a difference in resources, that's a difference in how the company itself is treating its investors. It's inequitable on the face; more pragmatically, it makes it much easier for the rich to exploit their advantages if they can just walk up to company officers and bribe them, which exacerbates inequality. Anything the company tells one investor, it is and should be obliged to tell all of them (and all at the same time).
I don't have much of an opinion one way or another about insider trading laws. That said, I think the single biggest benefit to removing them would be destroying this fictional notion that all investors have equal access to ALL potential investor relevant information. This is simply untrue and anyone investing with the idea that it is true is deluding themselves.
Insider trading laws don't try to make everyone have equal access to information, they try to make everyone have equal access to a very constrained subset of information, because any legal scheme that tried to do more than that would be destined to fail.
