Non-standard politics

Correct me if I am wrong:

Ah, so you and DanielLC define "paying people to be poor" to be when government incentives make it better for people with less normal income than for people with more normal income.

I was trying to say that we would still be paying people to be poor, just not enough to cancel out 100% the negative of being poor, so that making more money is still monotonic in increasing happiness.

I think my definition is more reasonable, but yours is also reasonable, as it seems to capture some extra connotations. I retract my complaint under your definition.

I do not understand your argument. If people know that taxes/basic income are coming in the future, that is an incentive for them to become poor relative to if taxes/basic income was not coming. They may not say "Oh, that is a good deal, I want to be poor," but they may work less or take bigger financial risks because of it, because being poor is relatively less bad than it would be otherwise.

"Paying people to be poor" carries an additional connotation of "encouraging them to remain poor"

IANA native speaker, but I'm not even sure it's just a connotation. It sounds to me like it's part of the denotation, and if I didn't want it I'd word it as “paying people for being poor”.

Perhaps this is true of some Platonic ideal of libertarianism/statism, but in the real world people who would usually be classified more on the statist side of the spectrum tend to also want the state to hurt people less in various ways.

I think we interpreted that claim differently; I saw "want government to hurt people less" as "oppose any government policy that hurts someone," rather than "oppose at least one government policy that hurts someone." I can't think of a libertarian policy proposal that leads to the government actively hurting someone more (though, of course, many libertarian policy proposals would make people worse off as the government moves from action to inaction).

For instance, progressives in the United States tend to be in favor of ending the drug war, or at the very least legalizing marijuana, on the grounds that the current regime hurts people unnecessarily.

By that logic does the fact that they favor more regulation of tobacco count as wanting to hurt the "right" people?

Also they favor making the "rich" pay their "fair share", eliminating due process for men accused of rape, etc., because the rich and college men need to be punished for their "privilege".

if the tests focus on Shakespeare and medieval Europe then they can be accused of cultural bias

Um, "cultural bias", i.e., limiting important posts to people who've assimilated into and agree with the culture, was a large part of the point of the Chinese Examination System and a big part of the reason why the system remained so stable.

Overall, I think the best thing is to have fluid intelligence as an essential component of the tests - if the tests focus on Shakespeare and medieval Europe then they can be accused of cultural bias

You can easily tune your fluid intelligence test in a way that gives woman an advantage or in a way that gives men an advantage.

But Raven's progressive matrices for instance is completely objective.

No, performance on that test is trainable.

In the US, the Bush line has been described as aristocratic

You misspelled "Kennedy".

Agreed, but I think they'd have some correlation, and I strongly suspect their absense would predict corruptability.

Cheers for the mention. I still haven't worked out if Divergent is meant to be a dystopia or utopia (somewhere in between I think?). Its an interesting world.

I think you're right that the relationship is complex and you probably wouldn't want to optimise just around empathy/altruism. In particular highly empathetic people can sometimes run into problems with cognitive bias around large abstract concepts or numbers. I'm guessing there might be a "sweet spot" for leaders of having enough empathy to want to do the right thing, but not to be overwhelmed by emotion and unable to make difficult decisions.

I'm very interested in possiblities for that sort of test, but it could be tough finding something that can't be gamed. Perhaps some research looking at a range of candidates for (perhaps multivariant) correlations with morally good and effective leadership decisions needs to be done. Actually... surely someone would have done that... though I haven't run into it so far...

Its a nice idea, although when making decisions regarding the live and death of many people, an empathic person might simply shut down, so it might be good to include some more dispassionate people who can shut up and multiply.

I don't think that's the case. EQ seems to make people both empathic and also able to keep a clear head when it comes to tough decisions.

That test is quite easy to corrupt by telling the 20 people to make it easy for them of the people who get interviewed.

More importantly you test for a very specific skill that's likely trainable. The best people at the skill will be people trained by specific coaches in telling lies in that artificial setting. Those coaches might be payed for by lobbyists.

In real life telling whether people lie when things are at stake for them is a much more useful skill than telling whether someone is lying for whom nothing is at stake.

In most real world contexts where telling whether someone lies is important you analyse the persons motivations and the emotions that body language reveals. That's highly different from telling whether someone whom you give a random card from a deck of cards lies when he says: "This is the Queen of Hearts"

While that's a valid observation, similar points were made just before WW1

Far more people have visited other countries now than in 1914. Having said that, once France and Germany were connected by trains it does seem a bit stranger that they would want to fight.

Also you did notice how one European nation, Russia, invaded another European nation, Ukraine, just this year -- right?

And the Russia stock markets crashed afterwards. But the war in the Ukraine is pretty limited with only a few thousand casualties, if it wasn't for the amount of trade esp. gas with Russia, the war might have escalated far more.

Incidentally, I'm not sure Russia counts as part of 'the west'.

Not generosity. The US was building barriers against Stalin's European ambitions.

I know, but despite that it still seems very charitable compared to the treatment of the vanquished in previous wars. If only the allies had shown the same wisdom after WWI...

[The Marshall Plan was] Not generosity. The US was building barriers against Stalin's European ambitions.

I dunno, it also gave lots of money to Britain too, which is harder to explain that way. (And I just learned from Wikipedia it also offered money to the Soviet Union and its allies, though I guess it expected them to turn it down.)

I thought part of it was Germany starting WW2 as a result of resentment at reparations, so a more generous approach was tried.

Ehrr... France is a nuclear power. Wholly independently so - It isn't like the british deterrent which might get a lot more expensive without US support, the French nukes are French. Made in France, mounted on french rockets, in french submarines that are propelled by french reactors. "Has a firing solution for washington DC right along with the one for Moscow" is what I am saying. Nobody is invading them.

As a Frenchman with German friends, and family near the border, this seems outrageously stupid.

If the US became completely isolationist, including pulling out all support from NATO and dismantling the nuclear umbrella, I'd predict the next Franco-German war in 20 years max (possibly sooner).

Which what credence?

Why the heck should Germany want to wage war in the next 20 years on France?

Why should an isolationist US lead to a weaker EU instead of the EU coming more together?

This seems very unlikely to me. Could you explain what you think would cause this war?

You would have gotten an answer if you had stopped at the first question.

What about the practical effects? Correct me if I'm wrong, but explicit mercenaries (like Blackwater) give worse results for vastly more money than normal volunteer (paid) soldiers.

I am with you on the preference for incentivizing people to go in to the military, rather than using conscription. Not being able to conscript more soldiers limits our ambitions to smaller wars against inferior powers. Then again, America seems to have a really good track record fighting giant military machines and great empires (Germany, Great Britain) and a really bad track record accomplishing our stated objectives in these regional wars against inferior militaries (Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan). Maybe I should be pushing for us to expend our military might on European plains?

Since these debts are paid back, with interest there is no way it could be interpreted as tribute.

Not true for treasury bonds, they roll them over rather than paying them down. The (likely temporary) special status of the dollar in international trade imposed after WWII also means that it is in high demand outside the US, giving us a special place as the source of dollars which can get extra stuff for them.

Regardless, end result is still more stuff for Americans.

Do you think it relies on its military dominance in order to extract that surplus?

Geopolitical power is quite complex. The US does at various points uses it's power to punish countries that act against US economic interests.

It's very hard to estimate the economic values extracted via wiretapping everything and using that information when it's needed.

In general if you would predict based on economic history that value transfer to the party with the military power is happening and you see that value transfer is happening, it should get you thinking. "Cui bono?" is a good question if you are dealing with intransparent complex systems.

If you don't see where the magician uses his skills, that can just means that the magician is good at his craft. If someone is really powerful you usually don't know how they get their results. Information warfare is a key part of US military thinking.

As far as European countries go Germany is the country with the biggest amount of US military occupation and it's the European country that exports the most. Of course it's just correlation ;)

When it comes to dealing with secret power I found Leoluca Orlando worth reading. As major of Palermo he fought the Mafia with makes him know what he's talking about. He did fought the building of US military bases because missile defense isn't the only thing that you can do with military bases. From that perspective it also makes a lot more sense why Russia has such a problem with Star Wars which probably won't work for it's stated purpose anyway.

The Heritage Foundation analyzed the report, making it easier to see the effect for a woman with one child in the +100% marginal tax rate, which by eyeball is about 7k->15k.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/effective-marginal-tax-rates-for-low-income-workers-are-high

I wonder if they factored in the increased costs associated with having a job: commute, lunch, clothing, laundry, etc.I'd guess from 7k->20k, you're basically working for no financial benefit, and that's valuing the personal cost of the time you spend working at $0/hr.

I hadn't realized how appallingly bad it was. Looks like going from 0k->20k produces about 4k in increased disposable income. For a 20k job, it's an 80% effective tax rate, ignoring the issue of marginal rates.

And I thought the drug war was evil.

We're from the government, and we're here to help.

the provisions of that Texas bill that was notably filibustered sounded reasonable to me

Political and social context is important for the Texas bill and others like it. The relentlessly pursued goal of the "pro-life" movement is to restrict access to abortion. Requiring hospital admitting privileges sounds reasonable on its face, but the stigma faced by abortion providers makes it an onerous burden that is more likely to shut down clinics than to improve the safety of their operations.

I think we should be less squeamish about acknowledging when we're trading off on human lives, particularly those of children.

Alongside bills such as the above, the "pro-life" movement is making every attempt to restrict access to long-lasting low-failure-rate birth control, which is one of the best ways to reduce abortions. They often base their arguments on erroneous claims that such birth control is abortifacient. Even if those claims were supported by evidence, the idea that a single-celled zygote is morally equivalent to (or even anywhere in the neighborhood of) a thinking, self-aware person is absurd.

"Human lives" is an artificial category. What counts as a human life? Why should we care about those things?

I think we should attempt to reduce (and ideally eliminate) these natural miscarriages through funding of medical research, the same way we do e.g. cot death.

There are two important points about these natural miscarriages. The first is the sheer number of them, which certainly would merit medical research and treatment if one considers fetuses morally equivalent or close to persons. The second, however, is not addressed by that proposal. In most cases of early natural miscarriage, the woman did not realize that she was pregnant. Does medical treatment for a fetus warrant, e.g., surveillance of women to ensure that no pregnancies go unnoticed?

Probably what would happen in real life would be that rights get ignored, people just take sides based on popularity, and being famous, the violinist wins. Or, people recognize it as the thought experiment from abortion debates, and the masses take sides based on previous pro-choice or pro-life opinions and nobody changes their minds and we don't learn anything.

I think there's a difference there between negative freedom and positive freedom - the freedom to go around spreading typhus everywhere, vs the freedom to not have things stuck in your body and the freedom to not be forced to dedicate resources to constantly keeping someone else alive.

Having something done to yourself VS doing something to other people, there's really no comparison here. The science is sound.

Not that people with grade school equivalent knowledge of politics are worth arguing with (I mean you by the way). Dunning-Kruger alarm bells ringing. Don't worry, you'll get laid one day

I didn't see anything in the grandparent that wasn't part of the standard socialist package.

The only thing there that's vaguely not socialist is being willing to cross the aisle to vote for anti-corruption candidates.

I think you underrate the complexity of carbon taxes. Measuring emissions isn't trivial. Various offsetting schemes can also get complex.

I wouldn't expect such a subsidy to overcome inertia in all cases. I expect it would help on the margins, though.

The existing welfare state only gives unemployed money if they are looking for a job.

There's a lot more to the welfare state then just what's called the welfare program.

During my time as a libertarian, it was common to refer to people like Nancy as "liberaltarians"

Another name is "bleeding-heart libertarians".

Left-wing market anarchism is anarcho-capitalism that is left-wing in its orientation. They typically support the same policies as other anarcho-capitalists, but in non-policy areas, they have notable differences. They're opposed to hierarchical labor relations (though they don't want to make them illegal), with which they associate the term "capitalism", and which is why they like to call themselves free-market anti-capitalists. They have a favorable view of labor unions, strikes, and worker cooperatives. They tend to believe that the current political and economic system favors large corporations and the wealthy to such a degree that there would be much less inequality under market anarchy. Finally, they support feminism, anti-racism, and related ideologies in their cultural goals, though, being libertarians, they oppose the state being involved.

Essentially, they're libertarians who believe that many (sometimes radical) left-wing goals are desirable and achievable in a free market.

If you measure that way, you'll mostly find that everyone prefers cheap land over all else.

Land is cities isn't cheap and still more people move to cities than vice versa.

The interesting question is whether if someone takes a job in Dubai and then goes and pays taxes there instead of living in the US or a European country it means that he supports that political system. Defacto he supports it but he likely doesn't vote that way.

Furthermore if people move around mainly based on median incomes, shouldn't politicians maximize public policy to maximize median incomes? Basically what the Chinese leadership tries to do?

In other words, they move to places where they can get well paying jobs (as measured against the local standard of living). So I would argue that the policies that lead to a society that people what to live in are those that are conducive to economic prosperity.

Actually, hold on, jump out, meta-level question: why are you privileging the hypothesis that "voting with their feet" represents a reflectively-coherent all-else-equal preference anyway?

Well, for one thing "voting with one's feet" doesn't have the rational ignorance problem that voting does.