The jobs reports are bad, yes, but cutting interest rates is not gonna have any effect there. Companies are actively trimming their workforce or not hiring for macroeconomic/policy reasons like tariffs that have nothing to do with the FED. There simply isn't any meaningful connection between unemployment and rate cuts. No executive is sitting around waiting for a .25 rate cut to hire a bunch of employees when all the other economic data is flashing red.
Hell, even the FED themselves say this and point out correctly that lowering interest rates to "help" employment doesn't work especially in an elevated inflation environment.
"When discussing this trade-off, it is important to emphasize that, since the stagflation of 1970s, the consensus position among macroeconomists is that loose monetary policy can easily lead to high inflation without persistent gains in lowering unemployment rates. Therefore, a guiding principle of post-1980s monetary policy has been that it should not be used to try to achieve permanently higher employment."
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_b...
But of course, we have already passed through the authoritarian looking glass and the Trump regime doesn't even bother to lie badly about their justifications at this point. Trump wants lower interest rates therefore they should happen. Anything else is noise.
To go down in history as this great figure who increased American territory and the power of the executive branch while making America this economic giant that doesn't depend on the global economy, because he thinks economic policies still work like they did in the 19th century.
I know he's a very different person with very different interests, but I can think of little worse than spending ANY years having to put on a suit and makeup every single day.
It's been interesting to watch and experience Techbros jump on different philosophical/religious trends over the years. Post 9/11 through the Great Financial Crisis New Atheism was all the rage. Once the tech boom was in full swing Stoicism became the dominant ideology.
Now, post Covid I see a hard pivot towards Christianity, but importantly, "traditional" forms of it. Protestant sects are being ignored and Catholicism, or if you are really intense, Orthodoxy seems to be in vogue.
I was recently listening to a podcast about Silicon Valley thought which theorized that at its root it is a justificatory mechanism and not a coherent worldview. Whatever the current problems facing Silicon Valley, its leadership will find some new theoretical underpinning that happens to justify whatever is in their naked self-interest. It's "move fast break things" but with philosophy. Their example was Marc Andreessen who once had coherent ideas that could be agreed with or disagreed with, but saw the writing on the wall and has aligned his "thinking" with the political movement he thinks will most protect his interests.
Yes. The founding mythos of Silicon Valley is of plucky upstarts destroying all the middle men and dis-empowering the establishment.
But now tech is the establishment and has all the power so that story isn't useful anymore. Instead they are justified in their control because they were so successful and are so wealthy. To fight against them is to fight against "progress" and "the market has decided".
Put another way:
"The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny"
> Now, post Covid I see a hard pivot towards Christianity, but importantly, "traditional" forms of it. Protestant sects are being ignored and Catholicism, or if you are really intense, Orthodoxy seems to be in vogue.
I have seen these trends as well, especially Orthodoxy of late. My assumption is this is a response to rampant moral relativism that has become the dominant culture in the west.
I think you're being too kind in assuming there is some sort of real philosophy or faith here. I laid out what I have observed the tech elite doing precisely to show that they are rootless and will join with whatever bandwagon is popular in their techbro circle.
It's the great irony of our tech elite. They all believe they are independent thinkers who are changing the world but like any clique they follow what the group says and found another Sass App or become another VC investor.
As a fan of Georgism and Land Value Taxation I was hoping for a good rebuttal but I am mostly just left confused by this article. It spends a ton of time talking about the political environment (not entirely uninteresting) and almost nothing on the "failure" part. The two points raised were that it was too difficult to implement and less was raised than expected.
LVT being too difficult to implement doesn't make any sense to me. We already have a property tax system in the United States that is really complicated. When property is sold that fact is recorded at your local county registrar. Property taxes are then calculated based on the most recent sales price, the rate, your tax districts, there's usually limits on how much it can increase, all sorts of deductions, etc. This is calculated down to the owner level for every plot already - how can LVT be more complicated than that?
This line in particular stuck out to me:
"What’s more, in line with Georgist theory, the tax was supposed to credit owners for improvements they made to the land"
I think we're talking about different LVT systems here. The current property tax system takes land improvements into account (and charges you more for them). My understanding is that LVT should be a flat tax on acreage (different tax rates for different areas of course) that doesn't care about what is on it.
This article is attacking a very different LVT than the one I know.
In my reading, what it means by "What’s more, in line with Georgist theory, the tax was supposed to credit owners for improvements they made to the land" is that those improvements are excluded from the tax, IE that the tax is on unimproved value, exactly as you say.
It's true that calculating the unimproved value is difficult. There is no obvious "ground truth" except in rare cases where the improved value has been destroyed and the owner will need to rebuild for some reason. And while there are probably enough such cases to get an estimate of the average in a large city, just taxing against the average would be distortionary (a burden to those with a below average plot, eg distant from metro stations or other amenities) . And to make a more detailed estimate makes the process subject to political maneuvering.
Why this amorphous "the government" wording? The people elected Congress and Presidents, who did this over decades with popular support.
Executive agencies are not unaccountable. They have specific charters and there is a huge volume of rules they have to follow. eg:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act). Congress writes their budgets every year and the heads of those agencies are reviewed at congressional and presidential levels.
Accountability means democratic accountability. The APA is not meaningful democratic accountability--it just means that lawyers like me end up running the country.
"Hitting a few singles and doubles beats trying to hit a home run and striking out."
As game developers and publishers have consolidated into mega corps this line just isn't true anymore. You need a billion dollar game to move the corporate needle these days. It's a very similar dynamic to what has happened in Hollywood. All the mid-budget projects are being squeezed out and you either go very low budget/indie or you go huge budget and swing for the fences. There is no career reward in the current corporate marketplace for modest wins.
I don't think this is heresy at all. I read this and just think you have a giant blind spot because you seem to be assuming that the way you learn is universally applicable.
I went to an unremarkable state school where I had classes with a hundred other students. Even my senior level courses were about a dozen to one teacher ratio. I still remember my professors and specific moments during their lectures when I was able to ask a follow up question which triggered that Eureka moment we're all looking for.
I wish I was able to just sit down with a textbook and learn a meaty subject but that doesn't work for me. I, and many others, need (or at least it helps a lot) the academic structure to learn effectively. The academic calendar, lectures, textbooks, homework, and other students you can study with all work in concert. The way you're dismissing all of that strikes me as really myopic.
There are many examination authorities but employers basically ignore all of them and have gone all in on college degrees as the signal for employment. In that way colleges are gatekeepers to higher level jobs, but they're hardly the only actor here.
Every 5 years or so a new food bogeyman appears and all the fitness/diet influencers hop on the bandwagon and blame every ill on it. Seeds Oils are just the most recent of these memes pushed by the power of group think as opposed to the power of the evidence. I think only the carnivore diet people are more out of touch right now...
I really wish there was a magic bullet to the obesity epidemic. An ingredient we can just stop using, or a diet that will fix all our problems - but that's just not realistic. The evidence points to this being a messy multivariate problem that extends beyond just diet to things like lifestyle, poverty, and cultural norms.
It's so much easier to believe that "with this one trick" we can fix everything but when has that ever worked?
Thanks to the author for writing this up.
There is a clear carcinogenic effect of processed seed oils in rodents. Mechanistically they break down into compounds that are harmful. It's far worse when the seed oil is reused in restaurants.
If you want to wait for conclusive evidence when all of the studies are financed by the companies that earn revenue from processed seed oil, be my guest.
Experiments with 10 different fats and oils fed at the 20% level indicated that unsaturated fats enhance the yield of adenocarcinomas more than saturated fats.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7285004
Thus, diets high in unsaturated fat appear to promote pancreatic carcinogenesis in the azaserine-treated rat while a diet high in saturated fat failed to show a similar degree of enhancement of pancreatic carcinogenesis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6577233
...tumors grew to a larger size in C3H mice fed the 10% corn oil diet...than in those fed the 10% hydrogenated oil diet (without linoleate). The C3H mice fed diets with 1% linoleic acid developed significantly larger tumors than did those fed 1% oleic acid...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6587159
...corn oil (CO) diet, which contains linoleate...hydrogenated cottonseed oil (HCTO), a diet free of the polyunsaturated fatty acid...Both incidence and growth rate of tumors...were greater in mice fed diets containing either 0.3, 1, or 10% CO than in those fed 10% HCTO.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1255775
...animals fed the HF safflower and corn oil diets exhibited enhanced mammary tumor yields when compared to animals fed HF olive or coconut oil diets...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/107358
These results show that a certain amount of polyunsaturated fat, as well as a high level of dietary fat, is required to promote mammary carcinogenesis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6782319
...the addition of 3% ethyl linoleate (an ethyl ester of a polyunsaturated fatty acid) increased the tumor yield to about twice that in rats fed either the high-saturated fat diet or a low-fat diet.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3476922
...animals fed HF diets rich in linoleic acid, such as safflower and corn oil, exhibited increased incidence and decreased latent period compared with...animals fed HF diets rich in oleic acid (olive oil) or medium-chain saturated fatty acids (coconut oil).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/416226
The differences in tumor incidence suggest that carcinogenesis was enhanced by the polyunsaturated fat diet during the promotion stage of carcinogenesis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6488161
These results suggest that a diet high in unsaturated fat alone, or in combination with 4% cholestyramine, promotes DMBA-induced mammary cancer in Wistar rats.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26091908
Groups of animals fed the corn oil-enriched diet showed the highest percentage of tumor-bearing animals, significantly different in comparison with control and HOO groups. Total number of tumors was increased...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6583457
...effect of dietary corn oil (CO), safflower oil (SO), olive oil (OO), coconut oil (CC), and medium-chain triglycerides (MCT)...The incidence of colon tumors was increased in rats fed diets containing high-CO and high-SO...whereas the diets containing high OO, CC, or MCT had no promoting effect on colon tumor incidence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6778606
...an increase in fat intake was accompanied by an increased tumor incidence when corn oil was used in the diets. A high saturated fat ration, on the other hand, was much less effective in this respect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9066676
Mice fed 20% saturated fat were almost completely protected from UV tumorigenesis when compared with mice fed 20% polyunsaturated fat.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8973605
...the highest tumour [loads] (fed 15% or 20% polyunsaturated fat),... in comparison with the mice bearing smaller tumour loads (fed 0, 5% or 10% polyunsaturated fat).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27033117
...we found an inverse association between SF content and tumor burden...at least in male mice; there was a decrease in mortality in mice consuming the highest concentration of SFAs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7214328
Increased tumor incidence and decreased time to tumor were observed when increasing levels of linoleate (18:2)...Increasing levels of stearate were associated with decreased tumor incidence and increased time to tumor.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1732055
Just for awareness, rodents used in research are genetically engineered to develop tumors whose rates and prevalence are well understood. When we do research, we study the changes and composition of the tumors, among other effects.
The rats will "get cancer" either way. How else would we know whether something has a positive or negative effect on tumor growth?
You might have to search for "transgenic" or other specific terminology to locate what model they used in the study, but they're assuredly not field mice or something you'd find in a pet store.
Nothing new, but Citric Acid consumption is skyrocketing in parallel to other more well-recognized commodities involved in the food processing industry:
I don't know if flying under the radar makes it more or less of a boogeyman but I'm not a very happy camper with having added citric acid in every meal and snack.
Chemically being "tribasic", citric can absorb up to 3 times the alkalinity per molecule compared to the acetic acid (vinegar) it is often used as a substitute for. That doesn't mean 3x is always the ultimate ratio if all the acidity were to be neutralized either in vitro or in vivo. Even if the same number or molecules were substituted. Remember pH IS NOT acidity. They are just closely related. An excess of citric can be added without lowering the pH as uncomfortably as an excess of acetic, so you would never know without careful multi-endpoint titration vs pH measurement response.
Now there may be some basis in fact underlying a few ultimately bogus phobias, but you should probably be careful what you consume whether as a food, drink, or a more potent concentrated ingredient like purified liquids or even crystallized solids. Everything which can have toxic effects does have a different toxicity profile.
Not surprisingly, there's a song about the boogie man relative to what toxins you consume:
Yes, I remember when movie popcorn was the demonic food of the day.
Now, no one is going to argue that an all-movie-popcorn diet would be healthy, especially with the fake "butter", but realistically how much movie popcorn do people eat?
According to Gallup, the average American goes to the movies about 1.4 times a year. Not enough for the popcorn to have any measurable effect at all, I reckon.
And now I'm hungry for popcorn. Going to make some. :-)
The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world.
Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.
It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.
Many of the zoning rules you list, and far many more that you don’t, exist for valid reasons. Those reasons may not be as obvious as the chemical plant/preschool rule, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as valid.
I live near a cove that comes off of the Chesapeake Bay. We have many of those zoning rules here for environmental reasons. Water movement and erosion are huge concerns here. Rules that affect density, frontages, trees within 100’ of the water…they are all necessary for the common good of the entire area.
We actually have a case on the other side of the neighborhood. A guy bought some land near his property for cheap. It’s not zoned for development because much of it is wetlands. He thought he could pressure the local zoning board to rezone it so he could make a handsome profit reselling it to a developer. As part of that effort, he diverted a creek and filled in the wetlands…and now several houses in the adjoining neighborhood flood (and there are legal repercussions for our entire neighborhood).
This is exactly the kind of Motte-and-Bailey argument the commenter you are replying to is talking about. Sure, you can justify some of the regulations, much like you can justify not allowing a chemical plant next to a school, but there are, in many places, hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important. How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements? Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation". So bringing up one of the _extremely_ small number of regulations that are worth having does not address the argument about the _hundreds_ that are not worth having.
> …hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important.
And you base that on…?
> How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements?
Here, minimum lot sizes are based on public/private water/sewer. We’re on well water so we need room for the well. We’re on public sewer, however, so we don’t need room for a septic tank.
As mentioned in other comments, minimum lot size also relates to infrastructure requirements. Here, it’s not as simple as just widening the current road or building another road through the narrow parts of our peninsula.
Setbacks are also related to stormwater management. Tree protection requirements, again, stormwater management and erosion control.
> Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation".
But you think that there are only an “_extremely_ small” number of valid regulations. You and the other comment I replied to seemed dismissive of specific rules that are vital to the survival—not just value, but physical survival—of my neighborhood.
Don’t the many zero setback cities invalidate your setback argument? They’re not drowning in stormwater - clearly it can be managed in a number of ways.
Why not admit to yourself that you just like exclusionary land use regulations, and are comfortable with the impacts on the cost of living, increased commutes, etc.?
It’s not your neighborhood under threat, it’s your status quo.
> Don’t the many zero setback cities invalidate your setback argument? They’re not drowning in stormwater - clearly it can be managed in a number of ways.
This means nothing without knowing the specifics of the local geography and ecosystem.
> Why not admit to yourself that you just like exclusionary land use regulations, and are comfortable with the impacts on the cost of living, increased commutes, etc.?
I’m not denying that our current zoning is exclusionary. It absolutely is. It’s excluding developers who want to sweep through and enshittify the place for a quick profit without regard to long-term viability.
> It’s not your neighborhood under threat, it’s your status quo.
In our case, the status quo many of our rules are meant to protect is, “the peninsula still exists and remains accessible by land,” so it’s both.
Do you think zoning rules like this - that Washington state is currently trying to change - exist for valid reasons? I really don't see a good reason, other than `NIMBY-ISM`.
I definitely listed the most egregious rules first. Those silly and overbearing laws exist though and have the same force as entirely valid ones like keeping trees along the coast to avoid erosion.
In isolation each rule is defensible (to varying degrees), but when we step back and look at the whole, we've created a regulatory environment that is hostile to development at every step. It's death by a thousand cuts. Big government through a massive collection of tiny rules.
Therein lies the real problem and why this keeps getting worse. There's no political will (probably because there's no political reward) in doing that sort of systemic analysis of the rules. What is actually essential? What is nice to have? What would be great but increases costs so much that it's not worth it?
