nerdspeak

Anything is possible. The question is, will it help you. Whether it will help you think/contemplate deeply, depends on your definition of thinking/contemplating deeply. Really, what it will do is help you clearly articulate premises and arguments about things in a structured way, that allows other people to challenge them. It will not help you learn to meditate or enter altered states or anything like that. Philosophy in the US and UK (again at BA level) is mostly about learning to challenge other people's arguments and build your own, while sign-posting to communicate clearly and without being unfair. Basically, it's about learning to build argument maps like those described by Desgupta (a Berkeley prof who teaches their methods course) here - https://shamik.net/teaching/materials/dasgupta a brief guide to argument mapping.pdf. It's not about pondering the nature of reality or anything like that, necessarily. Of course it could be, since philosophy can be about anything as long as you follow the rules of argument. You can choose to take courses in metaphysics that deal with that, but that's almost incidental to the skills they're trying to teach you. You can take an intro course at a community college for a few hundred dollars, why not try it and see if you like it.

I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and later switched to politics for grad school. A few thoughts. By itself it won’t get you a job, but employers like philosophy majors if they also have a vocational skill. When I worked in finance, we preferred to hire philosophy majors over business majors, as long as the philosophy majors could prove they knew some finance basics. While it gets very dry at graduate level, undergraduate-level philosophy is about learning to structure and communicate your thoughts in an honest way. All humanities degrees are like this to a degree, but philosophy is more rigorous than English or history. You can only learn to do this by practice — writing papers and I’m seminar discussion. These are active skills, and very useful ones. You will miss out on these skills if you only watch YouTube. Even better than Teaching Company to get a sense of real classes are the Berkeley iTunesU lectures from the late 2000s that are still on Internet Archive. I recommend David Ebrey’s Ancient Philosophy and Hubert Dreyfus’s Existentialism in Literature and Film (from 2008, before he got too senile).

You can approximate it — I’m basically on a 15-hour workweek — but it takes years and a lot of knowledge and skill. The idea that the average person with no business experience or specialized knowledge can do this right away is silly. What I did — and what Ferriss actually did too — is: 1. Come in with a fair amount of knowledge developed through working for others, in a field chosen because it’s fairly easy to do as a self-employee person 2. Experiment with a lot of things while working quite hard for several years, and failing a lot 3. Finally found a good niche, kept working very hard to to afford to build infrastructure, and then gradually hired and outsourced to reduce the owner’s time investment over 2-3 years You can’t just read his book and do it lol. Although a lot of what he says is true — many clients / customers are not profitable so it’s key to avoid them, you can hire very good people in developing countries, usually 1 offer will make a disproportionate amount of your profit, etc.

To make this work, the unions need to be represented in govt through a labor party that can act to prevent offshoring. Both the Labour Party and the British unions made a lot of mistakes in the 70s.

Tl;dr: we really should focus 90% of our energy on labor union organizing, because the threat of strike action -- and thus harm to the profits of the capitalist class -- is the only way to exact concessions from the capitalists/investors. I'm from the US, but I've lived in Europe for a while, and for the last few years in what could be described as "social democracies" or "mixed economies," where many crucial goods and services are either taken out of the market altogether or heavily regulated by the state. Most recently, I've been living in Belgium, where higher education and healthcare are essentially free, unemployment insurance payments continue almost indefinitely, it's quite difficult to be fired, etc. And this is considered a fairly mediocre Bismarckian welfare state compared to the social democracies in the Nordic countries. Denmark, for example has basically abolished poverty -- the 5% of the population living below the poverty line is comprised almost entirely of university students, and not because they are actually living in what we'd call poverty, but because they are receiving most of their livelihood in kind from the state rather than in the form of cash income. Ok, so why is there so much less inequality -- of both opportunity and of extreme outcomes? It's because there is high labor union membership, and I think that is at least 70% of the explanation. The credible threat of a significant strike -- and thus a pause in profits for the capitalists -- is the only way to reliably exact concessions from the investor class. It doesn't matter what sort of moral case you make -- capitalists will twist morality into what serves their interests (emphasizing property rights, freedom of contract, personal responsibility). We need to be able to threaten to hurt the rate of return of their businesses, otherwise stage-orange capitalists and the politicians who take their money won't pay any attention. Rates of labor union participation for some select countries: Denmark: 67% Norway: 52% Belgium: 50% Romania: 20-25% United States: 10% You'll notice labor standards steadily declining as union membership drops -- and Romania is a much poorer country than the US, yet worker protections (at least in the formal economy) are still stronger, with lengthy parental leave, etc. I also think having a political party to represent labor is important, but there is no point in trying to do that unless the labor organizations are already there.

Being small doesn’t make social democracy easier, it makes it harder. You have to trade to get most industrial inputs, many public goods benefit from economies of scale, etc. The Nordics are not that homogenous. In Finland especially there’s a lot of ethnic conflict. Belgium — which is still pretty good — is not homogenous at all. No country has access to infinite access to material resources at home or abroad. The main variable is the strength of organized labor, and its tie-in with a labor-oriented political party.

I would add that: 1. Firms in social democracies require natural resource inputs, but they still generally behave more responsibly than American multinationals because they respond to demands of organized labor. While Belgium was an imperial power, the Nordics were not. 2. The Eastern Bloc countries sustained their manufacturing model by receiving below-market prices on oil from the Soviet Union, extracted from places like Siberia that were effectively colonies of the core Slavic Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. I don’t know if the USSR can be a model for much although the 1917 revolution is inspiring in a way. 3. @DocWatts I agree the main task is building civic/social solidarity, and the only way to do that which I can see is through labor organizing. Exploitation by the investor class is the one thing most of us have in common.

They're not insignificant relative to their population, and if you combine all of the functional European welfare states together it is a very serious economic and military bloc. The Nordics are very entrepreneurial. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States, which makes sense as it's much lower-risk there -- you will still get free healthcare, etc. even if your business fails. Given the small size of the populations, they've had a lot of big successes, even in consumer tech sector which supposedly benefits from fluid labor markets if you believe the Silicon Valley propaganda. Especially in Sweden but in Finland too. More Bismarckian welfare states like Belgium, Germany, etc. have lower rates of startup formation than the Nordics. They're also less visible in consumer-facing tech. But, they are leaders in manufacturing innovation, particularly in machine tools and electrical equipment. Certain regions of Germany have high concentrations of SMB manufacturers that make critical components for global supply chains and those skills don't exist anywhere else. The Nordics have extremely serious militaries. The Finns defeated the USSR, the Swedes have one of the best navies in the world, etc. Some far-left organizations like to push the mass strike as a tool, and of course a mass strike would provoke massive retaliation by the capitalist class and the state. But most of those organizations are interested in creating a revolutionary situation, which is not what I'm interested in at all. I'm interested in concessions like healthcare, better working conditions, free university education, job retraining post-layoff, etc. You don't need a general strike to exact concessions. You can get a lot through targeted strikes, collective bargaining, legislative action (if you have a labor party), co-determination where representatives of labor sit on boards and keep the shareholders in check (like in Germany and the Nordics), etc.

There is something fundamentally wrong about how cops in the US approach the population. They seem to think they're running a counterinsurgency operation in Iraq. I wonder why...maybe it's because they recruit a lot of ex-military guys... The militarization of police in Belgium is also a thing, especially in Antwerp. But the suspicious, hostile vibe is not the same, and it's due to something deeply wrong about the post-9/11 US security state and the effects of non-stop war.

@Staples not necessarily, since the 1970s there has been a big effort by rich countries to neutralize the political assertiveness of the newly decolonized countries by decreasing the power of the UN General Assembly, by getting them heavily in debt, imposing austerity through structural adjustment, backing coups to kill off guys like Allende and Sankara, arming reactionary abslute monarchies and military dictatorships to counter political movements wtih developmentalist (i.e., anti-free trade) ideas, etc. We could, like, just interfere with them a bit less, allow them to form regional blocs instead of imposing free trade policies that mostly benefit rich countries, forgive some of the toxic debt, stop funding reactionary monarchs and military dictators, etc.

Yeah, but the non-profits mostly get their funding from governments and multinational corporations. The non-profit industrial complex is a thing. Many Global South countries made significant strides in the postwar era through the developmentalist state. This threatened rich countries’ access to cheap natural resources, and also threatened US interests in the Cold War, so we crushed these countries with structural adjustment programs in the 80s. Loans — a form of “aid” — were given by IMF and World Bank under the condition of reforming their economies in ways that benefited the richest countries. it’s gotten more subtle now but conditional aid is still a powerful coercive tool. When countries refuse this aid, their leaders often get killed. See Thomas Sankara and many others.

Of course neo-imperialist ideology is much more subtle than in early 20th century. In policy discourse it now takes the form of: Wehave a responsibility to protect civilians from jihadists and oppressive regimes, we have a responsibility to foster economic progress (which often involves preferential access for western firms and “free trade” policies that often crush local firms), etc.

I get what this “development” talk points to but it’s also dangerously close to neo-imperialist ideology. Like, of course I prefer living in Belgium to Afghanistan, but I am making that judgment from my own perspective according to my own values.

It depends on what your values are. If you value economic freedom above all else then the US is still one of the best places in the world. In Western Europe you go through the equivalent of an audit every time you file taxes. If you value un-corrupt elections, public goods like education and clean energy, and free high-quality education, then places like the Netherlands or Belgium are much better.

Germany has a lot of issues that we don't need to get into but if they do rearm, they'll have opinions like France and the UK, except slightly weaker because they won't have nukes. No way they start a nuclear program, their whole system is based on exports of manufactured goods and US will punish them very severely

What is your definition of corporatism? Corporatism in the European sense brings organized labor into decisions. E.g., in Germany, companies with more than 2,000 employees need to have half of their board of directors elected by the rank-and-file employees. This prevents some of the worst excesses of predatory capitalism. Fascism has some corporatist elements but it's different in a couple ways: 1. It removes the independence of unions from the state 2. It makes confrontational strike action illegal (all strikes have to basically be approved by the state/ruling party) 3. It's tied to an aggressive imperialist foreign policy. I'm not backing Trump or Vance, and probably Trump is a threat to further democratic backsliding, but this Vance in my understanding does not advocate for 1, 2, or 3. I'm not sure I'd agree that Reagan respected democracy but that's a side-debate we won't get into for now.

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Was it a miracle that the grenade thrown at Bush II didn't blow up? Was it a miracle, as Hitler interpreted it to be, that the many assassination attempts in the early 30s failed? Was Reagan surviving being shot a miracle? I've also had several near misses, narrowly getting hit by cars, almost falling off a fire escape on a skyscraper and catching myself in the last rung. These aren't miracles it's just surprisingly hard to die.

I know someone close to Vance. Hearsay, but apparently his economic nationalism and motivation to re-shore industrial jobs to the US is genuine. They describe his views as basically corporatist and aligned with the Christian Democrats in Germany or Belgium. If you want a US reference point, it's Compact Magazine. We're seeing a realignment in US politics similar to what happened in the 70s after the oil shock. People screamed "fascism" then about Reagan and they're screaming "fascism" now about Trump. I don't like either, and I especially don't like the race-baiting used by both Reagan and Trump to mobilize their base (part of Reagan's appeal to the white working class was cracking down on black "welfare queens" supposedly free-riding on their labor). But it's a re-alignment, and it's necessary because finance-driven globalization (from, say 1980-2008) had run its course and become a kind of zombie system.

Are you able to share how you calculate that? Using M1 or M2?

If you think we're due for a correction and want to position yourself, then switch to short-term treasury funds or money markets, wait for everything to drop and then buy. I did this in March 2020 and made a lot. I'm starting to do this again now although I'm not as bearish as Leo overall. The multiples are high but there are various factors that favor stocks. The shift from manufacturing to services means there will be more local monopolies and oligopolies that achieve higher returns than manufacturing-centric firms that operate in a competitive global market AI is a bubble, but it's a good tool for labor discipline and keeping wages low. Managers will threaten replacement of course, eventually the workers will realize it's a bluff. However, even when that happens, while it's bad at doing most work, it's good for employee surveillance. If Trump is elected, he will do some populist gestures but his financial base is regional capital and extractive industries (rather than the big banks and tech that donate to Biden) so he will likely at least try to give another corporate tax cut, which of course will boost earning and thus stock prices If Trump is elected he will continue to press the Fed to keep interest rates low which will prop the market up If Biden is elected, a lot of the infrastructure investment and onshoring he's been pushing for will boost earnings in the short term Basically, the S&P is a bit overpriced based on P/E ratios, but we also don't really know what's going to happen. There is so much political involvement, that basically by buying and holding you’re just betting on US empire continuing. You can keep buying S&P 500 or total market index fund now as long as you plan to keep buying it after it drops so you also buy equal amounts at the bottom. For most people this works better than trying to actively invest. All this said, anyone prudent must avoid putting themselves in a position where they are forced to sell at the bottom. Bear in mind, if we get a 2020 or 2008 type of big drop -- which wlll happen quite soon, in the next 1-5 years --you'll quite possibly also become unemployed or otherwise suffer a big hit to your income -- which might force you to sell stock to meet basic expenses. So you want at least 6-12 months of savings in something like money markets or T-bills -- they pay like 5% it's not that bad. Don't try to be a genius and pick individual stocks. Professionals from MIT and Wharton are spending 16 hours per day doing this. It's like challenging a pro boxer to fight and betting money on it. Even timing the market the way I do, is pretty dicey -- I've been wrong before and sold too early and missed a couple years of good returns in the mid 2010s. I would have probably had better overall returns doing the automated index fund route although I would always keep $40-50k liquid and unexposed. If that's out of reach for you, then really you shouldn't be investing and should focus on making more money at your job.

The Warren Buffett recommended strategy is that if you don't need the money in the short-term and you're in something diversified like VOO you can just hold out and wait. Timing the market is really hard. But seeing your net worth drop by 50% -- even if it's just on paper -- is stressful, and this is guaranteed to happen from time to time if you follow this approach. Since big crises seem to be more frequent now, you can instead keep your money in low-risk govt bonds paying 4-5% and wait for the next COVID/banking crisis/Ukraine war and buy a lot when blood is in the streets. That is more my strategy even though someone like Buffett would yell at me for trying to be too clever. An important thing to realize is, we don't live in a free-market society like before WWII. We live in a managerial society that uses markets as a tool for managing people and resources. What that means is, if there's a big stock market crash, the US govt will step in and over a few years pump it back up. Of course that doesn't apply to individual stocks let alone crypto. Leave individual stocks to professionals and I would stay out of crypto completely...

She doesn't know you so why would she reply promtly to you. Girls will make out with anyone decent-looking when they're drunk. The fact that you made out actually makes it harder for her to agree to go on a date with you. I get that it's a fun wild thing and if you're at a bar you don't have any guarantee to see her again. But in general you don't put things into an explicitly sexual context until you an do something about it.

I don't like Trump but I think expanding presidential immunity back to what it was like before Nixon -- maybe not this far -- is proper to avoid nonsense lawfare, like what happened to the Clintons and even certain aspects of what happened to Trump. They should have gone after him for Jan 6 and election interference, not this Stormy Daniels nonsense. . Political leaders need some immunity from prosecution because by going into public life they become much bigger targets for prosecutors, and minor crimes everyday people commit everyday get turned into big deals. Members of congress have much wider immunity than the president. Explicit constitutional legislative immunity (the president has no such explict immunity in the constituion), and they can only be arrested during scope of their duties for treason -- the president has no such arrest immunity. Legislative immunity - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legislative_immunity Arrest privilege - https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-1/21-compensation-and-immunities-of-members.html Given the extent of the lawfare used by both parties, expanding the scope of presidential immunity to some extent makes sense, although of course it should not be absolute.

“These photos will be rallying points for thousands of years to come” lmfao Owen get out of town