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Dante

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  1. Like
    Dante got a reaction from splitprimary in Objectivism doesn't condemn this?!   
    Objectivism requires, in a nutshell, that you do not attempt to gain values through dishonesty. This means more than simply ensuring that what you say isn't technically a lie; it requires that you endeavor to appeal to others' reason and intelligence rather than their stupidity and gullibility. In both of your examples cited above, the person is clearly behaving dishonestly, and in both cases it comes in the same form.  The person is failing to disclose a fact that they know will be material to the decision of the person that they are tricking.  In your original example, the guy clearly knows that he's going to leave this girl as soon as he sleeps with her, and he also knows that she wouldn't sleep with him if she knows this.  He's deceiving her by withholding this fact and pretending that he has the intention of dating her.  Similarly, the fact that some part will soon go out at great cost is a fact that is material to the buyer's decision to buy.  Withholding it is fraud, and clearly dishonest.
     
    Objectivism holds that this method for gaining values will not serve your life and happiness in the long term. Relying on dishonesty to gain values requires that you seek out the dumbest and most gullible people to deal with, rather than the most intelligent and perceptive.  It institutionalizes a fear of certain facts, namely the facts that will expose your lies, rather than encouraging an attitude of unreservedly confronting all facts of reality, which is the policy that one needs in order to be successful over the long term. Furthermore, relationships founded on dishonesty cannot become the kind of deep relationships that are integral to one's happiness, where another person truly sees and understands you. No short-term gains of one-night stands or car sales are worth this kind of life.
  2. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in Objectivism doesn't condemn this?!   
    Objectivism requires, in a nutshell, that you do not attempt to gain values through dishonesty. This means more than simply ensuring that what you say isn't technically a lie; it requires that you endeavor to appeal to others' reason and intelligence rather than their stupidity and gullibility. In both of your examples cited above, the person is clearly behaving dishonestly, and in both cases it comes in the same form.  The person is failing to disclose a fact that they know will be material to the decision of the person that they are tricking.  In your original example, the guy clearly knows that he's going to leave this girl as soon as he sleeps with her, and he also knows that she wouldn't sleep with him if she knows this.  He's deceiving her by withholding this fact and pretending that he has the intention of dating her.  Similarly, the fact that some part will soon go out at great cost is a fact that is material to the buyer's decision to buy.  Withholding it is fraud, and clearly dishonest.
     
    Objectivism holds that this method for gaining values will not serve your life and happiness in the long term. Relying on dishonesty to gain values requires that you seek out the dumbest and most gullible people to deal with, rather than the most intelligent and perceptive.  It institutionalizes a fear of certain facts, namely the facts that will expose your lies, rather than encouraging an attitude of unreservedly confronting all facts of reality, which is the policy that one needs in order to be successful over the long term. Furthermore, relationships founded on dishonesty cannot become the kind of deep relationships that are integral to one's happiness, where another person truly sees and understands you. No short-term gains of one-night stands or car sales are worth this kind of life.
  3. Like
    Dante got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in You Don’t Believe in God – Disprove Him!   
    Let me stop you right there. No legitimate medical profession would (or should!) include religious belief as such as a contributing factor to mental illness, and you do a disservice both to atheists and to psychologists by claiming that anyone with religious belief has some level of mental instability or psychological illness. This is simply a ridiculous notion.
  4. Like
    Dante got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in "Blaming the Victim"   
    Just wanted to come in and share my two cents.  I agree with the claim that inviting someone up to your place (for coffee, or whatever) after a date carries a sexual subtext.  Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with communicating one's intentions with subtext, rather than explicitly, so long as you are committed to making sure that there are no misinterpretations between you and the other person.
     
    I'll use this particular situation (from the OP) as an example.  The man is clearly trading on the ambiguity of the situation in order to get her up to his room, by any means possible.  He ignores numerous signs that she is reluctant, that she is really not interested in sex.  He pressures her into drinking more than she's comfortable with (we can leave when you take the shot).  When they're going back to his hotel, initially he just says "I know a place to get coffee," then he says it's his hotel but they have a coffee bar, and then he just leads her up to his room.  Once she clearly starts saying no, he ignores her and keeps going anyways.  In short, this is clearly not a case of honest misunderstandings.  Throughout the night he's applying as much pressure as possible to get this situation to move along as far as he can possibly get, and by the end he's just forcing her.
     
    Clearly, this is not an example of an honest use of subtext to communicate one's intentions.  That requires being cognizant of the fact that the other person might not interpret your subtext correctly, and thus being attentive to any signs that miscommunication is happening.  In an actual scenario, it's not that hard to do, and it doesn't stop at inviting someone in.  If after you invite her in, she's reluctant to move the situation along, doesn't seem to know what's going on, or (certainly!) if she resists anything you're doing, those are clear signs that she's misinterpreted your 'signals,' and you need to stop and explicitly figure out what she wants and what she's expecting.
     
    This is why I don't think this question of 'how widespread is this notion of coffee for sex?' is really the sticking point of the matter. If she hasn't understood your invitation in for coffee as an invitation for sex, you'll find that out pretty damn fast once you're both inside and you start trying to move things along.  If you're truly committed to clear communication, and you're attentive to signs that the two of you are not on the same page, you'll know very quickly whether or not she's also thinking sex.
     
    In the wise words of Michael Scott:
     

  5. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in The Noble Savage And The Anti-civ Movement   
    This might be of interest.  I was just re-reading Robert Tracinski's "What Went Right?" series of articles, and he discusses Julian Simon at some length, tracing his impact on thinking about population issues and citing him as an example of an intellectual forming principles consonant with Objectivism first-hand, inductively, and therefore playing a positive cultural role:
     
  6. Like
    Dante reacted to DonAthos in The Golden Rule as a basis for rights   
    IF the question (or *a* question, at least) is about the targeting of innocents during war, I begin to think about it this way...

    I can imagine a situation, such as you and Eamon describe, where I would "root" against the US; where I would be pro-Canadian, for instance. After all, if we had a Hitler or Stalin in charge, I would be doing what I could to defeat him, too. I would happily welcome Canada's assistance/intervention.

    And if, during that conflict, my wife and daughter were killed as "collateral damage"... I would be utterly broken, most likely, but I believe that I would understand the event as stemming from my own country's faults. I don't think I would hold Canada to blame for it. Not even if it were an accident, or if I judged that it could somehow have been avoided. War is full of such tragedy, and I understand that.

    However, if I learned that my wife and child were killed by Canada intentionally, as a means of trying to "break my country's will" or something like that... well, I don't know that I could ever forgive such a thing. I might still work to take down the Hitler in my country, but I might come to view Canada as having a Stalin of her own, and work against that country, too. And if innocents are fair game to bring down such a tyrant, well, why not a few "innocent" Canadian wives and daughters to join my own?

    I think that this idea of targeting innocents is the methodology of terrorists. I think it is likely to breed more terrorists and more terrorism.
  7. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in "Blaming the Victim"   
    Just wanted to come in and share my two cents.  I agree with the claim that inviting someone up to your place (for coffee, or whatever) after a date carries a sexual subtext.  Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with communicating one's intentions with subtext, rather than explicitly, so long as you are committed to making sure that there are no misinterpretations between you and the other person.
     
    I'll use this particular situation (from the OP) as an example.  The man is clearly trading on the ambiguity of the situation in order to get her up to his room, by any means possible.  He ignores numerous signs that she is reluctant, that she is really not interested in sex.  He pressures her into drinking more than she's comfortable with (we can leave when you take the shot).  When they're going back to his hotel, initially he just says "I know a place to get coffee," then he says it's his hotel but they have a coffee bar, and then he just leads her up to his room.  Once she clearly starts saying no, he ignores her and keeps going anyways.  In short, this is clearly not a case of honest misunderstandings.  Throughout the night he's applying as much pressure as possible to get this situation to move along as far as he can possibly get, and by the end he's just forcing her.
     
    Clearly, this is not an example of an honest use of subtext to communicate one's intentions.  That requires being cognizant of the fact that the other person might not interpret your subtext correctly, and thus being attentive to any signs that miscommunication is happening.  In an actual scenario, it's not that hard to do, and it doesn't stop at inviting someone in.  If after you invite her in, she's reluctant to move the situation along, doesn't seem to know what's going on, or (certainly!) if she resists anything you're doing, those are clear signs that she's misinterpreted your 'signals,' and you need to stop and explicitly figure out what she wants and what she's expecting.
     
    This is why I don't think this question of 'how widespread is this notion of coffee for sex?' is really the sticking point of the matter. If she hasn't understood your invitation in for coffee as an invitation for sex, you'll find that out pretty damn fast once you're both inside and you start trying to move things along.  If you're truly committed to clear communication, and you're attentive to signs that the two of you are not on the same page, you'll know very quickly whether or not she's also thinking sex.
     
    In the wise words of Michael Scott:
     

  8. Like
    Dante got a reaction from DonAthos in "Blaming the Victim"   
    Just wanted to come in and share my two cents.  I agree with the claim that inviting someone up to your place (for coffee, or whatever) after a date carries a sexual subtext.  Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with communicating one's intentions with subtext, rather than explicitly, so long as you are committed to making sure that there are no misinterpretations between you and the other person.
     
    I'll use this particular situation (from the OP) as an example.  The man is clearly trading on the ambiguity of the situation in order to get her up to his room, by any means possible.  He ignores numerous signs that she is reluctant, that she is really not interested in sex.  He pressures her into drinking more than she's comfortable with (we can leave when you take the shot).  When they're going back to his hotel, initially he just says "I know a place to get coffee," then he says it's his hotel but they have a coffee bar, and then he just leads her up to his room.  Once she clearly starts saying no, he ignores her and keeps going anyways.  In short, this is clearly not a case of honest misunderstandings.  Throughout the night he's applying as much pressure as possible to get this situation to move along as far as he can possibly get, and by the end he's just forcing her.
     
    Clearly, this is not an example of an honest use of subtext to communicate one's intentions.  That requires being cognizant of the fact that the other person might not interpret your subtext correctly, and thus being attentive to any signs that miscommunication is happening.  In an actual scenario, it's not that hard to do, and it doesn't stop at inviting someone in.  If after you invite her in, she's reluctant to move the situation along, doesn't seem to know what's going on, or (certainly!) if she resists anything you're doing, those are clear signs that she's misinterpreted your 'signals,' and you need to stop and explicitly figure out what she wants and what she's expecting.
     
    This is why I don't think this question of 'how widespread is this notion of coffee for sex?' is really the sticking point of the matter. If she hasn't understood your invitation in for coffee as an invitation for sex, you'll find that out pretty damn fast once you're both inside and you start trying to move things along.  If you're truly committed to clear communication, and you're attentive to signs that the two of you are not on the same page, you'll know very quickly whether or not she's also thinking sex.
     
    In the wise words of Michael Scott:
     

  9. Like
    Dante got a reaction from Nicky in Reblogged: Cantor Removes Self as a Problem   
    Objectivist journalist Robert Tracinski apparently lives in Cantor's district, here is his take on the primary: Why We Fired Eric Cantor
  10. Like
    Dante reacted to Iudicious in How do you interact with "normal" people in everyday life?   
    The best, most beneficial, way that I've found to interact with "normal" people, is to first realize that I, and you as well, am also a "normal" person (insofar as "normal" is even a valid concept, which I hesitate to believe).
     
    When I first got into Objectivism, also in high school, I had this whole ridiculous phase where I saw everyone around me as a "Keating" and a few, select people as actually rising above the rest. This is a stupid viewpoint. Everyone around you is not a "Keating," you just don't know the people around you, so you assume. Almost everyone I've ever met has personal interests, goals, ambitions, things and people they care about. Yeah, some select few people truly are hopeless losers who will only bring you down. Learning to avoid those people isn't an Objectivist task - it's a people task, because everyone has to avoid that kind of person. But most people aren't that kind of person.
     
    But sometimes we get into the habit of tribal thinking. Everyone who isn't an Objectivist, or who doesn't strictly adhere to the tenets of Objectivism, is a lesser person, or at least you're a greater person for doing so. It's the same kind of thinking that leads to religious extremism, and it's the same kind of thinking that causes people looking at some Objectivists to pronounce that they are dogmatists or cultists: that inside-vs-outside sort of attitude, where you're somehow more special than people who don't believe, is the exact kind of thing that causes people to believe Objectivism is a cult. You are no more a "true" individual (as the first responder would have you believe) than anyone else is - this isn't to say that you aren't an individual, but rather that everyone is.
     
    If you have trouble conversing with people because of your beliefs... well, than either the problem is your beliefs (which, seeing as there are plenty of Objectivists who are capable of living normal social lives, I hesitate to believe) or the problem is your social skills. Either way, the solution is simple: whatever problems you have with other people based on your beliefs, get past them. Until someone truly slights you, you have no reason to think less of them by default. Try to get to know people, discover their interests and their ambitions instead of simply assuming that they are "Keatings". Be a good person, and discover the good in other people. Share your interests with other people, and discover people who care about what you care about - or discover new things to care about by learning about other people's interests.
     
    Ayn Rand's fiction, while brilliant, did not portray a world that reflected the real world. Its limited cast of characters were almost always on one side or another: die-hard Objectivist ideals (with resumes that most of us could only aspire to) or clear cut "moochers" and "looters". There were a few exceptions, but Rand's fiction encouraged - perhaps not intentionally - the view that the majority of people are simply mindless drones. It's an easy belief to fall into when you're a teenager and you haven't developed that sense of perspective that allows you to be aware that, indeed, everyone around you thinks, everyone around you goes through hardships, everyone around you has goals and loves and passions, and everyone around you sometimes, also, feels left out.
     
     
     
    As for the problem of not enjoying school itself, take everyone else's advice: find a subject you enjoy, and learn it yourself. I did that in high school, and I've continued doing it in college, even when I didn't need to. 
  11. Like
  12. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in New Libertarians: New Promoters of a Welfare State   
    It bears pointing out that corporate welfare, in the form of direct subsidies to corporations, is not the main form of crony capitalism.  Most crony capitalism takes the form of more subtle influence of government regulation, in an attempt to put one's competitors at a disadvantage.
     
    Take the Dodd-Frank legislation as an example.  The idea that a new massive government regulation, over 2000 pages in length, is actually going to help the "Too Big to Fail" problem by making companies smaller is laughable.  Regardless of what the regulations say, the fact that there are 2000 pages of them with no legal precedent on how any of it will be interpreted by the executive branch or by the courts, makes it nearly impossible for small financial firms to comply with them.  This gives large firms, with the resources to fund huge legal departments whose sole purpose is understanding and complying with the regulations, an advantage no matter what the content of the regulations are.  This simple fact obviously doesn't escape the huge financial firms, and in fact much of the content of this bill was likely lobbied for by these very firms.  The same is undoubtedly true of environmental regulation and every other form of government influence.  
     
    This regulatory capture is the main negative impact of crony capitalism, far more important than direct government subsidies.  Subsidies themselves are easy to count and easy for voters to understand, and are therefore easy targets for political opponents (observe the numerous uses of Solyndra as a cudgel on the Obama administration during the last election).  The effects of influence on government regulation is much harder to quantify and therefore much more useful for corporations looking to benefit using the government.  This type of influence constantly pervades every single proposed bill in any government, whether national, state or local.  Crony capitalism of this type is a huge, huge problem.
  13. Like
    Dante reacted to Boydstun in Tests of General Relativity   
    Polarization patterns in CMB support trillionth-of-a-second inflationary model of universe expansion just after the initial singularity – 3/17/14!
     
    Institute of Physics
     
    BBC
  14. Like
    Dante got a reaction from EC in One Fallacy of Objectivism — Part II   
    The essay in the OP doesn't make a single reference to the purpose of the metaphysical/man-made distinction, the reason that Rand makes it in the first place.  Ridiculous.
     
    The purpose of the distinction that Rand puts forth is to aid in one's moral judgment of facts.  Specifically, it helps distinguish facts which can properly be judged (such as the structure and powers of a government) from those which cannot (such as the occurrence of a storm).  This is a necessity for man for several reasons.  Passing moral judgment on metaphysical facts (such as blaming a storm for the damage it caused, or blaming nature, or the universe, etc) is a waste of time and effort, and prevents the person in question from simply accepting reality as it is, which is necessary for living successfully.  On the other hand, accepting man-made facts without judgment (such as accepting that one's country will always be ruled by a dictator, no matter what) prevents one from taking the steps necessary to change those facts.  A populace that accepts the inevitability of dictatorship will never rise up for a better government.
     
    This is the purpose served by the distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made.  Keeping this in mind, it's easy to see that the essay in the OP is superfluous at best.  Regardless of whether the distinction between necessary facts and contingent facts makes sense, it cannot serve this purpose.  Knowing that the course of a particular river could have been different, whereas 'A is A' could not have been, does not help me determine which facts to judge and which to simply accept.
     
    The famous serenity prayer, often spoken at AA meetings, speaks to the same fundamental human need:
     
    "God grant me the serenity 
    to accept the things I cannot change; 
    courage to change the things I can;
    and wisdom to know the difference."
     
    Rand's distinction purports to give some wisdom as to how to tell the difference.  The Modal distinction, valid or not, does not.  It makes no sense to attempt to eliminate Rand's distinction without even making a passing reference to the purpose that it serves.
  15. Like
    Dante got a reaction from JASKN in Inequality.is website teaches the alleged causes of inequality   
    The question of the wage gap between men and women has been refuted time and again. This is a fairly good article that was written in response to President Obama claiming in the state of the union that women make 77% of what men make.  In short, that number is just the median female wage vs. the median male wage.  It does not control for different occupation choices, differential time off for raising children, different hours worked, different education choices, etc.  Once you control for the really obvious stuff, the wage gap shrinks from 23% to 5%.
     
     
    In addition to being a red herring, this claim is also simply false.  Don Bourdreaux and Liya Palagashvili address the claim here, in a recent WSJ op-ed.  In their view, the 'decoupling' of wages with productivity is an illusion fostered by two mistakes.  First, people fail to include fringe benefits, like health insurance.  Fringe benefits make up 19% of the average worker's pay today, as opposed to 10% 40 years ago.  This error tends to understate wage growth.  The second mistake is to use different price deflators to correct for inflation on the two different measures.  Although it's a more technical point, the way that analysts typically do this also tends to understate wage growth relative to productivity.  When these common errors are corrected for, the gap between productivity growth and wage growth disappears.
     
    Even though both of these issues are sideshows in the debate over inequality (the real issue is the right to redistribute wealth in the first place), we shouldn't let them go unchallenged, because these claims are simply wrong.  People who spread them are using misinformation and ignorance to advance their political agenda.
  16. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in One Fallacy of Objectivism — Part II   
    The essay in the OP doesn't make a single reference to the purpose of the metaphysical/man-made distinction, the reason that Rand makes it in the first place.  Ridiculous.
     
    The purpose of the distinction that Rand puts forth is to aid in one's moral judgment of facts.  Specifically, it helps distinguish facts which can properly be judged (such as the structure and powers of a government) from those which cannot (such as the occurrence of a storm).  This is a necessity for man for several reasons.  Passing moral judgment on metaphysical facts (such as blaming a storm for the damage it caused, or blaming nature, or the universe, etc) is a waste of time and effort, and prevents the person in question from simply accepting reality as it is, which is necessary for living successfully.  On the other hand, accepting man-made facts without judgment (such as accepting that one's country will always be ruled by a dictator, no matter what) prevents one from taking the steps necessary to change those facts.  A populace that accepts the inevitability of dictatorship will never rise up for a better government.
     
    This is the purpose served by the distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made.  Keeping this in mind, it's easy to see that the essay in the OP is superfluous at best.  Regardless of whether the distinction between necessary facts and contingent facts makes sense, it cannot serve this purpose.  Knowing that the course of a particular river could have been different, whereas 'A is A' could not have been, does not help me determine which facts to judge and which to simply accept.
     
    The famous serenity prayer, often spoken at AA meetings, speaks to the same fundamental human need:
     
    "God grant me the serenity 
    to accept the things I cannot change; 
    courage to change the things I can;
    and wisdom to know the difference."
     
    Rand's distinction purports to give some wisdom as to how to tell the difference.  The Modal distinction, valid or not, does not.  It makes no sense to attempt to eliminate Rand's distinction without even making a passing reference to the purpose that it serves.
  17. Like
    Dante got a reaction from thenelli01 in History of Banking in the US   
    Well my own research focuses on the National banking period in particular (1863-1913), so that's what I know the most about, but that is also when most of the nationwide panics occurred, so that might be of interest to you.  There's a good paper available here that gives an introduction to the regulatory structure of the national banking system, by Bruce Champ . There are also a few other papers in that series that discuss the national bank note puzzle and silver certificates.  Also, Banking Panics of the Gilded Age is the most recent comprehensive study of financial panics during the National Banking period, and the role of the New York clearinghouse in responding to the panics.  It's a bit academic, but it might also be interesting to the layman. Here is an online article on the National Banking period that provides a brief overview and also cites numerous other academic sources.
     
    Hopefully in a year or so I'll have a paper out on one particular financial panic during this period.
  18. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in 'Bourgeois Dignity' by Deirdre McCloskey   
    I just finished reading selected chapters from the book Bourgeois Dignity by Deirdre McCloskey, and frankly I loved it.  More importantly, I think the book might be of particular interest to other people on this site.  McCloskey is an economic historian, but more specifically one that is willing to affirm the central importance of philosophy in explaining positive economic developments (a rarity in economic history).  Here, I'd like to outline the basic thesis and goal of the book, because its thesis is quite similar to Rand's thought in many ways.

    The book is an attempt to pinpoint the cause of the Industrial Revolution. The central thesis of the book is that the best explanation for the Industrial Revolution is what the author calls the "Bourgeois Revaluation."  What she means by this is a change in the way that people viewed business and market activity.  Business and market activities, which had always been viewed as lowly, lacking in virtue, highly suspect at the least, began to be regarded with respect. Those that engaged in business began to be accorded a certain amount of dignity and a positive moral appraisal.  Although McCloskey doesn't use this phrase, Rand might call it a 'moral revaluation' of businessmen and entrepreneurs.  I'll quote extensively from the book as McCloskey lays out her central thesis:
     
     In short, her explanation stresses the power of philosophy, of ideas; specifically, the power of society's moral appraisal of businessmen and of profit-seeking.  When businessmen begin to be accorded a significant measure of respect and dignity, society prospers.  The parallels to Rand are obvious.
     
    In making her case, McCloskey takes on a number of other proposed explanations of the Industrial Revolution.  She argues against the theses that what caused the Industrual Revolution was capital accumulation, or the Protestant work ethic, or pure scientific advancement, or foreign trade, or imperialism, or purely institutional factors.  The root cause (athough she doesn't phrase it this way) was moral in nature.  It was a positive moral appraisal of business and profit-seeking.  Unfortunately, she does not extend this (as Rand would) to the pursuit of rational self-interest more generally. Even so, it is quite refreshing to see an economic historian affirm the central importance of philosophy in explaining one of the most important events in economic history.
  19. Like
    Dante got a reaction from brianleepainter in What exactly is wrong with Obamacare?   
    It should be noted that the horribly flawed rollout of the Affordable Care Act exchanges only makes this 'worst-case scenario' more likely.  Again, the fundamental concern is that too few young and healthy people will sign up for the exchange.  Because the exchanges are designed to use healthier people to subsidize the cost of sick people, if too few healthy people sign up the exchanges will not be able to offer cheaper insurance to people trying to sign up with preexisting conditions.  As I mentioned before, the individual mandate is an attempt to get more healthy people to sign up, by fining them if they do not, but the low penalty is likely to be ineffective, especially if insurance in the marketplaces is very expensive.
     
    Now we are seeing a disastrous rollout of the ACA's central website, which goes far beyond a few small glitches.  Millions of people have tried to sign up, and nearly all of them have been unable to, even with hours and hours of effort.  President Obama gave a speech on it in the rose garden, where he trotted out someone from Delaware who managed to sign up for the exchanges after only 7 hours (!) on the computer and on the phone, and she was undoubtedly one of the luckier ones.
     
    So what does this mean for the ACA system as a whole?  Well, it should first be noted that this is a much bigger deal than simply a malfunctioning website.  For the majority of people, the website is the only way that they have to get on the exchanges and sign up for insurance.  To draw some comparisons to private businesses, the ACA exchanges are designed more like Amazon than Barnes & Noble.  If Barnes & Noble's website goes down, that hurts their business for sure, but people can still come into the physical stores and buy books, coffee, etc.  B&N's website is nice, but it isn't synonymous with their entire company.  Amazon, on the other hand, is its website in a very real sense.  That is really the only way that consumers have to purchase things from the company, and if it is down, the company is down.  That seems to be the current status of the ACA exchanges.  Furthermore, it looks like the fixes are going to be a long time in coming.  Even if the interface between consumers and the exchanges is fixed relatively quickly, it looks like the communication between the exchanges and the insurance companies themselves is also a disaster, and this problem is likely to get worse, not better, as the customer interface improves and more people successfully sign up.  The scope of the problems is detailed here; here is a key excerpt:
     

    The final result of all this is that the cost of signing up for insurance in terms of time and frustration is much higher than anyone expected, and will be quite high for quite some time.  The people most willing to pay that cost will, of course, be people who really need the insurance, while people who are most likely to give up in frustration will be healthier people who will just decide to wait until the exchanges are working properly.  Many of these people will also probably assume that the individual mandate penalty will be delayed for at least a year; after all, how can the government charge you a penalty for not buying insurance when you can't buy insurance from their malfunctioning website?
     
    The result will be that, once the exchanges get up and running normally, and insurers have sorted out everyone that's signed up so far and their expected cost, they will have to set very high premiums, because the people that waded through the site headaches to buy insurance were mainly the high-cost, sicker individuals.  These high premiums will prevent many healthier people, who decided to wait, from signing up at this point, and many of the people needed to subsidize the system simply will not sign up at all.  Thus, all of this makes the negative outcome that I talked about above more likely to occur.
  20. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in What exactly is wrong with Obamacare?   
    It should be noted that the horribly flawed rollout of the Affordable Care Act exchanges only makes this 'worst-case scenario' more likely.  Again, the fundamental concern is that too few young and healthy people will sign up for the exchange.  Because the exchanges are designed to use healthier people to subsidize the cost of sick people, if too few healthy people sign up the exchanges will not be able to offer cheaper insurance to people trying to sign up with preexisting conditions.  As I mentioned before, the individual mandate is an attempt to get more healthy people to sign up, by fining them if they do not, but the low penalty is likely to be ineffective, especially if insurance in the marketplaces is very expensive.
     
    Now we are seeing a disastrous rollout of the ACA's central website, which goes far beyond a few small glitches.  Millions of people have tried to sign up, and nearly all of them have been unable to, even with hours and hours of effort.  President Obama gave a speech on it in the rose garden, where he trotted out someone from Delaware who managed to sign up for the exchanges after only 7 hours (!) on the computer and on the phone, and she was undoubtedly one of the luckier ones.
     
    So what does this mean for the ACA system as a whole?  Well, it should first be noted that this is a much bigger deal than simply a malfunctioning website.  For the majority of people, the website is the only way that they have to get on the exchanges and sign up for insurance.  To draw some comparisons to private businesses, the ACA exchanges are designed more like Amazon than Barnes & Noble.  If Barnes & Noble's website goes down, that hurts their business for sure, but people can still come into the physical stores and buy books, coffee, etc.  B&N's website is nice, but it isn't synonymous with their entire company.  Amazon, on the other hand, is its website in a very real sense.  That is really the only way that consumers have to purchase things from the company, and if it is down, the company is down.  That seems to be the current status of the ACA exchanges.  Furthermore, it looks like the fixes are going to be a long time in coming.  Even if the interface between consumers and the exchanges is fixed relatively quickly, it looks like the communication between the exchanges and the insurance companies themselves is also a disaster, and this problem is likely to get worse, not better, as the customer interface improves and more people successfully sign up.  The scope of the problems is detailed here; here is a key excerpt:
     

    The final result of all this is that the cost of signing up for insurance in terms of time and frustration is much higher than anyone expected, and will be quite high for quite some time.  The people most willing to pay that cost will, of course, be people who really need the insurance, while people who are most likely to give up in frustration will be healthier people who will just decide to wait until the exchanges are working properly.  Many of these people will also probably assume that the individual mandate penalty will be delayed for at least a year; after all, how can the government charge you a penalty for not buying insurance when you can't buy insurance from their malfunctioning website?
     
    The result will be that, once the exchanges get up and running normally, and insurers have sorted out everyone that's signed up so far and their expected cost, they will have to set very high premiums, because the people that waded through the site headaches to buy insurance were mainly the high-cost, sicker individuals.  These high premiums will prevent many healthier people, who decided to wait, from signing up at this point, and many of the people needed to subsidize the system simply will not sign up at all.  Thus, all of this makes the negative outcome that I talked about above more likely to occur.
  21. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in What exactly is wrong with Obamacare?   
    Sure, Medicare involves taxing the young to pay for the old, but it doesn't directly interfere with the ability of young people to get their own health insurance in order to accomplish its goal.  It's not just about how much money each system costs, but what each system does to the system of private health care.  A straight tax-and-redistribute system still leaves us with the ability to provide for our own unexpected health costs, at least.  When the private health insurance system itself is used as a redistributive tool like this, it has the potential to screw up the provision of private health insurance in addition to redistributing money.  It's not just the amount being redistributed, but the way it's being done.
  22. Like
    Dante got a reaction from softwareNerd in What exactly is wrong with Obamacare?   
    Much of the coverage of the ACA's negative effects has been focused on side issues, such as the incentives that it creates for employers to favor part-time workers (under 30 hours a week) over full-time workers, or the regulatory costs that it imposes on businesses.  While these are certainly issues, the core question is what will happen to insurance premiums over time under the system set up by the Affordable Care Act.
     
    The core problem rises from the combination of the 'community rating' regulations with the 'guaranteed issue' requirement.  Under the ACA, insurance providers are forbidden from denying insurance coverage to individuals regardless of their health status.  Additionally, they are severely restricted in their ability to charge different prices to individuals based on differing health risk.  In particular, there are three considerations that allow insurance providers to charge different prices in every state: they can charge differently based on age (but can charge the elderly no more than three times the amount that younger people are paying), they can charge higher premiums in higher health cost areas (like cities), and they can charge higher premiums for family insurance plans that cover more people.  Some states will also allow smokers to be charged a higher rate (up to 50% higher).
     
    And that's it.  Insurance companies are not allowed to offer lower prices to healthier, lower-risk individuals for any reason not listed above, and they are required to offer coverage to everyone, no matter how sick.  The result is that premiums will be significantly lower for high-risk individuals and significantly higher for low-risk individuals.  Additionally, if I found out next month that I have cancer, it will be just as cheap for me to get insurance then as it is for me now.  The obvious result is that many young, healthy individuals without health insurance will choose not to purchase it.  As these low-cost people drop out of the insurance pool, insurance premiums will have to rise to reflect the higher average cost to the insurance companies of paying out on their policies.
     
    One other factor that exacerbates this problem is the fact that, under the ACA, all insurance policies are required to offer coverage for an incredibly wide array of health care services.  Under the ACA, insurance companies will no longer be able to offer so-called 'catastrophic' coverage to young people: coverage that only extends to extreme health care needs, such as a severe car accident or cancer treatment.  Instead, every single policy must offer to cover numerous routine services that young people rarely need.  In essence, the ACA limits the menu of policy choices to include only the most expensive options.
     
    The result of all of this is that insurance premiums will be significantly higher than they are now for young, healthy people, and many of these people will decide to drop out of the insurance pool altogether, at least for a few years.  Now, this is quite an obvious problem for the law to have, and there are several measures in the Act that attempt to solve it.  The first is the infamous 'individual mandate;' simply require everyone to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, in order to keep young, healthy people in the pool.  Theoretically, this would work, but politically it was by far the hardest sell in the bill.  As a result, by the time the bill made it into law, the penalty had been lowered to a fraction of what was originally intended.  As it stands, the penalty associated with the individual mandate is a fraction of the average cost of health insurance itself.  Additionally, the penalty is essentially unenforceable; it will appear as an income tax liability, but those that do not pay it will not be subject to criminal penalties, liens, or levies.  Also, there are numerous ways to become exempt from paying the penalty altogether.  In short, in its current form, I would be surprised if the individual mandate was even remotely effective in fulfilling its purpose.
     
    Another way that the bill tries to prevent individuals from waiting until they fall ill to purchase insurance is the 'open enrollment' policy.  Under this policy, the only time that you can purchase insurance on the exchanges is from October 1st to December 7th (except for this first year, when the period spans from Oct 1st to March 31st).  Aside from the obvious problem that most people thinking about buying insurance don't know that this policy exists, 'open enrollment' only influences people who are consciously trying to game the system.  For young healthy people who look at the high premiums and simply decide to take their chances (which was the major concern in the first place), open enrollment does not give them an additional reason to purchase insurance.
     
    One way for me to ground this discussion is to think about what I, personally, would do if I did not already get health insurance through my university.  Based on a precursory look, it seems like buying health insurance for myself in the exchanges would cost about as much as my rent does (certainly much more than the mandate would cost me, if I even had to pay it).  Meanwhile, I haven't been admitted to a hospital since the third grade, when I split my eyebrow open playing catch and needed eight stitches.  I am precisely the kind of person that the Affordable Care Act is relying on purchasing insurance, but I think I'd go without, at least for a few years.
     
    Finally, it's worth mentioning that we're not talking about capriciousness here.  This isn't about people consciously trying to not make the system work.  Although there are a few Republican hacks that are trying to make that happen, the simple fact is that the structure of the ACA disincentivizes young, healthy people from buying insurance.  Even if most people want the system to work, on a personal level it won't make sense for many of them to purchase insurance.  The more young people opt out, the higher premiums go, and the more expensive it becomes for those still purchasing insurance.
  23. Like
    Dante got a reaction from JASKN in Modern Art or Toddler Art?   
    I'm guessing that if you put a segment from a piece of literature up against a short story written by a first grader, most people could tell the difference there.  That would seem a more apt comparison to this exercise.
  24. Like
    Dante got a reaction from mdegges in Immoral to forget?   
    In my view, absolutely it is.  It is important to take a wider context than simply one instance in order to address issues like this, where you are not consciously making a wrong choice, but rather your 'default' setting or level of attention leads you astray.  (If this is really just an isolated incident, and you're usually very attentive to stuff like this, then the rest of my post isn't really relevant to your situation in particular.  However, this is an issue that I've given some thought to, so either way I'd like to lay it out.)
     
    I'll give you some examples from my life to make this a little more concrete.  I have a tendency to fail to look for opportunities to show those that I care about just how valuable they are to me.  Far too often, when other people tell me about something they did for a friend or loved one, I find myself chiding myself for not thinking of that, or for not doing something similar when I had the chance.  For example, it just didn't occur to me to call my sister after her first day or few days of college, to see how it was going.  I haven't seen my grandparents in quite a while, and I didn't even think that it might be a good idea to visit them until my sister mentioned that she was flying out there to see them.  For a more mundane example, I'm sure you know those people that, when they go shopping, are constantly finding gifts to buy that their friends or family would appreciate.  I'm kind of the opposite.  I could be looking at something that would be perfect as a gift for someone I care about, and I probably wouldn't even realize it; it wouldn't even occur to me to buy it for them.
     
    I'll stop embarrassing myself with examples of my failings, but my point is this: even though none of these are bad choices that I consciously made, the end result is that, if I follow my 'default' setting with things like this, I end up neglecting people that I care about and whom I definitely don't want to neglect.  In my case, I need to find ways to consciously and actively seek out these opportunities, because they don't just 'occur' to me like they often do with others around me.  I may not mean to miss out on these opportunities, but the fact is that I do, and I really don't want to.  The solution is for me to take responsibility for what my 'default' setting is, and find ways to counteract it and eventually shift it more towards were I would like it to be.
     
    Presumably in the future you want to avoid forgetful mistakes that inconvenience your mother (or others around you).  Actually achieving that goal requires not hiding behind the explanation of 'well, I didn't mean to' and taking a longer viewpoint, where you are able to change how forgetful you are, to some extent at least.  But again, if you're generally much better about this sort of thing, I don't mean to offend.
  25. Like
    Dante got a reaction from LoBagola in Humor and Laughing at Oneself   
    So I just finished "Humor in The Fountainhead," from Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and its caused me to think some more about humor, a subject I hadn't given too much serious thought to. My purpose here is just to share some thoughts and hopefully hear others' thoughts on the subject.

    In the essay, Rand is quoted as making the following two statements:





    Upon first reading these, I found myself disagreeing strongly with both of them. My opinion is and has been that the ability to laugh at oneself demonstrates health and good-naturedness. In thinking about it, and reading through the essay and a few more of Rand's statements on humor, I find that these views are actually very easily reconcilable with my own. Consider this statement by Rand:



    In the essay, Robert Mayhew distinguishes between benevolent and malicious humor. Benevolent humor is basically humor aimed at objects which deserve scorn and ridicule, while malicious humor is aimed at objects which deserve respect and reverence. Thus, benevolent humor belittles the metaphysical importance of bad things, while malevolent humor belittles the importance of good things. Now, humor which is aimed at one's own achievements, or more generally one's own positive values, is obviously malicious humor. Laughing at oneself in the sense of laughing at these things is indeed bad. However, in thinking about it, that is not at all what I picture when I think of 'the ability to laugh at oneself.'

    Consider someone who slips and falls, or misspeaks in some absurd way, or makes an obvious error in a presentation. In all of these situations, I am inclined to think of the person who can 'laugh it off' as good-natured. I would contrast this with the image of the person who, when something like this happens, blusters and attempts to 'save face.' Obviously, this second person is primarily concerned with others' impressions of him rather than the actual error or accident. Such second-handedness is clearly not an appropriate attitude.

    But what is the first individual doing? First of all, he is acknowledging the reality of the accident or mistake. Furthermore, he is (in Rand's characterization) belittling its importance by laughing at it. Self-deprecating humor, in this case, is not aimed at ones values, but rather at one's mistakes. This form of humor is indicative of genuine self-esteem; the person in question is acknowledging the reality of his own thoughts and actions (an essential first step for genuine self-esteem) and is able to casually dismiss errors with a laugh. There is no attempt to pretend for the sake of others' opinions that the error was not made; rather, it is acknowledged and then moved on from.

    In my experience, the majority of instances of self-deprecating humor fall into this latter category of laughing off a mistake. Thus, while it is true that actually cutting oneself down with humor also undoubtedly occurs, the everyday understanding of 'laughing at oneself,' (at least what I think is the prevalent understanding of it) is a healthy practice, one which should be celebrated.
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