Hegemony shapes discourse in its image. I believe the issue is not which ideology ‘truly’ affirms some self evident notion of self interest, but which ideology can successfully assert its own notion of self interest as self evident.
This is wonderfully perfectly provocative. A clever button pushing projectile innocently lobbed into the everyday pitter patter. An imposter post meant to deviously short circuit the HN tropes' internal logic.
Plenary Talk by Michael Levin on "Non-neural, developmental bioelectricity as a precursor for cognition: Evolution, synthetic organisms, and biomedicine" at the Virtual Miniature Brain Machinery Retreat, September 16, 2021. Introduction by William Baker.
Since wealth is concentrated more and more into a minority, redistributing wealth is surely aligned with increasing the quality of life for a majority of people. Why do you say it would be worse for everyone?
I think the big problems the OP alluded to are more about politics and cohesion than these neat science puzzles. Medical innovation does not inspire me when the medical system which administers these innovations remains so dysfunctional.
What a cynical reply! Are you not impressed by the incredible medical breakthroughs in mRNA vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna in the last three years? And billions of vaccines have been distributed and injected at record pace in human history.
Also, this phrase: <<medical system which administers these innovations remains so dysfunctional>> feel like someone writing from a US(-tainted) persepctive. Have you experienced well-functioning public health systems in other highly advanced countries? They are impressive.
I want better systems and I am cynical about pursuing other ends in this willfully politics-blind isolated manner, impressiveness of their achievements having a slightly tragic quality under that light.
I am not from the US but I think the US is a great case study in the disconnect between technological progress and improved general conditions (in particular for but not exclusively relating to healthcare). I think cynicism is the correct response to this trend.
Conversation & social matters are so variable and vibe based that I think trying to get grip on something like 'likability' via a metric like 'contributions ratio' seems absurd.
Everyone vaguely informed about this story knows it was a scam. Reporting anything else is untruthful. Why do you defend reporting you know to be untruthful?
I think it’s still worth being critical of individuals even if they follow all the rules. The super rich have the largest influence on society as a whole. They cast a vote on the status quo by endorsing anti-social policies with their actions. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. I’m not arguing any particular consequences etc. whatever. I also agree that ‘news’ which emphasises a misleading causality is not helpful.
Nevertheless, the super rich ‘legally’ avoiding the proportional contribution to society nominally expected of them _because they can_ is still anti-social behaviour and however the laws came to be is irrelevant in my opinion. Democracy is so flawed especially at the individual policy level I consider the argument that ‘the populace voted for this’ conservative in the worst most nebulous way, defending the status quo for no reason other than it is the status quo.
Of course policies that protect the super rich are beyond the normal reach of democracy because lobbying and donations are so prevalent.
Do we approve of this behaviour in a normative sense? That seems like a more important thing to keep in mind than if individual’s playing of the game is technically above board. Or how the rules came about. To me the details of the case amount to details of a symptom and what is of more interest is the underlying condition which is revealed.
FWIW I don’t know the details of the case I’m just trying to nudge the discourse in a direction I find more interesting.
> Nevertheless, the super rich ‘legally’ avoiding the proportional contribution to society nominally expected of them _because they can_ is still anti-social behaviour and however the laws came to be is irrelevant in my opinion.
Why do you put legally in quotes? Is it because you think there was zero downside risk to maxing out a Roth contribution with start up stock? The article conveniently leaves out all the possible downsides.
Seems like the problem is wealth inequality, and going after people who follow the rules (that they had no part in influencing) is a waste of time, and reduced quality of discourse due to decrease in trust.
I’m not saying anyone should go after them. They followed the rules, how do you go after someone who followed the rules?
I’m just saying that it’s still okay to condemn (just as an act of casting judgement) rule following when it’s anti social and the question of what sort of society we would like to live in is the more prescient point to bare in mind.
I put legally in quotes because I think legality is an unsound basis for reasoning about whether something is normatively okay or not okay.
I agree. I don't think it was the intent for people to amass a multi-billion dollar accumulation in their Roth account. And when we're talking about whether something is "right," or "wrong,"--which different from whether or not if it falls within the rules--I think we can look at the contribution limits as a hint of the intent.
I'd even go as far to say that the $5k/yr contribution limit of Roth account makes it pretty clear that Roth was not supposed to be used to gain tax privilege on vast sums of money.
It's a retirement account. How much money do people need for retirement? 22B? Give me a break.
> I don't think it was the intent for people to amass a multi-billion dollar accumulation in their Roth account
Intent doesn't matter now. The rule is the rule.
You can't call foul and say it's "wrong" when someone plays by the rules and wins.
If you want to advocate for changing the rules that's fine. But don't forget to consider the non-billionaire Roth holders out there, the ones that are "right", who may be affected by a rule change.
I'm not calling foul, and I do advocate for changing the rules. He amassed that position fair and square.
... but that doesn't mean that he gets to keep it either. There's an obligation to society, as much as the libertarian crowd hates to admit it. I think that there was an oversight in the rules, and with new data, we should change the rules. How about 1B max in your IRA? Or 500MM max? or 100MM max?
I will not cry over the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-sheltering privilege, and neither should you.
> I think that there was an oversight in the rules
I'm not sure about that. Ever heard of a "mega backdoor Roth"? It's a legal way for high income earners to contribute much more than the normal limits.
Besides, you're free to load up on TQQQ or penny stocks in your Roth if you're feeling lucky. If you lose it all, you will have squandered a great opportunity to gain tax-free wealth. Or, maybe you'll hit the jackpot and end up with a pile of tax-free money. Then if the rules change and you have to give it back you'll probably ease off of that whole "obligation to society" line.
>I'd even go as far to say that the $5k/yr contribution limit of Roth account makes it pretty clear that Roth was not supposed to be used to gain tax privilege on vast sums of money.
How is this clear? By the same reasoning, one could say the lack of specification of maximum tax free gains makes it pretty clear that Roth was supposed to be used to gain tax privilege on vast sums of money.
Then why would they put in a maximum contribution? Why have any limit at all if it is as you say it is?
Are you implying that the government was trying to create a lottery for tax shelter? Or a shelter that at the minimum benefits the wealthiest class? Sure--it's available to everyone, but how much wealth is being sheltered by the lowest 90% vs the top 10%?
>Do we approve of this behaviour in a normative sense?
What is the approximate amount of taxes for Mr. Thiel of which you would approve of? How much wealth should he retain?
If a single individual does not have the right to confiscate your wealth, but a collective body does, how many voters are required to confiscate your wealth?
Where exactly is this demarcation point? Is there a limbo zone where the morality of forcible confiscation begins to bend?
The point of the speaker is that /in general/ these types of comparison amount to equivocation of the incommensurable, and this characteristic leads to progressively more unintuitive results as the breadth of application expands. The fact that the trolley problem intuitively suggests the opposite (it just makes sense!) is kind of the jumping off point for the interesting conversation.
This is a kantian imperative type concern. The question is: at the very highest level, should we use this principle /to restructure our society/. At the scale of influence of these schools of thought have the impact is unintuitive because it challenges the makeup of the normative fabric that society tacitly exists within. The more you apply the principle the less familiar notion of charity even becomes. The new thing that emerges is a purer and purer reflection of the ideological core of utilitarianism. As this slow move begins it seems wise to ask ‘do we want to move towards a society structured according to this principle?’.
The fact that the logic holds in a simple ‘charity is a fixed structure, I am already committed to giving X amount away, I am torn between two choices, equivocation and metric comparison is possible between these two similar options, an independent organisation has scored the effectiveness of these charities, which should I choose?’ Kind of does not relate to the complexity of the problem if you take the logic to the level of society wide acceptance as guiding principle.
I’m not saying EA really has the power to guide our /entire/ society but it is so enormously well funded that it is certainly a conversation worth having. It was the point of this podcast to discuss those more complex implications of utilitarianism in general which you have not considered noteworthy.
I was succinct and clear. You were not. You used long complex words and chains of weak logic for your point. I used "many is more than few" super simple logic.
The key topic discussed in the OP, which I engaged with in my comment, is the extent to which 'simple logic' fails to map to complex problems. Naturally, sometimes it is appropriate to describe a problem in a simple way, sometimes it has shortcomings yet remains a useful compromise, and sometimes it is completely inappropriate and misleading. The problem at hand is, in the broadest sense, how to try improve conditions of (human) life throughout the world.
Your take seems to be that there is no complexity, no square to be circled in trying to apply vague principles like "do maximum good" to a discussion of how to tackle all of the worlds problems. To me that seems like a very unserious take.
To me what it means to properly engage with this question is to discuss what we mean by good, to discuss the notion of quantifiability, etc.. I think avoiding these discussions is just a game of whackamole - as best you try to stamp it out you never escape the thorny issue that so much complexity hides in our silly contradictory human language notions of things.
Our vague human language notions serve a purpose but to be uncritical of them or even deny their importance when they are doing the heavy lifting of your argument seems strange to me. Notions like 'do more good' are very vague loose suggestions and so their value is only realised if also applied in a loose human common sense manner. Utilitarianism is the opposite of this loose human common sense approach, it demands your loose notions removed of their blurry edges and inherent contradictions and if you succeed in this unnatural transfiguration you will unhappily discover later on that the contradictions just pop up in your new solution because when you force natural language into an unnatural rigid form like that you find that you are no longer saying that which you thought.
I would love to know what in particular about my perspective you find interesting / flawed. I have tried to make arguments that aren't too flowery but if you find my chains of logic unsatisfactory please let me know where, although don't expect to find any very very clean lines of formal reasoning because I am writing in a conversational style.
