Ireland, doing a good thing.
>>><<<
Well, that just came full circle, didn't it?
>>><<<
Don't agree with everything in here (and it is 20 years old, after all), but some food for thought:
"the socialist case for the centrality of the workers in their movement was not a sectional case. Trade unions pursued the sectional interests of wage-earners, but one of the reasons why the relations between labour and socialist parties and the unions associated with them, were never without problems, was precisely that the aims of the movement were wider than those of the unions. The socialist argument was not just that most people were ‘workers by hand or brain’ but that the workers were the necessary historic agency for changing society. So, whoever you were, if you wanted the future, you would have to go with the workers’ movement.
Conversely, when the labour movement became narrowed down to nothing but a pressure-group or a sectional movement of industrial workers, as in 1970s Britain, it lost both the capacity to be the potential centre of a general people’s mobilization and the general hope of the future. Militant ‘economist’ trade unionism antagonized the people not directly involved in it to such an extent that it gave Thatcherite Toryism its most convincing argument—and the justification for turning the traditional ‘one-nation’ Tory Party into a force for waging militant class-war. What is more, this proletarian identity politics not only isolated the working class, but also split it by setting groups of workers against each other."
>>><<<
"motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order. Driving is a very moral activity – there are rules of the road, both legal and informal, and there are good and bad drivers. The whole intricate dance of the rush-hour junction only works because people know the rules and by-and-large follow them: keeping in lane; indicating properly; first her turn, now mine, now yours. Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside." BBC
>>><<<
Finland is gonna get a universal basic income!
>>><<<
Very interesting. At one point, Amsterdam was on the way to US-style car-centred urban development, with bikes falling by the wayside, then simply changed course.
>>><<<
This is great, and a good reminder that markets are ultimately an extremely efficient mechanism for aggregating information about needs and scarcity. The fundamental problem with most real economies isn't that they are based on markets, but that *entitlements with that market* (i.e. money) are so unfairly distributed.
"the Chicago economists managed to design a market that worked even for participants who did not believe in it. Within half a year of the auction system being introduced, 97 percent of food banks won at least one load, and the amount of food allocated from Feeding America's headquarters rose by over 35 percent, to the delight of volunteers and donors."
>>><<<
"gorillas who were pissed" Cracked
>>><<<
It seems like a good idea to have a national minimum wage, but I don't see why this couldn't be set at quite a low level (set so that it doesn't cause too much unemployment in sectors where low wages currently prevail) and then combined with higher sectoral and geographical minima?
>>><<<
I'm not sure I'm opposed in principle to the idea of companies basically operating as Uber subcontractors (loads of people might lack the capital to buy a suitable car, so wouldn't be able to become drivers if the companies didn't invest). Uber's practice of signing up as many drivers as possible to drive down prices is kinda skeazy though. The devil's in the detail, I suspect, as always.
>>><<<
Don't agree with all of this by any means, but the idea of an 'immigration dividend' is important. Currently most of the economic benefits of immigration goes to immigrants themselves and to relatively skilled people in the destination country (from what I have seen, the less-skilled do benefit, but only slightly). I think the demand for pure solidarity is important, but there's no reason not to sweeten the deal with economic rewards.
My position: citizen's basic income tied explicitly by law to GDP (new immigrants can start receiving these gradually with years of residence, or perhaps be restricted to means-tested benefits for some number of years). Then economic growth, which open borders undoubtedly would achieve, explicitly benefits all existing citizens.
(Though maybe I'm delusional that trying two left-wing aspirations together makes a single policy that is appealing to everyone)
>>><<<
Watch the xenophobia wheel spin: There are terrorists -> foreigners are terrorists -> refugees are terrorists -> people giving aid to refugees are terrorists.
>>><<<
*Trollface*
"The findings “robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households”."
>>><<<
"Contrary to legend, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) never trained a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell. In over three decades of research and tens of thousands of experimental trials, he and his coworkers used a bell only in rare, unimportant circumstances. Indeed, the iconic bell would have proven totally useless to his real goal, which required precise control over the quality and duration of stimuli (he most frequently employed a metronome, a harmonium, a buzzer, and electrical shock)." Marginal Revolution
>>><<<
"Another bizarre feature of our early prototype was its propensity to respond with “I love you” to seemingly anything" Google Research
>>><<<
Great headline
>>><<<
“The way I think of emotional labor goes as follows: there are certain jobs where it’s a requirement, where there is no training provided, and where there’s a positive bias towards certain people – women – doing it. It’s also the kind of work that is denigrated by society at large.” Guardian
>>><<<
Interesting case study here about privatisation and the pitfalls thereof. In some ways, privatising and breaking up monopoly telecoms brought big advantages for consumers in the form of efficiency and lower prices... but it also undermined some forms of long-term planning, innovation and gains from exploiting 'natural monopolies'.
>>><<<
This is really heartbreaking to think about, but it's worth having a detailed conversation with our loved ones about how we want to die. Having a clear plan in place can make a big difference.
>>><<<
Basically, fingerprint scanners are a terrible, terrible means of securing information.
"Back when the iPhone 5’s touchID system was just announced, [starbug] started salivating. He bought one immediately, played around with it for two days, and demonstrated that he could fake out the fingerprint reader before the lines around the block at the Apple Store had cleared."
>>><<<
Well, that just came full circle, didn't it?
>>><<<
Don't agree with everything in here (and it is 20 years old, after all), but some food for thought:
"the socialist case for the centrality of the workers in their movement was not a sectional case. Trade unions pursued the sectional interests of wage-earners, but one of the reasons why the relations between labour and socialist parties and the unions associated with them, were never without problems, was precisely that the aims of the movement were wider than those of the unions. The socialist argument was not just that most people were ‘workers by hand or brain’ but that the workers were the necessary historic agency for changing society. So, whoever you were, if you wanted the future, you would have to go with the workers’ movement.
Conversely, when the labour movement became narrowed down to nothing but a pressure-group or a sectional movement of industrial workers, as in 1970s Britain, it lost both the capacity to be the potential centre of a general people’s mobilization and the general hope of the future. Militant ‘economist’ trade unionism antagonized the people not directly involved in it to such an extent that it gave Thatcherite Toryism its most convincing argument—and the justification for turning the traditional ‘one-nation’ Tory Party into a force for waging militant class-war. What is more, this proletarian identity politics not only isolated the working class, but also split it by setting groups of workers against each other."
>>><<<
"motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order. Driving is a very moral activity – there are rules of the road, both legal and informal, and there are good and bad drivers. The whole intricate dance of the rush-hour junction only works because people know the rules and by-and-large follow them: keeping in lane; indicating properly; first her turn, now mine, now yours. Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside." BBC
>>><<<
Finland is gonna get a universal basic income!
>>><<<
Very interesting. At one point, Amsterdam was on the way to US-style car-centred urban development, with bikes falling by the wayside, then simply changed course.
>>><<<
This is great, and a good reminder that markets are ultimately an extremely efficient mechanism for aggregating information about needs and scarcity. The fundamental problem with most real economies isn't that they are based on markets, but that *entitlements with that market* (i.e. money) are so unfairly distributed.
"the Chicago economists managed to design a market that worked even for participants who did not believe in it. Within half a year of the auction system being introduced, 97 percent of food banks won at least one load, and the amount of food allocated from Feeding America's headquarters rose by over 35 percent, to the delight of volunteers and donors."
>>><<<
"gorillas who were pissed" Cracked
>>><<<
It seems like a good idea to have a national minimum wage, but I don't see why this couldn't be set at quite a low level (set so that it doesn't cause too much unemployment in sectors where low wages currently prevail) and then combined with higher sectoral and geographical minima?
>>><<<
I'm not sure I'm opposed in principle to the idea of companies basically operating as Uber subcontractors (loads of people might lack the capital to buy a suitable car, so wouldn't be able to become drivers if the companies didn't invest). Uber's practice of signing up as many drivers as possible to drive down prices is kinda skeazy though. The devil's in the detail, I suspect, as always.
>>><<<
Don't agree with all of this by any means, but the idea of an 'immigration dividend' is important. Currently most of the economic benefits of immigration goes to immigrants themselves and to relatively skilled people in the destination country (from what I have seen, the less-skilled do benefit, but only slightly). I think the demand for pure solidarity is important, but there's no reason not to sweeten the deal with economic rewards.
My position: citizen's basic income tied explicitly by law to GDP (new immigrants can start receiving these gradually with years of residence, or perhaps be restricted to means-tested benefits for some number of years). Then economic growth, which open borders undoubtedly would achieve, explicitly benefits all existing citizens.
(Though maybe I'm delusional that trying two left-wing aspirations together makes a single policy that is appealing to everyone)
>>><<<
Watch the xenophobia wheel spin: There are terrorists -> foreigners are terrorists -> refugees are terrorists -> people giving aid to refugees are terrorists.
>>><<<
*Trollface*
"The findings “robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households”."
>>><<<
"Contrary to legend, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) never trained a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell. In over three decades of research and tens of thousands of experimental trials, he and his coworkers used a bell only in rare, unimportant circumstances. Indeed, the iconic bell would have proven totally useless to his real goal, which required precise control over the quality and duration of stimuli (he most frequently employed a metronome, a harmonium, a buzzer, and electrical shock)." Marginal Revolution
>>><<<
"Another bizarre feature of our early prototype was its propensity to respond with “I love you” to seemingly anything" Google Research
>>><<<
Great headline
>>><<<
“The way I think of emotional labor goes as follows: there are certain jobs where it’s a requirement, where there is no training provided, and where there’s a positive bias towards certain people – women – doing it. It’s also the kind of work that is denigrated by society at large.” Guardian
>>><<<
Interesting case study here about privatisation and the pitfalls thereof. In some ways, privatising and breaking up monopoly telecoms brought big advantages for consumers in the form of efficiency and lower prices... but it also undermined some forms of long-term planning, innovation and gains from exploiting 'natural monopolies'.
>>><<<
This is really heartbreaking to think about, but it's worth having a detailed conversation with our loved ones about how we want to die. Having a clear plan in place can make a big difference.
>>><<<
Basically, fingerprint scanners are a terrible, terrible means of securing information.
"Back when the iPhone 5’s touchID system was just announced, [starbug] started salivating. He bought one immediately, played around with it for two days, and demonstrated that he could fake out the fingerprint reader before the lines around the block at the Apple Store had cleared."
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