PrimalDual

6 ms·

1.
by PrimalDual 3y ago
Although I disagree with the malthusian view on the world I still think there is a more important quantitative argument against this viewpoint. A fertility rate significantly below 2 results in an exponential decline in the population with
2.
by PrimalDual 3y ago
Every time fertility decline comes up I consistently see the same arguments about why fertility is declining: people are just not comfortable enough to want to have children. I just don’t buy this. I have seen reasons like workspace discrim
3.
by PrimalDual 3y ago
Here is an example of how people in the military making policy decisions think about it[1]. This guy in particular worked as national security advisor. My take is that it comes from nations avoiding war if they don’t think they can win anyt
4.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
I strongly agree with your statement. Free sex and love are fine as long as there are no consequences. But sadly even with all our technology there must be consequences since we don’t know of any other way to propagate the species into the
5.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
That’s a nice idea but how do you do credit assignment for childrearing purposes? Sadly even in modern society, sex is not entirely unliked from reproduction and we still expect, often legally demand, fathers invest resources in their child
6.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
My understanding is that this is largely the reality already in the dating marketplaces we can measure (dating apps). At least every study with dating app data I have seen shows a small minority of men get the vast majority of female atten
7.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
I always see people mentioning better employment benefits and more flexibility to increase fertility in working women. Unfortunately, I think this misses a fundamental problem with working and motherhood: opportunity cost. The more driven,
8.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
I like your approach and I agree that it should lead to better outcomes. Sadly for the less socially adept, it’s not clear to me how to get social interactions from random strangers without having both sides of the equation be uncomfortable
9.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
An element that is often missing from the conversation is the opportunity cost of the employee. A significant portion of a worker’s compensation should to go paying his opportunity cost. I think that despite similar productivity and the rec
10.
by PrimalDual 5y ago
I agree with your approach to the point I think it’s the only way to really tackle loneliness and making friends. You just have to talk to strangers, often about nothing. Unfortunately for the less socially trained, the advice in the articl
11.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
1. I doubt we have the technology to automate deer hunting yet; however, it would be very useful to have drones hunt the deer and have humans pickup the spoils. I did say it would be great if we could buy hunted deer as long as it’s tested
12.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
I frankly don’t understand why we would want to reintroduce a predator like this. From the article it seems the only benefit they bring is to control deer populations at the expense of farmers and causing discomfort to the general populatio
13.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
I also forgot to mention the insane amount of resources wasted lobbying to complicate the tax code so every company and sector gets their loophole. This doesn’t just have the same human capital cost but it also gnaws at the trust people hav
14.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
I still don’t understand corporate income taxes. These are just pass through entities. All the money goes to actual people which are a lot easier to tax than a corporation. I think it’s such a waste of human capital having corporations ince
15.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
I mean disposable plastic bags benefit the poor more than they hurt the rich. For example, perhaps the poor use those plastic bags as trash bags for other waste instead of buying proper trash bags. I know I often did.
16.
by PrimalDual 7y ago
I find there is a worrying lack of thorough quantitative analysis with these types of bans and attempts to internalize externalities. This law is a statement by lawmakers predicated on the cost of single use plastic bags and even paper bags
17.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
I think the government can definitely fund certian types of research but in most developed countries the private sector commands so much more wealth that it would be a waste not to allow companies to develop drugs for profit. I would rather
18.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
This sentiment I don’t understand. What’s the problem with aggregating most of the population in a few urban centers? It makes sense to me from an economic point of view where the productivity of clusters benefits greatly from density. It a
19.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
It’s also probably explained by the increase in single motherhood [1]. I suspect since women no longer need men for financial sustenance they can pick any father they want and raise the child alone if need be. Since attractiveness in men is
20.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
I was really talking about the type of poor man that ends up in gangs im places like Chicago. I remember a podcast that talked how even pretty heavily punished violent crimes like murder actually helped some of these men gain social status(
21.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
I think he is implying they dont work well for low-status males. Males in particular are known for getting violent in desperate efforts to accrue the status necessary to secure a mate. It’s not like marriage is perfect because some low-stat
22.
by PrimalDual 8y ago
On the other side of the polyamory issue, I am not sure the weakening of marriage is all that good. Single parenthood doesn’t seem to be that good for the children and I also dont see how polyamory solves the issues of paternal responsabili
23.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
One problem I have noticed in the field is that many existing professors are operating at a reduced capacity because of the incentives to work in industry (consulting etc) and do startups. Many end-up taking many less phd students than they
24.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
I love dropbox but one of their biggest problems is their refusal to support more than 300,000 files in their sync clients. I have considered moving to google but I need local copies since I often don’t have internet connection but I still
25.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
I am very curious to see what this will do to Chinese style capital controls. They probably have started cracking down on exchanges but even with an outright ban it sounds like a more powerful method to get money of of the country.
26.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
Seeing young americans accept communism is terrifying to me. They are showing the same level of historical ignorance that Bernie Sanders showed when he claimed the american dream was more alive in plces like Venezuela. It really sounds lik
27.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
I was reading other commenters mentioning the relatively old age of farmers. Maybe the only good option would be something like removing/phasing out existing subsidies so that only right amount of young people choose the profession cou
28.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
There are few places where market forces work as well as in farming. Which is surprising considering the distortions imposed by subsidies. Still, I think this is a case where automation will eliminate many if not all of their jobs and the m
29.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
I am not even sure they are learning much faster than the Japanese during their period of growth. Their progress definitely looks very Japan circa 1980’s to me. Either way the massive debts in their financial system seem like a test of the
30.
by PrimalDual 9y ago
That’s one explanation but if one company has the resources to innovate and keep up quality control it’s Apple. Especially since they have such a limited number of device models to support. I just hope this is a bad year and not an inflecti

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