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Bachman

@ElonBachman

2 Dec

1\ Classism is FAR more invidious than racism and sexism

I suspect this is because, in our evolutionary past, status gradations were the key to reproductive success, whereas ingroup/outgroup distinctions were malleable and not fundamentally about race

2\ Modern society is worm-eaten with classist policy:

Usury laws
Sugar taxes
Vice taxes
Building codes
Minimum wages

We are grossed out by the choices faced by the poor, so we "help" the poor by taking away those choices through regulation

3\ Nobody can point to laws that are actually racist, and when they try, they end up pointing to the classist stuff I mentioned above

In the US, class is often co-extensive with race, so things like minimum wage laws that have disparate race effects are really just classist

Read 7 tweets

Bachman

@ElonBachman

30 Nov

1\ People compare COVID-19 hysteria to the Salem Witch Trials, to various political movements, and to other mass delusions of the fairly distant past

But the best model for understanding lockdowns is 1980s USA, when the world hallucinated a sprawling, satanic child rape pandemic

2\ As with COVID-19, there *was* a small kernel of truth beneath the hysteria

Horrible things did happen to a few kids, just as in a world of 7.7 billion, a handful of healthy youngsters have died from COVID-19

3\ As with COVID-19, the child rape hallucinations were endorsed by credentialed public officials of all stripes: educators, prosecutors, social workers, investigators, doctors

As with COVID-19, *most* experts didn't believe the hype, but only the most hysterical got media play

Read 8 tweets

Bachman

@ElonBachman

27 Nov

1\ A fun paradox of economics:

If you can identify the jobs that a policy will "create", that policy almost certainly destroys net jobs

If you can identify the jobs that a new technology will destroy, that technology almost certainly creates net jobs

2\ In the first case, the usual reason you know a policy will "create" jobs is because you know it is replacing an efficient process with an inefficient one

E.g. replacing fossil fuels with solar "creates" energy jobs, but destroys net jobs by making society diffusely poorer

3\ In the second case, a technology can "destroy" the jobs it makes redundant, but by allowing resources to be better allocated, it frees society to employ labor in novel roles

"We are all unemployed farmers"

Read 5 tweets

Bachman

@ElonBachman

22 Nov

@garettjones

1\ This is a thread about how the structure of Sweden's political institutions allowed it to have the best COVID-19 policy in the world

I think it will be of interest to @garettjones, who managed to be wrong about the facts in Sweden, despite getting the principles right

https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/1329403815641145346

2\ Garett's scholarship (summarized in "10% Less Democracy") persuasively argues that outcomes of all sorts are improved when governments are a little less responsive to the political process, and a little more responsive to insulated technocrats

3\ Garett's prior is that Sweden had bad COVID-19 outcomes. He's wrong about this (for reasons that would require another thread to explain), but the assumption seems to have made him see Sweden as a nail in need of his "less democracy" hammer

But this is precisely backwards!

Read 7 tweets

Bachman

@ElonBachman

20 Nov

1\ This is the weirdest thread about a lighthouse you will ever read

12 miles off the English coast are the dangerous Eddystone Rocks, which so terrified mariners that they preferred to risk shipwreck by hugging the French coast

2\ The first person to attempt a lighthouse on the Rocks was Henry Winstanley in 1969. But England was at war with France, and a French privateer took Henry prisoner and destroyed the works

Louis XIV set Henry free, saying "France is at war with England, not with humanity"

3\ Henry finished the wooden lighthouse but had the bad judgment to be making additions to it with five other men when the Great Storm of 1703 hit. He and his men were never seen again

The Great Storm killed over 1,000 seaman and toppled many more chimneys

Read 12 tweets

Bachman

@ElonBachman

23 Oct

1\ There's a sort of "science homily" about limes and scurvy:

That Lind did a randomized control trial with limes, completely eradicated scurvy, and then was ignored by the scientific establishment because they were all idiots

I was surprised to learn this ain't so...

2\ The proceedings from the Royal Society of London make it clear that the scientific establishment was, well, scientific. It's just that the data was confusing!

First, the proposed mechanisms of action didn't make sense:

3\ Second, there were cases where scurvy happened despite lime juice, as well as cases where scurvy was avoided despite a diet of only meat:

Read 5 tweets

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