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
4\ Meanwhile, we are overt about classism in ways that make Jim Crow look apologetic
We talk openly about "deplorables", "trash", etc.
We openly venerate the lifestyles of the affluent, we openly mock manual labor
5\ I generally think people who say "We need to have a conversation about X" are grandstanding busybodies
But, gosh, it would be nice if we could point the Woke Microscope at policy that harms the low class
6\ Oddly, we mock the lifestyles of the low class while prudely denying that some cultures are more effective than others
It's like we don't recognize that class and culture are related
We obsess about class decisions, but pretend cultural decisions don't have consequences
7\ Wokesters are full of shit when they say "If you don't see racism and patriarchy, it's because you're part of the problem"
But I think it's fair to say that our society is so classist that we don't even have a language to describe it
Like fish not having a word for wet
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2\ They live in a city of a few million where many of the doctors are from a close-knit ethnic community
Well, the Karen side of the family sent around a philipic written by a local doctor, telling of COVID patients dying in hallways, etc, and warning people to mask up
3\ Locally, the thread went viral, mostly on WhatsApp
Well, my lady used to be a local pharma rep, and she knew the doc who was supposedly stepping over bodies to get to his ward
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
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
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
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
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: