Amen, and amen, and amen. I agree with everything you say here and consider none of it refutation.
Fresh eyes: I fell into a trap here. “Because I plan on doing some more serious campaigning for a more aggressive GBI (among other things) ” was poorly phrased, and I fell into a pattern of defending it. I focused there because it seemed the nearest point of contact to this community. My intent was largely to dodge answering questions about my actual thesis because I’m not public with it yet.
In doing so, I sound like a bad parrot of all the other GBI plans that spend a lot of time talking about how pretty the island over there probably is and far less time on boat schematics. GBI is compatible and has a foothold, but is not my core thesis. And while I assumed the downvotes were just the social conservative faction doing what they do (I don’t know anything specific I’ve done to tick them off, but I disagree more with them than any other LW faction and it’s a documented tactic of theirs, so it was an easy out), I now think maybe some folks noticed this and didn’t have time to type it up. Thanks guys, message worth hearing.
So I’ll respond here and wrap up, unless you want more, because my question was already answered.
I think there are a variety of preferences on the issue, and that policy is skewed toward accomodating the work-hard-play-hard group. I’d like that rolled back a bit.
Golly that did read like a false dilemma didn’t it? Sorry. My intent was to say that I have heard that argument a few times, and I can’t beat it. I definitely agree there are compromise positions, and even though I’d love a non-means-based GBI with tax simplification, in practice I bet we end up with one in the best reasonable case. But 2a is a total strawman. It is uncontroversially true, nobody I’ve ever met denies it, and it has nothing to do with my argument. If I say “if you argue that gravity is a repulsive force originating from dark matter that only looks attractive because we’re in gravity shadows I can’t defeat that argument.,” “nobody in America is being repelled by gravity under the current system” is not a rejoinder.
Yup, medical care is a tough one. We’re not immortal yet, and that’s a problem. It’s a good point, and I hope it gets a good answer in actual policy.
Don’t worry much about the downvotes; we have a local village idiot who automatically downvotes every single comment made by anyone whom he suspects of left-wing opinions—I guess you were just added to his list. (He got already banned for this, but he just makes another account, and the tech support is too busy to deal with him effectively. Sigh. Long story I don’t want to start here, it’s just the explanation that seemed most likely to me at the moment.)
Oh I’m not worried. I was just saying I had assumed that it was that and missed the signal for the noise and might have picked up that I was making a mistake earlier if I hadn’t. Though when “Thanks for your help” gets downvoted… maybe it’s not zero effect :)
It’s like when I waited tables. I don’t think I’m alone here, but when I got a bad tip, as long as I didn’t pour coffee on the customer’s lap, there was only one reason for a bad tip. The customer was a cheap bastard of course. Might be why I never stopped being a very bad waiter until I stopped being a waiter :)
Amen, and amen, and amen. I agree with everything you say here and consider none of it refutation.
Fresh eyes: I fell into a trap here. “Because I plan on doing some more serious campaigning for a more aggressive GBI (among other things) ” was poorly phrased, and I fell into a pattern of defending it. I focused there because it seemed the nearest point of contact to this community. My intent was largely to dodge answering questions about my actual thesis because I’m not public with it yet.
In doing so, I sound like a bad parrot of all the other GBI plans that spend a lot of time talking about how pretty the island over there probably is and far less time on boat schematics. GBI is compatible and has a foothold, but is not my core thesis. And while I assumed the downvotes were just the social conservative faction doing what they do (I don’t know anything specific I’ve done to tick them off, but I disagree more with them than any other LW faction and it’s a documented tactic of theirs, so it was an easy out), I now think maybe some folks noticed this and didn’t have time to type it up. Thanks guys, message worth hearing.
So I’ll respond here and wrap up, unless you want more, because my question was already answered.
I think there are a variety of preferences on the issue, and that policy is skewed toward accomodating the work-hard-play-hard group. I’d like that rolled back a bit.
Golly that did read like a false dilemma didn’t it? Sorry. My intent was to say that I have heard that argument a few times, and I can’t beat it. I definitely agree there are compromise positions, and even though I’d love a non-means-based GBI with tax simplification, in practice I bet we end up with one in the best reasonable case. But 2a is a total strawman. It is uncontroversially true, nobody I’ve ever met denies it, and it has nothing to do with my argument. If I say “if you argue that gravity is a repulsive force originating from dark matter that only looks attractive because we’re in gravity shadows I can’t defeat that argument.,” “nobody in America is being repelled by gravity under the current system” is not a rejoinder.
Yup, medical care is a tough one. We’re not immortal yet, and that’s a problem. It’s a good point, and I hope it gets a good answer in actual policy.
Anyway, thanks for your patience.
Don’t worry much about the downvotes; we have a local village idiot who automatically downvotes every single comment made by anyone whom he suspects of left-wing opinions—I guess you were just added to his list. (He got already banned for this, but he just makes another account, and the tech support is too busy to deal with him effectively. Sigh. Long story I don’t want to start here, it’s just the explanation that seemed most likely to me at the moment.)
Oh I’m not worried. I was just saying I had assumed that it was that and missed the signal for the noise and might have picked up that I was making a mistake earlier if I hadn’t. Though when “Thanks for your help” gets downvoted… maybe it’s not zero effect :)
It’s like when I waited tables. I don’t think I’m alone here, but when I got a bad tip, as long as I didn’t pour coffee on the customer’s lap, there was only one reason for a bad tip. The customer was a cheap bastard of course. Might be why I never stopped being a very bad waiter until I stopped being a waiter :)