tripu @tripu@qoto.org

https://twitter.com/imperfectidea/status/1421734758162345985

If you know me IRL, and you are the kind of friend or colleague who would buy me a #gift for my (imminent) #birthday, please take a look at

<PERSONAL_URL>/birthday.html

#EffectiveAltruism #ea

https://beta.birdsite.live/users/juanrallo/statuses/1421192704013316096

Sometimes I wish I had a “#couple’s dashcam” — recording in a loop the conversations my wife and I have — so that we can resolve on the spot silly misunderstandings about whether I said “always” or “often”, she said “our” or “your”, etc.

🤪

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/catholic-priest-quits-after-anonymized-data-revealed-alleged-use-of-grindr/

#privacy #location

To me, #feminism is primarily about “equality of the sexes”, and (only after that) “especially” about “women’s rights”. That’s the original meaning from the very end of the 19th century, and also the current meaning according to Britannica, Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia.

With that in mind, this is good news about the end of an outrageous inequality before the law between the sexes that still exists:

https://www.econlib.org/whats-wrong-with-registering-women-for-the-draft/

Addendum (lest I should be accused of utopian over-simplification):

Yes, chance plays a huge role in life outcomes. Yes, the past, which we can’t control (heritage, inheritance, the womb, childhood) is decisive, too. Yes, even conscious life decisions are strongly constrained by circumstances and by the information available at the time.

Yes, free will might be but an illusion.

I just want to stress that all the above holds true in our current welfare systems, too.

I realise many cases won’t be easy to adjudicate. But that’s a problem with our current welfare laws, too.

It shouldn’t be too difficult for the State to collate all the relevant data they hold for each person and feed it to an algorithm which in many cases would produce a fairly confident result. Think work history, tax returns, residency, health indicators, race, education, reports from social workers, property owned, investments, criminal record, etc. A good chunk of the population are clearly “privileged” or “dispossessed” by looking at these metrics.

Expressed this way, it sounds eerie and inhumane. I’m just describing the logic of it here. Of course, there still would be judges, social workers, recourse, and exceptions involved — just as in the current system. But I feel this general guidance would deliver as well if not better than the current system, while decreasing rent-seeking and public expenditure (taxes).

Thoughts?

🧵 5/5

A single parent who finds themselves struggling to raise their offspring while at the same time enjoying themselves the small luxuries of modern life (tourism, Netflix, eating out, a new car, a gym membership). If they are a single parent because their spouse died or left, leaving them with precarious income, they should get some benefits to help them make ends meet. If, on the other hand, they decided to raise kids without a partner in the first place, they are not morally entitled to anyone else’s money.

A new retiree who suddenly can’t afford more than the basics and has to lead a monastic life until death. If that person had miserable jobs all their life and still managed to be frugal and save a bit for retirement, society owes them a chunk now, since their misfortune was not their fault and they made responsible use of the bad cards they were dealt. If, on the other hand, that person used to be well-off and had the resources to invest on their own retirement plan, but was reckless enough to live hand to mouth instead, then a monastic life is all they get, in all fairness (no assistance from the rest of society).

Someone who is unemployed. If they are unemployed because they are handicapped, belong to a marginalised group, suffered an important workplace accident, have a very low IQ, etc, then society should fund a reasonable life for them (ie, above the minimum threshold). If, on the other hand, that person is lazy or unconscientious, or too picky when offered a job, then food, clothing and shelter is all they are entitled to get from the rest of society.

🧵 4/5

What about needs up and beyond that basic threshold? To give a few examples: predictable, regular cash flows from retirement until death (public pensions); subsidies for IVF or child care; public study grants; tokens for public transport; subsidised campsites or holidays; everything having to do with “culture” or sports (coupons for book shops, concerts, museums, sport centres, sport clubs).

For those, I draw a line between situations of necessity that are caused by events mostly outside the control of the person, and those for which the person is much to “blame”. I am all for taxes to fund the former, and zero for the latter.

So: individual responsibility, and the predictability of the (bad) outcome, are my deciding criteria.

Here go a few examples:

🧵 3/5

First of all, I establish

• a universal, absolute threshold for human well-being (enough food, reasonable shelter, basic medical treatment, physical safety), and
• the moral obligation of society as a whole to help those who find themselves below that threshold, for whatever reason,
• for as many people as necessary, for as long as necessary, and regardless of the cost in taxes.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a long-time beneficiary of social benefits already, a former billionaire who recklessly burned all their cash, a chronic tax-evader, or an unrepentant serial killer: if you are starving, have no roof, or suffer from illness or violence — and you do not have the resources to remedy your situation — and you have not unequivocally rejected the assistance of society — then it is not only moral but mandatory that our taxes be directed towards lifting you out of that dire state and back into human dignity.

That’s the unconditioned baseline for welfare benefits.

🧵 2/5

More about me slowly coming to (always temporary) conclusions in #politics:

#welfare, social #safetynet

For a long time, I failed to define a clear line between fair, necessary, humane benefits on the one hand, and greedy, opportunistic, unjustified rent-seeking on the other.

More recently I settled on a heuristic that I find just, and that is fairly simple to apply:

🧵 1/5

This is the kind of #cityscapes that I dig 🏙️
https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/onbxp5/shanghai_at_night_china/
#urban #punk #dystopia #BladeRunner

When I was younger, I thought that the defining distinction between #theLeft and #theRight was solidarity — as in, the former necessarily has to have way more of it than the latter.

Gradually I came to realise that characterisation is problematic for three reasons:

1. #Leftists want to impose #solidarity, which is an oxymoron (by definition, you can’t mandate voluntary inclinations, such as affection or desire, on people).
2. In practice, and at least in my own country (#Spain), the Left has become pro-independence and sympathetic towards secessionists (but more solidarity would require larger unions, stronger federations — not the richest regions going their own way).
3. Sometimes the Right puts in practice more solidarity towards certain groups or causes (eg, non-elites, non-conformists, disadvantaged people who reject the orthodoxy) than the Left itself.

I now think that the ratio personal freedom vs economic freedom better categorises Left vs. Right (cf #NolanChart). I like to think of those two dimensions as “#freedom to do what you please with your body” (food, drugs, euthanasia, suicide, sex, read, speech, thought, association, religion) and “freedom to do what you please with your property” (save, invest, buy, sell, donate, build, trade, settle).

This is not a defence of #anarchism or #libertarianism, by the way — I do believe certain restrictions on both kinds of liberties are necessary for any society to function at all.