I am usually among the first to claim that, in a lot of ways, smartphones are The Devil.
However, even I have to concede, that at least in my personal experience, being able to use one and even communicate with a single free thumb while the rest of my body had to remain in paralyzed silence for an extended period during the many such times infant care requires such conditions, was a blessing which reduced the perceived cost of child rearing considerably.
Sorry. I should have said that your second sentence takes away from your first sentence. Recommend that you delete the second. Why bring up truth here?
Ok. I agree I was a bit redundant. I also didn't state my thought clearly.
I agree he gained something. What's less clear is how much he lost. Maybe in the big picture it is unimportant, maybe very important. Surely somewhere in between but I don't know where.
(1) “people crave solidarity and a greater sense of security. Communism promises both.” What political ideology doesn’t?
(2) “Their leaders court small, disaffected, and ideally well-armed groups, converting them into the shock troops that are needed to impose totalitarian control on a larger population” ignores the conditions which create the opportunities for a new regime of dictators, communist or otherwise, to sieze control. Historically, there are numerous instances in which communist, Islamist, or other one-party dictatorship simply replaced another failing occupying force, or dictatorship/tyrannical monarchy weakened by external attack or civil war.
Countries with strong centralized government and no established history of multiparty proportional representation are particularly susceptible to dictatorship. See: https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/
In contrast, for example, in the occupied Netherlands, the communist parties were the major players in the resistance yet were unable to seize control following liberation.
(3) “Communism attracts men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative.” Or maybe men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative tend to perform well in the political arena and are rarely ideological purists but instead use ideology to further their personal goals? Or maybe such men retain power because the overthrown autocracy was not so great to begin with and the experience of civil war left the population apathetic and resigned to immiseration.
(4 ) Communism “petered out, with the mantle passing gently to social democrats.” No. Communism didn’t simply peter out across the world. Mass uprisings of brave individuals forced the overthrow of dictatorships and prevented the substitution of new dictatorships by demanding and submitting to new democratic constitutions instead. See overthrow of communist dictatorships: Velvet Revolution, Singing Revolution, Die Wende of 1989, Romanian Revolution, Mongolian Revolution of 1990, the Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, etc. The Carnation Revolution in Portugal is a good example of a democratic revolution undoing a non-communist dictatorship, or consider Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy. Autocracy doesn’t simply go away by itself: transitions out of autocracy require populist energy.
The terms “sceptical” and VC haven’t belonged together for quite some time. They’ve got money burning holes in their pockets. And who are these “others” who won’t fund? Most of the big VCs are falling over each other to fund the same types of companies. As in fashion, certain trends become popular.
> In terms of personality psychology, men with the Dark Triad (narcissistic, psychopathic, Machiavellian) are attracted to an ideology of total power. I would speculate that the subjects who let these men take over are high in neuroticism and perhaps also agreeableness.
Many Central Europeans, especially those on pensions or near, pine for the low cost of living under communism. After the Berlin Wall fell, market capitalism & freedom & far more monetary corruption came, with thousands of newly available products—at world market prices, with wages of workers usually less than US minimum wage. Instead of wasting time in lines to buy a pitiful selection of ok, sometimes quite high quality products at low prices, if available, the price system was used to allocate purchases and lots of folk felt actually poorer.
Feeling poor, as a feeling, is far more relative than actually being poor. When a pensioner is supposed to live a decent life on about $400/month, while he sees ex-commies & ex-secret police becoming millionaires thru privatization and tunneling (company money to the managers) and corruption, “capitalism” doesn’t seem so good.
For people at the bottom of any capitalist system, it’s easy to decry capitalism and turn, naturally, to much higher levels of redistribution. Getting more because one is now poor remains a huge reason for the poor to support communism, and the icky existence of the poor remains a key reason elites oppose capitalism and instead want “real communism”. The kind that has never been tried.
I too am unhappy about the poor, but especially about the poverty lifestyle choices the poor adults made and keep making—as noted by Vance & Henderson both about their parents in their autobiographies. Our society needs to provide more productive jobs to poor folk, including low IQ & lazy & careless folk. As communism did—with force to keep laziness and carelessness at a somewhat low level, and specific placement of low IQ workers into jobs they could do.
It was illegal to be unemployed, so all did have jobs; very high Employment rate. That might be a better life, with far far less freedom, but less bad lifestyle mistakes, for the bottom 10-20% (income).
"Communism attracts men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative."
Sure. Any totalitarian governmental structure does. Prove me wrong but any governmental structure does just as much as communism.
Communism also attracts pacifists who crave solidarity, security and a greater sense of security. In that way communists might be more different from those who favor other types of government. And it makes a great target for the ruthless and depraved.
Having worked for a few start-ups, there is something wrong with the culture of delusional belief in the incredible and innovative nature of the company. It seems like the current system rewards people who can fully embrace delusion and narcissism, those are the only kind of presentations that investors respond positively to.
I am usually among the first to claim that, in a lot of ways, smartphones are The Devil.
However, even I have to concede, that at least in my personal experience, being able to use one and even communicate with a single free thumb while the rest of my body had to remain in paralyzed silence for an extended period during the many such times infant care requires such conditions, was a blessing which reduced the perceived cost of child rearing considerably.
Or maybe you missed out on a deeper connection with the infant. IDK but I wouldn't accept your statement as truth.
Delete the second sentence please.
??
Sorry. I should have said that your second sentence takes away from your first sentence. Recommend that you delete the second. Why bring up truth here?
Ok. I agree I was a bit redundant. I also didn't state my thought clearly.
I agree he gained something. What's less clear is how much he lost. Maybe in the big picture it is unimportant, maybe very important. Surely somewhere in between but I don't know where.
This sounds like Sowell’s Law, though based on a lot of your comments, I think we could refer to it as Stu’s Law.
We finally made good friends with another family that they hang out with a lot, but we have very different attitudes on screens and its a challenge.
Four points regarding the communism piece:
(1) “people crave solidarity and a greater sense of security. Communism promises both.” What political ideology doesn’t?
(2) “Their leaders court small, disaffected, and ideally well-armed groups, converting them into the shock troops that are needed to impose totalitarian control on a larger population” ignores the conditions which create the opportunities for a new regime of dictators, communist or otherwise, to sieze control. Historically, there are numerous instances in which communist, Islamist, or other one-party dictatorship simply replaced another failing occupying force, or dictatorship/tyrannical monarchy weakened by external attack or civil war.
Countries with strong centralized government and no established history of multiparty proportional representation are particularly susceptible to dictatorship. See: https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/
In contrast, for example, in the occupied Netherlands, the communist parties were the major players in the resistance yet were unable to seize control following liberation.
(3) “Communism attracts men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative.” Or maybe men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative tend to perform well in the political arena and are rarely ideological purists but instead use ideology to further their personal goals? Or maybe such men retain power because the overthrown autocracy was not so great to begin with and the experience of civil war left the population apathetic and resigned to immiseration.
(4 ) Communism “petered out, with the mantle passing gently to social democrats.” No. Communism didn’t simply peter out across the world. Mass uprisings of brave individuals forced the overthrow of dictatorships and prevented the substitution of new dictatorships by demanding and submitting to new democratic constitutions instead. See overthrow of communist dictatorships: Velvet Revolution, Singing Revolution, Die Wende of 1989, Romanian Revolution, Mongolian Revolution of 1990, the Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, etc. The Carnation Revolution in Portugal is a good example of a democratic revolution undoing a non-communist dictatorship, or consider Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy. Autocracy doesn’t simply go away by itself: transitions out of autocracy require populist energy.
The terms “sceptical” and VC haven’t belonged together for quite some time. They’ve got money burning holes in their pockets. And who are these “others” who won’t fund? Most of the big VCs are falling over each other to fund the same types of companies. As in fashion, certain trends become popular.
Sure, there are exceptions that prove the rule.
> In terms of personality psychology, men with the Dark Triad (narcissistic, psychopathic, Machiavellian) are attracted to an ideology of total power. I would speculate that the subjects who let these men take over are high in neuroticism and perhaps also agreeableness.
Sounds like Orwell's pigs vs Boxer...
Many Central Europeans, especially those on pensions or near, pine for the low cost of living under communism. After the Berlin Wall fell, market capitalism & freedom & far more monetary corruption came, with thousands of newly available products—at world market prices, with wages of workers usually less than US minimum wage. Instead of wasting time in lines to buy a pitiful selection of ok, sometimes quite high quality products at low prices, if available, the price system was used to allocate purchases and lots of folk felt actually poorer.
Feeling poor, as a feeling, is far more relative than actually being poor. When a pensioner is supposed to live a decent life on about $400/month, while he sees ex-commies & ex-secret police becoming millionaires thru privatization and tunneling (company money to the managers) and corruption, “capitalism” doesn’t seem so good.
For people at the bottom of any capitalist system, it’s easy to decry capitalism and turn, naturally, to much higher levels of redistribution. Getting more because one is now poor remains a huge reason for the poor to support communism, and the icky existence of the poor remains a key reason elites oppose capitalism and instead want “real communism”. The kind that has never been tried.
I too am unhappy about the poor, but especially about the poverty lifestyle choices the poor adults made and keep making—as noted by Vance & Henderson both about their parents in their autobiographies. Our society needs to provide more productive jobs to poor folk, including low IQ & lazy & careless folk. As communism did—with force to keep laziness and carelessness at a somewhat low level, and specific placement of low IQ workers into jobs they could do.
It was illegal to be unemployed, so all did have jobs; very high Employment rate. That might be a better life, with far far less freedom, but less bad lifestyle mistakes, for the bottom 10-20% (income).
"Communism attracts men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative."
Sure. Any totalitarian governmental structure does. Prove me wrong but any governmental structure does just as much as communism.
Communism also attracts pacifists who crave solidarity, security and a greater sense of security. In that way communists might be more different from those who favor other types of government. And it makes a great target for the ruthless and depraved.
Having worked for a few start-ups, there is something wrong with the culture of delusional belief in the incredible and innovative nature of the company. It seems like the current system rewards people who can fully embrace delusion and narcissism, those are the only kind of presentations that investors respond positively to.