Comment by collinmcnulty

>There is still $5K more _economic_ value created, in that +$5K went to people who might otherwise be jobless. They'll in turn spend that money at businesses in the private sector, reaching more people, and so on. If the man with the septic tank runs a coffee shop, he will see extra value from more coffee sales.

That's the grade school analysis and in reality we are all poorer for it.

If ten people pay $5k to avoid getting a substandard service that has a 1/10 chance of happening and will cost $20k to remediate if it does that is a massive loss to the overall economy because that money otherwise would've been spent elsewhere else.

This isn't just septics, it's every widget and service. And it's not just a government and tax problem (though those cases are frequently most flagrant). Private industry requirements cause the same problems.

So instead of a man with a backhoe we should instead hire 10 men with spoons?

The person who wanted the septic tank almost certainly would spend that $5k somewhere else if he had it. Except in that circumstance he would spend it on something that he thought provided him value, instead of overbearing regulation.

It comes down to the amortized cost of insurance vs amortized cost of not. Say nothing about how incentives get fucked all to hell by breaking things across many parties (principal agent problem) and the money distorts things.

And this isn't just insurance. Just because someone who work is being made for by law or by rule says that their work output reduces the failure rate from X to Y doesn't mean that the cost of their work when applied to everything isn't a massive loss compared to just not paying for that and cleaning up the mess X times instead of Y times.

You can appeal to emotion all you want but it's a very simple calculation. Heck, health insurance (in the US) serves a pretty obvious counterpoint.

Compare against the typical OCED nation, US spending ~18% gdp on health, about ~8% higher than OECD average, i.e. 2T+ rent extraction per year for net lifespan that is statistically worse than OECD average. 6 months of US excess health spending buys you entire HSR system in China that's frequently being panned as overbuilt and wasteful. Meanwhile look at recently built Brightline Florida, with ~120 deaths per billion passenger km, normalize that to EU, JP, PRC HSR billion passenger km, you'd get 15k, 50k, 310k fatalities per year. Imagine PRC losing Cincinnati every year due to rail deaths. Now Brightline extra dumpfire execution but just to highlight at some point there's too much red tape, and red tape doesn't always buy you value. Sometimes the system is so broken and you end up the worst of both world quadrants: high cost rent extraction & less than first world outcomes because the accumulation of redtape itself is leading to substandard outcomes. AKA premium medicore. Extra worse in some sectors when it's not simply opportunity cost inefficiencies, i.e. you lose on something else. A sclerosic money flow recycling maximizer can also makes the thing it's pumping money into worse than expected.

The big whoop is the 100s of billions of dollars of revenue that flow to American internet companies from the rest of the world every quarter (and the high profit margins on that revenue—much higher than the margins of say Foxconn or DJI).

The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.

The US was also much more unified at the time. That’s the thing about history: Like economy, it’s human matter, and you could reproduce and experiment twice and get completely different result because your systems are not isolated in location or time.

America doesn't and shouldn't fight China or Russia alone, so I don't know why we're talking about that.

Russia is basically on its way out as a military power. It can't even conquer Ukraine.

As for China, you don't fight China alone. What do you think military bases in Japan are for? Anyway, for the world's sake, China shouldn't start a war, but sometime you just can't stop stupid.

>The US military isn't that scary; the evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength.

The US military's "ability" is very contextual - for instance, the US could easily obliterate Iran with a MIRV or two, but for various geopolitical reasons they choose not to. Likewise, the US navy is of limited use against Iran due to the literal mountain range between their only coastline and the bulk of their landmass (and population), much of which is quite mountainous.

> evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength

What kind of evidence? US is not destroying countries because its citizens don't want it to, and are generally not willing to pay the price for it.

If "the US" actually wanted, it could kill every inhabitant of continental Europe within less than a decade in a conventional war; the price in American lifes would be very high, but the outcome (without external intervention) seems pretty certain to me (speaking as a European).

> And the US has already been undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India

With respect, Russia is being decimated (literally, at least the "big fortresses" that Russia has been gnawing at for months such as Pokrovsk have insane loss rates) by Ukraine's army who are mostly using donated shoddy Soviet-era remainders and decades old Western surplus.

If the US were to wage actual war with modern technology against either Russia or China (whose arms are based off of Soviet designs and stolen American plans), there is no chance in hell either would be able to do much against the US.

India is different but they're at least a democracy that's reasonably worth calling it that (despite Modi doing his best to dismantle it). I don't see any attempts of India to project power anywhere other than in its immediate neighborhood (i.e. the border disputes with Pakistan and China). They're no threat.

I think you’re burying the lede there: this hypothetical war would be fought in Asia because China is completely incapable of projecting force to the North American continent. Without that ability to credibly threaten America China could not possibly win a war against it.

The conflicts which superpowers have withdrawn from have been against occupied nations which were in no position to ever become a future threat, this would not be true in a conflict with China, as China could conceivably develop the ability to project force and would be certainly motivated to do so during or after a real conflict.

> the evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength.

Only if Geneva enters the equation.

> the US has already been undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India

What is India doing on this list?

> China will probably win it unless the US gets a lot of help

Sure they’d win a land war on the continent. An amphibious invasion of Taiwan opposed by the US navy and air force would be a but trickier.

> undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India

To a large extent voluntarily.

The US is the second largest manufacturing power, the largest economic power and the largest military power, but those things aren't even what makes it a scary threat.

There are things that make up the US that vastly increase its potential for self-organization when it is given an organizing principle. Yes, dynamism has taken a hit over the decades, but there are also a lot of aimless purposeless people right now that do have an appetite for purpose if given one.

Major modern countries today have red lines defined that they won't cross in order to keep the peace. Russia says don't attack Moscow or otherwise attempt to replace their government or they will nuke you. Nukes do change the structure of future wars between nuclear powers, which might actually make some aspects of it less extreme.

If Ukraine had nukes, they could have a red line like, "If you keep hitting hospitals and schools, we will nuke you. Powerplants and railroads we understand, but if you show us with your actions that you have no mercy for the weak and innocent, we will end you." Instead, they have nothing of the sort.

All the US has to do is wait for the enemy to make catastrophic moral failures and it's game over, because it rallies the people, the companies, the innovative talent, the allies, etc to reject it with force. It crystallizes the purpose.

We are energy independent and are advancing even more ways to expand the dimensions of that. You can't destroy our government, because we'll just recreate it.

We're forcing our allies to become more independent, because they got too soft and we need them hardened up. That only makes the US stronger, because strong allies are better for all of us. It makes us a better deterrent against war happening in the first place.

Meanwhile China is surrounded by countries that dislike it and don't trust it. Giving Canada and Mexico tough love is no comparison to the fundamental failures in the relationships China has with its neighbors in their region.

India is far more US aligned than with China, regardless of tensions. Neither North Korea nor Russia trust China, but they are forced to deal with it despite the buddy-buddy optics.

Failing to benefit from so many possible optimizations at the basic strategic level in their local region, any confidence in a favorable outcome for the CCP seems misplaced. Their failings probably cascade down into the other levels of preparation as well.

Could China attack US? Why would US try to attack China in asia? Not an expert but that feels like losing proposition. I think people confuse proxy wars with wars. US is under no threat of being actually attacked.

Military action is an extension of politics.

US politics do not support all out war against foreign nations at this point in time hence the half wars.

This goes for most first world nations.

> Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever there is heavy rain.

I didn't know about this. Can you share a link?

The chemistry department teaches culture? nonsense.

Nonsense. Universities are just part of culture, it's tiny and most people do not participate and only receive the "products" coming out of universities. Culture is a broad concept and very region specific, it is not tied to academia. Universities have influence on culture but that's pretty much it.

Universities are supposed to teach valuable skills and knowledge. Outside of STEM fields they are increasingly failing at that task. Relativism is in full force and we are in the "post-truth" world largely because university produced some of the most garbage theories you could think of.

And universities have no business inserting themselves into moral arguments, otherwise it is basically a state sanctioned religion. But this is basically the problem, universities have become the ideological arm the power in place, exactly like it was when the Catholics dominated Europe and gave legitimacy to kings. Unsurprisingly there have been complaints of "neo-feudalism" which is just a repeat of the middle-age, that happened after the rise of Christianity, when universities were de facto Catholic institutions.

> but you need a good education to understand what "morality" means in this context.

Passive-agressive much ? Instead of attempting cheap low blows, maybe you can go through the trouble of explaining.

Morals can guide you for science and engineering choices but the whole point of those fields is that they shouldn't be limited by morals. I think you are confusing ethics and morals but it also seems like you are just arguing for some form of censorship.

>The collapse of the West started when the old Enlightenment morality - education of all kinds as a collective good - was replaced by the MBA culture of greed and vapid narcissism.

Vapid narcissism is an inherent human behavior and doesn't have much to do with universities but is largely linked to consumerism. I guess you could say that people go to university for credentialism in order to get a good pay to finally express their vapid narcissism. But the universities have nothing to do with the process and just a middle point in route to the goal. Which is basically the argument: credentialism is nonsense and cost a lot of money for no good results. If universities would be successful, one could easily argue that vapid narcissism should be going down actually but instead you get just another marker of uselessness. As for the MBAs, they can't be that big of an influence in the universities, it's mostly about bachelors and masters; why even bring this up ?

> DEI was a weak and ineffectual response to that. The dysfunction goes far deeper, and universities are now a vector of it rather than a bulwark against it.

DEI take its roots in universities, via feminism, gender studies and all kind of social sciences bullshit. Those fields were created precisely to fill the ranks because it was statistically impossible to have enough people clearing the bar for the hard studies even if they had wished to expand capacity. It was just a way to make people pay for a piece of paper that is supposed to give them legitimacy even though what happened is nothing short of endoctrinement.

Of course the universities are a vector of it, they created the dysfunction out of ideology and greed. It is just some a proto-religion that is trying to establish its authority. Nothing can tell you that better than the divide between the university "educated" women, voting left and the common man being either right-wing or closer to the center. Historically women are often the first followers of new religions (just go check who is doing new age bullshit) and they constituted the majority of early followers of Christianity.

So DEI was hardly a response, it was the result of a new religion that has no name trying to cement itself in the establishment. But it can only work if the men play along and so far the sentiment has been quite negative to say the least.