I think it's common of all groups to lump individuals of other groups. Someone might say "<republicans | democrats | asians | whites | blacks | chinese | americans | rich | poor> all think that <insert thing here here>".
it's worth noting that those with more power have greater potential to cause damage with their haphazard lumping
Does this argument explain why I can't think of a single country that has put forth a concerted effort to discourage cross border capital flows? I don't think so. If I'm wrong please point out a case study. I think the fact that globalism ends up being a net positive for nations long-term is the reason they prefer to stick to it as a system. I'm not well-versed in economics as a whole, but it seems like PPP is one of the metrics that can somewhat approximate how well individuals in a nation are able to exercise economic power. And it looks like globalism does help increase that if the goods your country produces are uniquely positioned in some way (ie uniquely cheap, uniquely durable etc.). I remember many people predicting that the luxury-good level pricing of the iPhone meant that it would never take off in "non-developed" countries but clearly in 2021, that's far from the truth. I think what people want is access to high-quality and reliable goods/services, rather than globalism or nationalism as a system.
FWIW, I like localism the most due to the psychological/cultural/scaling effects that it produces and hopefully, there's a minimally harmful way to get there without getting stuck in a nationalist rut.
> Does this argument explain why I can't think of a single country that has put forth a concerted effort to discourage cross border capital flows
This is a complex topic in a country where many pressure groups are fighting over policies.
In terms of immediate winners and losers, on the pro-globalism side, the winners are:
* investors that benefit from the race to the bottom
* the professional and managerial classes whose salaries rise as companies become more centers of management/coordinate/design with productive labor formed elsewhere
* service workers in select urban areas dominated by business services and consulting sectors
The losers are:
* blue collar workers
* service workers in smaller urban areas and rural areas
But in terms of long term effects, the losers are the vast majority of society, because de-industrialization creates a lot of social pathologies as we became a society with a shortage of meaningful work, the decline in solidarity hurts the nation's ability to coordinate to solve problems and deliver services efficiently, and the global supply chains are fragile, with many points of failure.
But the larger point is that the proponents of globalism are those who espouse liberalism, from the university professor who believes humans are isolated machines that maximize lifetime utility to those committing street violence against "fascists" -- that is, anyone who believes in national solidarity. This array is effectively the shock troops of globalism. It is one large movement fundamentally rooted in the idea that the purpose of life is to enjoy yourself as much as possible before you shuffle off to the grave, rather than being a part of a chain of being with your ancestors and grandchildren, in which the purpose of life includes making sacrifices for your group in order to contribute to your group's overall long term success.
Thus a society gripped by liberalism is one in which everyone defects. Consumers don't buy american made goods out of a commitment to the wellbeing of their society. Companies don't hire american workers out of a commitment to their fellow countrymen's wellbeing. Taxpayers do whatever they can to offshore wealth. It's everyone for themselves, and those types of societies just don't last very long. This is why we see liberal democracies in Western Europe and North America being rapidly eclipsed and outcompeted by well organized nationalistic societies in Asia.
It is for these reasons that societies have historically put up boundaries and exacted punishment on defectors and adopted institutions to inculcate loyalty and patriotism. When those borders are knocked down and the institutions subverted, don't be surprised when you are stabbed in the back by your countryman who doesn't give a sh*t that you and he are citizens of the same country.
> And it looks like globalism does help increase that if the goods your country produces are uniquely positioned in some way
You are talking about gains from trade. The issue is not gains from trade but trade deficits -- e.g. one way trade. These large Global capital inflows are not used to finance trade, they are used to finance trade deficits.
Could you explain why you feel bummed about it? You've clearly exposed your child to a world of fulfilling outdoor activities that are far richer than what a group of kids could get up to in a neighborhood. I myself had the freedom as a child that many in this thread fondly remember, and yes, making friends and spending time with them was highly influential. But all my significant memories involve sleepovers, watching movies/playing video games, or family vacations. Simply being allowed to go outside didn't really do much for me, and my most defining life experiences at this point occurred in high school and the two years after graduating.
I think that if you as a parent are giving your child the freedom to go outside and explore however they want, as well as a minimum amount of advice, that's really where the advantage lies. Being told that the world is dangerous and constantly being smothered definitely causes issues but I don't think there's anything inherently valuable about socializing in a very specific way.
Two things. First, the pandemic has me bummed because our son has largely had to sit around inside for the past 15 months due to living in a relatively barren "kid environment" in our neighborhood. That is most of the reason for me being bummed.
Related, I like balance, and while we tried to fill our son's time with activities, I think some more free play would've done him good, but, again, our barren kid environment didn't really allow for it. I was the opposite growing up, with nothing but "get out and play" for my entire kid life until my first summer camp as a teenager. It had its upsides, but I think I would've been better served by having more structured activities that exposed me to more things in life.
Regardless, kids are resilient and they learn what they learn and find their own way in life, ours is no different!
their empirical data does not account for factors like wealth distribution, and a lot of the subjective indicators do not correlate strongly with the "objective" measures, with the exception of housing satisfaction.
Data and science doesn't make something objective. For something that claims to measure the quality of life of entire countries and compare them, I'd expect at least 70% of the world to be sampled in a thorough way.
Also, I don't think I've ever met anybody that genuinely believed the US was a third world country. They usually bring up its flaws in response to claims of "USA #1" or something along those lines which are slogans they grew up around their whole life. Now that they are looking into things, traveling, and experiencing more of life, they realize that that blanket statement holds no truth. The arm chair media consumption is definitely an issue but in the same way, I remember only reading good things about the US for almost the entirety of the 90s (consuming news from the BBC, Reuters, and local Japanese/Indian news orgs).
> Data and science doesn't make something objective
Well the “US is a third world country” take is based on no evidence whatsoever and defies all common sense, experience, etc, so I guess I’ll take the significant but imperfect evidence.
The idea of the US "turning into a third world country with a Gucci belt" is just a caricature; you are taking it extremely literally and I'm not sure why. But assuming large amounts of the population believed this to be a fact, this evidence from the website is not significant whatsoever. It's imperfect and insignificant. Any meaning you extract from it would be the equivalent of obtaining a desired trend from a plot full of randomly placed dots.
> The idea of the US "turning into a third world country with a Gucci belt" is just a caricature; you are taking it extremely literally and I'm not sure why.
Some people are intending it as a caricature and others are intending it literally (for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520754). The literal case is obviously factually incorrect and the caricature case is unhelpful and divisive. Take your pick.
When reputable and trusted journalists are leaving their industry and sounding the alarm while becoming bloggers on Substack, it is not so easy to maintain faith in the process.
> When reputable and trusted journalists are leaving their industry and sounding the alarm while becoming bloggers on Substack, it is not so easy to maintain faith in the process.
They aren't saying news is unreliable, they are saying they can make more money on Substack.
This is the entire reason the media took actions like banning the very topic from being discussed. Someone else mentioned it higher up in the thread but there was a huge overlap between people claiming to simply sincerely investigate the possibility of a lab leak, and the group of people who believed that the virus was a bioengineered weapon released on purpose by China to disrupt other nations.
That might be what they're sniffing, but anal gland secretions are not subtle. They're the opposite of subtle.
I have a lot of dogs. Every once in a while, it seems that one of them gets a plugged up anal gland, or it doesn't get fully expressed when they poop. An earlier commenter said to look for liquid dropping out when they poop; I see this all the time. But sometimes that doesn't work for whatever reason, and then later on the gland "pops" and all the stuff comes out. The dog is usually sitting on my lap when this happens. It happens with both girl and boy dogs. My wife calls it getting butt-juiced.
The smell causes me to immediately change my clothes. It's not a fecal smell. I can't begin to describe it, but once you smell it you'll never forget.
Years ago we fostered a girl dachshund who loved my wife but hated me and feared me like the devil himself. Often when I would approach her in any but the slowest and most non-threatening way, she would tense violently and squirt anal gland juice like a skunk. Sometimes she'd leave a trail of the stuff on the floor as she ran for her life. One whiff would tell you it wasn't urine.
(BTW, that poor girl dog was eventually adopted by a sweet single woman and they are now inseperable companions)
This is true. I meant that they are subtle in the amount available when dogs butt-sniff each other. Dogs can detect the tiniest amount, way before a human even notices it's there. The concentrated stuff is, as you say, very intense.
> The smell causes me to immediately change my clothes. It's not a fecal smell. I can't begin to describe it, but once you smell it you'll never forget.
I'm sorry to put this in your head but... fish sauce.
With really old dogs the gland sometimes won't unblock itself and becomes infected. The cure is to milk it. This is a vet's least favourite job, and they have some pretty grim tasks.
There is much more limited harm from a person wielding a knife for malicious purposes, as opposed to how quickly social media can fuel similar actions. If you genuinely believe scale doesn't matter and everything is the same as everything else, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't doubt that scale matters, it's just a bad analogy. Knives aren't comparable to social media, but if the commenter wants to play the knife analogy game then this is the conclusion.
