Your comment suggests you think cronyism was in some part responsible for America's rise as a global power. Common sense would indicate that we became a power despite the cronyism, not because it, and you've provided nothing to support your wildly counter intuitive claim.
This is your comment basically:
People really need to read their history. When America definitively surpassed the UK in 1880 as the richest country in the world (per capita), tuberculosis was a leading cause of death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis
The advancement of antibiotics did not happen until the mid 20th century, which significantly postdates America's rise to the top. It would be a great idea to rollback science to that time when we didn't have all these life saving vaccines and antibiotics.
> Your comment suggests you think cronyism was in some part responsible for America's rise as a global power.
Not at all. My comment was that America’s good run began a century before the 20th century practice of administration through independent experts. Thus, such administration cannot be a necessary condition for America’s “good run” as OP suggested.
Worth noting that the period you indicate is a an example of an America largely deploying inventions from the UK (e.g. the steam engine, steam locomotive, etc.).
The latter part of the 20th century and first part of this century is a story more of the US driving invention and deploying those inventions.
The techniques needed to go from lesser power to leading power are different from those needed to advance as a leading power. For Lebron to stay on top, he has to do different things than any of us would need to do to get into the NBA.
Different circumstances & different goals require different strategies.
That's fair, but I think your original comment could be much more clearly written.
"There was a spoils system in the late 1800s. It sure would be great if we could go back to that time." Technically these can be interpreted as unrelated statements (as apparently the statements are in your original comment), but most people would infer from that they were related and that the reason it would be nice to rollback to the earlier time was the aforementioned spoils system.
> but most people would infer from that they were related and that the reason it would be nice to rollback to the earlier time was the aforementioned spoils system
Except I explicitly referred to “[r]olling the government back,” specifically “the modern administrative state.” The two systems being compared are the old system where the executive branch was politically accountable (but suffered from patronage jobs), and the new system presided over by experts (but who are insulated from political signals).
My point is that the old system, with its shortcomings, empirically produced good results, as good as the new system, with its shortcomings. That’s not an argument that the spoils system was great in isolation. But it’s possible that political appointees aren’t as incompetent as you assume. Or credentialed experts aren’t as competent as you assume. Or that the gains from more administrative competence are outweighed by the loss of responsiveness to political signals.
I would argue that PE often makes things better for the consumer in the sense that they often buy businesses that are going out of business.
When the 65 year old sole proprietor of a local HVAC business sells it to a PE firm, the other option was likely winding down the business. If the owner had children that were interested in running the business, no doubt they would give it to them. But usually that is not the case. So the owner needs to sell. And if there were capitalized, enthusiastic local entrepreneurs that could buy it, no doubt the owner would consider them. But again, this is quite rare.
So the choices usually come down to: close up shop or sell to a PE firm. All other things being equal (which they never are), I think a market with more businesses is going to be more competitive and pro-consumer than a market with fewer businesses. Further, some economists have found that PE activity encourages business formation, perhaps partially explaining why the US has more small businesses per capita than Europe (where they have far less PE). So it's a double whammy: PE causes less businesses to close and more businesses to open.
It’s only natural to want to defend one’s preferences with these things. Because unlike with some other preferences, such as what IDE, operating system, or terminal emulator you use, version control systems must be shared.
If it is like you say and different people are just inherently more or less suited to different paradigms, then not everyone can be happy.
This whole thread is about working with git coworkers while using jujutsu, and it was in that context that I wrote my comment: Namely that most who prefer jujutsu happily work with their colleagues who use git in precisely the scenario the OP mentions and don't see why the OP finds it painful. The OP and others should accept that reality.
> If it is like you say and different people are just inherently more or less suited to different paradigms, then not everyone can be happy.
If you force everyone to use git, of course not everyone will be happy.
If you force everyone to use jj, of course not everyone will be happy.
Thankfully, the whole point is git and jj users can interoperate without needing to care what the other is using. So yes, not only can everyone be happy, but everyone is happy! This isn't a hypothetical - it's a reality. It's the reason so many use jujutsu at work.
> What it achieves, is that the quality of people who assume office sinks even lower than it is today, since anyone with a modicum of competence, would never divest a business for a low paid, public job.
Unless of course those with a modicum of competence desire to be true public servants. Read about the character of some of our great leaders like Washington, Lincoln or Eisenhower to understand the mentality of a true public servant. Something someone like Kash Patel knows nothing about.
I don’t think this level of virtue is all that rare, though it is rarely rewarded at the ballot box.
I don’t disagree with your post but I’m still unclear on how you envision gatekeeper should work.
You want the ability to choose a different “authorities” that verify and sign binaries? That makes sense to me but is unlikely to relieve any of the issues in the post.
Also what do you mean by “even yourself?” What would that option look like?
In any case, Gatekeeper is mostly intended to save grandmas who are at risk of downloading random malware from the internet.
If you're a developer who is reasonably aware of how computers work you might as well disable Gatekeeper entirely. You're taking many times more risk every time you use Terminal.
Nowadays (as of Sequoia, I think), I find that I need to run `xattr -c Foo.app` to clear the “this was downloaded from the Internet” bit on the application bundle before I can right-click, “Open” it. Used to be that you only needed to do that with .apps extracted from zip archives, but it seems to apply to .apps copied out of disk images (DMGs) now, too.
The charges could be very serious but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, because being charged (or even just arrested) is not the same as being convicted. The author of this post claims both of their charges were dropped.
So, what, let’s torture anyone that _might_ have done something “serious?” No judge, no jury, just if a cop thinks you might have done something, straight into a psychological torture cell for weeks and months while they think about your case? wtf
Also, your description of their experience as “not pleasant” just kind of blows my mind. Like it was a long line at the DMV or something.
> testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation
There is a solid explanation.
First, before the adoption of mass spec, studies used a less accurate method of measuring testosterone that overstated testosterone levels.
Also, the studies showing the population level decline in testosterone generally controlled for obesity (which naturally lowers testosterone) using BMI. But BMI is a very crude measure.
When studies control with better methods like BMI + waist circumference, and only compare samples using the mass spec measurement method, the unexplained population level decline goes away. After fixing the measurement method, what remains of the decline can be explained by BMI + waist circumference. In other words, modern men are more prone to obesity and metabolic syndrome, which naturally reduces testosterone. Case closed.
That study appears to be US only, while global studies have shown the effect.
For that matter, some _animal_ studies have shown declining testosterone as well. That doesn't seem to be well-studied, but if it holds up it would make me lean toward it being something environmental (e.g. microplastic pollution)
I linked that study because it is particularly interesting because they run the mass spec test on archived blood samples.
But there are other studies and meta analyses which cover other countries and come to the same conclusion.
I think many of the studies claiming to find significant population level decline are older and overstate the issue due to the methodological errors outlined in my previous post. If you are thinking of a particular one, please share a link.
I am not familiar with the research on testosterone levels in animals. In humans, while not conclusory, I do think the evidence suggests that increasing rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome are the proximate cause of testosterone decline.
This is your comment basically:
People really need to read their history. When America definitively surpassed the UK in 1880 as the richest country in the world (per capita), tuberculosis was a leading cause of death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis
The advancement of antibiotics did not happen until the mid 20th century, which significantly postdates America's rise to the top. It would be a great idea to rollback science to that time when we didn't have all these life saving vaccines and antibiotics.
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