How does the World view America these days?

[caze]

 

Last night I stayed up until like 5 reading about disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer, and John Ronson's book So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

 

I've been on the fence about the ethics and efficacy of public shaming. (Also, public shaming dovetails nicely with my recent obsession: acausal decision theories, Parfitian-filters, morality and evolutionary psychology)

 

But ultimately I decided that humans are social creatures, we have to share this earth and the things on it, and so I am totally down with public shaming to the extent that it's proportional (although deciding what's proportional is another matter altogether).

 

This dentist should have an uncomfortable life, at least for a while. His faux-apology ("oops, didn't realize anyone cared about that particular lion") is just further evidence that this guy is the quintessential rich white entitled American fuckwad. The sort of person who inflicts pain and death on fellow creatures simply to keep from being bored, that is a person that should eat shit for the rest of their life.

 

 

I think Lehrer deserved some of what he got certainly, he was a fraud. The dongle gate folks, and the AIDS joke tweeter did not though, both because there wasn't really much wrong with what they did in the first place, but even if there was they're pretty insignificant people in the grand scheme of things, so it's pretty petty and vindictive to go after them, mob justice can be acceptable if it holds the powerful to account, but you're right, it needs to be proportional. Twitter is awful.

Edited July 30, 2015 by caze

[caze]

 

 

real estate prices are the biggest load of horseshit imo. housing prices should all be fixed otherwise you just ruin everything with gentrification. it's great that rent prices are constantly in flux too. Like super rational that rent prices change by the day.

 

fixed at what price, by what calculation? it's a nice sentiment in theory, but sadly the maths prove it's impossible to set fixed prices for things and maintain a working economy. housing bubbles are caused by government's meddling in the housing market (usually via subsidies and tax breaks, but also central banks printing too much money, and then they make matters worse by writing off the debt when the investments fail). if they simply hadn't meddled in the first place, and then not meddled after the fact, house prices would remain what people could afford (as long as there was no barrier to the supply of goods and services, and land to build on at any rate).

 

 

 

lol are you high?

 

 

I wasn't trying to remove all blame from the banks btw, certainly in the case of America, the subprime/derivatives shit had a big impact on it as well, but that was not really a big factor in the banking problems in the UK & Ireland for example. Do you have an alternative explanation in those cases?

[Nebraska]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDY5nQLMr5M

[Rubin Farr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDY5nQLMr5M

The operator resigned

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

Last night I stayed up until like 5 reading about disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer, and John Ronson's book So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

 

I've been on the fence about the ethics and efficacy of public shaming. (Also, public shaming dovetails nicely with my recent obsession: acausal decision theories, Parfitian-filters, morality and evolutionary psychology)

 

But ultimately I decided that humans are social creatures, we have to share this earth and the things on it, and so I am totally down with public shaming to the extent that it's proportional (although deciding what's proportional is another matter altogether).

 

This dentist should have an uncomfortable life, at least for a while. His faux-apology ("oops, didn't realize anyone cared about that particular lion") is just further evidence that this guy is the quintessential rich white entitled American fuckwad. The sort of person who inflicts pain and death on fellow creatures simply to keep from being bored, that is a person that should eat shit for the rest of their life.

 

 

I think Lehrer deserved some of what he got certainly, he was a fraud. The dongle gate folks, and the AIDS joke tweeter did not though, both because there wasn't really much wrong with what they did in the first place, but even if there was they're pretty insignificant people in the grand scheme of things, so it's pretty petty and vindictive to go after them, mob justice can be acceptable if it holds the powerful to account, but you're right, it needs to be proportional. Twitter is awful.

 

 

I totally agree with everything you just said.

[chenGOD]

 

 

 

real estate prices are the biggest load of horseshit imo. housing prices should all be fixed otherwise you just ruin everything with gentrification. it's great that rent prices are constantly in flux too. Like super rational that rent prices change by the day.

 

fixed at what price, by what calculation? it's a nice sentiment in theory, but sadly the maths prove it's impossible to set fixed prices for things and maintain a working economy. housing bubbles are caused by government's meddling in the housing market (usually via subsidies and tax breaks, but also central banks printing too much money, and then they make matters worse by writing off the debt when the investments fail). if they simply hadn't meddled in the first place, and then not meddled after the fact, house prices would remain what people could afford (as long as there was no barrier to the supply of goods and services, and land to build on at any rate).

 

 

 

lol are you high?

 

 

I wasn't trying to remove all blame from the banks btw, certainly in the case of America, the subprime/derivatives shit had a big impact on it as well, but that was not really a big factor in the banking problems in the UK & Ireland for example. Do you have an alternative explanation in those cases?

 

 

Are you talking about the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007/2008, or housing bubbles? The GFC was much more than a housing bubble, and to go into the causes of it requires wayyyyyyyyy more space and time than I have.

 

Housing bubbles on the other hand, are generally caused by one thing - people using properties as investment vehicles.

[caze]

 

 

 

 

real estate prices are the biggest load of horseshit imo. housing prices should all be fixed otherwise you just ruin everything with gentrification. it's great that rent prices are constantly in flux too. Like super rational that rent prices change by the day.

 

fixed at what price, by what calculation? it's a nice sentiment in theory, but sadly the maths prove it's impossible to set fixed prices for things and maintain a working economy. housing bubbles are caused by government's meddling in the housing market (usually via subsidies and tax breaks, but also central banks printing too much money, and then they make matters worse by writing off the debt when the investments fail). if they simply hadn't meddled in the first place, and then not meddled after the fact, house prices would remain what people could afford (as long as there was no barrier to the supply of goods and services, and land to build on at any rate).

 

 

 

lol are you high?

 

 

I wasn't trying to remove all blame from the banks btw, certainly in the case of America, the subprime/derivatives shit had a big impact on it as well, but that was not really a big factor in the banking problems in the UK & Ireland for example. Do you have an alternative explanation in those cases?

 

 

Are you talking about the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007/2008, or housing bubbles? The GFC was much more than a housing bubble, and to go into the causes of it requires wayyyyyyyyy more space and time than I have.

 

Housing bubbles on the other hand, are generally caused by one thing - people using properties as investment vehicles.

 

 

Well the GFC started off as a housing bubble (or at least it was the straw that broke the camel's back), but I was speaking more generally.

 

You're right about the investment thing, but why do you think that people who couldn't afford to get into the house investment market were getting into it if not because of government and central bank policies which encouraged such behavior?

[chenGOD]

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

[Rubin Farr]

Texas food truck set ablaze because owner offered free sandwiches in return for turning in confederate flags.

http://www.eater.com/2015/7/30/9072727/food-truck-set-on-fire-owner-against-confederate-flag

[caze]

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

 

In Ireland there were massive tax breaks given to developers (this was a policy of the FF/PD government at the time of the crash, as well as with the preceding FG/Labour government - though more so in the hotel/commercial market with them), and the low interest rates at the time didn't help either. Better regulation may have caught the problem sooner, but it wasn't the cause (and due to the complexity of how all the debt was being packaged worldwide, it's debatable how quickly they'd have caught it anyway). It wasn't all developers either, there were plenty of first time homeowners who ended up with unsustainable debt as well. As well as that, the easy money available to all the banks worldwide a direct consequence of the monetary policy of the US and EZ at the time, so even in countries where there may not have been tax incentives for investment, or where interest rates alone couldn't account for everything (I don't really know about the US circumstances with that in that much detail, but it wouldn't surprise me if both were a factor there too), the repayment bar was lowered due to the amount of cheap cash the banks were swimming in.

[maitake]

America gets more embarrassing every day.

It makes me feel like dirty white male scum.

[MisterE]

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

how about the CRA? it pushed those banks to make a lot of those loans to people who they knew could never pay them back? it wasn't a form of regulation itself? the idea that the problem was caused by rampant free market capitalism is ridiculous. banks were given incentives through the CRA to give risky loans. then you also have the fed, manipulating interest rates drastically, causing all kinds of chaos. then fannie+freddie step in, buy those loans, and they're backed by the gov and therefore supported by tax dollars. at one point they announced their low income loan commitments at $5trillion. the whole thing was a racket. the banks got their bonuses out of it but the gov was orchestrating the whole thing. 'too big to fail' and bailouts also came from the gov. that's hardly a free market with a lack of regulation.

[goDel]

housing bubbles caused by government intervention. sure, i wish it was that simple.

 

the gfc started as a credit problem. people/businesses were borrowing way more than they could repay. whether it's about houses or anything else. that was the bubble that burst. were houses involved? sure. government? probably. did the government create a bubble by meddling with the markets? obviously, there isn't a single cause, but the opposite would be more likely. due to a lack of regulation, the bubble grew way too big. (and yes, like mistere says, there were also policies incentivising banks to give more loans)

 

long story short, just watch this video (30mins) of economy 101:

Edited July 30, 2015 by goDel

[LimpyLoo]

Until today, I had never in my life heard that the economic disaster was caused by over-regulation.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2015 by LimpyLoo

[caze]

there isn't really over-regulation and under-regulation, just bad-regulation and good-regulation. governments tend to do the former unfortunately. conservative parties like to talk about less regulation, but that's rarely what they actually do.

[goDel]

 

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

how about the CRA? it pushed those banks to make a lot of those loans to people who they knew could never pay them back? it wasn't a form of regulation itself? the idea that the problem was caused by rampant free market capitalism is ridiculous. banks were given incentives through the CRA to give risky loans. then you also have the fed, manipulating interest rates drastically, causing all kinds of chaos. then fannie+freddie step in, buy those loans, and they're backed by the gov and therefore supported by tax dollars. at one point they announced their low income loan commitments at $5trillion. the whole thing was a racket. the banks got their bonuses out of it but the gov was orchestrating the whole thing. 'too big to fail' and bailouts also came from the gov. that's hardly a free market with a lack of regulation.

 

 

one point about the "gov orchestrating the whole thing" is to be really careful when you say such a thing. first, whose policies were those? especially in the us there's a huge grey area between "the market" (or rather wall street) and "government". i haven't looked who wrote the policies you're pointing at, but i'm pretty sure the people from wal street were deeply involved in writing those policies and making sure the politicians "responsible" voted accordingly. if your view of us politics is that whenever government makes laws there is regulation, think again. not sure why i should explain this, but you know, obviously it's pretty difficult to remain rational in the us bubble.

second: even if those incentives were put there against the will of "wall street", there was supposed to be a safety net. and "wall street" was supposed to be incentivised in and of itself to create their safety net. because wall street should be able to recognise the financial risks and act accordingly.

on the freddie/fannie thing: you might want to explain that why housing prices were rising in pretty much the entire western world. was that us policy? did all governments just happen to make stupid policies at the same time? wouldn't that be a happy coincidence? or was there more perhaps? in this global financial market which was acting pretty much outside of the scopes of those local governments.

all i know is that whenever i hear someone blaming governments, i can be safe to stop listening and go back to sleep, because governments are only half the story. at most.

[chenGOD]

 

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

 

In Ireland there were massive tax breaks given to developers (this was a policy of the FF/PD government at the time of the crash, as well as with the preceding FG/Labour government - though more so in the hotel/commercial market with them), and the low interest rates at the time didn't help either. Better regulation may have caught the problem sooner, but it wasn't the cause (and due to the complexity of how all the debt was being packaged worldwide, it's debatable how quickly they'd have caught it anyway). It wasn't all developers either, there were plenty of first time homeowners who ended up with unsustainable debt as well. As well as that, the easy money available to all the banks worldwide a direct consequence of the monetary policy of the US and EZ at the time, so even in countries where there may not have been tax incentives for investment, or where interest rates alone couldn't account for everything (I don't really know about the US circumstances with that in that much detail, but it wouldn't surprise me if both were a factor there too), the repayment bar was lowered due to the amount of cheap cash the banks were swimming in.

 

 

Government monetary policy was not particularly loose prior to the GFC - low inflation and low output significant in that determination. Sure interest rates were low, but again, the risk was all on the banks doing the lending. And they showed a serious appetite for risk. The deregulation of the banking sector and lack of oversight on capital reserves, combined with collusion from the ratings agencies, was what enabled the banks to make those ridiculous loans.

 

 

 

 

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

how about the CRA? it pushed those banks to make a lot of those loans to people who they knew could never pay them back? it wasn't a form of regulation itself? the idea that the problem was caused by rampant free market capitalism is ridiculous. banks were given incentives through the CRA to give risky loans. then you also have the fed, manipulating interest rates drastically, causing all kinds of chaos. then fannie+freddie step in, buy those loans, and they're backed by the gov and therefore supported by tax dollars. at one point they announced their low income loan commitments at $5trillion. the whole thing was a racket. the banks got their bonuses out of it but the gov was orchestrating the whole thing. 'too big to fail' and bailouts also came from the gov. that's hardly a free market with a lack of regulation.

 

 

The risky loans that started the ball rolling were almost universally in the private market.

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/things-everyone-in-chicago-knows/

 

Further, it wasn't either of the gov't agencies who repacked the mortgages and sold the "toxic assets" along with good investments.

Nor was it gov't policy which led to the massive speculation in the housing market.

 

With regards to the CRA, given that the CRA has been around since 1977, you would think that if that was going to cause a market crash, then it would have done so long before now. What the most cited paper on this finds is that while the CRA did have some incentivizing effect on banks to make risky loans, they did so around periods of CRA compliance testing, and thus the long-term performance would not affect the "safe and sound" principle of lending. As the deregulation of the industry occurred (mainly by the constant erosion of the separation of investment firms and banks, and yes the repeal of Glass-Steagall in '99 under Clinton) , that safe and sound principle went out the window.

Finally, two points. One - the majority of subprime loans were done by independent mortgage loan companies who were not subject to the CRA. Two - loans to low and moderate income communities comprised only a small percentage of loans made by CRA lenders.

 

http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/cra_lending_during_subprime_meltdown11.pdf

[caze]

 

 

People who should not have been receiving mortgages (NINJAs - No Income No Jobs or Assets) were getting mortgages because banks had a much higher appetite for risk, due to lack of oversight and regulation. This lack of regulation enabled predatory lending. So I suppose one could say this lack of policy encouraged such behaviour.

 

In Ireland there were massive tax breaks given to developers (this was a policy of the FF/PD government at the time of the crash, as well as with the preceding FG/Labour government - though more so in the hotel/commercial market with them), and the low interest rates at the time didn't help either. Better regulation may have caught the problem sooner, but it wasn't the cause (and due to the complexity of how all the debt was being packaged worldwide, it's debatable how quickly they'd have caught it anyway). It wasn't all developers either, there were plenty of first time homeowners who ended up with unsustainable debt as well. As well as that, the easy money available to all the banks worldwide a direct consequence of the monetary policy of the US and EZ at the time, so even in countries where there may not have been tax incentives for investment, or where interest rates alone couldn't account for everything (I don't really know about the US circumstances with that in that much detail, but it wouldn't surprise me if both were a factor there too), the repayment bar was lowered due to the amount of cheap cash the banks were swimming in.

 

 

Government monetary policy was not particularly loose prior to the GFC - low inflation and low output significant in that determination. Sure interest rates were low, but again, the risk was all on the banks doing the lending. And they showed a serious appetite for risk. The deregulation of the banking sector and lack of oversight on capital reserves, combined with collusion from the ratings agencies, was what enabled the banks to make those ridiculous loans.

 

Which government? Do you at least accept my points with respect to Ireland? (which was mostly what I was talking about here)

[Rubin Farr]

man shoots neighbor for mowing her lawn too late at night, then drives over her body with his lawnmower. wtf

http://news.yahoo.com/video/man-accused-shooting-neighbor-running-175049420.html

[cwmbrancity]

sounds like the Valleys, just swap beaten to death instead of shot

 

much more civilized

[Rubin Farr]

Sounds like Subway Jared likes to solicit underage girls, then watch them get fucked. Yeah maybe they should have done a background check ya think??

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-subpoenae-subway-jared-fogles-text-2015-7

[Guest Atom Dowry Firth]

Texas man injured as bullet ricochets off armadillo

[LimpyLoo]

Sounds like Subway Jared likes to solicit underage girls, then watch them get fucked. Yeah maybe they should have done a background check ya think??

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-subpoenae-subway-jared-fogles-text-2015-7

 

Reading that article got me wondering about age of consent laws.

 

 

Here are some fun facts:

 

-age of consent is 16 most places in U.S.

-age of consent is 12 in Mexico City, Philippines and Angola

-there is no age of consent in Nigera

 

 

 

I find the interplay between morality and law interesting. You can't buy cigarettes the day before your 18th birthday, but obviously nothing magical happens on your 18th birthday. It's a bit like the old idea of having a pile of salt...

you take away a grain, it's still a mound of salt and so on, and so on...but eventually, it will cease to be a mound.

 

Back to the Subway guy...it seems strange that having sex with a 16 year old is legal, but having an image of a 16 year old is illegal. I don't know how things should be different, but it just seems strange. I mean, the sex is higher stakes than the picture, no?

 

And it's strange that adults who have pictures of 16 year olds would--socially--be branded pedophiles, while at the same time the legislation on the books allows one to actually have sex with a 16-year old.

 

In conclusion, Jared sounds like a creep.

[LimpyLoo]

edit: oh jesus, i just started thinking about the implications of Nigeria not having an age of consent

[LimpyLoo]

edit: oops looks like it's more like 10 if married, 13 if not married

Edited August 1, 2015 by LimpyLoo