sykick

A friend of mine with a Ph.D. in math and a Master's degree in electrical engineering works in industry in data science. He once told me that he would not want to hire people with a Ph.D. to do non research. He said they just have a hard time fitting into an environment where most other people aren't as insightful/perceptive.

Can people with the minds/attitudes/skillset of adjuncts fit into the workplaces you mention? Even if they could would it be useful? What side effects happen to the less intelligent who also compete for such jobs.

Whatever the answers are to this it does nothing to obviate the need for better labor market regulation.

Overall, though you are right. There is way too much participation in graduate school in relation to the job market for those skills. However, this fact does not justify treating people poorly and this is where labor market regulation comes into play. Unfortunately we Americans, in the form of our elected officials, have decided that such regulation is too burdensome.

The motivation of the German and French governments was that German and French banks not suffer. And of course the leaders of those countries cared more about their people than the people of Greece. This is natural and part of the psychology of being part of a nation. We ended up with things like:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-greece-warships-...

At any rate, both parties are at fault and both parties ought to have suffered. From my perspective only one party suffered.

Loans are a two party relationship and people tend to view the borrower more harshly than the lender. Lenders tend to get bailed out and somehow aren’t viewed negatively for their profligate lending. Why is it only the borrowers that suffer?

You’re clearly very passionate about Syria and ridding world of Assad. Why don’t you go there and fight his regime? Does your moral outrage stop at the point of actually getting involved? Is your moral compass so weak that anger and invective at an internet stranger is enough to feel you’ve done something good in the case of Syria? You are quick to send others to kill for you but it appears you lack the ambition to go yourself.

It’s fascinating that you can be so firm in your conclusion with so little evidence. Despite never having said or even remotely implied the things you think I believe you have an unshakeable certainty that I’m a piece of shit. Despite directly stating twice that U.S. involvement in WWII was the right thing to do you persist in the delusional belief that I’d not have been opposed to Hitler.

If invading another country can be reduced, in its essence, to “we are good, they are bad” then this effectively gives carte blanche to those in power with bad intent. They just need to easily manipulate the masses into thinking that Country A is bad.

The U.S. has been fantastically inconsistent when it comes to intervening for humanitarian reasons. It has effectively become the case that if those in power don’t like the leadership in a given country they just need to drum up moral outrage in order to unleash our military forces. This is a bad state of affairs because it is so easy to paint a given country in a bad light. Since thoughtful consideration is not a requisite for military action we tend to engage in military conflicts for dubious reasons and for short terms goals without considering long term implications. This is bad as I see things.

You’ve committed numerous argumentative fallacies. It behooves you to reflect on your responses and reflect on how it came to pass that you think a person who claims the situation in Syria is complicated implies they are a piece of shit and implies that they would not try to stop Hitler.

Where have I suggested that inaction is always the best course? Where have I suggested that intervention is never warranted?

What's missing in internet discussions like this is the assumption we make about people when we first meet them in person. Namely, that the other person isn't bad even if they have a different opinion. It's too easy in faceless discussions like this to paint an incorrect picture about the other person.

I wish you well.

But let's look at the historical example you brought up. Did the United States really care about the plight of Jews in Europe? Didn't we famously prevent a ship full of Jewish refugees from landing in the United States? We didn't enter the war to help Jews. My dad fought in World War II. In modern times we'd have diagnosed him with PTSD. The war left him a drunk and he had issues his whole life as a result of it. Should we have fought the war? Of course. Were there costs to it that never showed up in the statistics. Of course and we shouldn't forget or ignore these types of costs when we advocate military action.

Did we invade China to prevent the mass killings that occurred under Mao? Did we invade Cambodia to prevent the Khmer Rouge? Did we really care when Saddam gassed Iraqi Kurds? Why did we support Saddam invading Iran but not Kuwait? Where was our moral outrage at the former? Where was our moral outrage when Latin American dictators brutalized peasants whilst we supported them militarily?

Given our history of exploitation, support of brutal dictators, and active engagement in mass killings are you so sure our leaders' intentions in Syria will be altruistic? You are so sure of the necessity for intervention why don't you go there and fight it yourself? Why are you so quick to send others in your place if you aren't willing to go yourself?

What doesn't fly over my intellectual head is that there is a propensity for those in power to rally the populace with pithy slogans and calls for patriotic action in order to mask malevolent intention.

To send our armed forces to go kill others without any thought is a truly dangerous idea. We don't give carte blanche to our leadership to engage in killing simply because we've been convinced the other person is bad. It should be more.....nuanced than that.

Addendum: In 2005 I was on a light rail late at night on a Friday night. There was a drunk guy on the train and he was pretty annoying. Sort of harassing women on the train. I decided to engage him in conversation. Found out he was a Marine. We talked a bit and then he turned me and said, "I killed kids in Iraq. That's fucked up. I'm too young to kill kids." He repeated it over and over. I didn't know what to say to him. It was very sad. Fuck war and fuck the people who so easily advocate for it.

Unintended consequences. Exit conditions. Will it inflame passions in neighboring areas and cause greater harm? Suppose we overthrow Assad and Syrian Kurds breakaway from a weakened Syria and establish a nation. Are we prepared to thwart the inevitable Turkish invasion? Suppose a worse tyrant ends up in power after Assad. Suppose enmity against the United States greatly increases as a result of our intervention and this unleashes attacks we aren't really prepared to deal with.

At a higher level how do we distinguish as a people from the mass killings we disapprove of versus the ones we approve of or perpetrate ourselves? How do we know that the intervention will be done with good intentions or that there is not an ulterior motive at play? How bad does a person have to be to warrant American military intervention? What about the cases where we actively support the genocidal maniac? For example in Cambodia. How do we know our intervention won't lead to a worse outcome? Is our leadership competent enough to justify a belief that our intervention will be good? Are we prepared to properly care for our soldiers who get wounded there? Do we have the money and will to properly care for them? Does it matter? Is the military capable of winning the conflict? Is there a winnable strategy that we are willing to engage in? Is our leadership sufficiently knowledgable and well informed to make good decisions?

We famously intervened in Lebanon in the 1980s. After one terrorist attack on Marine barracks we left. Do we have the political will to see the intervention to the end? Do the American people have the attention span/desire to see the thing through to its end? Do the American people care enough?

I do not in any way support Assad. I also don’t fully understand what is going on there and what the various actors desire. But I do know that just saying Assad is evil is not enough to justify military action.

Overall though, your point here supports my view. It is hopeless at present to expect an informed populace. We are not psychologically prepared as a species to resist sustained, subtle propaganda and said propaganda is far too easy to do nowadays. Hence, I’m content to bury my head in the sand.

It’s a bit hypocritical to overthrow Assad on humanitarian grounds given the death and destruction wrought by U.S. forces in Iraq the past 17 years. The U.S. had no problem supporting Saddam Hussein while he used chemical weapons against Iran. When he used said weapons against Iraqi Kurds there was token pushback by the U.S.

Just painting the picture of, “Assad is genocidal maniac” is overly reductionist. It’s a message that keeps the average American mired in the absurdly comical worldview of America being the shining light on the hilltop. I would welcome reporting on all these nuances. Maybe then Americans would start to question why we support regimes like Saudi Arabia while decrying regimes like Syria. Perhaps we’d come to the conclusion that we don’t need to intervene and control everything for the sake of short sighted goals of dubious benefit.

Here's one example among many that perhaps these are not good sources of information.

https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti...

There is virtually no nuance in the reporting. There’s no dissection. For example, the situation with Syria is quite complicated as Turkey, U.S., Russia, Kurds, and Assad all have conflicting goals and desires. Yet all of the reporting I’ve seen on this conflict has been absurdly reductionist and used to garner support/hatred toward the party in power by the adherents/adversaries of said party in power.

I understand the desire to have an informed populace but I think that is no longer possible. It is too easy to sway large swaths of the public. Witness the rise of anti-vaxers and other thoughtless beliefs. Even if I tried to be relatively informed it wouldn’t matter because the vast majority of the people are not psychologically prepared to withstand the pressure of subtle, sustained propaganda.

I have resigned myself to the fact that the republic is dead in the sense of what the ideal of a republic ought to be. I too avoid news and social media. I don’t count this website to be what I call social media since there is no identifying information about myself on here and none of my friends knows about my posts on this website.

Your overall point appears to be that a repeat of 2008 is immanent and this point can be better made without the "Debt is dumb" first sentence.

It’s hard to argue that Smedley’s single sentence can possibly constitute a comprehensive set of rules when “defense of our homes” is so vague and can reasonably be interpreted to encompass so much.

Can you see that perhaps your level of commitment is not possible for some people? Some people simply lack the willpower to do this.

I feel I should state that I'm an atheist who used to be a Christian (at least I proclaimed as much). I've noticed a tendency of American Christians to have a nationalist perspective rather than a global one. This has struck me as odd given the message of Christ.

At any rate, pray for our troops tho. And those of Iran too!

In case there is misunderstanding on what I meant by duplication let me be more specific. The UK and France both have similar military command structures. Thus collectively both militaries are paying for the bureaucratic overhead of maintaining of two militaries whereas Russia pays for only one. Both militaries have personnel dedicated to HR, admin, police and other ancillary costs for maintaining a military. Since there is no Euro wide military the collective spending on defense is inefficient.

From my perspective The EU is militarily disjointed, fragmented, and overall weak. I'm speaking solely in terms of military might and force projection.