burgessaccount (u/burgessaccount)

burgessaccount commented on A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/rzk

gruez · 5 years ago

>and barter to money

>Of course I'm an engineer and know next to nothing about anthropology.

You're probably wrong here.

>There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[32] instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt.[33][34][35] When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or potential enemies.[36]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Non-monetary_...

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

“Barter” may not be the best term for it, but until the 18th/19th century (varied a lot by location), most people procured the physical goods they needed through their own family’s effort (subsistence); through in-kind payments and mutual exchange (old contracts used to specify that people would be paid in firewood, or candles…); and through favors. The switch from that model to a model of surplus and specialization, where people were paid in cash which could then be exchanged for any number of products, procured from distant places and from strangers, was indeed one of the most dramatic transformations in human history. I think we still don’t appreciate how much it shook up our old systems, and we blame things like divorce rates or child estrangement on newfangled values or bad morals when in fact they are a natural result of structural changes.

burgessaccount commented on A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/rzk

zwieback · 5 years ago

I don't think parent-child relationships were fundamentally better in the past, just read some Dickens or George Eliot or Henry James and you'll find plenty of agonizing both ways.

The article headline suggests there's a "shift" but doesn't really go into enough detail to explain why a shift from relationships based on duty to relationships based on fulfilment would fuel estrangement. A little more data on that would be helpful.

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

I think the article really under-emphasizes the role of capitalism in this. If I need help with my kid, I don’t call my mom, I hire a babysitter. If my mom needs medical help, she won’t call me, she’ll pay a nurse. Goods and services that used to be procured through social bonds are now procured with cash - which creates a feedback loop where people then neglect their social bonds to acquire more cash.

burgessaccount commented on A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/rzk

wonderwonder · 5 years ago

Wonder how much of this is driven by social media and the internet today. The word 'Toxic' is just thrown around now and everything is 'Toxic'. Its a word that has ceased to have any real meaning but virtually every behavior that used to just be normal every day activity is Toxic. Everyone has flaws and no one has all the answers. Parents are just people doing the best they can and for the most part making what they think are the best decisions in the moment while struggling with everything that everyone else struggles with. Children want to put their parents on a pedestal and assume that all decisions; and any harm caused was intentional. There are of course bad parents and bad people and I don't mean to discount the effect that those people have on their kids. Social media is quick these days to tell you that your parents are narcissists when in reality they are just distracted trying to figure out what happened to their lives and trying to get by. At the end of every day I look back and see choices I made that were probably not great or see where I ignored my kid as I was trying to get something done for work. These things pile up and then are focused through the lens of the internet and suddenly you are a bad parent.

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

I’m not so sure about blaming social media. I really wish the article had included any sort of concrete data on whether estrangement has actually become more common over time. In my family, my grandfather didn’t talk to his parents because they were alcoholic money-grubbers. My grandma didn’t talk to her dad because he’d left their family to start another family. My aunt didn’t talk to my grandma because my grandma discouraged her from having a career. Reading biographies and history books, it seems like there have always been shitty, “toxic,” or difficult parents, and there have always been disowning, abandonments, and silent treatments. Add to that the fact that our social support structures (babysitting help, end-of-life care) can be paid for in cash, rather than social favors, and you have some pretty normal and understandable dynamics. People barely have time for friends these days. What are the odds that both parents are fun, awesome people you really want to hang out with and spend extra time with? FWIW, I get along great with my parents. But I also recognize that they were better, healthier, more supportive, more present parents than what most of my friends had growing up.

burgessaccount commented on Facebook plans to pay creators $1B to use its products nytimes.com/2021/07/14/te... · Posted by u/jaredwiener

hoppyhoppy2 · 5 years ago

On the other hand, YouTube paying content creators has helped that platform remain dominant.

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

Yeah. I guess my instinct would be this is something platforms have to do while they’re still considered cool? Like Snapchat could have done this seven years ago but couldn't pull it off now?

burgessaccount commented on Facebook plans to pay creators $1B to use its products nytimes.com/2021/07/14/te... · Posted by u/jaredwiener

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

This feels like when Microsoft pays for TV characters to use Bing instead of Google. It doesn’t make Bing look cooler, it just makes the TV shows look cheap.

burgessaccount commented on $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal xprize.org/prizes/elonmus... · Posted by u/captn3m0

slothtrop · 5 years ago

> But unless you’re planning to Thanos our way out of the situation, the people in the Western world need to consume less.

There are more viable and compassionate solutions to accelerate stagnation of global growth. One is universal access to contraceptives, the other is eliminating global poverty and improving economic stability. This is no less politically viable than coercing Westerners to consume less, and far more effective.

Add to that, our governments *target a growth rate of 3-4% per year through immigration*. That is purely through policy, and the entire point to increase GDP through, you guessed it, consumption. As you well know, our minimum carbon footprints are higher in the West. The minimum. If decimating consumption is such a priority for green advocates, then it should follow that they staunchly oppose increases in immigration rates, and in fact favor reductions. That would actually be consistent with the argument. This is an obvious connection that people coyly dance around. And while it's a separate discussion, many economists agree today that GDP is not a reliable measure of a nation's prosperity and chasing perpetual growth is not required.

> Less beef, which is hugely polluting.

There have been some interesting strides in innovation that reduce methane emissions some 90+% using a fraction of kelp/seaweed in feed, and this may be rolled out as a matter of policy. That would eliminate issues related to methane emissions in a fell swoop, in a way that discouragement of consumption can't touch. It's a ways off, but it doesn't have to be, it's right there.

Land-use, contrary to popular belief, is actually decreasing in the U.S. for cattle in spite of the small uptick in demand growth. However, it has been growing in Brazil, presumably due to the growing Chinese market and they're supplying of soy to just about everyone.

> The average American child owns between 70 and 100 toys.

Citation?

> The average American woman owns 100+ items of clothing.

Citation?

> It is too much; it is more than we need.

There is no metric offered for what is enough / too much. It's entirely arbitrary. And yet, the difference between a perceived low consumption and average consumption, in aggregate, across the population, would not result in a significant change as the environment is concerned, since we all still use power, water, transportation, food, as the most basic form of living. The industry giants are responsible for most destruction. We can pat ourselves on the back for buying fewer material goods but it doesn't put a dent in the problem. Given the approx 36 gigatons of annual emissions, you won't even get down to 35 with a persuasive campaign. You won't even get down to 35.5.

Blaming the consumer is foolhardy. Most problems with regards to energy and waste can be resolved through policy. People want these problems fixed but feel dismayed when most of what they throw in the recycling bin, typically related to food stuffs, ends up at the dump.

Living well means more than mere survival. You don't "need" your little device you use to browse hackernews and your daily caffeinated drink and all the comforts you take for granted, and no one gets to decide for you that you don't need them, in a free country. This is important because blaming consumers will not save the environment, strong policy and innovation will.

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

You can google all the stats I provided, just like I can google all the no-citation stats you provided.

Yup! I’m a big fan of contraception and options for women. That will probably start to bring the global population down slowly within about a hundred years. But we have less than thirty years to fix the climate problem.

Per-person carbon emissions in the developing world are <1 ton per year. For Europe, China, India its 5-10 tons per year. Which is bad enough. For the United States, it’s TWENTY TONS PER PERSON PER YEAR.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

That isn’t because we for some reason have worse power plants or worse ways of making steel. It’s because we eat too much; we drive too much, in cars that are too big; we use too much heat and air-conditioning, in houses that, in spite of what you keep saying, are the largest in the world, and getting bigger every decade (you can google this too). We fly too much, we buy too much, we use too much, we consume more than literally any other people on the planet, and if we don’t stop, we are going to kill everyone, ourselves included.

To put this another way, if every American started living, not even like people in Kenya, but like people in France, that would take 3 gigatons off of global annual emissions. Holy shit.

burgessaccount commented on Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it twitter.com/JStoteraux/st... · Posted by u/luu

WalterBright · 5 years ago

You also wrote:

> Perhaps some public high schools do not make some people fully ready for Caltech

which implies that they, in general, do much better than I'm suggesting. But an objective test would be, does a public high school diploma command more pay? What does it mean in the job market?

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

No, the test is, does a public high school diploma command more pay than no high school diploma? And the answer is a resounding yes. As I have noted, multiple times, in this discourse, I think there is a role for private education, and I think it can do wonderful things. But It is a costly model whose social and economic benefits depend, in part, in exclusivity. If you hadn’t gone to your “worthless” public school, that doesn’t mean you would have suddenly gone to Dalton. It means you would, most likely, either not have gone to high school, or gone into debt to attend a more expensive school. Presumably you think your option was better? That means that public schools are a net good that should exist.

burgessaccount commented on $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal xprize.org/prizes/elonmus... · Posted by u/captn3m0

jbay808 · 5 years ago

Where can I learn more about the costs and challenges of thoughtful reforestation, and the key differences between the responsible and irresponsible sort? (Just popping in to ask because it seems like you might know). I'm interested in doing some work in this space but don't have any background.

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

Hmm… can’t point to one specific book, but there are lots of links. You can google “reforestation monoculture” and “reforestation native species.” This article is a great place to start: https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-green-pledges-will-not-cr... It doesn’t get into the granularity of the costs, but highlights that the basic issue is countries are still hoping to make a profit off these “carbon sinks” by planting easily usable timber - aka monoculture - which greatly diminishes the benefits of forests and leaves them vulnerable to blights and other disasters.

burgessaccount commented on Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it twitter.com/JStoteraux/st... · Posted by u/luu

WalterBright · 5 years ago

That's an astute observation. I did quite a lot of other stuff, and got in (I found out later) because the prof who came to interview me felt that I was worth taking a chance on. The school also put out a fine course catalog that looked amazing, it's possible that the admissions committee was taken in by that.

Nevertheless, I arrived very naive and woefully under prepared.

My high school was not exactly a pipeline to Ivy League :-)

In modern news, the Seattle public school system decided to abandon gifted programs because they were inequitable.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/01/24/42658513/seattle...

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

Or it’s possible that your public school helped make you into the person your professor thought had potential.

Re: Seattle. I didn’t say “the public school system is perfect and never does anything stupid.” I said, “it is a net-good for the government to provide free education, which people can then improve upon with more expensive private or family options.” Surely that distinction will not be lost on a Caltech grad :)

burgessaccount commented on Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it twitter.com/JStoteraux/st... · Posted by u/luu

WalterBright · 5 years ago

We already have that - public high schools. Unfortunately, being "free" equates to being nigh worthless.

(I put "free" in quotes because high school diplomas cost the taxpayers plenty.)

burgessaccount · 5 years ago

Also, your public high school got you admitted to Caltech, so… worthless??