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> norms are very strictly enforced

And now norms are not enforced at all, and look at who we have in the white house. This is why we can't have nice things.


Have you ever been beaten across the legs with a tobacco stick for so long that you couldn’t walk the next day?


Well, yes and no. The remedies are impeachment and electoral accountability. Both of which have broken down in this era of extreme partisanship.


Impeachment that has to be done in a house of congress that was designed to have minimal accountability and is deeply anti-democratic? Maybe it "broke" down because there were no real checks and balances to begin with.


What is the profit margin of a health insurance company? Google suggests 2-4%, with United at about 6%. This does not seem that extravagant.


Something around half of UnitedHealth Group (UHN) profits come from other business units that aren't directly related to UnitedHealthcare insurance plans. They have a huge software business under the Optum brand that would be one of the top 20 largest US tech companies if it was broken out separately.


That means the insurer part makes even less profit.


Or possibly you would have learned emotional regulation sooner.

Kids change you, for the better if you let it. There's nothing like a completely helpless infant who is totally dependent on you to wear down your selfish tendencies.


Children used to be your retirement plan.


Just the other day my wife and I were marveling that people in our neighborhood groups are requiring pet sitters to be insured and bonded.

The future has always been uncertain. The modern world focusses on risk mitigation to an astonishing degree compared to generations even in the relatively recent past. A lot of that has produced good results. But personally I suspect that we're overly focussed on safety to a degree that inhibits human flourishing.


Just saying people need to chill out there has always been risk isn't really going to cause that to happen as there's no information there really. It's still useful to look at the reasons for the perception of increased risk if that's the right thing to focus on at all.


Where can I find information on how much of the birthrate decline is due to unwed teenage mothers?



I don't dispute that the teen birth rate is much lower now. I'm trying to estimate out the counterfactual "what would the US birth rate be if teen pregnancy was (say) the same as 2 decades ago" ? Currently it's 1.66.

But the back-of-napkin math is hard for me to figure out from the given "births per 1,000" women per different age group.


> There is no effect on money supply if this is funded through taxes

Of course there is. Suppose we tax Elon several billion dollars. Now, instead of sitting in his money vault, it flows into the economy where it increases demand pressure.


He doesn't have a money vault. He has almost zero cash holdings. If you tax him, then he will have to sell assets to pay for those taxes, which removes money from the economy as that money was being actively spent on his assets. The only situation when money supply changes is if someone has a literal mattress full of cash hidden away. Even if you just have money in a savings account, it acts as a fractional reserve for the banking system meaning that there is a net decrease in money supply when you give it to the government as banks can no longer use it as the backing for loans.


To split hairs slightly that is the "velocity of money" (basically how often does the average dollar get spent and passed around per year). Money supply is the total amount of (a given type of) money in existence. But yeah, the effect on inflation is the same.


Your access to all of that collective knowledge is funded by ad revenue.


Wikipedia isn't funded by ad revenue. Kagi isn't funded by ad revenue. Anna's Archive isn't funded by ad revenue. The Internet Archive isn't funded by ad revenue. You can torrent all the knowledge you'll ever need and all you need is an internet connection.

I think we would be fine without ads.


So fund it in a way less corrosive to the human experience.


The welfare state is predicated on a pyramid-shaped population.

Also: people deride infinite growth, but growth is what is responsible for lifting large portions of the population out of poverty. If global markets were repriced tomorrow to expect no future growth, economies would collapse.

There may be a way to accept low or no growth without economic collapse, but if there is no one has figured it out yet. That's nothing to be cavalier about.


The welfare state isnt predicated on a pyramid shape but the continued growth of the stock market and endless GDP growth certainly is.

>infinite growth, but growth is what is responsible for lifting large portions of the population out of poverty

It's overstated. The preconditions for GDP growth - namely lack of war and corruption are probably more responsible than the growth itself.


> The welfare state is predicated on a pyramid-shaped population.

America isn't a welfare state, I think this much is clear :) It's welfare for the rich only.

> Also: people deride infinite growth, but growth is what is responsible for lifting large portions of the population out of poverty. If global markets were repriced tomorrow to expect no future growth, economies would collapse.

We don't have infinite resources so infinite growth is just impossible. And a fairer distribution of wealth can also lift populations out of poverty. The problem is the people that have a lot of wealth also have a lot of power they can wield to keep it that way.


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