but we've got to rid ourselves of these Calvinist ideas of work, because we waste so much on busy work.
I like those Calvinist ideas of work and I think they have been enormously beneficial to our society. I have no desire to get rid of them, and I suspect neither do the majority of Americans.
Are you suggesting that it has been proved that giving people free stuff produces poverty in the long run? Worse poverty than if they had been given nothing?
More specifically, it has been proven that taking away free stuff and forcing people to work reduces poverty and joblessness in the long run, not just by small trials, but by large scale reforms in several countries.
Fact is, job scarcity in traditional vocations is acute, worsening and permanent
True: buggy whip manufacturing specialists have a really hard time these days. In different words, that's been a permanent state of Western economies for centuries.
So, get people to sweep the streets. Great way to put municipal workers, who actually know how to drive the street sweeper, out of a job
Nowhere did I say that the UBI recipients were to be a replacement for existing workers. There is plenty of work to be done in addition to the government employees we already have.
Actually in the previous Mincome [wikipedia.org] experiment it was shown that people stopped working to do things like spend time with children or get an education.
So? Neither of those is productive work or helps them get out of poverty.
When people have money they're also not in poverty
UBI doesn't get people out of poverty because it's not enough for that (by definition, it can never be). What it does do is cause them and their children to lose the skills they need for work.
so your "fact" is obviously an "alternative fact"
Oh, you progressives are so precious: making things up left and right and then accusing others of being dishonest.
What if we make robots that can clean the streets, maintain parks and take censuses (or just have enough people)?
People who receive UBI anyway are cheaper than any robot.
What if we say a person's job is to create an art project? What makes you think people actually need to hold a regular job and show up to a normal work place?
So you accept then that it is legitimate and appropriate to ask people who receive "UBI" to work for it. We're now only discussing what the government should require them to do for that money.
If people are worried about joblessness, I have a better idea: make people actually work for their "universal basic income". The government has more than enough things for people to do: clean streets, maintain parks, go around as census takers, etc. As a bonus, people get basic experience actually holding a job and showing up for work.
A well-designed UBI equates to freedom. Freedom from exploitative employers. Freedom to launch a small business or develop an invention despite a lack of employment income. Liberation from the "poverty trap," where taking a paying job means surrendering welfare and other benefits... Fact is,
Fact is that nobody has shown that giving people lots of free stuff produces anything other than poverty in the long run.
That's what was behind HB2, SB 1070, SQ 755, Prop 8 and others?
Yes, those laws are about wanting to be left alone. And let me say, as a gay immigrant, I have no significant problem with any of them. And all those laws are pretty much the norm everywhere else in the world.
No, but I mentioned him to illustrate the absurdity of your point.
Motherfning Zuckerberg is _not_ a progressive lefty.
So? Neither is Peter Thiel. But the tech industry is overwhelmingly run by Hillary and Democrats-supporting progressives. And those people are the people who want women to get into tech. What they certainly are not is conservatives.
Finally, the Dems _aren't_ progressives.
Oh yes they are. They are nowhere near as racist, corrupt, and evil as their early 20th century ideological ancestors, but they are still progressives. Hopefully, we can change that for good.
Conservatives have been oppressing and discriminating against gays, minorities and women since forever.
You don't know your history. It was progressives that frequently declared homosexuals, minorities, and women to be inferior, and they justified it with science. Democrats and progressives justified the oppression, segregation, and sterilization of blacks and homosexuals.
Oh, sure, there was homophobia and racism among conservatives and some Christians, but nowhere near as virulent and institutionalized as it was under progressives and Democrats. Conservatives largely just want to be left alone.
The world doesn't need that shit anymore.
Correct, which is why hopefully progressivism has gasped its last gasp with Hillary.
As long as they are compensated for their property what is the problem?
They are generally not compensated.
Here is another example, the government wants to take away people'e private property to build a wall along the southern border. What is the proof it will be effective? There is none, you just have to trust the politicians.
Border security is the sole responsibility of the federal government and there is no way to handle border security through the courts in our system. Furthermore, the federal government already controls that land. Whether specific policies it wants to adopt today are effective or not is irrelevant, it needs control of that land because controlling it is its job. It's a long time oversight that it doesn't. The government can use eminent domain and it should compensate the current owners adequately.
a bunch of wealthy capitalists tired of paying $100k/yr for a decent programmer are.... Getting women into tech isn't a left wing policy. It's a right wing one used to depress wages
Why don't you apply a little logic here. Are the Koch brothers and Trump "looking for female programmers"? Or are is it the tech billionaires, who are overwhelmingly progressive and Democrats?
And it's not just that they want the additional labor supply, they also want to install their own values into kids in public preschools and schools. Socialists and communists have also been pushing women into the workplace where they have been in power, for pretty much the same reasons. This crap has a long history with the left.
See, the reason you don't understand this is because you have this knee-jerk reaction that "left=good" and "right=bad". Learn something about the history of the progressive movement and the Democratic party, and you'll see that a lot of the things you say you hate are their fault.
Why is it that people like you have such a hard time accepting that human beings are not blank slates? That there is as much variation in mental aptitudes and talents as there is in physical ones? Do you think that Danny DeVito could have become a professional basketball player if he had just been "taught correctly"? Do you think that Indonesians are as tall on average as the Dutch?
There are simple biological reasons that women as a group are underrepresented among world-class scientists; pretending that it's all due to "incorrect teaching" won't change it. And there are compensations for that: women are also underrepresented in prison populations, insane asylums, and they live a few years longer.
If you have an interest in a field and are likely to succeed in it, you generally do so even with poor teaching. And no amount of good teaching can make people interested in fields they don't like. You'd think even nerds would figure that out, or don't you remember gym class? Well, maybe you liked it, I hated it.
Science -- and really, everything and not just science -- should be conducted in the open light of day. It gains its strength FROM the fact that it is nominally reproducible and absolutely open to criticism and contradiction by further work.
Let me add two observations. First, I think one of the reasons Americans are increasingly souring on science in government is because it is being conducted in this way; the average American these days is smart enough to have figured out for themselves that "trust me, I'm a scientist" doesn't cut it anymore. You see similar things happen with other professions: people want reasons and evidence when they see their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant, their PC repair man. Second, the US government, as well as the US academic community, has a long and horrific history of misusing science to further political and personal agendas, and I think that also makes people suspicious. So, I agree: I think these kinds of laws actually strengthen science and the trust people have in science.
The law has, always had, and always MUST have a lower standard than science - because unlike science there IS such a thing as a legal truth.
Quite the opposite: legal standards of evidence are higher in the legal system than for science. The legal system requires things like chain of evidence, well-defined formats for hearings and resolving conflicts, well-defined procedures, and stiff penalties for misrepresentations and carelessness. Most scientific papers are written with little accountability or liability, and often by people who don't even have formal credentials (graduate students).
There can just about never be such a thing as overreach here. These laws prevent cold-blooded, brutal murder of people who have ZERO opportunity to defend themselves. The single most critical reason for having any government at all - is to have laws of the kind the EPA enforces.
Quite the opposite: the EPA is largely redundant. Everybody's first defense against environmental injuries is the court system, followed by local and state regulatory agencies and legislatures. If something becomes important enough to rise to the level of the EPA, Congress should probably look at it anyway.
Your faith in EPA regulations is also foolish. A lot of what the EPA does amounts to a license to pollute; that is, companies can say "the EPA determined this is safe, so you need to put up with it". The EPA also causes enormous harm by taking away people's private property and livelihoods.
Do you deny that physical harm to a person is evidence that something can harm them ?
No, I deny that the observation of physical harm to a person is sufficient justification for the EPA to regulate anything. The EPA should only become active after a problem has shown up in numerous court cases and if local and state regulatory authorities are unable to handle it.
As I was saying, you have a paternalistic, progressive, proto-fascist view of government in which government is your guardian and your protector and you just submit to it for your own good and some mythical common good. That kind of view is shared by probably a third of Americans and a majority of Europeans. The rest of us will not stand for it. We want to deal with these issues primarily on an individual basis in the court system, or through the legislative branch. We tried to compromise on allowing "reasonable regulation" as a shortcut because it might be beneficial, but progressives have obviously abused those powers, so it's time to roll things back.
Requiring actual reproduction instead of reproducibility from an agency that is not given the resources to perform this reproduction just means that EPA cannot use science anymore - which is just what some lawmakers have in mind.
Reproducibility is all this bill requires. Reproduciblity for observational studies requires, at a minimum, that the data used to reach the conclusions be available.
Sure, it should be able to do that. If that possibility becomes a requirement, it means that either EPA would need funding on about the order of magnitude of all the universities and institutes that produce science relevant to its job.
That line of reasoning is just dumb; I suggest you work through it again. In any case, much of the research that the EPA uses to support its conclusions is already government funded; that research and the resulting publications should, in fact, be in the public domain as well.
You seem to have no idea abut how science or the EPA work. If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.
No, I'm afraid it's you who has no idea how science or the EPA works. That's not surprising given the field you work in and your background.
Who do you think will provide that funding? A Republican congress?
Tell you what: why don't you get your own house in order before opining on US politics.
You'd think if it were 'good for science' then the scientists (remember most of them have nothing professionally to do with the EPA) would be cheering - not complaining !
I wouldn't think that at all. The relationship between progressives and scientists is one of mutual worship, admiration, and support. That's why most scientists are Democrats and why Democrats love to give money to scientists.
The republicans have been pushing versions of this bill for years and years - and it has NOTHING to do with science, it's about trying to destroy the EPA because (annoyingly) EPA regulations cost money from their rich friends.
EPA regulations cost everybody lots of money, they limit growth, they cost jobs, and they result in loss of private property. Most environmental regulations should be made by the states, not the federal government. The EPA should be for rule making of last resort, for issues that are truly national and for which there is overwhelming evidence. The EPA has vastly overstepped those bounds and this is an attempt to rein them in. If this doesn't work, Congress may well abolish the EPA. The EPA only exists because Congress has chosen to delegate regulatory powers to it, and it can revoke that decision at any time.
How exactly do you "independently reproduce" the data on a one-time event ?
If it is a one-time event and there is no physical evidence, just people's write-ups of it, that shouldn't be enough for the EPA to justify rules.
There is no way to reproduce most of this data without flagrantly violating scientific and medical ethics anyway. "Patient had X level of lead in his blood, and showed symptoms Y and Z" is valid scientific data. But it's not reproducible because PUTTING X level of lead in somebody else's blood is a fucking crime against humanity !
It is indeed scientific data, it is simply too weak to support scientific conclusions, let alone rules or laws. Hence the law.
What you quoted is only about works *created* by US government employees. It does not apply to works CITED by US government employees.
No, it applies to data used by government employees. If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.
You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data. That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.
Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.
Err... no, of course if you find a coelocanth alive, you needn't find a second one in order to conclude that they aren't yet extinct.
Yeah, that's about what sums it up: "Hey, I saw a _____ in your pond, an animal that was thought to be extinct. The federal government should cease your property immediately! No, I don't have any physical proof for you to examine, why do you think that matters?" The EPA is ruling about taking away people's private property, and the standard for that should be higher than "scientists believe".
And the sad thing is that a lot of the EPA rulings are exactly about that kind of unscientific anecdotal reporting, with no scientific proof and no reason to believe that the observer didn't make a mistake.
I note that the same attitude you show here was the basis for forced sterilizations and segregation in the US: progressive policies based on the scientific beliefs of the day, promoted by people who are still heroes of the Democrats and progressives today. It is fundamentally wrong for government to operate that way.
An objection without merit could waste years: courts would have no alternative but to hear it all out.
And that is a problem... why? If it is about something where lives are at stake, courts can issue short term orders until the matter is resolved. And if there is any doubt, the courts should kick it over to Congress. Your fascination with having the executive branch just issuer decisions quickly is the typical progressive and fascist view of government.
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I like those Calvinist ideas of work and I think they have been enormously beneficial to our society. I have no desire to get rid of them, and I suspect neither do the majority of Americans.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
More specifically, it has been proven that taking away free stuff and forcing people to work reduces poverty and joblessness in the long run, not just by small trials, but by large scale reforms in several countries.
True: buggy whip manufacturing specialists have a really hard time these days. In different words, that's been a permanent state of Western economies for centuries.
Nowhere did I say that the UBI recipients were to be a replacement for existing workers. There is plenty of work to be done in addition to the government employees we already have.
So, you're putting up a strawman.
So? Neither of those is productive work or helps them get out of poverty.
UBI doesn't get people out of poverty because it's not enough for that (by definition, it can never be). What it does do is cause them and their children to lose the skills they need for work.
Oh, you progressives are so precious: making things up left and right and then accusing others of being dishonest.
People who receive UBI anyway are cheaper than any robot.
So you accept then that it is legitimate and appropriate to ask people who receive "UBI" to work for it. We're now only discussing what the government should require them to do for that money.
That's maybe how your brain works, addled academic that you are. Maybe you should spend less time on Twitter.
If people are worried about joblessness, I have a better idea: make people actually work for their "universal basic income". The government has more than enough things for people to do: clean streets, maintain parks, go around as census takers, etc. As a bonus, people get basic experience actually holding a job and showing up for work.
Fact is that nobody has shown that giving people lots of free stuff produces anything other than poverty in the long run.
Yes, those laws are about wanting to be left alone. And let me say, as a gay immigrant, I have no significant problem with any of them. And all those laws are pretty much the norm everywhere else in the world.
No, but I mentioned him to illustrate the absurdity of your point.
So? Neither is Peter Thiel. But the tech industry is overwhelmingly run by Hillary and Democrats-supporting progressives. And those people are the people who want women to get into tech. What they certainly are not is conservatives.
Oh yes they are. They are nowhere near as racist, corrupt, and evil as their early 20th century ideological ancestors, but they are still progressives. Hopefully, we can change that for good.
You don't know your history. It was progressives that frequently declared homosexuals, minorities, and women to be inferior, and they justified it with science. Democrats and progressives justified the oppression, segregation, and sterilization of blacks and homosexuals.
Oh, sure, there was homophobia and racism among conservatives and some Christians, but nowhere near as virulent and institutionalized as it was under progressives and Democrats. Conservatives largely just want to be left alone.
Correct, which is why hopefully progressivism has gasped its last gasp with Hillary.
They are a bloody nuisance and just take up disk space.
They are generally not compensated.
Border security is the sole responsibility of the federal government and there is no way to handle border security through the courts in our system. Furthermore, the federal government already controls that land. Whether specific policies it wants to adopt today are effective or not is irrelevant, it needs control of that land because controlling it is its job. It's a long time oversight that it doesn't. The government can use eminent domain and it should compensate the current owners adequately.
Why don't you apply a little logic here. Are the Koch brothers and Trump "looking for female programmers"? Or are is it the tech billionaires, who are overwhelmingly progressive and Democrats?
And it's not just that they want the additional labor supply, they also want to install their own values into kids in public preschools and schools. Socialists and communists have also been pushing women into the workplace where they have been in power, for pretty much the same reasons. This crap has a long history with the left.
See, the reason you don't understand this is because you have this knee-jerk reaction that "left=good" and "right=bad". Learn something about the history of the progressive movement and the Democratic party, and you'll see that a lot of the things you say you hate are their fault.
Why is it that people like you have such a hard time accepting that human beings are not blank slates? That there is as much variation in mental aptitudes and talents as there is in physical ones? Do you think that Danny DeVito could have become a professional basketball player if he had just been "taught correctly"? Do you think that Indonesians are as tall on average as the Dutch?
There are simple biological reasons that women as a group are underrepresented among world-class scientists; pretending that it's all due to "incorrect teaching" won't change it. And there are compensations for that: women are also underrepresented in prison populations, insane asylums, and they live a few years longer.
If you have an interest in a field and are likely to succeed in it, you generally do so even with poor teaching. And no amount of good teaching can make people interested in fields they don't like. You'd think even nerds would figure that out, or don't you remember gym class? Well, maybe you liked it, I hated it.
And who do you think enforces EPA regulations? That's right: the court system.
Where do you think I made any such assumption? Please point to it.
Let me add two observations. First, I think one of the reasons Americans are increasingly souring on science in government is because it is being conducted in this way; the average American these days is smart enough to have figured out for themselves that "trust me, I'm a scientist" doesn't cut it anymore. You see similar things happen with other professions: people want reasons and evidence when they see their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant, their PC repair man. Second, the US government, as well as the US academic community, has a long and horrific history of misusing science to further political and personal agendas, and I think that also makes people suspicious. So, I agree: I think these kinds of laws actually strengthen science and the trust people have in science.
Quite the opposite: legal standards of evidence are higher in the legal system than for science. The legal system requires things like chain of evidence, well-defined formats for hearings and resolving conflicts, well-defined procedures, and stiff penalties for misrepresentations and carelessness. Most scientific papers are written with little accountability or liability, and often by people who don't even have formal credentials (graduate students).
Quite the opposite: the EPA is largely redundant. Everybody's first defense against environmental injuries is the court system, followed by local and state regulatory agencies and legislatures. If something becomes important enough to rise to the level of the EPA, Congress should probably look at it anyway.
Your faith in EPA regulations is also foolish. A lot of what the EPA does amounts to a license to pollute; that is, companies can say "the EPA determined this is safe, so you need to put up with it". The EPA also causes enormous harm by taking away people's private property and livelihoods.
No, I deny that the observation of physical harm to a person is sufficient justification for the EPA to regulate anything. The EPA should only become active after a problem has shown up in numerous court cases and if local and state regulatory authorities are unable to handle it.
As I was saying, you have a paternalistic, progressive, proto-fascist view of government in which government is your guardian and your protector and you just submit to it for your own good and some mythical common good. That kind of view is shared by probably a third of Americans and a majority of Europeans. The rest of us will not stand for it. We want to deal with these issues primarily on an individual basis in the court system, or through the legislative branch. We tried to compromise on allowing "reasonable regulation" as a shortcut because it might be beneficial, but progressives have obviously abused those powers, so it's time to roll things back.
Reproducibility is all this bill requires. Reproduciblity for observational studies requires, at a minimum, that the data used to reach the conclusions be available.
That line of reasoning is just dumb; I suggest you work through it again. In any case, much of the research that the EPA uses to support its conclusions is already government funded; that research and the resulting publications should, in fact, be in the public domain as well.
No, I'm afraid it's you who has no idea how science or the EPA works. That's not surprising given the field you work in and your background.
Tell you what: why don't you get your own house in order before opining on US politics.
I wouldn't think that at all. The relationship between progressives and scientists is one of mutual worship, admiration, and support. That's why most scientists are Democrats and why Democrats love to give money to scientists.
EPA regulations cost everybody lots of money, they limit growth, they cost jobs, and they result in loss of private property. Most environmental regulations should be made by the states, not the federal government. The EPA should be for rule making of last resort, for issues that are truly national and for which there is overwhelming evidence. The EPA has vastly overstepped those bounds and this is an attempt to rein them in. If this doesn't work, Congress may well abolish the EPA. The EPA only exists because Congress has chosen to delegate regulatory powers to it, and it can revoke that decision at any time.
If it is a one-time event and there is no physical evidence, just people's write-ups of it, that shouldn't be enough for the EPA to justify rules.
It is indeed scientific data, it is simply too weak to support scientific conclusions, let alone rules or laws. Hence the law.
No, it applies to data used by government employees. If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.
You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data. That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.
Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.
Yeah, that's about what sums it up: "Hey, I saw a _____ in your pond, an animal that was thought to be extinct. The federal government should cease your property immediately! No, I don't have any physical proof for you to examine, why do you think that matters?" The EPA is ruling about taking away people's private property, and the standard for that should be higher than "scientists believe".
And the sad thing is that a lot of the EPA rulings are exactly about that kind of unscientific anecdotal reporting, with no scientific proof and no reason to believe that the observer didn't make a mistake.
I note that the same attitude you show here was the basis for forced sterilizations and segregation in the US: progressive policies based on the scientific beliefs of the day, promoted by people who are still heroes of the Democrats and progressives today. It is fundamentally wrong for government to operate that way.
And that is a problem... why? If it is about something where lives are at stake, courts can issue short term orders until the matter is resolved. And if there is any doubt, the courts should kick it over to Congress. Your fascination with having the executive branch just issuer decisions quickly is the typical progressive and fascist view of government.