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by mistrial9 1379 days ago
I had to think twice about this reply .. I believe that from a psychological, character development point of view, what you say is reasonable.. adjust to change and apply new skills in new ways.

However, there are different "lenses" through which one might examine large topics, and one lense might be that of personal challenge, adjustment and endeavor; but another lense is closer to The Economist Magazine, where factual snippets of market behavior, participants and results are traded every day, every week, every year. Any college educated person ought to be able to say, there have been real, serious and long-standing economic changes where thousands and millions of capable, good-enough people, had serious, years-long hard times up to and including starvation, war, and abundant death. Those without personal experience of that, or a close relative or similar imprinting, may not really consider this real. I had to learn it from books myself based on where I grew up. Others reading these words, know it very well.

Hand-craft preservation is a thing, I have heard.. so there is certainly a broad spectrum between "no more blacksmiths downtown" to "I send my print jobs via phone for pickup near the metro at an automated kiosk". It is said that nobody has a right to a job. However, The Economist Magazine exists for a reason, and things are not normal where I live.. Welcome to the New Not-Normal, as Jerry Brown said..

2 comments

> It is said that nobody has a right to a job.

Arguably, that's basically directly saying that nobody has a right to life.

You either ensure the basic resources necessary to live are free, or you want everyone to get a job. The alternative is saying - "some people die from lack of work, get over it".

> I had to think twice about this reply

Good :)

> The Economist Magazine, where factual snippets

I have nothing special for or against the mag, but I will point out that economists are famously known for disagreeing on huge things once you get beyond the law of supply and demand. Not every discipline of study has whole alternative schools of thought the way they do. Economists are closer to philosophists than most philosophists.

I really love economics! But I have no illusions at all that they serve up one and only one version of the truth like physicists. :D

> real, serious and long-standing economic changes

Ok, 100's of counterpoints: https://www.humanprogress.org/datasets/ (but check out the articles also, lots of great stuff on there.)

> starvation, war, and abundant death

Yeah, there's lots of that. Pre-panbdemic all the trends were in the right direction. This too shall pass.

Things aren't that abnormal in my area, and it's getting even better daily.

you link to a Cato Institute website

"founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries."

some of these people have funded climate denial on behalf of the Oil and Gas Industry Lobby.. they have the largest wealth in history to defend, at the cost of Climate Change.