Artrax's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions in ~misc

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Well, that's a very complicated way of saying that progressive downballot candidates were more unpopular on average.

    Well, that's a very complicated way of saying that progressive downballot candidates were more unpopular on average.

  2. Comment on Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions in ~misc

    Artrax
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    ? which subs did I claim push this agenda in a comment before? I only talked about r/neoliberal and r/badecononomics which are centrist subs. And regarding house-seats, I should have maybe said...

    ? which subs did I claim push this agenda in a comment before? I only talked about r/neoliberal and r/badecononomics which are centrist subs. And regarding house-seats, I should have maybe said "swing districts", because these districts are so blue that democrats could nominate a glass of water and it would still win. AOC runs in New York City, Rashida Talib in Detroit, claiming that it is their progressiveness that won these districts is a very bold statement.
    Also, did you even read what I wrote in the first comment? I explicitly mentioned Ilhan Omar as an example were a very progressive underperformed Biden by 15% in her own district.

    EDIT: Indeed, I referenced CTH, FC and "BernieBro" subs, which I forgot I mentioned. I won't dig through FullCommunism but I think It's not a big secret that communist are not particularly fond of Biden. CTH and "BernieBro" subs I think I explained sufficiently.

    1 vote
  3. Comment on Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions in ~misc

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    So that is why r/OurPresident, a Sub with over 100k Subs banned everyone that argued for voting for Biden?...

    This has been a pretty common strawman by right-wing democrats to smear progressives.

    So that is why r/OurPresident, a Sub with over 100k Subs banned everyone that argued for voting for Biden? https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/g0e3ma/rourpresident_mods_are_removing_any_comments_that/

    That is why r/SandersForPresident, a sub with nearly 500k subs told people that Bernie is still in the Primary, although he endorsed Biden?
    https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/g0wyb9/sanders_endorses_biden_when_the_me_betrays_the_we/ ?

    CTH telling their listeners that their vote doesn't matter now? (I can't link to anything on their sub because it got banned)

    And because Progressives are way more appealing then moderates literally none of the house seats gained in swing states in 2018 where progressives, and all of them were moderates.... take it from https://www.vox.com/2018/11/7/18071700/progressive-democrats-house-midterm-elections-2018 or look up who won seats.

    And yes, having never head a single issue that mobilized liberal voters other than getting trump out is truly anecdotal. Healthcare, Immigration Reform and housing costs are all issues that liberals also care about, there is just a different perception on how they should be solved.

    2 votes
  4. Comment on Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions in ~misc

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    depending on the community and topic, yes. Defund the police was a strong one, where everyone (the more left-wing people that I follow) on twitter tried to explain what it actually is supposed to...

    depending on the community and topic, yes. Defund the police was a strong one, where everyone (the more left-wing people that I follow) on twitter tried to explain what it actually is supposed to mean. I can't pinpoint it down to specific persons though.

    2 votes
  5. Comment on Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions in ~misc

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    I'm not quite sure which communities you mean. Since r/neoliberal is socially very progressive but is still rooted in older communities (like r/badeconomics) where many people still remember the...

    I'm not quite sure which communities you mean. Since r/neoliberal is socially very progressive but is still rooted in older communities (like r/badeconomics) where many people still remember the "culture war" between the "SJWs" and the Alt-Light/Alt-Right that took place, but since it leans economically to the center/center-right there is a heavy disdain for rose-twitter and other socialist leaning spaces (especially on reddit with fringe communities like ChapoTraphouse, FullCommunism, the BernieBro Subbreddits that refused to acknowledge that Bernie endorsed Biden, etc.).

    Sometimes even outright "wars": One of the earliest things r/neoliberal did that gained attention was to "challenge" socialist subreddits to a charity marathon to prove their moral superiority.

    The sub spent it's whole existence complaining either about trump or about socialists/"progressives" and how both their proposals and their messaging would alienate voters and are out of touch with most of the electorate. This election basically proved their point with the moderate Biden winning the presidency, but left-wing democrats downballot heavily underperforming Biden. Ilhan Omar for example only managed to get 65% in her district while Biden got 80%, in a blue-collar district that, as Pelosi once put it "could be won by a glass of water for the democrats".

    1 vote
  6. Comment on What misconceptions would you like to clear up about your country/the country you live in? in ~talk

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Sorry for replying so late, in the US, Merkel would probably be between A bit to the right of the New Democrats, although she certainly belongs to the more moderate, "progressive" wing of her...

    Sorry for replying so late,
    in the US, Merkel would probably be between A bit to the right of the New Democrats, although she certainly belongs to the more moderate, "progressive" wing of her party.
    A brief summary of important political decisions that she made/spearheaded, because it's not as easy as left/right/center:

    • Exit from nuclear energy after Fukushima
    • Austerity for Greece/Spain/Portugal after the financial Crisis, but also lots of loans and funding for these countries to keep them in the eurozone
    • A Pretty much botched Exit from Fossil Fuels to renewable energies, leading to a still high amount of electricity from fossil fuel while having the highest energy prices for consumers in the EU (although this topic is more complicated when you go into the details because other parties had a say in this as well and energy is very cheap for companies)
    • Coming up with a ton of mass surveillance laws that in the end all failed at our constitutional court
    • Letting in a lot of refugees during the 2015-17 refugee crisis, which is certainly not a very conservative move and also put her under a lot of fire from her own party
    • Increasing spending for some social security systems, decreasing for others
    • Introducing a minimum wage
    • Blocking Gay marriage for quite some time, then finally deciding to let it come to a vote in the parlament and not enforce fraction discipline, leading to gay marriage coming into existence in germany
    • One of the best corona Responses from any large Western Country
    • Very pro EU
    • Foreign policy either passive or focused on mediating, think of that what you want

    So it's a mixed bag. From a european perspective, yes, she'd be a moderate conservative. But also many left-wing people came to like her (or at least be ok with her personally) for her extraordinary crisis-management skills and pretty much drama free leadership. So as I said, a bit to the right of the average new democrat, her whole party maybe like a Mixture of Blue Dogs and New Democrats.

    Definitely not conservative in the sense of Republican or evangelical conservative, they are mostly a far right party now.

    3 votes
  7. Comment on What misconceptions would you like to clear up about your country/the country you live in? in ~talk

    Artrax
    Link
    Bavaria is a state of Germany, that has a very different and distinct culture that most of germany. (The biggest former kingdom is by far prussia and the difference in culture between former...

    Bavaria is a state of Germany, that has a very different and distinct culture that most of germany.
    (The biggest former kingdom is by far prussia and the difference in culture between former prussian and bavarian areas are quite noticeable).

    Things like Weißbier, Weißwurst, Oktoberfest, Lederhosen, etc. are all bavarian, not german and you'll have a hard time finding them in other parts of the country.

    I think both Bavarians and Germans would be happy if people wouldn't confuse that.

    7 votes
  8. Comment on Landlords across America are bracing for a wave of rent defaults in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Do you have numbers on that? Because Vacancy Rates in Cities in the industrialized world that also have high rents are usually lower than 2%, making the claim "rents are up because people leave...

    like New York, where the vacancy rate on commercial properties was super high because the landlords weren't willing to sign leases at rates that businesses could function

    Do you have numbers on that? Because Vacancy Rates in Cities in the industrialized world that also have high rents are usually lower than 2%, making the claim "rents are up because people leave their units empty" not very likely to be true

  9. Comment on Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing in ~health

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Well, whats wrong with "decentralized approach"?

    Well, whats wrong with "decentralized approach"?

  10. Comment on Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing in ~health

    Artrax
    Link
    Apple-Google approach is a bit misleading since it implies that they provide the system. They just provide the Interface to exchange the messages that are needed for most decentralized systems,...

    Apple-Google approach is a bit misleading since it implies that they provide the system.
    They just provide the Interface to exchange the messages that are needed for most decentralized systems, the implementation and the details are still up to the government.

    1 vote
  11. Comment on India and Pakistan: A continuing story in ~humanities.history

    Artrax
    Link
    I'm pretty amazed to see, that a channel, that I had written off as another channel of the alt-right a couple of years ago, started to produce reasonably well researched videos and applies the...

    I'm pretty amazed to see, that a channel, that I had written off as another channel of the alt-right a couple of years ago, started to produce reasonably well researched videos and applies the same principles, upon which he criticized islam and SJWs, to the alt-right and other areas.

    I'm pretty glad I was wrong, although I think that being doxxed by other alt-right Youtubers kinda makes you reflect a bit more about who you want to appeal to.

    2 votes
  12. Comment on What's the education system like in your country? in ~life

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Very good explanation, but I'd add that education is mostly a responsibility of the state, so there are quite a lot of variations regarding the structure of the primary education. In some states...

    Very good explanation, but I'd add that education is mostly a responsibility of the state, so there are quite a lot of variations regarding the structure of the primary education. In some states like Berlin Gymnasium/Realschule etc. start with grade 7, in some states gymnasium is always till 13, in some only till 12, and if you look at the dual education system it gets even messier with many people getting their qualification for university as part of their trade school program.

    5 votes
  13. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    lmao, non of these are assumptions that are actually held in academic econ. They might be teached in econ 101 classes because it makes some things easier to understand, in some cases it might be a...

    lmao, non of these are assumptions that are actually held in academic econ.
    They might be teached in econ 101 classes because it makes some things easier to understand, in some cases it might be a acceptable approximation, but it's definitely not what is actually believed to be true.

    Conflation of money with utility and then utility with welfare is an especially pernicious one.

    Where did you get this one?

    Rational actor assumption

    You've ever heard of game theory? Or microeconomics in general?
    The rational actor assumption is one of the dumbest strawmens about econ

    2 votes
  14. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    lol robert skidelsky is a historian. Writing a three part biography about Keynes isn't an academic qualification. This dude has never written a scientific paper in his whole life, not even in any...

    lol robert skidelsky is a historian. Writing a three part biography about Keynes isn't an academic qualification. This dude has never written a scientific paper in his whole life, not even in any other social science.

    graeber is well respected for his work in anthropology, but I've never seen him being credited as a good economist by any other redeemed figure in academic econ

    1 vote
  15. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    For example?

    lousy with lazy assumptions

    For example?

    2 votes
  16. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    No one has a problem with alternating views on society or econ. Krugman is a well respected economist. But If you come up with a new theory of gravity you have to show real world data making it...

    No one has a problem with alternating views on society or econ. Krugman is a well respected economist. But If you come up with a new theory of gravity you have to show real world data making it likely that your model is superior than the already existing ones. And MMTlers don't do that, the just insist that they are right and 150 years of research are wrong

    1 vote
  17. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    Well, they do. Have you ever read an econ paper? I mean, how am I supposed to prove you wrong? Link you a batch of econ papers? Also, do you even know what scientific methods are? Experiments are...

    Well, they do.
    Have you ever read an econ paper?
    I mean, how am I supposed to prove you wrong? Link you a batch of econ papers?
    Also, do you even know what scientific methods are?
    Experiments are definitely one method viable to biologist or chemists, but for fields like psychology, epidemiology or econ. You can't simply create to separate countries with separate economies, give them different starting parameters and then examine what happens.
    You rather have to make case studies, examine data already present and try to find correlations that are likely to be true under the given data set.

    ALL statements in econ are only true with a certain probability, like all other statements in other sciences.
    I get that people often forget that, and for sure, some economists take themselves a bit to serious, but that's it. Just because sciences advances, scientific consensus shifts, old ideas that were believed to be definitely true turn out to be false (like the idea that Minimum wage lowers employment levels ), doesn't mean you should replace an entire science with bullshit backed up by nothing but hot air and wild dreams.

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    While I agree with you, I feel heavily insulted by the shear stupidity that some people put out into the public with the assertiveness of a nobel price winner. I have by no means an academic...

    While I agree with you, I feel heavily insulted by the shear stupidity that some people put out into the public with the assertiveness of a nobel price winner. I have by no means an academic background in econ, but before I spill out something into the public, I at least try do to some research. And if I don't know enough about something, I keep my mouth shut so that people that know more than me can have a more constructive dialog.

    1 vote
  19. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    There lies the problem. He's probably a great anthropologist, but he's as good in econ as most economists are good in anthropology. Also, being a professor at a university that has "economics" in...

    Professor of Anthropology

    There lies the problem. He's probably a great anthropologist, but he's as good in econ as most economists are good in anthropology. Also, being a professor at a university that has "economics" in it's name doesn't mean you understand economics.

    Also, MMT has been thoroughly debunked by numerous economists, I'll just leave this Link here.
    MMT at best makes simplified, trivial statements, at worst, it's just wrong.

    6 votes
  20. Comment on Against economics in ~finance

    Artrax
    Link Parent
    WTF, the whole first paragraph does not make any sense and is complete garbage: Money supply includes both the money created by the central bank and private banks. This is the definition of the...

    WTF, the whole first paragraph does not make any sense and is complete garbage: Money supply includes both the money created by the central bank and private banks. This is the definition of the term "Money supply" that you will in fact find in every econ textbook. This is an A-Class Strawmen, build to win over people who maybe managed to read the first 10 pages of an econ textbook and than gave up because they were confused by the terms (Which either the author exploits or is one of).
    Also, no one follows Monetarism 100% since like every Idea in a science, some parts are outdated. And no central bank in the world strictly follows Monetarism but they still use some of the findings from friedmann (there's a reason he's got a econ nobel prize, oh sorry, it's "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences").
    But what did the FED and ECB do during the 2008/9 Recession? Quantitative Easing, a term the author probably didn't even heard before.

    government borrowing didn’t divert funds from the private sector; it created entirely new money that had not existed before.

    Doesn't mean that you don't have to pay it back. And either this guy's arguing for more borrowing from the private sector, which just increases the amount of money that the state has to pay to not be viewed as bankrupt (and future governments can't spend) or for creating new central bank money, which would in fact increase inflation (most likely, depending on the circumstances, like everything in econ).

    politicians continued to be grilled about where they would find the cash for social programs.

    How the hell did we get from "private banks create money" to this?

    Who the **** is this dude arguing against? His college econ-prof that he didn't get along with and let him fail class (apparently with a good reason) ?
    This dude doesn't understand money creation, money supply, the responsibilities of central banks and the tools they have and therefore doesn't have the slightest cue what "monetarism" even means. He probably only heard that it was invented by friedman, and friedman=Pinochet=bad, therefor monetarism=bad.

    btw. I'm not generally arguing against government spending, social security, etc. .
    I'm arguing against stupid arguments. If we as a society decide to increase our social programs, that it is necessary that everyone knows in what way it will affect different things and also to implement it the most efficient way.

    5 votes