The primary election is the election

I’ve seen many people lamenting that the US has this two-party system, and since one of the parties is a garbage fire, we basically have the one Democratic candidate foisted upon us, regardless of whether we actually like them. And, well, yes. That’s what democracy is, the foisting of popular candidates upon people who don’t necessarily like them.

But if I may point out the obvious, we do in fact get a say in the Democratic candidate, during the primary election. Heck, we don’t even have to vote for a Democrat during the primaries, since one of the major candidates is still an independent. As far as my own vote is concerned, the primary election is the election, and the general election is a formality.

I think everyone knows this, so what I’m really advocating is a shift in thinking. The primaries, which occur between February and June 2020, are the time to pick your favorite candidate, and let your political ideals shine. The general election, in November 2020, is the time to put out the garbage fire.

Of course, thinking about it this way, there are certainly aspects of the Democratic primaries that are disappointingly undemocratic. In 2016 there was a lot of talk about superdelegates, but I don’t actually think that’s the worst problem. (Anyway, superdelegate rules have been reformed since then.)

[Read more…]

Exploitation of labor, part 2

This article is part of a series discussing capitalism and socialism.  Remember, the point isn’t to conclude that socialism or capitalism is good or bad.  The point is to discuss which aspects are good or bad, and why.  Don’t treat me as an authority, tell me how wrong I am, discuss.

Last time, I introduced the idea that labor has a certain maintenance cost, and creates a certain amount of value.  The “surplus” is the difference between the value output and maintenance cost.  In the discussion, we agreed that it’s difficult to define the productivity of each worker.  Usually, many workers are cooperating to make the final product, and you may even have workers who are there to improve the efficiency of other workers.

There are two responses to this.  One response is, even if we can’t define it on an individual basis, we can look at worker productivity and worker pay on a macro scale, and see that workers are getting paid less and less of the surplus.

Another response, is a question.  In the current capitalist system, how do we evaluate worker productivity for the purposes of determining their wages?  The answer lies in the idea of marginal productivity.

A graph whose axes are "number of workers" and "wages". The graph has two curves, labeled "marginal cost" and "marginal revenue". The intersection of the two curves determines the equilibrium wage and workforce size. Two regions of the graph are labeled the employer surplus and worker surplus.

Image mine. Use with permission.

[Read more…]

Link Roundup: May 2019

Plugs

Skepchick is back! – That is, to say, they’ve collected a lot of their former writers, and relaunched the site.  (Although, even when Skepchick was “inactive”, Rebecca Watson was still there with some good vlogging.)

Terrible Graphs of Orientation – I collected a bunch of graphs, primarily made by ace people.  And I tried to “outdo” the graphs by drawing hypercubes labeled with comic sans.

“No romo”: An overanalysis – I wrote in great depth about “no romo”, which is an occasional meme among aromantic people.  Mostly I end up talking about the history of “no homo”, and all the different ways it has been used.

A commenter pointed out that you can hear the beating frequency between two notes, even if each note is played in a separate ear.  If you have headphones/earbuds, you can hear it for yourself.  This is fascinating, because there is no real beating frequency in the air, so the beating frequency you perceive is somehow created in your brain.

Articles

[Read more…]

Postshipping

“Shipping” is a fandom term that refers to a desire to see two fictional characters in a relationship. Shipping includes many behaviors, such as…

  • Wanting canon to bring the characters together.
  • Wanting to interpret canon in such a way that it makes sense for the characters to be together, or that they’re already together.
  • Fantasizing about two characters being together, regardless of whether that would make sense.
  • Wanting to produce or consume fan works that portray the characters together.
  • Rooting for a particular relationship over the alternatives, similar to how sportsball fandoms root for teams.

As a person who has always been on the outside of fandoms, shipping doesn’t really make sense to me. That is, I have difficulty imagining ever feeling that way about characters. Sometimes I like romantic arcs in fiction, and I even enjoy stories in the romance genre, but I don’t fantasize about counterfactual relationships between characters.

But perhaps it’s something I can understand after all. Because you see, I have fantasies in the opposite direction.

[Read more…]

Exploitation of labor

When asked about my economic politics, I say I’m “socialist, kinda”. I owe a lot of that to listening to The Barefoot Bum over many years talking directly about how economic systems work, and the problems with capitalism. By comparison, I find a lot of other socialist arguments on the internet unsatisfying. It’s all “overthrow capitalism” and “seize the memes of production”, and I wish we could talk about specifics more often.

So, I’d like to lead a discussion about the problems with capitalism, much like what I did with health insurance years ago. Don’t treat me as an authority, tell me how wrong I am, discuss.

My first subject of discussion, is exploitation of labor. This is a Marxist concept, but I’m not interested in exploring what exactly Marx did or did not believe. I’m interested in exploring (and improving upon) the concept as I understand it. So here goes:

[Read more…]

Origami: Skarmory

Skarmory, designed by Shintaro Miyamoto

I dabble in many kinds of origami, especially in the context of interacting with origami groups.  I created this model, because someone at the origami group was really excited about making Pokemon, and asked if anyone could help him with this one.  It was difficult because we didn’t know the folding steps, we only had a crease pattern.

[Read more…]

Don’t cite logical fallacies

In a cooperative argument, you should never* explicitly refer to logical fallacies.

*additional qualifications below

This is a point I’ve made several times before, especially in my How To Argue post.

In that post, I make a distinction between cooperative and competitive arguments.  In a cooperative argument, you are trying to find the truth, which involves coming up with the best arguments you can, but does not necessarily involve “winning” the argument.  In a competitive argument, you are trying to win the argument, which might involve coming up with truthful arguments, but not necessarily.  I don’t mean to say there is anything inherently wrong with having a competitive argument, I’m just not talking about them here.

In a cooperative argument, you don’t want to antagonize the person you are arguing with (“interlocutor” is the term I would use).  After all, your goals are aligned.  You’re both trying to figure out the truth.  And if you tell your interlocutor that they’ve just used a logical fallacy, I think there’s something inherently antagonizing about that.  It’s like telling them not just that they’re wrong, but that they’re wrong in a particularly predictable and trite way.

[Read more…]