Is Effective Altruism “sociopathic?”
Krystal — you’ve referred to EA as sociopathic on this show and KKF. Spell your position out a bit. The basics of EA seem to be about making sure your charitable contributions are doing the most good, insofar that good can be quantified. It seems uncontroversial that some charities will be better than others at realizing real life benefits for people. One argument you’ve used is to say that EA may lead people to take an “ends justify the means” approach. Can’t that argument be applied to charitable giving in general as well? That is basically what the fictional character of Robin Hood did. I don’t recall that story mentioning that he was an Effective Altruist. Is there something specifically about EA that makes you stand so strongly against it or are you against charitable giving in principle? I’ll grant that the very online component of that movement is pretty cringe, but what is it about the philosophical basis of the movement that you find questionable? I would also encourage you to look more carefully at their position on climate change. It is not as you described it on your show.
Anti-trust action against the 2 big Political parties?
I was thinking about it, in theory would they not fall under a monopoly status? Only 2 "competitors" which are independent entities that consistently use practices that would be illegal in any other sector along with large profits and little accountability. It could easily be argued that the 2 party monopoly actually has driven the prices up in many sectors it touches or ignores, backroom collusion to keep out competitors, constant misleading ad's, and many more points. I doubt traditionally it would count, but there is a strong argument to be made, any thoughts?
Laws don't implement themselves
After almost all mass shooting we find ourselves wondering why this person wasn't subject to "red flag laws". I was just listening to a short blurb that presented some data to suggest that a driving factor behind the use of these laws is police lack of knowledge and time to institute them. I'm wondering about your take on this. Where do we have perfectly good laws that simply get lost in the beuracracy? What can we do to make sure the people charged with implementing laws have the support they need to get it done?
The bank run happening in the stock market
Context: With the fraud of FTX, the growing wave of skepticism in our financial institutions has turned into a tsunami. A group of retail investors on the stock market have already believed they are not safe. To protect their assets they have turned to Direct Registration of their Shares(DRS). This removes the shares from the hands of the brokers/exchanges and puts it exclusively in the ownership of the shareholder. The belief is assets are being maliciously oversold by these institutions. Currently GameStop investors have DRS more than half the available shares, over 2 Billion dollars(ish?). There is a tracker on social media sites that try to log, in real time, the number of shares; current estimates are 59% DRS of the free float which is worth close to 3 Billion USD. Every quarter about 10-15 million more shares are DRS'd, at that rate the free float is totally locked in less than a year. Question(s): 1. Have you heard of this development? 2. Do you think, when the free float of GameStop is pulled out of the stock market, there will be widespread evidence of fraud/naked shortselling? 3. If there is, would you be in favor of forcing all the naked shorts to close their positions on the open market, forcing a short squeeze that would certainly bankrupt every naked short, and put that money into the hands of the retail investors?
Why does the far left love china so much?
I've always wondered why my friends and others to the far left seem to worship China. I consider myself on the left, but I've never considered the regime a net gain for democracy and freedom. I know they've done good things, but is there something I'm missing? And I'm not talking about liberal celebrities who are bound to Chinese interest