Leaving Bay Area

I would prefer Lillehammer, love snow, hate rain…The skiing near Seattle is pretty crappy…Whistler is 4 hrs away and rains a lot there too…

I could go for Seattle, but tsunami risk is real (in addition to similar ca earthquake risk)

Small countries may be more efficient. Small countries also tend to be homogeneous. But that doesn’t follow a multi-cultural multi-racial society is inherently inefficient or undesirable.

A => B and A => C

doesn’t mean B and C have any causal relationship. The world’s most efficient country: Singapore, is both multi-racial and multi-religion.

The sorry state of American public service has a lot to do with our fundamentalist mindset about personal freedom. We don’t compromise. Whenever we are asked to sacrifice a little bit of personal choice and freedom for the public good, we refuse. So costs are much higher than societies who compromise.

:slight_smile: It works when the world is in disarray. Now that the world learns to cooperate…

Manch, the democratic machine has dominated Sac, LA and SF for years…No compromise needed…Yet they get nothing done. …To busy pandering to unions and special interests. .I miss Willie Brown, the last of the old style Roosevelt Democrats, actually got stuff built…Unlike an ass kisser like Newsom…

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It’s not about compromising between left and right, although that would help a lot.

I am talking about sacrificing some personal freedom for the good of society. It runs deep in the rugged individualism of the USA, and shows in both the left and the right. And that pushes up costs for everybody.

An example from the left: a few homeowners’ right to sunshine means much shorter new buildings and that pushes up house price for everyone.

Or everyone is entitled to $80K a pop medication even that only prolongs life for 3 months, and that pushes up insurance costs.

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I have seen a lot personal freedom given up in the last 40 years with little benefit. …Every new law chips away at our personal freedom…From helmet laws to fines for not having healthcare. …I just got popped for not wearing a seatbelt… $200 fine. .makes me glad Trump won…We are sick and tired of the nanny state…I hate smoke alarms, low flow toilets, lead paint laws, rent control, airport strip searches and all the other personal affronts to freedom that have mutiplied in the last 40 years…Can’t even piss in the woods without government interference. .My 79 year old friend with prostate cancer was harrased and almost arrested for pissing on the side of the road…Don’t cops have anything better to do? They would rather harass a dying old man than be made to have to ask for your green card…

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People not wearing helmets and got his motorcycle crashed, who foots his medical bill?

Fine for not having healthcare is to make the Obamacare economics work. If only the sick is in the insurance pool, the whole thing will collapse. It’s not ideal, sure. How about we go to single payer?

Single payer is fine with me. .because no one is turned away from emergency care we all have to pay anyway. …But as some one who survived and thrived before the Nanny state, giving away freedom is not worth it…

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Part of freedom is people are responsible for the choices they make. When you socialize risk to remove it, then people have no incentive to make good decisions. Then you get bad decisions on a huge level. Just look at birth rate by income level. The highest income people are having the fewest kids. People under $10k income are having the most kids. That’s creating a huge cost burden on society, since those people aren’t going to pay the cost of their kids. We’re also lowering the average IQ of society. The long-term math of how this impacts social programs and our ability to afford them isn’t good.

Can you please explain what you meant here?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/researchers-western-iqs-dropped-14-points-over-last-180634194.html?ref=gs

I’m trying to understand why is this relevant in this discussion?

Will try to find more information on this study if I can.

My quick research found this with the important parts bolded:

Michael A. Woodley of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Jan te Nijenhuisc of the University of Amsterdam and Raegan Murphy of the University College Cork in Ireland conducted a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time – in indication of general intelligence.

“We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations, using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of cognition.”

The researchers used data of simple reaction time described in a meta-analysis of 14 age-matched studies from Western countries conducted from 1889 to 2004.

The study, published in the journal Intelligence, found a decline in general intelligence of 1.23 points per decade.

If you google, you can find plenty of studies that discuss it. I explained why it matters, and why it’ll continue to get worse.

Have thought about this. Same initial thought as you. Later I realize I have assumed:

a. Two idiots produce idiots only… geniuses can also be born because diversity is random. In USA, geniuses are the ones that make quantum leaps in improving the quality of life for everybody and create millions of jobs. Intelligent guys mostly benefit themselves.
b. Smarter guys can survive plague and apocalypse better… not true.
c. Lower income guys are stupid… could be lack of opportunities or possessed skills that are not highly valued at that point of time.

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You’ll have exceptions, but I don’t think you can deny the overall trend and implications.

There’s no shortage of studies

Also, we used to have 6% of kids born out of wedlock. Now it’s 40%. There’s a real social impact and cost of that.

That’s because of loose morals. I blame Hollywood.

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And here is where I throw in my plug on why I say real estate (over stocks) can improve a person’s standing at least financially fairly quickly. My former tenant pretty much came to this country as an illegal with hardly any money in his pocket. He manages to meet a US citizen who marries him. He doesn’t have an education but knows the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver. Works hard in construction. Saves up enough money through a generous landlord (me) who never raised his cheap rent ONCE in what 10 years(?) and buys a fixer. Fixes the old lady up to be very, very nice and now it is worth at least 250-300k more in a matter of several years and he now he has options that he probably never ever dreamed would be available to him. Sell and buy more fixers or just enjoy being a bonafide homeowner with a substantial amount of equity. With stocks, someone like that (with hardly any money or knowledge) is not going to elevate himself as quickly.