Lemmy.zip instance admin

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I think the impact of wealth and access to nutrition and an environment that does not stunt development plays a major role here as well. A good example of this is height in Europe post-industrial revolution and improvements in medicine:

    Most notable being a 20cm increase in the Netherlands in just over 100 years as well as changes in places that industrialised quickly like China:

    Not to say that geography plays no role but it’s closer to 10cm gap than a 30cm one.




  • Government spending/revenue as percentage of GDP is the common proxy for government size. That said actual empirical evidence doesn’t lead to clear cut conclusions about the relationship between economic growth/outcomes and government spending. It’s very much dependent on the country, quality of government institutions and components of the expenditure.

    Intuitively, you can clearly see that if you had 2 identical countries where 50% of gov spending went to building schools, hospitals and roads in one and paying interest on national debt in the other then you would expect very different outcomes with the same government “size”.

    For the US, that metric has been close to 30% for the last several decades with spikes during crises like 2008 and 2020 (changes to money supply or “minting” is a component of government size but usually a temporary one). It’s been relatively stable outside of that since the 1970s. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to-gdp

    Relative to the rest of the world’s rich countries it’s on the lower end:

    In my view, it’s highly dependent on the quality of the government institutions and components of spending. People immediately think of inefficiency and bureaucracy when governments are brought up but there is empirical evidence to show that gov spending on things like education and infrastructure are usually “productive” in additional to contributing to factors that may not be properly captured by measures like GDP growth.

    In short, people reducing government spending/regulations as inherently bad/controlling are at least not being completely honest because it’s a very complicated discussion.














  • Yes, civilians who want to leave should be able to. Does that change the reality of the situation? Does that make Egyptians willing to take in 2 million refugees because Israel is breaking international law? Does that save the lives of those who stay? Does that eradicate Hamas? Does that resolve the conflict equitably?

    Spare me with your “agenda” accusations.

    bombing the people who just targeted and murdered over a thousand civilians is legitimate or not

    Bombing over 2000 children (so far) is not morally ambiguous. It’s never justified. There are other means. If you don’t believe that is the case then I urge you to reassess how you value the lives on each side of this conflict.


  • Once again, the continuous bombing is a military choice by Israel. It’s because they don’t want to fight on the ground and value Palestinian civilian lives infinitely less than they value the lives of their own soldiers.

    If that’s what you got from what I said then you’re deliberately being obtuse. Even if you evacuate 1.5 million civilians to Egypt what do you do with the 500k that stay? Are they alright to kill because they chose to remain in their homes?

    I’ve left my home country due to the deteriorating situation from events indirectly caused by this conflict so I guess that’s my “agenda”. I am against the collective displacement AND collective punishment of Palestinians and the further destabilization of the region as a sick form of “revenge”.