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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      There’s something unseemly about a society where a lot of people have to rely on charity to survive and there is an uncritical charity-cheerleading track of the discourse flowing withgratitude, humility, etc. I appreciate those who do basics-giving, but it’s a job for taxes

      5 replies 35 retweets 161 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      The US is particularly prone to this pattern. Americans *like* a society built on benefactor-benefactee relationships of humility/gratitude as a basic building block. “Charitable person” is in the top 5 American archetypes. ESP religious and high-society subtypes.

      5 replies 7 retweets 32 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      Inefficient though it might be there’s a dignity-preserving aspect to receiving safety-net support from a well-run bureaucracy that catalyzes personal agency and provides an impetus towards self-sufficiency in a way personal dependence on “the kindness of strangers” does not.

      3 replies 2 retweets 51 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      I suspect conservatives who get into a moral panic about creating parasitic dependency/welfare queenism etc actually *want* to preserve the humiliation-based culture of community charity (not saying those who give *want* to humiliate, but that’s often the structural effect)

      6 replies 10 retweets 58 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted

      I know this is sincerely the ideal many people believe to actually be true, but is just wildly psychologically implausible on the receiving end at least, *excelt* where both are part of a religious culture https://twitter.com/unorthodoxxxy/status/1249049542630051841?s=21 … https://t.co/uIJq0SbVPm 

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      2 replies 0 retweets 25 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      The actual effect of being the beneficiary of highly personal charity is often resentment. Beneath the mask of expressed gratitude is often anger, a sense of unwanted burden/obligation, unworthiness, low status in the community etc. It can drive people to leave communities.

      3 replies 3 retweets 48 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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      Blanche duBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is of course the best-known American portrayal of the oppressiveness of “kindness of strangers” cultures. Tennessee Williams’ other play Glass Menagerie has similar themes. There was a really good quote by him on dignity I can’t find

      12:11 PM - 11 Apr 2020
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      • sanjagrozdanic AJW Phil Wolff 狼爱马 Jason Nathaniel Eliot Inanna Malick 🏳️‍⚧️ Aaron Jacob James Tiberius Stone 🔫
      1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Basically, problems created by industrial scale extraction, negative externalities, or direct cruelty can’t be solved by palliative measures based on family and church scale compassion. Impedance mismatch. You need same responses that rhyme with the causes.

          5 replies 6 retweets 51 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          It’s like pretending Covid19 is just the flu and everybody should just walk it off. People being forced to use GoFundMes as de facto health insurance isn’t heartwarming humanism. It’s a blaring systemic emergency alarm. I’m glad the option exists, but it shouldn’t have to.

          3 replies 7 retweets 64 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Re UBI, I have very mixed feelings about it. LVT otoh, seems truly like a bit of a cure-all here. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1249060360402829312?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1249060360402829312 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Replying to @pouyatafti
          Gone back and forth on UBI a lot. I think it is total hypocrisy unless you also advocate open borders, in which case it becomes unviable. But in a Covid19 world where borders are closed for stronger reasons, it might both work and be non-hypocritical.
          2 replies 0 retweets 18 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          In a sufficiently simple and primitive world, privatizing the rewards of success to a degree while socializing the costs of failure almost entirely, is a win-win for everybody. In a sufficiently complex and technologically advanced world, it tends to be a lose-lose.

          3 replies 2 retweets 19 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          It’s because the taller and wobblier the tech stack, the deeper the hole failures can put you in. Innovation goes from antifragile to fragile with the height of the stack it rely on. And when things fail, they hurt more people, more badly. Beyond the scope of personal charity.

          1 reply 3 retweets 15 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 11
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          There’s something silly about expecting churches and gofundmes to fix externalities of say heavy metal contamination, asbestos, slums created by redlining and highway systems, and pandemics spread by globalized industry. America bridges the gap with lawsuits. Not ideal.

          3 replies 4 retweets 34 likes
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        8. End of conversation

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