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Scott Alexander shares conspiracy theory that COVID didn't happen (www.astralcodexten.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Collectivist@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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In his original post he said:

4: Related, breaking news: A popular Substack claims that COVID didn’t happen at all, and that both “lab leak” and “natural origins” are part of the higher-level conspiracy to distract people from the fact that there was never a virus in the first place.

He later edited the post to add:

I wonder if I could even more Substack likes if I one-upped them with a theory that lockdowns never even happened, and it was just one of those Berenstein Bear or Mandela Effect things where everyone has a false memory.

So now it's ironic, and therefore not harmful to spread the conspiracy theory to his large audience.

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[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 22 points 5 months ago

Good try but his own disclaimer at the top ends up telling on him

[I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]

That's nice Scott.

And right under there you've got

I’ll never tire of analogies putting the US / Europe gap into perspective - for example, did you know that the median black American household earns more ($48,297) than the median UK household (£35,000 = $44,450)?

Assuming these numbers are real, it's meaningless to compare gross salary, and not take into account the social contribution and whatever other taxes and contributions paid by the employer. I don't have good enough knowledge about how US and UK salaries break down to elaborate much, but a heuristic I've been applying is to just slash US salaries in two to get a better impression of the living conditions.

(And as the page Scott links to specifies, "According to the Census Bureau in 2021, the average non-Hispanic black median household income was $48,297 in comparison to $77,999 for non-Hispanic white households", so there you go)

[-] Collectivist@awful.systems 20 points 5 months ago

I left a comment that made a similar point with some data:

4: Please stop sharing conspiracy theories

5: Higher wages are useless if your country's infrastructure and tax system is so piss poor that you need to spend more on basic necessities. We have economic metrics that account for some of this, such as the difference between income and discretionary income. Free-market propagandists always point to the US having high income, but the same can not be said for discretionary income. For example, if we compare the US to the Netherlands, we see that the US median disposable income is 41K while in the Netherlands it's 36K. But let's compare how much you have to spend in your day to day life and calculate the discretionary income based on that:

________________________US_______Netherlands

income________________41k_______36k

food___________________5.1k_______3.7k

shelter_________________13.2k______13k

clothing________________1.2k_______1.5k

transport______________6.3k_______3.4k

health__________________3.2k_______1.8k

student debt___________2.1k_______0.8k

discretionary income__9.9k_______11.8k

As we see, the case the free-market capitalist makes falls apart once we look at discretionary income, which collectivist and social policies ensure is higher in the Netherlands.

EDIT: Scott has edited the post to make 4 seem less like an endorsement and more an ironic share. This is better, but I still prefer it if these things aren't spread at all.

EDIT 2: Source for the 2021 US-Dutch disposable income vs discretionary income (as well as a lot of other comparisons between median US and Dutch expenditure): https://www.moneymacro.rocks/2021-07-02-dutch-vs-america-middle-class/

[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 20 points 5 months ago

christ the level of bad faith wrongheaded nonsense you're getting in response is maddening

How would you justify your demand to stop sharing conspiracy theories? What's the rationale?

dude

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 13 points 5 months ago

"now do arbitrary homework for me"

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 15 points 5 months ago

Scott "I didn't actually read the book I reviewed" Alexander.

this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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