Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Thunderf00t" channel.

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  2.  @qurqo  That's not quite true. Depends on the type of work, the type of boss, the type of system, the geography and transport systems, and the type of employee. The right combination and productivity skyrockets when people can work from home, the wrong combination and it tanks. Noteworthy is that work from home systems often expose employees who weren't doing anything productive at work either, and incompitent managers who were actually making things worse rather than better... But it is worth noting that there are psychological aspects to the whole thing too. Some people work better in a more relaxed environment without other people distracting them, which could mean working from home, depending on their family situation and the way the office is organized, or it could very much mean NOT working at home for a different combination of those same factors. Likewise, some people require that very distinct separation of space between the two to focus on the relevant tasks, others can manage with as little as putting on different music in the background and be good. A functional work from home system can reduce how much productivity is lost if people take time off work due to certain illnesses and events, where they can't come in to the office or work a full day, but still have the time and ability to get Some work done to regular standards (compaired to forcing sick people to come in and work a full day as usual, which produces distinctly substandard work and is very likely to infect other employees and further tank productivity). And on and on the list goes. Very much a case of 'applied correctly to the right use cases this is very beneficial, applied badly and/or to the wrong use cases it is quite harmful'... much like a truely staggering number of other things, really.
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  9.  @gorillaguerillaDK  I followed what was going on in the UK's parliament regarding Brexit... the reality is it wasn't just the opposition opposing for the heck of it, it was multiple parties (and factions within parties) being staggeringly incompentent and perfectly willing to through the country under a bus with a 'no deal' exit if the alternative was anything other than their own deal. The whole brexit referendum was Supposed to basically just be a bit of propaganda that killed the idea so certain individuals couldn't keep using it to be a pain in the butt for the government at the time. They could Claim to be in favour of it and so keep certain subsets of their supporters satisfied, and, they Thought, be confident that it was such an obviously and staggeringly stupid idea that it would never actually pass the referendum. (and, really, even if it did, if the margin was narrow enough, the referendum wasn't binding anyway, there were plenty of ways to spin just not doing it), and the fact that they bothered asking would be a nice boost in the upcoming election. ... They underestimated the propagandists who saw benefit in a successful Brexit campaign. They underestimated the ignorance, gullibility, and (to a lesser extent) stupidity of the British public (... honestly, the general public in most countries, but only the British public is relevant here). The referendum came back in favour of Brexit. And then public sentiment and media attention shifted such that just ignoring the results or otherwise fiddling the system to avoid going through with it was simply Not Viable. So they had to go through with it. This was followed by attempting to stall and dick around such that the EU would end up basically forcing the UK to stay by way of negotiations breaking down and no 'leave' agreement being made. Then the failure to go through could be blamed on the EU (boosting the popularity and election chances of the politicians who Claimed to be against such things) rather than the government, and Brexit wouldn't happen (no predictable consequences)... Except the EU was having none of it and told the UK to either make a deal or leave without one. What followed was an utter farce, with first the government (or at least PM) constantly going with a 'make proposals that will clearly be unaceptable to the EU but make it look like it's the EU's fault that things aren't working until we can just blame the EU for Brexit not happening' strategy, despite it being increasingly obvious both that that was happening And that the EU wasn't following the script, and then once parliament as a whole (and the general public) got so fed up with that nonsense that changes were made regarding who was actually conducting the negotiations (and running the country, if I recall correctly) the situation I described in my first paragraph became the status quo (with each faction being more interested in their constituents being happy with them for trying to push their pet obsession than in getting a nondisasterous result that could be blamed on specific individuals who weren't even in power anymore and the EU when it came to calming said constituents if need be) continuing right up until the deadline ran out. Oh, and as an added bonus the PM and a few other officials decided that it would be a great idea to promise solutions to certain problems that this whole issue caused that were A: Directly contradictory to what they had told the EU they were going to do to resolve those issues and B: Flat out illegal anyway. The simple fact is there was never a good plan for Brexit because, to those who would be making such plans, it was Never Supposed To Happen! The need for election reform in the UK is almost as dire as it is in the USA, because that was a staggeringly incompitent showing.
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  25.  @ericmaclaurin8525  My understanding is that previous attempts at carbon markets resulted in various scams that made some people very rich off doing nothing much and did very little to actually change carbon patterns. Also, while some countries can manage smart regulation most of the time, and most can manage smart regulation some of the time... smart tax policy is a pipe dream, because basically the defining trait of most big 'centre right' (yeah, that's questionable labling, but moving on) parties is 'we'll gut the many and various useful things that the taxes pay for (but never the corrupt nonsense that's not working, oh no) so you pay less taxes! pay no attention to the fact that the actual reduction is so low that 90% or more of the population won't notice any real benefit and that privately owned sources of the same product/service, when hey even exist, cost several times as much per person (not per user, mind you)!'. It's pretty rare that they have anything else going for them as entities (their individual politicians can be just as capable of looking after their constituants local needs and interests as anyone else, but their higher level policies? yeah, tax cuts and 'screw the people who need services (such as clean water) and aren't rich!' is pretty much the whole of it, at least most places.) ... and that's when your 'leftist' parties even understand what a budget is and why you shouldn't just jack up taxes, print money, or force everyone to work for no compensation (this is less consistent, there are plenty of 'leftist' political parties that understand this just fine... but there are also a surprisingly large number that Don't!)
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  35.  @stripedcollar335  a 'dark age' is litterally just a period for which we don't have much in the way of written records. We probably Are in a Cultural dark age due to the complete insanity that is modern copyright law in most of the world, but we're nowhere near the circumstances that lead to the dark ages in Europe. In the north east, it was mostly that no one was really keeping records of most things yet anyway, in the west, the collapse of the roman empire lead to economic decline that meant that there simply weren't the spare resources to dedicate to specialists whose entire job was to keep records of stuff that didn't really matter all that much in the shorter term, as more people had to be farming etc. locally to make up for the collapse of the trade routes, and big cities couldn't fit enough farm land close enough to the city to do that, so a lot of the biggest cities shrank as people moved to... smaller cities and larger towns where that wasn't a problem. Society as a whole didn't really Collapse, technological regression was limited and inconsistent, technological Development continued, etc. The biggest problem was probably that no one entity had the resources for most large scale engineering projects anymore. Fortunately the Romans built major infrastructure stupidly well (and even if they couldn't build on that scale, maintainence was still possible for more local entities) to the point where it was still highly significant in many places up until the world wars. Mind you, the modern world would, in some respects, be a Lot harder hit by such a collapse of trade routes (heck, just look at the effect of recent disruptions), but we're still not talking complete chaos and collapse.
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