Simon Guenzl vs. Dave Smith on Open Borders

2024-04-03

California raised its minimum wage rate for the fast food industry to 20$ today. US Politicians haven’t targeted specific industries with minimum wage increases since the Great Depression. There are already signs that some fast food places in California are cutting back on employment. The specific effects of this fast food minimum wage will become clear during the rest of this year. For the time being, we should recall the general effects of minimum wages.Minimum wage laws reduce employer demand and increase labor supply; this causes higher unemployment rates. Minimum wage laws affect teen workers more than adult workers because teens are less skilled, less educated, and less reliable. The below left graph depicts the relationship between minimum wages and overall

2024-01-22

So-called social media is frequently maligned for the nastiness it brings, with focus often set on the personal attacks and trolling that tend to haunt potentially reasonable discussions. X (formerly Twitter) is supposedly the worst, on which people engage in endless mudslinging and bullying. However, the other platforms are not better.
The common explanation for the degenerative nature of social media discourse is that the platforms are developed to maximize “engagement,” which prefers emotional outbursts over reflective, rational discourse. Indeed, social media is designed to bring out the very worst in people. They are for-profit psyops that push or nudge people to scream louder and viciously attack each other.
There is some truth to the engagement argument, but the social media problem