On link 6, my first job for a big corporation was working in the call centre for a big insurers workers compensation division
We had a woman we all hated getting calls from, always hostile, always rude and always in the wrong. This was 2004 & she had been on workers comp since 1986 when she sprained her knee. How did a sprained knee lead to 18 years off work you ask? Well by 2004 the official reason she was on workers comp was ‘mental pain & anguish of being unable to work’
This woman didn’t want to work so the mental anguish was a joke, she was over $1.2 million in payments by this time including multiple 6 figure payouts, psychiatric bills, physical therapy, etc. it was a joke
That made it worse was that worker’s comp premiums are based on percentage of salary that were different for different industries (so builders were 15% and sales were 0.6% that kind of thing) so the next call after this awful rorter, you’d get a call from a small businessman in tears because he wanted to grow his business but couldn’t afford to employ the new guy he needed as the workers comp premiums made it impossible, was infuriating that while some ppl were ripping off the system other businesses were being driven to the wall while someone else was being denied a job as the employer couldn’t afford to hire him
One thing it did was make mid-twenties me question my knee-jerk left wing bleeding heart politics when it came to welfare policy
Any sufficiently complicated system – be it the benefits system or the tax system – will have loopholes, and there will always be some miserable people who want to make it a life-project to rip the arse out of as many of them as possible, or in the case of the latter, pay accountants to do so on their behalf.
I'd love to see numbers, but I'd be surprised if the total sum of money lost to society, via either fraud or creative applications within the benefits system, even approaches that lost via tax evasion and avoidance.
Bent people are despicable (and both Lee's and DalaiLana's stories are justly infuriating). But the problem is that closing every loophole is hard, even when the motivation is there (and this might be lacking in the case of tax), and the more effort you put into checking and enforcement, the more you create the risk that the intended beneficiaries of welfare or tax benefits are unjustly denied them, or delayed.
So is it acceptable to grit our teeth and tolerate some level of con, in order that the system functions, or is it more important to root out every single transgressor? (and if the latter, can we have a corresponding level of vigilance for the tax system?)
The very same! You'll probably enjoy the rest of Bits About Money, and also - well, "enjoy" is the wrong word, but "learn things from" and "be righteously infuriated by" both fit - the story of how he ended up running the US government's shadow vaccine-availability tracking service: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/
Oh fraud is usually way lower than unclaimed legitimate benefits from people who can’t be bothered with the paperwork, but still doesn’t quell your rage when you come across genuine no doubt examples of it, this is why welfare politics is so complicated
I have a friend whose mother managed to turn carpel tunnel syndrome into a lifelong disability that paid for a new house. At some point you realize that us honest, middle-class, hard-working people are doing it wrong. Actually, I think Terry Pratchett pointed it out -- that middle class values are a sort of prison that doesn't contain either the upper or lower classes.
Just look at who is president now, a man who publicly makes it clear he thinks people who work hard and play by the rules are suckers and he has been rewarded for that attitude
I guarantee that woman from my workers comp days is both still rorting the system and passionately supports Trump
Not really sure how "Vance isn't taking something personally" is somehow a bad thing. Do we really want politics based on "he hurts my feelings"? I think that's honestly where we went wrong, with all the "lived experience" stuff, etc. There are plenty of racists in power who are just smart enough not to advertise it on social media. One can argue whether this guy is really as smart as he claims, based on his social media usage. But otherwise I doubt he's less competent than anyone else in the average federal job.
Yeah, the "vice-signalling" post shows an infuriating unwillingness to engage with conservative moral foundations. To conservatives, loyalty is a virtue! Not cancelling people for stuff they said online is a virtue! Being able to say "that racist-looking thing is clearly an edgy joke" is a virtue!
I have a question about narrative… People talk quite a bit these days about longer, more creative features and factual books as examples of ‘narrative non-fiction’? Do you like the name? How much do you think about narrative structure when you are writing a longer story? Do you have any favourite structures/narrative approaches for the longer pieces you write? Do you prefer to structure pieces around particular characters and their stories or via the investigation of an idea or theme? Sorry - that’s actually a lot of questions, not just one question… Answer whichever one you feel like. Thanks Helen!
All great questions! The only one that’s simple to answer is: yes, I think a *lot* about structure. One of the screenwriting dudes said “story IS structure.”
Heard for the first time "Strong Message Here", and as someone who has avoided the news as much as possible since November, it has made me feel informed but less terrified, thank you.
Cummings just ignoring the fact that he was one of the most powerful unelected people in Britain at the precise moment the deal was ‘oven baked’ is really something. This guy just refuses to take any responsibility for what he’s done, it says so much about his particular class of people
Also, I’ve been doing some checking out of his old blog posts, back from when he assumed people wouldn’t read his stuff I’m guessing, did you know he’s been connected with Thiel and Musk since at least 2014? His posts about his trips to Silicon Valley are very Yarvin like in his belief we’d be better off with the tech nerds running the world, he tries to be very coy in avoiding mentioning actual names when he talks about who he met when over there, but in some replies and comments to people replying to his posts he lets it slip who the people ate he met
Oh I agree with that, but as soon as you start reading you realise instantly ‘oh this is a dumb persons idea of a smart person’ (as a bonafide member of the ‘dunb persons idea of a smart person group myself, I can see the signs’!!! )
I have a logistics question! Given how little it pays to be a cultural critic now, what are your hopes and fears for how Substack works as a market for new writing? Can a new generation of critics and journalists thrive here, long term?
Mixed. Substack has good discoverability through the recommendation engine, so you can become part of a community of people who are interested in cultural criticism. But undoubtedly it’s easier to import an established following than build one here from scratch.
Thanks for the reply. I've discovered several really amazing writers on here who didn't come in with a following, and I'm watching them grow with great interest. I hope they're able to build up enough momentum to earn a few quid!
I have a question around writer's block, please. Well, not generally, but in two specific cases: one, when you have all the material and a generally good plan but don't 'feel' what you are writing, and two, when you have a good article/book and you have the materials and you're ready to write your heart out, but it's not your specialist subject and you are worried you'll really get things wrong.
On link 6, my first job for a big corporation was working in the call centre for a big insurers workers compensation division
We had a woman we all hated getting calls from, always hostile, always rude and always in the wrong. This was 2004 & she had been on workers comp since 1986 when she sprained her knee. How did a sprained knee lead to 18 years off work you ask? Well by 2004 the official reason she was on workers comp was ‘mental pain & anguish of being unable to work’
This woman didn’t want to work so the mental anguish was a joke, she was over $1.2 million in payments by this time including multiple 6 figure payouts, psychiatric bills, physical therapy, etc. it was a joke
That made it worse was that worker’s comp premiums are based on percentage of salary that were different for different industries (so builders were 15% and sales were 0.6% that kind of thing) so the next call after this awful rorter, you’d get a call from a small businessman in tears because he wanted to grow his business but couldn’t afford to employ the new guy he needed as the workers comp premiums made it impossible, was infuriating that while some ppl were ripping off the system other businesses were being driven to the wall while someone else was being denied a job as the employer couldn’t afford to hire him
One thing it did was make mid-twenties me question my knee-jerk left wing bleeding heart politics when it came to welfare policy
Any sufficiently complicated system – be it the benefits system or the tax system – will have loopholes, and there will always be some miserable people who want to make it a life-project to rip the arse out of as many of them as possible, or in the case of the latter, pay accountants to do so on their behalf.
I'd love to see numbers, but I'd be surprised if the total sum of money lost to society, via either fraud or creative applications within the benefits system, even approaches that lost via tax evasion and avoidance.
Bent people are despicable (and both Lee's and DalaiLana's stories are justly infuriating). But the problem is that closing every loophole is hard, even when the motivation is there (and this might be lacking in the case of tax), and the more effort you put into checking and enforcement, the more you create the risk that the intended beneficiaries of welfare or tax benefits are unjustly denied them, or delayed.
So is it acceptable to grit our teeth and tolerate some level of con, in order that the system functions, or is it more important to root out every single transgressor? (and if the latter, can we have a corresponding level of vigilance for the tax system?)
Yes, the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero, as argued in this excellent post by Patrick McKenzie: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/
Aha – thanks!
By... oh, by _that_ Patrick McKenzie! I've read other stuff by him. Very good.
(<https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/> and <https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/> are both obliquely fascinating, and memorable)
The very same! You'll probably enjoy the rest of Bits About Money, and also - well, "enjoy" is the wrong word, but "learn things from" and "be righteously infuriated by" both fit - the story of how he ended up running the US government's shadow vaccine-availability tracking service: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/
Oh fraud is usually way lower than unclaimed legitimate benefits from people who can’t be bothered with the paperwork, but still doesn’t quell your rage when you come across genuine no doubt examples of it, this is why welfare politics is so complicated
I have a friend whose mother managed to turn carpel tunnel syndrome into a lifelong disability that paid for a new house. At some point you realize that us honest, middle-class, hard-working people are doing it wrong. Actually, I think Terry Pratchett pointed it out -- that middle class values are a sort of prison that doesn't contain either the upper or lower classes.
Just look at who is president now, a man who publicly makes it clear he thinks people who work hard and play by the rules are suckers and he has been rewarded for that attitude
I guarantee that woman from my workers comp days is both still rorting the system and passionately supports Trump
Not really sure how "Vance isn't taking something personally" is somehow a bad thing. Do we really want politics based on "he hurts my feelings"? I think that's honestly where we went wrong, with all the "lived experience" stuff, etc. There are plenty of racists in power who are just smart enough not to advertise it on social media. One can argue whether this guy is really as smart as he claims, based on his social media usage. But otherwise I doubt he's less competent than anyone else in the average federal job.
Yeah, the "vice-signalling" post shows an infuriating unwillingness to engage with conservative moral foundations. To conservatives, loyalty is a virtue! Not cancelling people for stuff they said online is a virtue! Being able to say "that racist-looking thing is clearly an edgy joke" is a virtue!
I have a question about narrative… People talk quite a bit these days about longer, more creative features and factual books as examples of ‘narrative non-fiction’? Do you like the name? How much do you think about narrative structure when you are writing a longer story? Do you have any favourite structures/narrative approaches for the longer pieces you write? Do you prefer to structure pieces around particular characters and their stories or via the investigation of an idea or theme? Sorry - that’s actually a lot of questions, not just one question… Answer whichever one you feel like. Thanks Helen!
All great questions! The only one that’s simple to answer is: yes, I think a *lot* about structure. One of the screenwriting dudes said “story IS structure.”
Heard for the first time "Strong Message Here", and as someone who has avoided the news as much as possible since November, it has made me feel informed but less terrified, thank you.
Cummings just ignoring the fact that he was one of the most powerful unelected people in Britain at the precise moment the deal was ‘oven baked’ is really something. This guy just refuses to take any responsibility for what he’s done, it says so much about his particular class of people
Also, I’ve been doing some checking out of his old blog posts, back from when he assumed people wouldn’t read his stuff I’m guessing, did you know he’s been connected with Thiel and Musk since at least 2014? His posts about his trips to Silicon Valley are very Yarvin like in his belief we’d be better off with the tech nerds running the world, he tries to be very coy in avoiding mentioning actual names when he talks about who he met when over there, but in some replies and comments to people replying to his posts he lets it slip who the people ate he met
Cummings blog is almost unreadable. The really smart people are good communicators and good editors of their own work, he is neither.
I wonder if anyone has ever read all the posts and not skimmed bits.
Oh I agree with that, but as soon as you start reading you realise instantly ‘oh this is a dumb persons idea of a smart person’ (as a bonafide member of the ‘dunb persons idea of a smart person group myself, I can see the signs’!!! )
I have a logistics question! Given how little it pays to be a cultural critic now, what are your hopes and fears for how Substack works as a market for new writing? Can a new generation of critics and journalists thrive here, long term?
Thanks Helen 🙏
Mixed. Substack has good discoverability through the recommendation engine, so you can become part of a community of people who are interested in cultural criticism. But undoubtedly it’s easier to import an established following than build one here from scratch.
Thanks for the reply. I've discovered several really amazing writers on here who didn't come in with a following, and I'm watching them grow with great interest. I hope they're able to build up enough momentum to earn a few quid!
And the producer of that Spike Milligan "Melting Pot" first episode , the aptly named
Roger Race.....
Hey Helen!
I have a question around writer's block, please. Well, not generally, but in two specific cases: one, when you have all the material and a generally good plan but don't 'feel' what you are writing, and two, when you have a good article/book and you have the materials and you're ready to write your heart out, but it's not your specialist subject and you are worried you'll really get things wrong.