Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Just own the damn robots

thereformedbroker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 356 posts

Re: Just own the damn robots

#281

Post by ddnb »

explainplease wrote: post #254
ddnb wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is not correct >Communism means more state control of people, capitalism means less. In comparison to what? Eachother? Because western-europe has more control than the US, china has more control than western-europe (and let's not pretend china isn't capitalist). These are economic systems and are seperate from political systems.

> In comparison to what? Eachother? Yes, that is the point I tried to make with all those paragraphs. > These are economic systems and are seperate from political systems. I directly addressed this in the penultimate full paragraph. > and let's not pretend china isn't capitalist It depends on how you define "capitalist." Some industries in China are state-controlled--is that capitalist? Is "capitalist" 0% state contr…

> I realize that you're not the first person I replied to, nor the last, but I wish you would say why you think I'm wrong, because otherwise what's the point of saying so?

The quote I used to have an example of what I think was not correct.

The problem is your reasoning is based on these 'wisdoms' that aren't actually real facts or which are simply misunderstood, for example:

> toward either anarchy or communism

Communists and anarchists have the same end goal, these two 'groupings' are one and the same in the end.

> which is part of human nature

Is there such a thing as a fixed human nature? Our strength is that we adapt.

>It depends on how you define "capitalist." Some industries in China are state-controlled--is that capitalist? Is "capitalist" 0% state control, or There is no state in communism so that would not be a good measure.

Then you seem to imply that communism is full on state control while the opposite is true and communism (and anarchism) stands for a stateless and classless society. A country that is full authoritarian is just that, authoritarian, regardless of what mix of state-ownership of the economy is involved. Your whole post is more of an argument against authoritarianism than anything else in my opinion.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#282

Post by alien_at_work »

lostboys67 wrote: post #252
suls wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Just a bit of portfolio theory would make it very clear this isn’t a good idea .. .. yet I have to defend myself every odd month as to why I am not participating in the employee stock ownership program.

Depends on program in the uk share save schemes are an obvious no brainer investment you literally cant lose more than the difference between inflation and the guaranteed return if the stocks are under water at exercise time

There is more to consider than that. How much money is being tied up for participation, what is your average expected return for that amount, how does that compare to just picking an index, etc.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#283

Post by kleer001 »

snikeris wrote: post #244
hectorlorenzo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off-topic, but that is the main reason I do not want to have kids: I am not sure I would like the kind of person I would become. Sometimes I am already paralysed by fear when thoughts about my future take a dark turn (relatively often), but at the end of the day it is my well-being (and my wife's) we are talking about, and we are economically independent adults. We could take a hit or two. Throwing little de…

Every one of your ancestors raised children successfully.

Incorrect. "Everyone one of our ancestors successfully reproduced." is the most we can say.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#284

Post by alien_at_work »

Waterluvian wrote: post #280
alien_at_work wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel bad about renting. In german real estate is called "Immobilien". And it is, I saw an investor somewhere put down some actual math and buying a house tends to be a bad investment compared to what could have been done, largely because of illiquidity of it. >seeing 45% of my before tax income going into savings feels amazingly liberating. By "savings" I hope you mean an ETF or mutual fund. If you do that you…

Under my mattress! Kidding. A combination of TFSA max out, RRSP max out, rolling GIC, RESP. I doubt I'm min-maxing my savings ideally, but I'm generally interested in infinitesimal risk solutions I don't have to think about more than once a quarter or so. I've only been in the workforce for 4 years. Married for 1. Was planning on a house so I valued liquidity. But you're right, I need to do the mature, responsible th…

That's exactly what index funds are for: just dump what you can spare into it every pay period and don't even look at the statement. When you get to, say, mid 50's, have a look to see if you can retire. My advise, when you're ready to give a little thought to this is to check out this site: [1].

EDIT: After you pick out some indexes (at you're age I'd probably just do SP500 exclusively), you can use this [2] to see what that could look like over a given time frame. Normal disclaimers apply: past performance does not gaurentee future success, etc. but it can give you a good idea of what will probably happen. I'd advise picking a date before the financial crisis so you can see how little these "end of the world" events actually matter over 30+ year horizons.

[1] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios

[2] https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio

Re: Just own the damn robots

#285

Post by btilly »

pgeorgi wrote: post #265
btilly wrote: post #53

A correction to the history of retirement schemes. Retirement schemes go back a lot farther than acknowledged in that article. The most popular to have lots of children in the hopes that one would take care of parents in their old age. But then you having things like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine .

Sure, but Tontines didn't originate in the US (or at least the UK) and therefore there's no need for the author to consider them part of world history.

They didn't originate in the US, but they were popular in the US long before the invention of pension funds.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#286

Post by snikeris »

kleer001 wrote: post #283
snikeris wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every one of your ancestors raised children successfully.

Incorrect. "Everyone one of our ancestors successfully reproduced." is the most we can say.

Eh yeah, I suppose some died during or shortly after reproducing, but even in those cases someone in the community raised your ancestors successfully.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#287

Post by electrograv »

lostboys67 wrote: post #257
electrograv wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to go to a high end steak house and have their wine poured and meal served by robots. I’m sorry, but that actually sounds like a wonderfully peaceful way to dine.

Don't take this the wrong way but you need to think about some therapy and being able to take a random piece of steak and correctly prepare it 99% of the time is a hard problem.

What an odd argument. Preparing food correctly will almost certainly be more reliable with machines.

Regarding the human element of dining: I think you lack foresight. We will look back at human waiters as we now look at horses, vs modern cars. People still ride horses, and that’s fine, but to suggest they’re the only way or even the best way to go is just archaic and indiciative of an unhealthy level of denial, or a calcified brain unable to change. Open your mind.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#288

Post by robotresearcher »

TrickyRick wrote: post #192
robotresearcher wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is, but their customer is themselves. They use 50,000 robots today and that will grow fast. Google doesn't sell robots. I don't know if they use them, apart from a few for research.

A self driving car is a robot, they will be selling that in a near future if Google themselves are to be believed.

Oops yes of course. I stupidly forgot about them. They spun them out from the Google brand and also my brain.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#289

Post by csomar »

Waterluvian wrote: post #98

Reads like this are slowly convincing me not to buy into the world of mortgages and debt and to just live the rest of my life paying for everything in cash. I tried to buy a house last year with my wife but the market exploded where I live and suddenly houses were 40% more expensive from last year. So we still rent, which makes me feel incomplete. Like I'm kind of failing my duty of bringing the Canadian Dream to my…

Are you planning to live in that big dream house all of your life? I have seen it through my parents. They saved money hard till I reached 12-13 where they were able to afford the "house". But guess what, at my 20, pretty much everyone left the house. And now they are staying in this "big empty house" that is expensive as hell to run.

The alternative could have been to rent out a nice vila while we were young. It would have been then an expensive "few years" instead.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#290

Post by alien_at_work »

philipkglass wrote: post #50
achamayou wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invest in education rather than robots ;)

Even if every barista could learn to write software or practice law, it would just mean that software developers and lawyers would come to be paid like baristas. An individual can rise by educating-up to a kind of job that offers high pay. A whole generation of graduates can't. ( Literacy used to be a specialized skill that provided its wielders with better-than-average jobs. Not so much today.)

Further, what if by the time the barista learns a new trade that trade has been eliminated?
Post reply on HN