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U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

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Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#101

Post by geofft »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #88
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more "mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the day. I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy, only to see it on the front page later. I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, t…

> I certainly don't post things to promote any kind of political agenda per se. Posting factual and informative articles is promoting a certain kind of political agenda, truth-based.

That's a nice-sounding claim but "truth" isn't a coherent agenda. There are many things that are true, and a finite life; which true things are worth paying attention to?

Five hundred star-bellies Sneetches and five hundred plain-bellied Sneetches died in combat yesterday; reading just the obituaries of the heroic star-bellied Sneetches and how they gave their lives for peace is truth-based, but it's a very different agenda from the equally-truth-based approach of reading the obituaries of the martyred plain-bellied Sneetches and how they sacrificed everything for their people's freedom.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#102

Post by redblacktree »

claydavisss wrote: post #57
40acres wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a clear trend for decades now showing that the defecit grows under Republican presidents and shrinks under Democratic ones. Aside from cultural issues like abortion the Republican agenda seems so far removed from what their constitancy needs it's hard to fathom. The next time Democrats are in control you'll be sure to see GOP complaints that the defecit is a problem and entitlements should be on the ch…

https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-an... https://www.thebalance.com/deficit-by-president-what-budget-... It isn't a "trend".

Are those numbers adjusted for inflation? It isn't mentioned in the article. If they aren't, the conclusions are suspect.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#103

Post by dang »

geofft wrote: post #21

Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many hackers participate in the world economy…

The general mix is probably about the same as ever. Streaks of otherwise are probably just random; that of course is how randomness works.

Complaints like this go back about as far as HN does. I wrote a thing about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#104

Post by dang »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #53
geofft wrote: post #21

Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many hackers participate in the world economy…

There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more "mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the day. I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy, only to see it on the front page later. I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, t…

HN has 5M visitors a month. Well, 4.5M at present. It fluctuates some.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#105

Post by DoreenMichele »

dang wrote: post #104
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more "mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the day. I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy, only to see it on the front page later. I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, t…

HN has 5M visitors a month. Well, 4.5M at present. It fluctuates some.

Thanks. I didn't bother to qualify the remark, though I figured it was likely outdated or inaccurate info. Glad to see better data posted here.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#106

Post by dang »

hunta2097 wrote: post #83
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, they are interesting for sociological reasons. As politics has become more contentious in recent years, both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs", which promotes people seeing information that is for or against (or even just about , and confirmation bias does the rest) one of these areas as being political. There's likely also…

Hacker News' evolution feels a lot like Slashdot's, which also had it's roots in hardcore tech. I hope it doesn't impact the content or discussion too much.

This perception has also been around forever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485.

Presumably it's a mirage, since "turning into Slashdot/Digg/Reddit" would hardly have been a steady state.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#107

Post by dang »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #62
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more "mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the day. I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy, only to see it on the front page later. I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, t…

Yeah, HackerNews seems to be getting closer to Reddit by the day.

People have been saying this literally since HN started. In fact the HN guidelines used to include a line asking people not to post about it ("it's a semi-noob illusion"). We removed that guideline for brevity a while ago, but maybe we should bring it back.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#108

Post by cprayingmantis »

tareqak wrote: post #90
cprayingmantis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been noticing this for some time as well. Either HN is becoming more political or someone is manipulating the voting. I honestly think HN is at its best when it’s apolitical.

What about when technology or a technological platform is used for political purposes, and the stewards of said technology or technology platform are slow to acknowledge or catch up?

You know honestly I don’t have a good answer for that. On the one hand I feel like we’re intelligent enough to rise above partisan or two sided politics but on the other hand we’re not intelligent enough to realize what the true implications of some of the platforms we’ve built are. And we’re definitely don’t have the forethought to understand that our platforms will and should be used by people we don’t agree with.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#109

Post by dang »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #82
DoreenMichele wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by that. I participate on Reddit. I experience HN and Reddit as completely different animals. I see them as very extremely an apples to oranges comparison.

Perhaps my comment was the prime example ]= What I meant is: Three years ago, HackerNews seemed (to me) to be a forum for intellectuals to discuss things business/tech-y. Opinions were mostly well thought out. When they weren't, they were challenged (thanks for calling me out [= ). Now it just seems like the break-room banter. A lot of sensationalist articles seem to make the front page. A lot of purely comedic comme…

> Three years ago, HackerNews seemed (to me) to be a forum for intellectuals to discuss things business/tech-y.

Had you read the site guidelines then (or now!) you'd know that the very first thing they say is that HN is about more than this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#110

Post by mercutio2 »

nknezek wrote: post #73
40acres wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time I couldn't wrap my head around why defecits matter to the US when we print our currency. To be honest I still don't fully understand the hand wringing over a balanced budget and reading more about modern monetary theory is leading me to believe that for a superpower which issues it's own currency the defecit is more of a political issue that a concrete one. The defecit just keeps ballooning but the on…

The deficit mainly matters because we have to pay interest on the loans we take out. If the rates are good, it's actually a great investment. If the rates are bad, it hamstrings future growth, because now the budget is spent paying back old loans instead of building new things. Well, why can't we just print money? We can, but it runs the risk of inflation. Inflation is historically low, so yes -- we could totally jus…

In other words, we don't have to pay interest, we choose to, because inflation would almost certainly rise substantially if we printed a ton of money, and we're cautious (some might say overcautious) about inflation.

Of course there are some head-scratching rationalizations going around about why gargantuan deficits are good now, a decade into one of the longest economic expansions in living memory, but would have been bad to do when proposed in response to one of the deepest recessions in living memory.

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