Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardly what you'd call a "failure".
Uncorrelated, I would say. Plenty of failures are valuable as collectibles, at least on paper.
I think it's clear that "failure" is the wrong word.
GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
171–180 of 197 posts
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#172"Let’s state the uncomfortable truth. The future for many Americans is bleak and their lives are going to be nasty, brutish and short." I find it funny how first-worlders are horrified by the idea that they might have to live in mild discomfort. Maybe try looking at how most of the world that isn't the US and Western Europe lives before saying people's lives will be "nasty, brutish and short" because they won't be wo…
While this may be true, there's no point comparing yourself to other countries if you did achieve success, and are slowly losing it. The article makes the point that previous generations did have that success and slowly for newer generations it is being lost. That's a failure that needs to be highlighted - in the end against previous generations livings standards if you agree with this article we do not currently measure up to those standards.
IMHO I think globalization is to blame for this; it has transferred equity/ownership from Western countries over time. It has given us cheaper electronics, cheap aviation/holidays, and other discretionaries but in return has denied people of the essentials (cheap houses, job security, etc) and has transferred existing wealth away. The rich have the means to protect themselves and even profit from this redistribution of wealth; it's the middle class instead where much of the wealth was has slowly been drained. Instead of wealth they now substituted it with debt to keep the system running.
In the country I live in house prices are highly proportional to debt growth, much accrued to foreign debt. Our exchange rate stays high since issuing debt in the local currency despite increasing the CAD and draining wealth bids up the currency on the FX market. As long as houses don't crash (which is where most debt is issued) the dollar's worth doesn't deteriorate and we don't see the drain of wealth. As long as debt growth keeps growing we always create positive pressure on our exchange rate. The sad part about this of course is while young people can't afford houses, the goods they may substitute for this (cars, holidays, gadgets) are all underpinned by the debt used to bid those houses higher via a higher than otherwise FX rate.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not enough jobs. People do settle in smaller cities if there are jobs - the city of Ulsan has higher GDP per capita than Seoul, thanks to Hyundai Motors and other big plants, but it's not exactly easy to get one of these jobs. In the end, most people flock to the greater Seoul area because that's where most jobs are.
The major reason my small ruralish home town has a brain/talent/youth drain is the lack of high quality jobs. I'm pushing to move to my partners small ruralish town now that we can work remote but her fear is the lack of like minded friends. It's sad because it is much more enjoyable and realistic to live, raise a family, and buy a home in these types of areas as compared to a city.
What qualifies as a like-minded friend? Same hobbies? Same political ideology? Same profession?
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#174> Everyday I see a world where many in my generation have simply given up all hope for opportunity of a family, a house, a stable career and forced to confront an uncertain future in a world that is slowly boiling itself to death. South Korea and Japan are 10-20 years ahead of the same curve here. However, the result has been resignation and stagnation, not revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampo_generation h…
There's a pretty big difference between East Asian cultures and contemporary American culture, though. The former tend to be shame-based cultures: "I can't succeed, and this is because I am personally a failure." The latter tends to be an anger-based culture: "I can't succeed, and this is because the government / corporations / landlords / George Soros fucked me over." Elsewhere in the world, this same generation als…
Multiple forms, unlike most of asia these are multicultural societies, The Losers are distributed across these multiple cultural spheres and they will react in different ways.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is mostly due to the dangers it poses to old people, who are by and large defenseless against scammers. If you don't put barriers in place to prevent old people from making the choice to throw their nest egg away, bilking old people becomes an industry .
There are plenty of old people buying lottery tickets. All of these justifications are just an excuse to erect artificial barriers around the early stage market (aka where all the upside is). People should be free to spend their money as they see fit, even if that means shoveling it into a campfire.
The lottery isn't a scam, it won't call you at bedtime threatening devastating legal action unless you take care of this very urgent business matter.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should stop complaining that they don't have healthcare because they have iPhones and vaccines and don't literally live in the mud? Maybe that would hold water if there were literally no other option, and if the distribution of wealth and misery were an unchangeable force of nature. But the reality is, people don't have healthcare BECAUSE some people don't want to pay more taxes, and want poor people to stay i…
Life is not a zero-sum game. The reason why some people have little is not that some people have a lot. This is not something we will agree on. I agree that the distribution of wealth could be a lot more equitable, but I fundamentally disagree with this idea that "If some people have little, that is only because evil/stupid people don't want them to have more". The world is a lot more complicated than that. I live in…
Physics is also a lot more complicated, but we have some simple approximations that help us describe a lot of our world.
I agree, life is more complicated than a zero-sum game, but can you argue that it doesn't behave like it is for most people?
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't you do that with gold or even earlier, seashells?
You can't send gold over the Internet. The question isn't whether Bitcoin lets you do things that couldn't be done before, it's whether those things are valuable .
"For the first time any person can own a financial asset completely decoupled from any government."
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could already own land, houses, cattle, ownership shares in companies that produce useful goods other humans want, all things the government doesn't control. If the concern is the government could potentially seize control of those things, sure, but a sufficiently malicious government can seize control of you and no amount of magic numbers on a USB stick is going to stop them.
I predict his reply will be that your property rights to land, cattle, homes, and common equity are protected by governments.
If people find out you own a lot of Bitcoin you are relying on governments to protect you from theft, blackmail, kidnapping schemes, etc.
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me tell you, we used to dream of living in the non-US/Western European world! What I did there-- and what you are doing-- is referred to as "one-downmanship." Essentially, attempting to ignore or downplay suffering by talking about a case of worse suffering that you have experience with. When not part of comedy sketches[1], it's usually considered disruptive. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"? I understand that "one-downmanship" can be used to dismiss legitimate claims, but the existence of such tactics does not automatically validate anyone who claims their lives are hard. The original article used a line from Hobbes regarding existence pre-society, which does not apply. The author could have used many valid other things in the…
> Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"?
As far as one-downmanship-- it can make sense in personal situations where trust is high and someone opens up about suffering. Perhaps in other high-trust instances, where it's likely to be interpreted as bonding/guidance and not muscle-flexing. But even in those cases it can quickly become unhelpful, hence the Python sketch getting lots of laughs.
In the case of political rhetoric, do you know an example of one-downmanship that isn't mere muscle-flexing? Just look at the example here-- OP said they find it "funny" that a generation of people are frightened by decreasing opportunities and the dangers of climate change.
Perhaps pre-internet this was a way to at least get a dissident message out before one got cut off in a live interview. A kind of "sign of life" to sentient beings in the audience. But on HN-- where those constraints don't exist-- it looks to me like the kind of low-effort disruption on par with asking, "What about Visa/Mastercard monopoly, or the telcos," on the next thread that discusses the Google monopoly case.
Edit: clarification
Re: GameStop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage
#180> Everyday I see a world where many in my generation have simply given up all hope for opportunity of a family, a house, a stable career and forced to confront an uncertain future in a world that is slowly boiling itself to death. South Korea and Japan are 10-20 years ahead of the same curve here. However, the result has been resignation and stagnation, not revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampo_generation h…
What countries have successfully resisted the movement of money to the rich over the last 20 years?
Bolivia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, etc :-)