Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming the Fed keeps printing more.
Yeah, yeah, I'm assuming the US government stays solvent.
The 50%-300% increase in market values of tangible assets in that country this year is assuming the opposite.
The most precious resource is agency
321–330 of 340 posts
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure! It gets talked about every now and then, this one generated a bunch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886659
I‘m not fetishizing. There is lots of hard evidence that at least the Swedish model is superior to what eg Central European countries have. Our country sends delegations to Sweden to analyze what they are doing better, and maybe get inspired by that. Sorry for throwing Finland into the mix, I probably misremembered.
Apologies, I didn't mean to say you were fetishizing, just that there's a lot of Scandinavia fetishizing on HN (and everywhere else for that matter) in general, haha
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends. There is a lot of the bad mixed with the good. Rich societies (not just Western ones) seem unable to reproduce themselves - the TFR has gone south of 2 pretty much everywhere, with interesting exceptions (Iceland, Israel). That means that our lifestyle is incompatible with long term survival. We also have a huge, huge health problem that might directly be caused by abundance of food. Metabolic diseases. Just…
> the TFR has gone south of 2 pretty much everywhere, with interesting exceptions (Iceland, Israel). That means that our lifestyle is incompatible with long term survival. Only if the rate stays there permanently , which is unlikely. Over the span of a century or two, some population contraction might actually be good for overall survival.
Yeah, but a society of year 2221 is likely to look completely different from society of 2021. We do not yet know how.
It might be that Taliban-like theocracies inherit the Earth through their much higher fertility, or it might be that authoritarian countries start producing children in artificial wombs, or something completely different. But the current societal model where the old are more numerous than the young is likely to be unsustainable. It is not just raw numbers (population contraction); it is the structure of the population that is extra worrisome.
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
I vehemently disagree. Not with your explicit reasoning, but with the implicit assumption that there is some 1-dimensional metric of specialness or greatness that we're all being measured against. The great thing about life is that it's so multidimensional. If you want to be the richest person in the world, of course you're setting yourself up for failure. But if you want to be the best version of yourself, you can e…
You said you disagree, and then you repeated their point with different words.
The comments are similar, but the energy is different.
One of them read to me like "go and strive to be great in one of the million directions possible" and the other was "you won't win on any direction more than average, so settle down and live simple".
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole society seems designed top down to keep us fighting and arguing, live at the expense of others is the mantra. It seems it took a lot of engineering to get us this far from our natural state of caring. The Chinese seem to indoctrinate with a slightly different model where you are to believe society comes before the individual. The sensible model seems rather obvious: One has to organize their own show before…
Elevating society above the individual stifles innovation and leads to stagnation.
References?
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me it played a big role that I wanted my kids to have grandparents for as long as possible, since I lost mine relatively early. Also the other way around, for my parents it is nice to have grandchildren now too.
Sure, these are valid considerations once you have decided to have children. It is the 'how' and 'why' of even deciding to have children that I am curious about. I mean, were you in your early 20s, grinding leetcode, thinking "can't wait to become a parent"? Or was it more of "I want to have had children when I am 65, so even though I'm not over the moon about it right now it is what it is, I'll just go with it"? Or…
The closest thing to "reasonable" I can remember about wanting to have kids was about introducing a few more reasonable creatures into the world, something like preventing the "Idiocracy". :)
In general, I did have an innate plan to reproduce at some point in the future from early on (my 20s), potentially because of social norms (then again, my sister didn't), or maybe because of my ego (I'll be bringing smarter-than-average, decent-physical-specimen humans into the world, even though by the time I had kids, I learned that "reasonable" and "empathetic" are probably more important).
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have followed this and am on track to having a nice sum when I decide to retire. I look at that pile. Divide it by what I make now per year. That number is the number I could coast and not have to 'worry' about money with 0 change in lifestyle. I then add that to my current age and figure out where I should run out when I am old. That number is currently not far enough along for my liking. I am also doing ridiculou…
A car that you could buy for a few thousand today is much more capable than the cars people bought for a few thousand in the past. New cars are status symbols or toys. I never understood how people could trade a human's full time salary for a car. People take old cars to work every day for a small fraction of the cost. American lifestyles have inflated much more than the price of comparable goods. Average home size i…
> New cars are status symbols or toys. I never understood how people could trade a human's full time salary for a car. People take old cars to work every day for a small fraction of the cost.
It's not that simple. If nobody bought new cars, where would the used cars come from? :D
And their prices would go comparatively up.
So basically, they are just like everything else that you can get cheaper (which is, really, everything). Eg. you can get a comparable laptop for 1/2 the price most likely (maybe not with new M1 macs, but in a few years). Or the phone.
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#328The biggest missing bits in all of these analyses are, to me:
1. How many people under consideration ("famous people") did not posses the quality brought up in the premise ("agency from early age")?
2. How many people did posses the quality ("agency"), but did not achieve the desired result ("fame")?
Without that, we are pretending to show data to support a premise, whereas it's just an opinion with cherry-picked data.
Granted, it's hard to get numbers for 1 and 2 (esp 2, I guess), but I don't even see anyone trying before considering their premise "proven" or at least worth sharing. :/
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#329The biggest missing bits in all of these analyses are, to me: 1. How many people under consideration ("famous people") did not posses the quality brought up in the premise ("agency from early age")? 2. How many people did posses the quality ("agency"), but did not achieve the desired result ("fame")? Without that, we are pretending to show data to support a premise, whereas it's just an opinion with cherry-picked dat…
Survivorship bias plagues all of “self-help” writing, unfortunately. Let’s take successful people and assume everything they’re doing contributes to their success and so must be replicated.
Re: The most precious resource is agency
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, these are valid considerations once you have decided to have children. It is the 'how' and 'why' of even deciding to have children that I am curious about. I mean, were you in your early 20s, grinding leetcode, thinking "can't wait to become a parent"? Or was it more of "I want to have had children when I am 65, so even though I'm not over the moon about it right now it is what it is, I'll just go with it"? Or…
The closest thing to "reasonable" I can remember about wanting to have kids was about introducing a few more reasonable creatures into the world, something like preventing the "Idiocracy". :) In general, I did have an innate plan to reproduce at some point in the future from early on (my 20s), potentially because of social norms (then again, my sister didn't), or maybe because of my ego (I'll be bringing smarter-than…
Thanks! To me it sounds like a TON of effort, a HUGE change for a very long time - for an ego thing.
Now if, say, my wife wanted to handle 90% of the work, with me primarily responsible for breadwinning and little else - a 'traditional' family - I could understand making such a big decision on what looks to me as very weak reasoning. Because then it wouldn't even be THAT big a decision to me anymore, as MY life would not be changing all that much.
But assuming a true 50/50 split in responsibilities? And wife feeling the same about all these things as I do? To me, much much stronger reasons are required than what motivated you, as you would be changing your life completely, with no going back, committing for a very long time. Not to mention the HUGE financial commitment (say goodbye to financial independence and therefore being able to do independent research/projects in the future). And that's the best case scenario of healthy, not-too-unreasonable children.