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

The Demoralization is just Beginning

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 812 posts

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#641

Post by berkanunal »

gizmo wrote: post #561
berkanunal wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics. No, she was not fined for posting crime statistics [0]. > Kaiser published a tile on her social media accounts with the text "Afghanistan refugees; Hamburg SPD mayor for 'unbureaucratic' admission; Welcome culture for gang rapes?" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Kaiser...

> [media posts] reinforce the "negatively abbreviated representation" and fuels an atmosphere of fear and rejection. In explaining the verdict, Halbfas also made it clear: "Those who attack human dignity cannot invoke freedom of speech." She was found guilty of reinforcing negative stereotypes and by doing so she "violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees". Where is the line between having ant…

> Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme

Simple cute social media post where she equates afghan refugees to gang rapists.

> Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to?

Racist ones that leads to violence. Argument started from "going to jail in europe for posting memes" to "posting statistics" to blatant racist xenophobic stereotyping punished via financial penalty. Free speech crusade came all the way to this goal post.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#643

Post by dudefeliciano »

desumeku wrote: post #637
dudefeliciano wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their ideas are to deport immigrants, end the "woke agenda", stop supporting Ukraine, leave the euro, end green policies, get rid of the political establishment. All of these are purely reactionary and do not adress the problems Germany is facing. They did manage to galvanize a large portion of the electorate, and the last election debates were ridiculous, in that immigration seemed to be the only issue Germany needs…

> and do not adress the problems Germany is facing According to you. The solutions to your complaints come pretty easily from solving AfD's, at least in my view.

According to me and 80% of the German electorate, yes. We are seeing the effects of MAGA on the US and the world in real time, I don't think AFD would fare any better.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#644

Post by ryandamm »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #352
alecco wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. Hmm > you’re better off reading Krugman It used to be kind of a meme to make fun on how wrong Krugman was but now it's kind of like beating a dead horse. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalizatio... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/paul-k... In particular, Krugman was the flag bearer of "co…

And that sort of thing is predictably wrong. It's premised on the combination of low interest rates and a lack of inflation, even though low interest rates generally cause inflation. As soon as you get inflation, keeping interest rates low would make it worse, but raising them explodes the interest rate on the debt. And your other alternative to paying the high interest is to print the money to pay the debt, which al…

I think you’re confusing correlation for causation.

I trust a Nobel Prize winner has thought through it more deeply and integrated the causes and effects more than most random internet commentators. I am happy to report that “low interest rates” do not cause inflation by themselves on any scale less than a decade. Source: 1995-2021.

What actually causes inflation is more a function of overall demand and supply in an economy. Interest rates have an indirect effect on that balance that can also have higher or lower leverage depending on a lot of other factors.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#645

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

sgt101 wrote: post #501
Rhapso wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are trying to pin a currency to a standard, gold isn't great. Its value is almost entirely speculative and it lacks meaninful intrinsic value at this point. If you demand to leave fiat currency, an aluminum or steel standard might make more sense. Rare earth metals, or even just petroleum would be my proposal. Maybe someday we will have a duterium pinned currency.

I think this shows the problem of non fiscal pegs - the value of rare earths or duterium is going to be impacted by technical change. For example let's say that a new processing technique means that a rare earth can be extracted at 20% of the current cost, or a new deposit is discovered. The whole economy is now flexed around this change... which has nothing to do with the economy. I don't think that there is a fixed…

Land?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#646

Post by tony69 »

shash wrote: post #299
tony69 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deflation is fairer and reduces moral hazard in finance. The weak point of gold is that it’s too slow to settle transactions (you have to move it), so a paper gold system on top of it inevitably arises. [0] “broken money” by Lyn Alden

Deflation (defined as, the value of the currency goes up with time) means that prices go down with time. This however tends to accumulate wealth and not have it move around in the economy (it being more remunerative to hold on to your currency because its value increases). This makes it harder to run an economy because eventually, with a fixed supply, all the currency gets hoarded and only a bare minimum circulates t…

You have it reversed.

Currency inflation leads to unfair distribution because the value of financial assets grows faster than the real economy (it inflates).

Currency deflation benefits the poorer. As technology and productivity grow, it costs less to produce goods, so their prices should decrease.

The currency hoarding behavior that you describe is no different than today’s financial investment.

It is trivially easy to avoid the effects of inflation by investing - if you have assets to invest, that is. But if you live month to month, you get screwed by inflation, because your salary is sticky as prices rise.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#647

Post by desumeku »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #643
desumeku wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and do not adress the problems Germany is facing According to you. The solutions to your complaints come pretty easily from solving AfD's, at least in my view.

According to me and 80% of the German electorate, yes. We are seeing the effects of MAGA on the US and the world in real time, I don't think AFD would fare any better.

Well, I hope more immigrants and more green deal policies and more political establishment somehow solves the housing crisis and the neutering of the country's industries in some opposite day fashion.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#648

Post by rayiner »

deserts wrote: post #617
rayiner wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern Bangladesh constitution, created in the 1970s, has concepts like “due process.” That phrase comes from a 1354 English law implementing the Magna Carta: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5-5-2/ALD... . If you study British history, you’ll see that foundation for what became America, Canada, and Australia has being built for 900 years, even when British society was ruled by a king. Turning t…

This isn't a good argument as the importance of "due process" in British and American systems differs and diverges significantly both currently and historically. Actually if you study British history you'll find that what is most striking is that the United States is a departure from rather than a continuation of British legal or governance norms.

I’ve extensively studied British history and British legal history specifically. What’s striking is that America, for all the influences on it, has displayed such remarkable continuity with British tradition.

Obviously there’s differences in application of those concepts after hundreds of years. But the point is that when Bangladesh drafted a modern constitution, it reached for concepts dating back to 13th century England. Democracy as we understand it was a long time in the making. They didn’t reach back to the Mughals or the Nawabs of Bengal. This was no indigenous foundation for law-based democratic society. And experience has proven that you can’t transmit such a system from one society to another with ideas or words on paper. It’s the organic result of mother teaching child over generations.

Remember, the american revolutionaries were fighting to vindicate what they saw as the ancient rights of Englishmen, unlike say the french revolutionaries who sought to institute a new regime.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#649

Post by sejje »

RivieraKid wrote: post #458
janalsncm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuitively, if a toaster costs 5x in the US what it would cost in China, GDP says that a sale in the US was more productive when in reality it’s the same thing in both places. My opinion is the money is a means to an end and we’d be served better by focusing on those ends instead: healthcare, housing, education, life expectancy etc.

The question is why would people buy a US-made toaster if the Chinese is 5 times cheaper.

Quality, perceived quality, nationalism?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#650

Post by yencabulator »

flyinglizard wrote: post #486
makeitdouble wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wether the US is a beacon of freedom is too much of a landmine, I'll just point out that there's about a few dozen countrjes around the world where you'll enjoy enough personal freedom. > Culture is something that's very hard to replicate. You are highlighting the global influence of the US. By definition, you'll get access to that global shine almost wherever you live. Nobody will immigrate to the US to watch Disney…

It's called the American Dream rather than American Reality for a reason. People follow this dream into the country. If China had enough of a hold on Western culture, it could too manufacture this perception which would draw immigrants in.

Foreign opinions on the desirability of The American Dream have plummeted quite hard.
Post reply on HN