Depends what "poverty" means. A lot of poor people were subsistance farmers, able to hold property and carve a space for themselves and their families in the world. That's something that will be out of reach for many "rich" people in the upcoming decades.
Dude. Go move to my dad’s village in Bangladesh for a year, so what they do, then come back and post on HN.
Let’s assume all of us are curious about what we would learn doing that, but none of us are probably willing or able to actually do that. What would we learn if we did?
Coming from the UN, we already know what the answer will be. More governance, more/better management of risk by the UN that is then delegated to its administrative regions (the US, EU, etc). This is because as long as we are talking about risk, this plays into the hands of a global governance structure. All risks should be planned for and managed - I mean the covid response was fantastic, right? What was wrong was no…
Assuming a democratically elected government, isn't "less government" a way to take away power from voters to make decisions and manage commonly held resources? Why is that a good thing? Who gets the power when voters lose it? Who gets to say what happens, when we can't all decide together?
You can think of the U.S. Bill of Rights as taking "power from voters to make decisions and manage commonly held resources". You might think of the above claim as simplistic, but it's no less so than is "yay democracy".
> broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility" How about artificially low interest rates? An interest rate is exactly the coordination between risk and time, with a low interest rate you're subsidizing stupidity and wastefulness, and with its concommittant inflation you're forcing people into making those investments to stay afloat. Maybe if we weren't goosing the interest rate low…
This hits the nail on the head. Also, all the money-printing creates extreme market distortions, inequality and injustice. It greatly increases the role of luck and social connections in financial success (due to Cantillon effects) and therefore those who end up at the top, blinded by their extreme survivor bias, tend to be overly optimistic about reality and so they are among the worse qualified to be making complex…
I read it: 'UN wants to curtail their 5-years-plan 'agenda 2030' to be finished in 2025 , cos they are planning to impose you with their might (davos 05-22-2022 who want to overrule health, stripping sovereignty and if thats succsessful, forbidding nationalism world wide) to use the same _scare_tactics_ - as other western nations (media-driven experiment) before (-migration -covid-19 -war in ukraine for example), saying now - 'The UN welcomes you to 1,5 disaster per day beginnig in 2030!' (-; No... and while that wasn't about money, have you ever thought 'rising markets are an equivalent of increased productivity' ? ^^
Some days ago there was a headline: 'productivity is on an 75-year low.'
But in terms of asking 'Is that a participation-thing?', i might enjoy what you wrote, sry, won't sound offending... (-:
Nope. One of the fudges is saying that a computer based on today's technology is more valuable than on from a couple years ago. I forget what this is called. But it's stupid and could be really abused to say a cellphone is a trillion dollar device, since that's what the processing power would have cost in 1980. Maybe we should measure GDP via wages. Since all spending has to come from that anyway... not sure how to c…
There were proposals for labor-backed currency, where the basic unit is one hourly work of the worker. So B2B transactions will be valued from the man-hours that went to it. Of course this approach breaks when the gigantic corpocracies are able to bloat into larger and larger sizes. But it might be an interesting research topic.
There are a lot of reasons why this wouldn't work but fundamentally the LTV is an interesting toy but crap economics. Bottom line is utility to people does not depend on person hours involved in production.
Think about it this way: I can have somebody skilled or unskilled do a job. Assume that they make the same output but it takes unskilled 2x the time, let us say maybe producing some leathercraft. Their output is not worth 2x the skilled, it's the same thing. Now assume that they take the same time but the skilled produces an output of 2x quality, maybe they are cooking something and the skilled makes a dish 2x as good. Neither are they worth the same. It may actually be worth less because they produce it slower so consumer has to wait 2x as long.
In Europe we do not have "safe places in colleges". It is an US phenomenon, that has nothing to do with risk aversion - on the contrary, it is based on the optimistic assumption that society is generally mature enough to own firearms and you only need to mitigate some "edge cases". True risk aversion would be to regulate the gun ownership, education and welfare the same way as it is done in Europe, where mass shootin…
Let's say you have two possible projects: X is investment in growth, which will result in increase of your revenue in the short term, and Y is investment in reduction of risks which will increase the value of your assets in the long term. If interest rates are low, borrowing money for Y or for both projects becomes more tangible option. If interest rates are high and you are an optimist, you will choose to borrow mon…
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We don't have "safe spaces in colleges". I graduated from college recently and never witnessed any such thing. How long has it been since you've set foot on a college campus? This is a fabrication by fox news to promote contempt for young people, who are dealing with real problems like sky high costs of education, health care, and housing, and who don't deserve this kind of disrespect. Young people are survivors. They're a lot more resilient than you think. It's stunning to me how many people just swallow this kind of rhetoric without any sort of internal reality check. Do you think your own kids act this way? Do their friends? No? So what's the disconnect here?
Nope. One of the fudges is saying that a computer based on today's technology is more valuable than on from a couple years ago. I forget what this is called. But it's stupid and could be really abused to say a cellphone is a trillion dollar device, since that's what the processing power would have cost in 1980. Maybe we should measure GDP via wages. Since all spending has to come from that anyway... not sure how to c…
An iPhone 12 uses less material than an iPhone 11 yet is more valuable than an iPhone 11.
A Tesla uses about 25 tons less fossil fuels than a gasoline car, even if its electricity is powered by a natgas generating station. The Tesla uses about the same amount of fossil fuels as the trucks transporting the fuel to the filling station.
Software of course, is special. New software is better than old software otherwise nobody would buy it. Yet the material usage is roughly equivalent at roughly $0.
These three types of progress can continue indefinitely.
In Europe we do not have "safe places in colleges". It is an US phenomenon, that has nothing to do with risk aversion - on the contrary, it is based on the optimistic assumption that society is generally mature enough to own firearms and you only need to mitigate some "edge cases". True risk aversion would be to regulate the gun ownership, education and welfare the same way as it is done in Europe, where mass shootin…
Well you dont have free speech in Europe too. Because everything against the current narrative is "hate speech".
Feel free to sit in a bar in Washington and talk about how to assassinate the President. Or sing a popular song. Or try to persuade someone to vomit suicide.
You're right - but also wrong. Governments built the roads - other solutions are conceivable. Tax payers paid once for the roads to be built, and are now paying for roads to made unusable for cars (lane restrictions, pedestrianisation, etc). That's a waste. Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? Government waves through unacce…
Government bad! Here's an example of businesses using their power over the government to do bad things. Let's deregulate businesses further so they don't need to use the government to do bad things because they can do them themselves. Did I miss anything?
Not really - but I think its a message that bears repeating.
Most people have been through the governmental education process and have been taught that the government is the only fair/legal/possible answer to all our ills. That 10+ formative years of propaganda to counter. Even more if you go to university and licensed to do your job - you are now vested in an exploitative system, that initiates harm against others.
Understandably people will want to stick with the devil they know until a/ they have worked through the alternatives and b/ understood that the problems commonly blamed on people are actually the natural outcomes of government policies.
It is not just about informing people, but also automation of many things. It is certainly more powerful transformation than invention of steam engine. It has transformed industry and agriculture on a similar scale, enabling many things that were not possible before, but it also transformed our society, changing the ways we communicate, learn, entertain and find partners.
The difference between having a tractor and not having a tractor is much larger than between having a computer/gps-guided tractor and having an old school tractor. While it's certainly an improvement, it's a smaller improvement. The difference between hailing a taxi via app and hailing a taxi by waving at it is much smaller than the difference between automobiles being available and not being available. Again, it's a…
These differences aren't the results of taking less risk. They're the results of the technology being low-hanging fruit.
The low-hanging fruit is gone now. There could be some revolution that comes - but physics is at a standstill and has been for decades. Most of the gains are coming as evolutions, not revolutions, focusing on optimization.