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The Demoralization is just Beginning

geohot.github.io

351–360 of 812 posts

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#351
post #337

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

> 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…

Also, his article on why the internet is going nowhere. Definitely missed a few things

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#352
post #337

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

> 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 also worsens inflation. So taking on that much debt is just a bomb that goes off as soon as inflation becomes non-trivial, and on top of that, is a thing that generally causes inflation.

To understand how people like that succeed, realize that there is always a market for someone who will tell you what you want to hear.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#353
post #12

Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s succes…

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of a…

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on

Exporting knowledge, culture and contacts

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#354

This feels too all over the place and contains a lot of assertions without evidence. I say this as a person who is very bearish about America. > The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes. I’m pretty sure they put people in jail for the equivalent of memes during the imperial days, no? The king couldn’t put you away for speaking against him?

Americans need to understand that everything their Founding Fathers wrote is just footnotes on the ideas that came out of the political tumult of seventeenth-century Britain. Free speech was first proposed by John Milton during Cromwell's disastrous attempt at creating a republic, and was swiftly rejected as a bad idea. The Founding Fathers were obsessed with 'Tyranny', because that's what Charles I was executed for when the Protectorate was established. Tyranny isn't the omnipresent problem that the puritan pamphleteers portrayed them as; it's just the cause of the specific debate in which they engaged.

There are no principles in British politics, there is only pragmatism. Every policy must solve a real-world problem. The current Labour government will remove the hereditary peers from the House of Lords, because they only show up to vote in their own personal interest, and that reform has widespread support and will pass. Harriet Harman has put forward a bill that will also remove the Lords Spiritual, and that will pass, because no one has a problem with what the bishops say and do in Parliament.

Parliament gained control over taxation and the treasury in the seventeenth century - this was the major cause of the Second English Civil War. Later in that century, freedom of the press was established, but there were still consequences for libel and defamation. With the accession of King George I, Parliament gained control over the king, by appointing one who couldn't speak English. Everything that is not illegal is permitted, and the only speech that is restricted is that that is widely considered objectionable. Getting along with one's neighbours is an integral part of living in a society, regardless of one's beliefs on 'personal autonomy' and 'self-reliance'.

No one has been gaoled for posting memes, but people have been gaoled for threatening and abusing behaviour, and for inciting violence during rioting across the country. It just so happens that this has been done by posting memes, but if it had been done by using a megaphone to whip up a protest into a riot, the consequences would have been the same.

America's obsession with free speech is a problem, because it's used to justify retrograde opinions. The two political parties in the US are still debating broadly the same economic and political philosophies that held sway in Britain at the time of the War of Independence. Both political parties treat it as a religion, holding to these dusty old ideas rather than solving real-world problems experienced by real-world people. But every time someone proposes this, someone else yells 'Tyranny!', and the ghost of King Charles I laughs.

With one foot planted firmly in the past, and the other striding determinedly forward, the United States of America is truly a nation going in circles.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#355
There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch.

But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc?

Aside from anything else, the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services. And so it becomes a self-defeating policy long-term.

Good economists (and to be honest I don't know of many these days) know that there are no free lunches. We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer.

After writing this I wonder even if the economic and political dysfunction we're seeing in so much of the world as actually the inevitable consequence of decades of brain-draining, rather than an indication of the need for more of it.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#356
post #12

Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s succes…

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of a…

> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services.

Another reason would be to generate goodwill and potential future business relations for your country. Can be pretty valuable for your export-oriented businesses.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the gold standard isn’t? As someone said elsewhere - a working knowledge of economic history is crucial to be a part of this discussion.

The gold standard is also central planning. But, where the heck did I say anything about the gold standard? I’m referring to private banks issuing receipts for metal deposits, which can be freely sold or traded. This is the origin of currency, no? The exchange rate between everything and everything else naturally floats in such a system, so there is no central planning. > a working knowledge of economic history is cr…

But thats the heart of the gold standard.

The only difference here being that you’ve described it before things like watering gold down, fraud, volatility, bank failures and the rest resulted in it coming under a single aegis.

Issuing currency against gold is what the gold standard is all about. What do you think it was?

And eggs are expensive, you should save them for later.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#358

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

The US is already the brain drain destination #1. Nowhere else can highly skilled people generate comparable levels of income.

I'm not convinced that that's sustainable though, and I think it might be an artifact of the dollar reserve currency status etc., because US firms cost more for a given yearly profit. Just look at Boeing vs Airbus.

I also lived better in Sweden when I was a PhD student, than I would have if I went to Washington and took an H1B job for 100k. I think the cutoff would be at somewhere soon above 120k. Maybe at 130k-140k, I would be able to live in Washington approximately as well as I could live in Sweden as a PhD student, but it would substantially more stressful. Maybe 130-140k isn't much to long-term Googlers, but I think this is closer to salaries that people actually pay for H1Bs than these 500k+ salaries.

The built environment in the US doesn't really correspond to the nominal prices, so in a way, America is only interesting economically if you're planning to go back home.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#359

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

I don't think economists overall, even when generalizing, have a good track record. Too often hidden interests modify the core of their messages. Krugman for example has a poor record on predictions, not sure about the other ones. That said, this isn't all "gold" either in my opinion. Money is still tied to productivity. At least it works as long as people believe debts can be repaid. If they wouldn't, there would be…

I always find gold weird. It has value for exactly same reason any money has. People believe they can later trade it for something else. And main argument for proponents seem to be that it was always valuable so it should also be now and in future.

And when market changes drastically(extra gold, or lot of removed supply). The value also swings a lot. Possibly even more than with other currencies.

Some level of floating currency is clearly most reasonable solution. But just how is still very open question.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#360
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in Denmark, Japan, China, Netherlands and some other countries in the past 10-15 years? I really don’t think you weigh in people’s personal preferences and general quality of life into your equations. There is a very big reason why there’s no more large swaths of immigrants from European and some Asian countries flocking into the US. Yes there is some, but the times when it was objectively much better…

>There is a very big reason why there’s no more large swaths of immigrants from European and some Asian countries flocking into the US. Yeas, and this reason - US visa is one of the hardest to get.

Denmark is much much harder than the US.
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