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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

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Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#421

Post by KETpXDDzR »

bezalmighty wrote: post #48
evergrande wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's a good point. Inflation would be even worse if that cash was going into physical goods and services. The government now has an incentive to leave crypto alone aside from providing clarity.

In the macro economic sense, fiat money isn't 'used up' or 'locked away' when you buy something like crypto, it's transferred from your account to someone else's bank account. Worse, it goes through the process of fractional reserve banking and multiplies about ~10x after changing hands repeatedly.

That's correct. However, investing in Crypto using dollars will inflate the dollar. Thus, the arguments that the government will probably leave crypto alone, still holds.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#422

Post by KETpXDDzR »

l33tbro wrote: post #221

The more I read about this subject, the only thing that becomes reinforced is that nobody really knows what the hell is going on with the markets. The inflation / deflation debate has been raging on for years now, and it's still not clear what we are experiencing in this virualised economy of ours. Gun to head? I think it seems that 'inflation' is not really inflation - but a kind of profit tax that seems to be being…

Yes, the complete system is way too complex to understand. Even the FED admitted that[0]. Especially forecasting anything is very hard and the luck factor is very high. That's why business "science" (not a real science IMO) is only reactive, not proactive. They keep the system running, see it fail, adjust the screws on the machine we call "the market", and try again.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/upshot/inflation-economy-...

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#423

Post by RC_ITR »

WA wrote: post #265
RC_ITR wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trickiest question in business that noone seems to get right: Q: How much money flows into "X" market? A: None, money flows THROUGH markets.

Not sure about that. Money velocity went down a lot. If you pay Apple money, Apple – the company – keeps that money as cash reserves in some form or another. This might be reinvested and circulates a bit more, but is it really spend in the real economy so that average Joe benefits from this?

Discussion is around the stock market.

Yes, when you buy newly issued shares from Apple (rare), cash flows through the stock market into Apple's accounts, but again, no money went 'into' the stock market.

If you're talking about Apple selling devices, then it's another concept entirely.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#424

Post by djrogers »

wexler88 wrote: post #391
throwtheacctawy wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Michigan. I have a 5.9kwh solar array. Spring/fall, I can produce over 40kwh/day. Summer heat lowers my production to upper 30-40kwh. January 2021, I produced 197kwh the entire month. I know this discussion is focused on heating. But from an electric vehicle perspective; 197kwh is not that much. In the winter, I don't think it would be enough electricity for a homes electric needs + EV or electric heat. I c…

Did you miss the part where Michigan is already connected by a transcontinental electricity distribution grid to places like Las Vegas (8 average hours of sunlight in January, average temp 9C in January)?

That’s a gross oversimplification of reality - to the point of outright falsehood.

Michigan can’t get any electricity from Nevada today - they are on different grid ties, and there would need to be a ton of upgrades in the DC-DC and VFT ties between them to get that significant a chunk of electricity sent the ~2000 miles from Nevada to Detroit.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#425

Post by leereeves »

UncleMeat wrote: post #362
nostrebored wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is weighing superstition vs tangible harm. Eliminating fossil fuels will condemn large swathes of the living population to true poverty and kill many more. How do you think things like hospitals in the developing world run? And the infrastructure that lets them be created to begin with? The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.

Climate change is indeed a justice problem and we should optimize for justice rather than just raw temperature management. There are "solutions" that cause more injustice by denying efficient energy to the global poor. But the wealthy people who make this argument tend to argue for total inaction rather than a justice-focused approach where they sacrifice greatly in order to permit the global poor to have access to e…

It's difficult to believe the working class in America should bear the sacrifice when the richest people in the world just flew their private jets to a lavish climate conference thousands of miles from home to discuss how much the working class should sacrifice.

Any sacrifice that is called for should start at the top.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#426

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

slv77 wrote: post #350
neilwilson wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because you haven't taken the time to understand what is being said - just the twisted version that isn't actually the case. Every financial debt has a corresponding financial asset. Why follow the 'debt' and not the 'asset'? Because you have a psychological anchor on the word 'debt' that causes an emotional reaction? All money is somebody's debt. That's how the accounting works. Rather than looking at the books…

Because at some point the credits and the debits need to be settled with real goods and services and when they can’t be someone has to take a loss. The loss either comes through default or inflation but allocating those costs are extremely painful politically. In many cases those costs end up being paid in blood.

> Because at some point the credits and the debits need to be settled with real goods and services

If that happened all at once, for every credit and every debit, it would indeed be a problem. But that doesn't happen, ever.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#427

Post by dang »

wexler88 wrote: post #419
dang wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. We're trying for a different quality of discussion here, to the extent possible. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the rules and sticking to the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . If you know more than someone else, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want…

The implication is that one needs to contribute a detailed response to any statement, no matter how shallow and foolish, or else accept it to the discussion as though it had some validity.

Not replying is not the same thing as "accepting it as though it had some validity". As long as you work with that false assumption, you're stuck in a tough place.

The internet is wrong about nearly everything. You can't fight it that way. Responding with a shallow dismissal or putdown is just a variant of the same dynamic—it encourages more of the same, and so creates more of what you're trying to combat. Your two options for not doing that are (1) not replying—because then at least you're not feeding it; or (2) patiently and respectfully supplying better information.

Don't get me wrong, I know how hard it is in practice—it requires going against one's habits at the nervous-system level.* That ranges between difficult and impossible depending on the level of activation. But it's definitely possible, and it's basically what this community is basically working on learning together. Why? Because the goal of this place has always been to have an internet forum that escapes the default fate of deteriorating into suckage—or at least staves it off as long as possible.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

* I don't know if it's helpful or not, but another way of saying this is that we want reflective reactions rather than reflexive ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#428

Post by edmundsauto »

mindslight wrote: post #399
edmundsauto wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking for “why” is often a path to becoming more fragile and/or frustrated. I do a lot of split tests (a/b testing). People always want to know why a treatment worked. I believe this is human nature. However, the answer to any specific situation is generally unknowable. I may have only changed one color and gotten way different results, but there could be a billion or a trillion situation dependent factors that cau…

What you're finding with A/B testing is local maximums. Which might make sense when your sole goal is squeezing a few more pennies out of a mundane business. But generalizing this to all of existence is sorely mistaken. Asking "why" is the act of cognition. Discerning structure, compression, building a model (science). Then applying that model to new territory (ie engineering), to achieve better gains than undirected…

Asking why can lead down two paths. In a system where it's possible to understand the "why" (often overlaps with "hard" sciences), it is crucial.

In fields where the inputs are unknown, obscured, non-linear, and sometimes non-deterministic: asking "why" is going to create cognitive biases that are very difficult to break.

- Why did the Soviet Union fall?

- Why did Trump lose in 2020?

- Why did I eat a cheeseburger when I'm trying to lose weight?

Those all turn into narratives that may or may not be correct, but are usually self-reinforcing. Confirmation bias also means we evaluate the "why" question as follows: "given what I know about this situation, and how I think things generally work, can I see this singular narrative as being true?" That leads to blindness of other possible interpretations, as well as other cognitive dysfunction.

To be a little cheeky - that is why commentators on politics, economics, social sciences, psychology... are full of shit.

Asking why may be the act of cognition, as you say - but my take is that the act of cognition itself will not lead to understanding the truth, or better decisions. Making up fairy tails is also cognition but does not help us build mental models to better understand the world around us.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#429

Post by nitrogen »

_3u10 wrote: post #307
nitrogen wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human experience simply cannot be averaged over large spans of times while ignoring the extremes. Dipping into the red means permanent damage. Imagine applying this line of thinking to your bank account -- "sure I spent $500k in two years on fast cars and fancy bars, but averaged over 80 years of paying small amounts of interest, the bank should be glad to make the sacrifice of stability in favor of efficiency."

umm... this is kind of the purpose of banks... get car now, enjoy car now, pay 3%, inflation is 5%. If you buy the car cash you pay more, and get it later. Lets take a C8 Stringray @ $100K, if you buy it today, it will cost $107K over 5 years. In five years it will cost you $128K.

No bank will let you go on a $500k spending binge when you've never had more than $5k in your account. And no amount of averaging over a lifetime will make up for the fact that rent is due now.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#430

Post by panda-giddiness »

Freskis wrote: post #262
throwaway894345 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with this, but if climate experts are to believed, we’ve stalled to the point where we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control in order to meet targets, and most countries haven’t even begun to make significant changes. At some point there will be pain. The question is, “do we want a little pain now or a lot of pain down the road?”. And to be clear, “wearing a coat inside during winter” may…

"we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control" Every year we're told it's our absolute last chance. Environmental brinkmanship hasn't work and the tune needs to be changed. Literally no economies are planning for mass famine or wars because no-one actually believes that is going to happen, except religious cults.

1. The same thing could've been said about the Covid-19 pandemic back in February 2020. In fact, a certain American President said as much. The fact that people are incapable of envisioning major disruptions to their lives does not prove that scientists are wrong; it's proves that humans can be blindsided by their own biases.

2. Countries don't plan their economies half a century ahead. Most struggle to plan beyond the next election cycle.

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