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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#441

Post by agumonkey »

pif wrote: post #388
KaiserPro wrote: post #349

Going back to a gold standard will limit the money supply. This means that there will be less capital for building $thing. A gold standard means that when the economy gets overheated it pops, then contracts and you get deflation. This makes crashes last longer and harder. It requires greater fiscal discipline to overcome. The problem with the USA "empire" is that for a trading empire to work you need a plan, and stic…

> That takes planning, money vision and time. And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans, unless you either make huge efforts to ensure everyone gets their fair share (see Scandinavia) or you have a good plan for people being rich with not too much effort (see Switzerland and other tax havens). Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too la…

And further than democracy, the universe doesn't guarantee long-term anything. Sensible regimes (being democracy or else) seems intrinsically more aligned with that. Except maybe clear catastrophes that require "homogeneous" actions / behaviors (like asia approach to the covid 19 pandemic)

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#442

Post by jgilias »

tomhoward wrote: post #424
jgilias wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Brain drain, despite the name, is not really a zero-sum game. The people who move rarely lose all contact with the host country. They gain invaluable experience, know-how, and contacts that some of them eventually bring back to the host country. I know of more than one example where someone has been “brain-drained” to the states, who has subsequently moved back to start a success…

Yes of course but when articles like this (and the general policy/assumption in the US) just blankly asserts that we can just “brain-drain” our way back to prosperity and dominance, there isn’t much nuanced consideration of the limits, caveats and tradeoffs inherent to that approach, which need much more than an HN comment or brief blog post to fully explore.

I’d be happy if the US policies these days were based on _at least_ an HN comment. A typical HN comment does a much better job of considering at least some of the caveats and trade-offs than a POTUS Truth Social post.

EDIT: Thinking about it, it’s kind of hilarious that it’s called “Truth Social”, given that it’s mostly antisocial lies.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#443

Post by lqet »

flyinglizard wrote: post #410
foven wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, when you write an article like this foretelling the doom of the american economy, why would you think you are able to brain drain any country? What stops the countries you are trying to drain from offering better incentives to stay?

At this point in time, US is the global leader in personal freedoms, culture and financial opportunities. These are the things people are looking to immigrate towards. Personal freedoms can't be manufactured. They are a product of the underlying system governing a country. The US has very strong institutions and legal framework in the form of the constitution (again, at this point in time; I expect the current admin…

> These are the things people are looking to immigrate towards.

In the academic world, I am definitely seeing brain-drain from the EU towards China now. 10-20 years ago, it was almost exclusively the US. I expect this shift to rapidly continue now. From a European perspective, China appears to be more stable than the US at the moment.

> The language of the world in English, Hollywood is American, Hip hop is American and I can't really think of any other country in a position to globally influence and create an ethos in the same way US can. You can call it branding. US fully controls the societal narrative around the world.

You are describing the world 20 years ago. A large and respected German newspaper (FAZ) had an article today, titled: "Is the US our enemy now?" [0]. The Financial Times had an article last week titled: "The US is now the enemy of the west" [1]. This would have been completely unthinkable just a few weeks ago. 27% of Canadians already see the US as an enemy state [2].

Would you get your daily entertainment from the enemy? China is already the major trading partner for most of the world. Why shouldn't it became the major entertainment provider?

[0] https://www.faz.net/podcasts/f-a-z-podcast-fuer-deutschland/...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/b46e2e24-ca71-4269-a7ca-3344e6215...

[2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/windsor/article/27-per-cent-of-canadi...

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#444

Post by yakz »

rsanek wrote: post #400
pif wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That takes planning, money vision and time. And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans, unless you either make huge efforts to ensure everyone gets their fair share (see Scandinavia) or you have a good plan for people being rich with not too much effort (see Switzerland and other tax havens). Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too la…

income inequality today is about the same as it was 100 years ago. https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-...

This says it improved significantly from 1940 until 1980, then made a turn for the worse. So it's about the same as 100 years ago, but for a big part of that 100 years, it was better.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#445

Post by wahnfrieden »

RivieraKid wrote: post #440

This started out interesting but then the red flags started to pop up. Going to jail in Europe for posting memes, gold standard, salivating over doing something that benefits the US and hurts countries that are already poorer than the US. He has strong opinions on economics, but doesn't understand it. His points about economics are partially true but either subtly incorrect or interpreted incorrectly.

It's geohot

Leading with a Curtis Yarvin citation as supporting material

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#446

Post by yakz »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #408
pif wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That takes planning, money vision and time. And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans, unless you either make huge efforts to ensure everyone gets their fair share (see Scandinavia) or you have a good plan for people being rich with not too much effort (see Switzerland and other tax havens). Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too la…

>And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans Say again? If we're talking strictly about the United States as per the article that inspired this post, the U.S. is a case study of a prosperous, remarkably stable democracy steadily increasing its prosperity, wealth, influence and power while also for the vast majority of its history investing for the long term and in vital infrastructure. T…

> Note also that as another comment above this mentions, the U.S has had more or less similar levels of said inequality for the last 100 years

This is not what it said. It said it was about the same 100 years ago. It improved for a long time before going back up.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#447

Post by Twixes »

globular-toast wrote: post #386
sam_goody wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work, we provide video courses of therapists to other mental health professionals. I help run a youth group, which uses lots of software to manage, communicate, learn and empower the next generation. Nothing physical, but there is no question in my mind that all this software is intrinsically valuable.

If it were intrinsically valuable then it would still be valuable if you took away the businesses. Would your healthcare software be valuable if there was nobody to produce the video course? Would your youth group be valuable if nobody attended it? What are you empowering the youth to do? Also write software to empower the next generation? It has to end somewhere. You can't eat software. You can't eat gold either, bu…

So the whole idea of "you can't eat technology" relies on the apocalypse happening imminently? Modern institutions of society are WHY our lives are full of what would be magic 200 years ago, like being able to grab a carrot from the supermarket shelf any time. With both hardware and software we've made agriculture the most efficient its ever been, and it's now so efficient it literally frees up to optimize the edges of other problems

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#448

Post by agumonkey »

chazhaz wrote: post #436
rsanek wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

income inequality today is about the same as it was 100 years ago. https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-...

...and about twice what it was 50 years ago. How have Sweden, Japan, France, etc. managed to keep income inequality around postwar lows while America hasn't?

Not sure, but it seems in France the situation in degrading. The same 1% being richer while workers / students waiting in line for food charity stories were common. Part of it might be due to COVID, but I can't shake the feeling that business management (influenced by anglo-saxon/american culture) is harder than before and squeezes employees. Not only a feeling, I worked on precarious jobs that shouldn't exist, and we saw employees having materially impossible daily duties (due to bad software unable to organize things).

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#449

Post by BLKNSLVR »

"Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing."

Never a truer word spoken. Making money by moving money around. It shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be possible or at least should come with severe limitations that make it not possible to live off as a vocation. When person A 'wins', person B 'loses'.

It is a specific skill set that some humans have, but it's not one that should be valued because it gives nothing back to society. In fact, it's a net negative.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#450

Post by RivieraKid »

ryandamm wrote: post #11

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…

Krugman and Pettis are among the small group of economics / finance people I follow. Do you have any other recommendations of people to follow?

Regarding Pettis, I still haven't decided whether I agree with (and understand) his worldview.

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