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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#591

Post by greyw »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #414
atwrk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this point: We can look to China to see that the financialization of the economy, like it happened in the US, is not a natural law but can instead be restricted. China has explicitly said that they see the development of financial markets in the US as a problem for the US economy they decidedly aim to avoid. Stories like what happened to Jack Ma have to be interpreted in that context, I think. In my reading…

People like to forget China was aggressively combating financialization [1] long before Jack Ma was forced to step down. Ant financials ambitions were an absolute disaster in the making [2]. I still remember my wife casually mentioning, back in 2019 or something (well before Evergrande), that China was restricting property speculation. Prohibiting folks from taking out loans on third properties etc. As an Australian…

Most chinese are storing wealth in real estate its the prime investment vehicle. People in china have been speculating on properties for decades. The chinese government realized a bubble was forming because house builders started using crazy leverage. The fact this crazy bubble formed has shown the regulators were in fact asleep.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#592

Post by dingnuts »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #505
acatton wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple cases in Germany (where I live). I cannot find them all, but "Pimmelgate" is a famous one where one guy on twitter (that's what it was called at the time) told a local politician " Du bist ein Pimmel " (in English: "You're a dick") and the next day the police showed up at his apartment and searched it. The issue is the harassment. Most of these cases are baseless and get dropped once presented to t…

My question was specifically about being jailed for expressing their opinion? Is this something that happens all the time in Germany (from what you wrote I would say no. It's a hassle but at most you get a fine that you can appeal, right?). Americans seem to think that people post a meme and end up in an american style max-security federal prison or something, while actually the offender gets a minor slap on the wris…

here you go, guy got jail time for a crude joke in the UK

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#593

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dijit wrote: post #560
agentultra wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if he’s far-right MAGA but these red flags are all far right talking points. No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard. Seems like geohot should stick to jail breaking iPhones and mocking programmers and CTF challenges… and maybe read a few more books and attend some lectures if he wants to continue deepening his understanding of economics and political science.

I really hate this idea of "far-right talking points" and "far-left talking points". It immediately frames questions as "us vs them", if there's a talking point you hear come up frequently and it's easily dissolved: learn how to dissolve it. The fewer people walking around with incorrect ideas about things the better we all are. If people rebuff you, maybe they had a point the whole time? If they change the subject o…

No, it's a useful framing.

I might have time for reading an interesting take on economics. I can learn from that, even if I don't agree with the overall position. (That was one of the beauties of HN 10 years ago - you learned from people you disagreed with. You could even wind up upvoting posts you disagreed with, because they had an interesting point that made you think.)

If something is a collection of far-right or far-left talking points, I don't have time for it. Either way, it's too little reality and too much zealotry, propaganda, and shilling. I don't have time or patience to wade through it and dissect all the problems and issues and just general falseness of it all.

Now, that framing can be used as a general pejorative ("I don't like that"), or even as an attack from the other side (far-left labels normalcy as far-right, far right definitely labels normalcy as far-left). But, honestly given, it's useful to know something is far-right or far-left, just to avoid wasting my time and sanity.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#594

Post by tomrod »

troupo wrote: post #178
tomrod wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. My comment doesn't claim it doesn't. My only point was that BTC has limited supply. In almost all other ways, crypto is not great.

BTC being limited isn't great either. Because it only stimulates saving up.

Honest feedback request: how can I be more explicit when noting a fact without connotation or judgment?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#595

Post by dudefeliciano »

dingnuts wrote: post #592
dudefeliciano wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question was specifically about being jailed for expressing their opinion? Is this something that happens all the time in Germany (from what you wrote I would say no. It's a hassle but at most you get a fine that you can appeal, right?). Americans seem to think that people post a meme and end up in an american style max-security federal prison or something, while actually the offender gets a minor slap on the wris…

here you go, guy got jail time for a crude joke in the UK https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

This is exactly why I asked for credible sources. This man never got any jail time (even a cursory search of the article you linked shows that), if anything this stunt made his youtube career take off.

"Meechan was sentenced to a fine of £800, with no prison sentence." i mean his video probably made more money than that...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/count-dankula-na...

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#596

Post by regularization »

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-...

And what was happening then? In 1916 a socialist got 6% of the vote for president (by 1920 he was in prison, but still got 3% of the vote). You had the green corn rebellion, 1919 bombings, Seattle general strike of 1919, Boston police strike, steel and coal strikes, Palmer raids, first red scare. Then the 1924 immigration act and creation of the US border patrol (echoes of today), cutting off most European immigration. Then up to 1932 and the Bonus Army and sut down strikes and New Deal overwhelmingly affirmed in the 1936 election.

There was the same amount of inequality a century ago in the US, so what happened at that time.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#597

Post by intended »

jaggederest wrote: post #367
intended wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boom and bust cycle has required things like 2008, COVID, major wars, Brexit to create these booms and busts.

Other centuries must have been remarkably peaceful, since by your assertion they did not have bubbles, pandemics, wars, or geopolitical schisms...? It's enough to say that fiat currency, fiscal and monetary policy have papered over the worst of the excesses and explosions, you don't need to pretend like we live in unique times. Every time is unique, but history rhymes.

??? The previous argument was on the pace of boom and bust cycles. This argument is on their existence.

We don't even have the same kinds of boom and bust cycles. There is no dustbowl, and we've recovered from incredible calamites well compared to the disasters in the past. Spain hasn't ended up destroying its entire wealth by finding too much wealth for example.

I'm making the mistake of getting into detail with a point that is so out of bounds, its in "not even wrong" territory.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#598

Post by AnimalMuppet »

roenxi wrote: post #285
Nimitz14 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had spent the time writing this and other comments googling/chatgpting you could have learned why returning to the gold standard is a joke.

Typically when someone says "I think A" the onus is not on them to do the legwork trying to prove A false. Although I agree that ChatGPT is generally better at putting together an argument than the HN average.

Well, no, when someone says "I think A", the onus is on them to try to prove A true. And in trying to do so, you might have found out why A is false.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#599

Post by dudefeliciano »

ShellfishMeme wrote: post #588
sdsd wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose this doesn't remotely qualify as "memes", but Mr. Bond went to prison for ten years in Germany for making racist rap songs.

It was Austria, and I think it's pretty telling that when free speech limitations come up in these kind of threads, it's always neo-Nazi stuff.

seriously why do people get so mad that a rapper can't release such classics like "Mein Kampf mixtapes" or "A Nazi goes to Afrika" in the country that birthed the guy who destroyed the world. (I know why they get mad)

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#600

Post by nuancebydefault »

LeroyRaz wrote: post #423
tomhoward wrote: post #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, t…

Your claim that good economicts "know there is no free lunch" is completely false, unsubstantiated and actively misleading. Many impressive economists believe there are policies that could massively improve the worlds economy, but that implementating these policies is a coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc... Radical Markets is great book on exactly this topic.

> coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc...

So much for free lunch?

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