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Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

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Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#61

Post by mwbajor »

throw0101b wrote: post #10
Darmody wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly because gold has an intrinsic value.

> Not exactly because gold has an intrinsic value. Gold has zero intrinsic value. Like all forms of money, its value is a psychological and sociological construct to treat it as if it had value. The Incas for example simply used it for religious and ornamental purposes: * https://www.tourinperu.com/blog/inca-gold-culture-invasion-r... Anything can be used as money, including giant rocks: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

I'm not an expert on this by any means but:

Modern society needed something scarce and was hard to manufacture/process (thus ensuring price stability) to use as an intermediate currency between currencies. Those countries agreed to use gold as this intermediate currency. Other ideas have been to use groups of commodities but these incur more complexity since they're purpose is to be consumed in some process.

So does this not give gold an intrinsic value? Economists regard it as a "shiny rock" but I think that is an oversimplification used to make opponents of fiat money look stupid.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#62

Post by darkerside »

mwbajor wrote: post #44
verall wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if this comment is made in good faith - Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets? Are they adjustable for different people's shapes and sizes? How long was it before car chairs were adjustable to be driven by women, and how much longer until regulators started considering women-sized crash dummies? Sure, your skin color doesn't mean much to a car, but it does to an automatic fa…

Answer the question, would the car be different if Henry Ford was black? Would the AC induction motor be different if Tesla was Hispanic? Would the transistor be different if Shockley was Asian? Shall I go on? Believe it or not, it doesn't just apply to White people. The most important products don't care about what you look like. "Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets?" I would argue they a…

Bandaids are a bit of an ironic example. They were probably made the skin color of their majority customers, and not that of their inventors, but someone might have been in a position to ask whether there should be more than one color.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#63

Post by darkerside »

hcayless wrote: post #39
netbioserror wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s quite hard to understand the opposition to them without hypothesizing that it’s simply racism. We have two criteria here: Hire on merit and try pick the best person for the job; or, subsume merit to picking based primarily on skin color and/or ethnicity. One man's "hire people besides white men" is another's "hire using racist criteria and violate every hard-fought and hard-won civil, moral, and ethical princip…

Binaries are cool and all, but maybe it's better for your organizational health to have (for example) your company look something like the population they're selling to? Maybe not everyone gets the same level of boost in their education? Maybe they've overcome some adversity and that will make them a better, more resilient colleague, but it also meant their grades weren't as high? Like I said, this isn't easy stuff,…

You said you were astonished. Parent poster is just explaining how some people view the world in an attempt to make it a bit less astonishing to you. Why not read it through that lens instead of calling it a binary strawman?

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#64

Post by lordloki »

hcayless wrote: post #32

It’s astonishing to me how obviously intelligent people can just be put into the mental equivalent of an unrecoverable flat spin by ideology. The essay is interesting, but then just flips into silly mode. DEI is not the Spanish Inquisition. The idea that we should try to hire, retain, and promote people besides white men seems straightforwardly good to me. Obviously it’s hard to execute on, particularly without makin…

If you want to understand the opposition, you should start by reading and listening to the arguments put forth instead of assuming racism. The fact that you seem to default to that conclusion is showing that your not listening to opposing opinions, and instead utilizing your inherent bias to make a judgement call. Which then reinforces your idea that the other side has no argument, is racist, and therefor should be ignored.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#65

Post by dav_Oz »

The insights into the current Dollar hegemony from this article are excellent, but I fail to see the striking similarities.

If one studies the price revolution [0] in Europe mainly taking place during the Spanish Golden century ("Siglo Oro") the statement: [...]access to unlimited quantities of a universal medium of exchange, craved and accepted everywhere at best just forces an analogy but in reality the "Spanish elite" weren't even near it.

America's silver (and to some extend gold) pouring into Western Europe was just one aspect of financial power but without adequate instruments like (1) safe enough infrastructure to protect against piracy, (2) appropriate financial instruments and (3) a solid framework of economics (academic institutions like the "School of Salamanca"[1] could just barely keep up, offered some new insights but ultimately those were tragically forgotten after the fast decline) the "new wealth" couldn't be properly utilized and leveraged. In the end both France and Spain had to declare state bankruptcy over their costly wars to their respective wealthy merchants sitting in cities like Antwerpen. France then emerged as the new center of power in Europe.

The "financial innovations" were mostly driven by the merchant class in the Low Countries who had freedom to establish their own judicial system regarding trade and loans, those were slowly adapted by the Netherlands and later by England.

Jakob Fugger is prime example [2] of that class at that time in Europe having built a monopoly on copper mining, he went on to establish new silver mining techniques in the wake of the Great Bullion Famine. In 1527 - at his peak - Jakob Fugger resided over 2,800,000 Florins about 2% Europe's GDP at that time or in today's standard an estimated $400 billon fortunate. He was also instrumental into securing a gigantic loan of of about 100,000 ounces of gold for Charles I later becoming the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

[0]https://eh.net/book_reviews/american-treasure-and-the-price-...

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca#Economic...

[2]https://fuggerstrasse.eu/en/history.html

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#66

Post by lordloki »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #37
netbioserror wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s quite hard to understand the opposition to them without hypothesizing that it’s simply racism. We have two criteria here: Hire on merit and try pick the best person for the job; or, subsume merit to picking based primarily on skin color and/or ethnicity. One man's "hire people besides white men" is another's "hire using racist criteria and violate every hard-fought and hard-won civil, moral, and ethical princip…

The most eye opening aspect of this issue is how many people find the all white male default to be normal and self evidently meritocratic, and a deviation from that is what they instinctively consider to be contrived.

That only shows your flawed understanding of the issue. Nobody is saying that everything was meritocratic throughout history and that's why the most successful people in the west were white. However, there was a move towards meritocracy that did help many people in disadvantaged groups and throwing that away is foolish and short sighted. Meritocracy was a hard fought win by people who were not white and or male, throwing that away now will not lead anywhere good. It wasn't in societies best interest before meritocracy, why would it be now?

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#67

Post by somenameforme »

yardie wrote: post #25
roody15 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ People care about the US Dollar because of the backing of the United States and its economy. ” This may be changing. The US may have overextended its “credit line” if you will.

The libertarians keep saying this. Yet the US continues to sell bonds to international investors who never question if the credit line is overextended. They continue to use the economic model they learned in high school economics class to a more complex economic model that is designed by and for a hegemony. The US has an almost unlimited credit line because investors are clamoring for it. It's literally the best, mos…

The US debt is $32.3 trillion, and skyrocketing. [1] Total debt held by foreign/international investors is $7.3 trillion, and declining (both in absolute $ as well as percent). [2] The largest single holder is the Federal Reserve. Other holders are disproportionately made up of domestic organizations (like pension or mutual funds) which will collapse when the USD collapses, essentially regardless of hedging efforts, so they have no motivation to consider risk of collapse in their evaluations.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#68

Post by endemic »

mwbajor wrote: post #55
miffel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would insist that you try to open up your worldview slightly and accept that sometimes having a team with more than just white men can be desirable and lead to better outcomes for the end product. Maybe bandaids are not the best example, but consider pulse oximeters[0]. There are many examples like this if you care to look for them. I would recommend the books Weapons of Math Destruction and Invisible Women for som…

Lets make a deal: I'll read your diversity books if you realize that meritocracies will never go away. You might be able to suppress them, but the smart people (and they're not just white people) will reorganize behind your back and be better than whatever you are doing. See INTC vs. TSMC for probably the best example since you're into references. Pulse oximiters are another terrible example by the way. Couldn't we h…

> if you realize that meritocracies will never go away

I understand the DEI stuff as partially trying to get more diverse input, but also as a way to help make up for disadvantages that minorities have had historically. Of course a white person from a wealthy background has more chances to get in the "merit" club.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#69

Post by verall »

mwbajor wrote: post #55
miffel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would insist that you try to open up your worldview slightly and accept that sometimes having a team with more than just white men can be desirable and lead to better outcomes for the end product. Maybe bandaids are not the best example, but consider pulse oximeters[0]. There are many examples like this if you care to look for them. I would recommend the books Weapons of Math Destruction and Invisible Women for som…

Lets make a deal: I'll read your diversity books if you realize that meritocracies will never go away. You might be able to suppress them, but the smart people (and they're not just white people) will reorganize behind your back and be better than whatever you are doing. See INTC vs. TSMC for probably the best example since you're into references. Pulse oximiters are another terrible example by the way. Couldn't we h…

Are you seriously suggesting that really tanned white people have a similar skin tone to Black people?

r.e. tsmc VS Intel, is tsmc much more meritocratic than Intel? I haven't really heard this anywhere. I've heard they're an extremely hierarchical org and work insane hours for comparatively low pay.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#70

Post by verall »

mwbajor wrote: post #44
verall wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if this comment is made in good faith - Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets? Are they adjustable for different people's shapes and sizes? How long was it before car chairs were adjustable to be driven by women, and how much longer until regulators started considering women-sized crash dummies? Sure, your skin color doesn't mean much to a car, but it does to an automatic fa…

Answer the question, would the car be different if Henry Ford was black? Would the AC induction motor be different if Tesla was Hispanic? Would the transistor be different if Shockley was Asian? Shall I go on? Believe it or not, it doesn't just apply to White people. The most important products don't care about what you look like. "Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets?" I would argue they a…

Why answer? Your argument as far as I can read it is "Physics exists, therefore DEI is bad". Can you help me fill in the gap?

What is your clearly rhetorical question getting at?

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