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The Demoralization is just Beginning

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#621

Post by desumeku »

alecco wrote: post #337
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…

> 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…

Krugman is also the guy who said that minting a $1 trillion dollar coin wouldn't be inflationary.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#622

Post by desumeku »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #462
thegrto wrote: post #395

On Lex, you said you want to have Elon as dictator. Dinner is served, enjoy your meal.

The issue with these contrarians, is that all they can do is scream loudly about how shitty everything is, without any real proposals on how to improve the world. We see this all the time: MAGA in the US, AFD in Germany...

I would say that AfD has a pretty clear idea of what they think would improve the situation in Germany.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#623

Post by desumeku »

agentultra wrote: post #534
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.

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.

> No one who understands modern economics wants to bring back the gold standard

Except, of course, Miseans.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#624

Post by baq »

Hikikomori wrote: post #371
baq wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you present China as an alternative? I’d you’re a western country, the CCP is not a body you want anything to do with unless you’re desperate. They do not share western values. If you don’t ally with the US, you really, really want to be a separate center of power, because everyone who isn’t US wants to exploit you dry and admits it openly.

Most of the "protection" and for democracy stuff the US has been up to has been to protect their own corporate interests to extract resources from those countries, see all of South America and some of the middle east.

I don’t blame them for how the world works. I’m saying if I need to be under some ‘protection’, I’d rather it is US than China and especially Russia.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#625

Post by lxgr »

sebastianz wrote: post #327
lxgr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually grew up in one of these, and I fully agree. Yes, my country was significantly larger and more influential a century ago. It even was an empire, with an emperor and all! But no, I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me.

> I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me. This is true for (almost) anywhere in the world. Everybody has a better life _on average_ than 100 years ago. > It even was an empire, with an emperor and all! But the fact that your country was the capital of an empire a century ago is a large reason for why it is richer now, and generational wealth was indeed passed on. This perhaps is…

Oh, definitely! Many former empires still benefit from their history.

But all I'm saying is that there's a path to preserving wealth beyond outright remaining an empire. (Whether it's still possible after making hypothetical full reparations is a difficult question I don't know the answer to.)

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#626

Post by desumeku »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #482

The gold standard makes no sense whatsoever, you want the money supply to be able to grow with the economy. Printing loads of money is bad, but a deflationary spiral due to a fixed money supply is even worse.

When was the last time we had a deflationary spiral? The 1930s? And how long has kenyesian inflationism been trying to "fix" this issue? And exactly how many global economic crashes have happened under the system that is supposed to prevent them? Additionally, exactly how much damage has been caused by the destruction and pilfering of the dollar's value, and exactly how much good has inflationism done to offset that? Judging by how harshly everyone speaks about wanting to behead billionaires in the streets, I would say that things have "gone bad", in very light terms.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#627

Post by neffy »

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…

If that, as @acatton says. It is certainly not happening all the time. There are laws around libel and slander, which are more aimed at civility than anything else, but its rare that they make it to actual court. In Britain at least there is a long held tradition, and some rightly infamous accompanying libel cases, where 1 farthing/penny/pound damages (inflation has had some effect I guess) were awarded in an ok, you win but the moral case was with the defendant signal. One of the more recent:

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/judge-right-to-award-lying-...

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#628

Post by h2zizzle »

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 even then. Little reported: Switzerland's largest private bank was forced by the government to take over its rival's assets. Why "forced"? Something something Archegos. The truth is that we don't know what UBS saw and didn't like in Credit Suisse's files, and we won't know for a long time, as the report for the investigation into what actually happened during the acquisition has been sealed for 50 years.

Suffice it to say that the debacle presents circumstantial evidence that "rich with not too much effort" might encourage dangerously laissez faire behavior.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#629

Post by desumeku »

Ekaros wrote: post #365
tomrod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, bitcoin does have an upper limit, but rug pull coins don't. The exact number is ₿20,999,999.9769

I always considered that there is real possibility for that limit to be removed by hard fork. Governments can come together and tell that from block x forward reward is back to 50BTC or whatever. And only on this chain can you pay taxes.

Good luck enforcing that.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#630

Post by neffy »

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…

Not actually the case. The gold standard linked the expansion of the money supply to the price of gold, not the actual supply. So as the money supply expanded, every time gold was bought or sold through direct bank transfer, the price was influenced by the expanding deposit supply, not by the asset gold supply, and slowly increased, creating a nice little feedback loop. If you look at the figures for the gold standard period in the 19th-20th century, otherwise known as the British Monetary Orthodoxy, you will see a slow and steady expansion in the deposit supply in all countries using it. Trouble was, the expansion was a different rates in different countries, and so by the 1910´s the differences were tearing the invisible financial fabric apart. The rest as they say is history.

Banking systems being somewhat unstable and prone to credit crises is actually an entirely different problem, and unrelated to how the expansion is being regulated.

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