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Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

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Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#71

Post by mwbajor »

verall wrote: post #69
mwbajor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dont deflect, the example is meant to show that your criteria for diversity, why and how, is dumb. Please give a better example or answer my original questions. I never said a diverse workforce is bad, I simply asked for concise examples on why its good.

You can make whatever excuses that you want, but Asian companies are not diverse at all and they are doing pretty well and show no signs of slowing down. Don't you think that if a diverse workforce really mattered (as opposed to the most qualified workforce) they would be pursuing it?

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#72

Post by nemo44x »

medo-bear wrote: post #47
nemo44x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backing implies the military. A strong military is necessary for any independent, thriving state. The USA economy is the most dynamic and powerful in the world by a large margin. People want their wealth backed by this and will pay a premium for the right.

who this people ?

All the people holding trillions in treasuries. The people invested in USA markets. Etc.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#73

Post by verall »

mwbajor wrote: post #71
verall wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dont deflect, the example is meant to show that your criteria for diversity, why and how, is dumb. Please give a better example or answer my original questions. I never said a diverse workforce is bad, I simply asked for concise examples on why its good. You can make whatever excuses that you want, but Asian companies are not diverse at all and they are doing pretty well and show no signs of slowing down. Don't you t…

I gave 2 examples - automatic faucet and women sized crash test dummies, your response was seriously that they could use very tanned white people. As if that is not "deflection".

> Don't you think that if a diverse workforce really mattered (as opposed to the most qualified workforce) they would be pursuing it?

"A company from a homogenous country is homogenous. They are the best at XYZ, therefore DEI must be bad because how else could they become number 1 without diversity"

This is a bad argument because there's a million other things that other companies, diverse or not, are best at. It doesn't really tell us much.

I'm sad your profile says you joined to talk fpga, since I used to do that and you don't seem nice to work with.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#74

Post by throw0101b »

mwbajor wrote: post #61
throw0101b wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Modern society needed something scarce and was hard to manufacture/process (thus ensuring price stability) to use as an intermediate currency between currencies.

And now we have no intermediary and no one bothers with gold when going between USD and EUR or JPY and CAD. Gold is completely useless for such exchanges in 2023 and would just add overhead. So given that it is worse than useless (being an hinderance due to an extra step) in such transactions, how can it have "intrinsic" value? If you're travelling internationally, do you exchange your domestic currency for gold, cross the border, and then exchange the gold for the destination currency?

What exactly is gold useful for in 2023 besides jewelry and some minor industrial uses? Can you buy groceries? Pay property taxes? Can you show up at a car dealership with a brick or two and get a new ride?

What is the value of me having gold in my possession?

> Those countries agreed to use gold as this intermediate currency.

It was socially agreed to it having value, but if it had "intrinsic" value, (a) no such agreement would have been needed because it would have been self-evident (the Gold Standard was only formalized in 1870), and (b) it would still be valid today. When the agreement stopped the intermediary status also stopped, showing there was nothing "intrinsic" about it: it just happened to be a convenient convention (for a time).

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#75

Post by mwbajor »

throw0101b wrote: post #74
mwbajor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Modern society needed something scarce and was hard to manufacture/process (thus ensuring price stability) to use as an intermediate currency between currencies. And now we have no intermediary and no one bothers with gold when going between USD and EUR or JPY and CAD. Gold is completely useless for such exchanges in 2023 and would just add overhead. So given that it is worse than useless (being an hinderance due t…

I agree with everything you are saying with the exception of the fact that it seemed to be a better intermediary than paper currency. I think that is something the "end the fed", "bring back gold" people don't understand. You're right, I cant do anything with gold alone, its actually quite useless.

My argument for gold (if you even want to call it that) is more to keep politicians in check from printing more money where "printing more money" really means a politicization of the financial industry and increasing wealth inequality. The human element was less when a gold standard existed. I'd be all for a paper currency if limits to politician involvement were somehow built into it, I'm not really a fan of Gold in any sense. I've read that in 1972 some of these checks were supposed to be implemented but never were, partly because the nixon shock was supposed to be temporary and partly because polticians realized they could have more power.

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#76

Post by kurikuri »

netbioserror wrote: post #35
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…

>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…

> 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.

The word ‘merit’ is doing a lot of work here. What traits/aspects of a person would you use to calculate into their merit? I’ll argue that between two people who’ve crossed a finish line at the same time, the one who started furthest from that line is more meritorious. From a hiring/placement perspective however, especially during the first screening, there isn’t a good way to determine a candidate’s starting line.

The dichotomy is a bit wrong as well, but I’ll get into that once we get past the first hurdle (for the curious, it is about a selection bias after an initial screen).

Re: Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

#77

Post by throw0101b »

mwbajor wrote: post #75
throw0101b wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern society needed something scarce and was hard to manufacture/process (thus ensuring price stability) to use as an intermediate currency between currencies. And now we have no intermediary and no one bothers with gold when going between USD and EUR or JPY and CAD. Gold is completely useless for such exchanges in 2023 and would just add overhead. So given that it is worse than useless (being an hinderance due t…

I agree with everything you are saying with the exception of the fact that it seemed to be a better intermediary than paper currency. I think that is something the "end the fed", "bring back gold" people don't understand. You're right, I cant do anything with gold alone, its actually quite useless. My argument for gold (if you even want to call it that) is more to keep politicians in check from printing more money wh…

> My argument for gold (if you even want to call it that) is more to keep politicians in check from printing more money where "printing more money" really means a politicization of the financial industry and increasing wealth inequality.

The Gilded Age, when income inequality in the US and EU was at its highest, occurred during the Gold Standard:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age

The US has returned to those levels of wealth concentration, but having paper currency backed by gold didn't prevent the first round. Further, there was much more wealth inequality, with the aristocracy, when gold and silver coins were the actual currency (rather than paper notes).

> The human element was less when a gold standard existed.

Wild gyrations of finance and economy due to human behaviour were worse pre-Fed and during the Gold Standard:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...

* https://archive.ph/FWKcL

Various 'incidents' during the Gold Standard era:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1896

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

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