Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The material worth of something is what someone will pay you for it, i.e. the value it would sell for at auction. The problem is that this i.e. isn't right, because the vast majority of market transactions are not auctions. The value a pallet of rice would auction for is very different than the value a rice farmer would accept to load it onto a truck, which is very different than the value a supermarket would pay t…
That's because those are all different products. Water in the desert is a different product than water at the river and they can still differ in value even in a competitive market because of the cost of transportation.
The Demoralization is just Beginning
791–800 of 812 posts
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
> at the end of the day we both just want toast but the seller doesn't care about that. The seller will attempt to extract the maximum price of a toaster. It is because americans are more productive, that their maximum price for a toaster is 5x that of china; they can afford to pay 5x. So this is a measure of their utility - not the ability to toast. An american finds that the ability to toast to be worth 5x that a c…
I think my point is about an underlying quality of the toaster, the ability to make toast, which is independent of its cost in different places. The price of a product is complicated by many factors which are irrelevant to that underlying quality.
and this is called intrinsic theory of value[0], which mostly has been superceded by other theories (such as the one in my post, which is the subjective theory of value[1]).
While the intrinsic theory of value isn't wrong per se, it is too naive, and "simple", such that this theory does not explain much when applied to real world scenarios.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cant be serious. Inflation is a policy. it is mandated in the fed charter. and at the end of the article, he says "let's have more inflation". he is prescribing it. > rather than firing them Absolutely nuts outcome. why dont we enable capital to be lazy terrible dishonest management instead of having them actually respond to market forces with hard truths and look their employee in the eye and fire their employee…
I strongly disagree with your policy prescription. I would prefer lower unemployment. Workers are still free to leave their jobs and seek out better wages. It's just that they're no longer forced out, and I think that's an objectively better outcome.
imagine a society where not everyone had to be employed. some could afford to stay at home and take care of the kids, or take care of someone else's kids, the elderly, or just do random social improvement activities.
well in a society incentivized to maximize the employment statistic, the society will craft policies to incentivize people to be employed, and a lot of unemployable social good will be imobilized and the capacity to do it will be undeployed. by far the worst mechanism to do this is inflation, whose mechanism of incentivizing individuals to be and stay employed is a compounding treadmill which if you fall off, youll be homeless or foodless or both.
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#794Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people are moving to Russia China and India from non western nations that use to send their top talents to the EU/US.
A lot of people are moving to Russia, now? China also has seen their ex-pat communities reduced by 90% since Covid.
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't Ben Franklin have his own printing press promoting his views? America's political class got complacent and lazy, and forgot that they have to sell what they were pushing to the American people. They never even FOUGHT the battle of ideas. As they age out/get pushed out new Ben Franklin with their own printing press types will rise.
Other part of it, yes, Benny F was quite an edgelord, but it took patience and drive in those days. You couldn't just drop a shitpost in 30 seconds, no, you had to lay out the shitpost in little tiny metal letters, and make copies of the shitpost, painstakingly, one at a time, to distribute. And people didn't come by much reading material in those days, so the shitpost was cherished when acquired. Generally speaking…
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does say at the bottom of the page "A home for poorly researched ideas". So I don't think even he is very confident in what he is saying. I assume they are just trying to be provocative. Judging by the number of comments here, it worked.
This is called lamphshading. Lampshading is when someone acknowledges a flaw or controversial aspect upfront, often humorously or ironically, to deflect criticism or give the appearance of humility or openness. Saying something like "A home for poorly researched ideas" while actually propagating extremist, controversial, or misleading content is a tactic intended to: disarm critics, avoid accountability, and create p…
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 years ago someone like Trump wouldn't have a way to obtain a platform from which he can amass a big enough public following. Anyone that wanted to play had to play nice with the establishment. 50 years ago, editorials mattered. Any messaging of a politician or candidate would be followed with context, analysis or discussion by journalists.
you really don't know what you're talking about. 50 years ago, Trump, or someone like him, being very wealthy outside of politics, could have just bought his own media source, or several smaller ones, and let em rip with yellow attack journalism while promoting his vision. Failing that, he could have made paid agreements with all kinds of supposedly "reputable" mainstream media sources to promote his politics. This i…
Maybe he tried?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_South,_Manhattan#Tel...
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#798Why? You could also invest in better schools and education in the US. A smarter population would also be good for democracy, because they would vote smarter. But I guess it is too late now. Dictators don‘t need a smart population, they need a dump one, so they can do whatever they want.
Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#800He contradicts himself. Europe, in particular Spain, France and Germany are still manufacturing goods. And yet their economies are stagnant. Because those industries have seen no growth for decades already.
I cannot speak for Spain and France, but for Germany, stagnation was primarily due to long-standing internal political issues. Wolfgang Münchau discusses this in his book Kaput [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Kaput-End-German-Miracle/dp/B...
Germanys role in the fight against covid should not be forgotten. Germany is not just cars.
https://www.ft.com/content/4c0f90ac-1068-46ec-bb6a-b27f21af6...