6 ms·

I lived in Zim through the hyperinflation and early USD years and knew lots of people working in private schools there. I heard one of them say that school fees

I lived in Zim through the hyperinflation and early USD years and knew lots of people working in private schools there. I heard one of them say that school fees were also set to be roughly constant in units of cattle (I forget the exact numbers, it might have been 3 heifers (~2000 USD) per term). Maybe the same idea now with bay area house prices in units of FAANG shares. Everything is constant for those holding (cows, FAANG) and not great for those with (ZD, USD).

cwilkes 4y ago
Well except for Netflix, down 70% over the last year.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
  [dead]
- mhh__ 4y ago
  My reading of that event is to buy some Netflix stock at some point. They started a chain reaction with bad news but as far as I'm aware they might have been able to raise their prices in exchange for a relatively small amount of their customers. That being said I haven't actually verified any numbers so maybe the market is right.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Everyone I know is threatening to quit Netflix over the price hike/password sharing crackdown. Yet nobody I know has actually quit. I suspect they might be addicts claiming they can quit anytime...
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      I ended up quitting for several reasons. I really liked their content when they first launched here in AU. I have two family members on limited incomes who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it - so I got the top-end plan, specifically because it said something about multiple devices in your family. Then the prices were raised, it became harder to find anything that I wanted to watch (new content I wasn't interested in, and lots of missing older content). I basically stopped using it. Then prices were put up again (twice, I think), at the same time that they started bitching about password sharing/whatever. Then one family member died, and the other stopped using it, so... yeah, I'll keep the $23/month.
    - rocqua 4y ago
      There's a decent change I'll drop it when they actually block me from account sharing. Until that point, I don't mind the higher prices. When that point does come, I'll certainly re-evaluate if Netflix is worth it for me.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    I haven't looked into it myself, but I'd do more research than just looking at diffs before buying FAANG stocks now. It's easy to forget that a lot of especially tech stocks were extremely handsomely valued by traditional metrics before the Fed started raising rates.
  - 988747 4y ago
    My take is that Netflix is doomed. They had a good run, because they were first streaming platform, but at the end of day it is all about the content that you have, and big competitors, such as HBO and especially Disney+ are much better at producing quality content (and they have huge catalogs of existing, top-shelf movies and shows already). I expect people gradually switching to those services, and Netflix becoming irrelevant.
    - Bedon292 4y ago
      I keep almost killing off my Netflix in favor of the others, but then I remember its actually where most of what my kid watches is right now. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth a consistent subscription. What I really need is a better way to manage it all: Content aggregator which you can add everything to a single watchlist. And when you want to watch something on a service you don't have subscribe and then cancel it immediately so you just have it for the month. I am sure all the services would squash something like that though.
      - 988747 4y ago
        I think eventually people will do something like this: keep Disney+ subscription active all the time, as the default (because it will be the best), and occasionally buy one month of the other services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) just to see what's new there.
        Bedon292 4y ago
        The Disney+ and Hulu bundle is probably going to end up my default. But Prime just kind of exists. Never watch much on it, probably need to re-evaluate the value there.
  - codebolt 4y ago
    They were priced at a level that could only be justified if they had the same exponential growth they've been having for many years into the future. I think the dump is mostly a reckoning that this isn't realistic. They might still grow from current levels, but it's not going to be at the same rate as they have for the past decade.
notch656a 4y ago
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  Quite rare to see racists coming out on HN. Who is "whites" exactly?
  - notch656a 4y ago
    "Whites" in the sense the people that Zimbabwe government deemed were whites. If you have some issue with the word, ask a former member of the Mugabe regime, whom implemented the policy because their definition is the one you're looking for. And since when was it racist to point out a racist eviction policy helped lead to hyperinflation? It's racist now to be against evicting someone based on their perceived ethnicity?
paganel 4y ago
> Maybe the same idea now with bay area house prices in units of FAANG shares. It's interesting how this holds up so well across time. The Byzantine historian Michael Attaleiates [1] was writing in the 11th century how the increase in the price of grains (which, in that particular case, was caused by the nationalisation and centralisation of grain delivery by the Byzantine State) was also causing an increase in the base salary demanded by the Byzantine demos and, most importantly, by its soldiers. Presumably grains were a fundamental "economic unit" (for lack of a better term) for Byzantium, as cows are for Zimbabwe and as real estate is for SV. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Attaleiates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Attaleiates
james-redwood 4y ago
I never quite thought that I would see a fellow Zimbo on HN - although I suspect the few of us that are have left the country for good (and did so decades ago at that).
oldsecondhand 4y ago
Maybe the Big Mac Index would be better. At least it's linked to cattle as well.

cwilkes 4y ago

Well except for Netflix, down 70% over the last year.

donthellbanme 4y ago
[dead]
mhh__ 4y ago
My reading of that event is to buy some Netflix stock at some point. They started a chain reaction with bad news but as far as I'm aware they might have been able to raise their prices in exchange for a relatively small amount of their customers. That being said I haven't actually verified any numbers so maybe the market is right.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Everyone I know is threatening to quit Netflix over the price hike/password sharing crackdown. Yet nobody I know has actually quit. I suspect they might be addicts claiming they can quit anytime...
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    I ended up quitting for several reasons. I really liked their content when they first launched here in AU. I have two family members on limited incomes who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it - so I got the top-end plan, specifically because it said something about multiple devices in your family. Then the prices were raised, it became harder to find anything that I wanted to watch (new content I wasn't interested in, and lots of missing older content). I basically stopped using it. Then prices were put up again (twice, I think), at the same time that they started bitching about password sharing/whatever. Then one family member died, and the other stopped using it, so... yeah, I'll keep the $23/month.
  - rocqua 4y ago
    There's a decent change I'll drop it when they actually block me from account sharing. Until that point, I don't mind the higher prices. When that point does come, I'll certainly re-evaluate if Netflix is worth it for me.
- t_mann 4y ago
  I haven't looked into it myself, but I'd do more research than just looking at diffs before buying FAANG stocks now. It's easy to forget that a lot of especially tech stocks were extremely handsomely valued by traditional metrics before the Fed started raising rates.
- 988747 4y ago
  My take is that Netflix is doomed. They had a good run, because they were first streaming platform, but at the end of day it is all about the content that you have, and big competitors, such as HBO and especially Disney+ are much better at producing quality content (and they have huge catalogs of existing, top-shelf movies and shows already). I expect people gradually switching to those services, and Netflix becoming irrelevant.
  - Bedon292 4y ago
    I keep almost killing off my Netflix in favor of the others, but then I remember its actually where most of what my kid watches is right now. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth a consistent subscription. What I really need is a better way to manage it all: Content aggregator which you can add everything to a single watchlist. And when you want to watch something on a service you don't have subscribe and then cancel it immediately so you just have it for the month. I am sure all the services would squash something like that though.
    - 988747 4y ago
      I think eventually people will do something like this: keep Disney+ subscription active all the time, as the default (because it will be the best), and occasionally buy one month of the other services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) just to see what's new there.
      - Bedon292 4y ago
        The Disney+ and Hulu bundle is probably going to end up my default. But Prime just kind of exists. Never watch much on it, probably need to re-evaluate the value there.
- codebolt 4y ago
  They were priced at a level that could only be justified if they had the same exponential growth they've been having for many years into the future. I think the dump is mostly a reckoning that this isn't realistic. They might still grow from current levels, but it's not going to be at the same rate as they have for the past decade.

notch656a 4y ago

vagrantJin 4y ago
Quite rare to see racists coming out on HN. Who is "whites" exactly?
- notch656a 4y ago
  "Whites" in the sense the people that Zimbabwe government deemed were whites. If you have some issue with the word, ask a former member of the Mugabe regime, whom implemented the policy because their definition is the one you're looking for. And since when was it racist to point out a racist eviction policy helped lead to hyperinflation? It's racist now to be against evicting someone based on their perceived ethnicity?

paganel 4y ago

> Maybe the same idea now with bay area house prices in units of FAANG shares. It's interesting how this holds up so well across time. The Byzantine historian Michael Attaleiates [1] was writing in the 11th century how the increase in the price of grains (which, in that particular case, was caused by the nationalisation and centralisation of grain delivery by the Byzantine State) was also causing an increase in the base salary demanded by the Byzantine demos and, most importantly, by its soldiers. Presumably grains were a fundamental "economic unit" (for lack of a better term) for Byzantium, as cows are for Zimbabwe and as real estate is for SV. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Attaleiates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Attaleiates

james-redwood 4y ago

I never quite thought that I would see a fellow Zimbo on HN - although I suspect the few of us that are have left the country for good (and did so decades ago at that).

oldsecondhand 4y ago

Maybe the Big Mac Index would be better. At least it's linked to cattle as well.