7 ms·

Getting really annoying to have to keep track of macro events affecting my life year after year instead of just being able to live a normal peaceful life.

by natly 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
You can do both! Live needing little, be humble, spontaneous, help your friends and family! Let go!
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  This.
throwaway_1928 4y ago
Monkeypox is just getting started. Hang in there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/22/biden-monkeypox-vaccines-outbreak/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/22/biden-mon...
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  No airborne spread. Transmitted through sex. We're safe as houses. :p
  - throwaway_1928 4y ago
    In that case HNers are safe :-) But I am afraid it is is transmissible by 'respiratory droplets'. > "Monkeypox virus is transmitted from one person to another by close contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets and contaminated materials such as bedding." https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox
    - SilasX 4y ago
      Old crypto joke: "Major STD outbreak; bitcoin users unaffected."
- jopsen 4y ago
  Reading Wikipedia on monkeypox, there have been multiple outbreaks before, outbreaks that we never heard about. Supposedly, we're better at tracing now, if it really blows up we're better prepared than ever before.
- shakezula 4y ago
  This is fear-mongering. You cannot predict the future and the CDC tracks dozens of novel virus outbreaks each year that never go anywhere. It’s less transmissible, and responds to vaccines that we already have.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Do you really though? If you are a long term investor, just picking a couple of core asset classes and then rebalancing regularly (rebalancing is key because it is an automatic way of selling thing when prices are higher and buying when they are lower), and never paying attention to the news, it's a winning strategy.
- 88913527 4y ago
  When you buy a home -- the largest single purchase one makes in the middle class -- you lock in the purchase price, but not the interest rate. Housing prices still haven't recovered in Japan to their 1990 highs. So if you don't pay attention to the macro environment, you could be costing yourself a great deal. Fortunately, other asset purchases like mutual funds in retirement accounts are DCA'ed in by the paycheck, and not done all at once.
  - jbay808 4y ago
    (This situation might not be familiar to US commenters, who can lock in an interest rate for their entire mortgage).
    - 88913527 4y ago
      US commenters hopefully know they can re-finance when rates go down. Locked in, with the option of re-fi'ing. Only possible when rates drop but we're yet to have a period of 30 years of continually rising rates.
      - jbay808 4y ago
        Yes, I didn't mean to imply that wasn't the case. I meant that in the US, homebuyers can fully protect themselves from the downside risk, an option that doesn't exist in many other countries (like Canada).
        hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
300bps 4y ago
There are lots of people who have not paid much attention to these “macro events” you speak of and it has not impacted them in any meaningful way. Covid came closest to impacting my life. But I got the Pfizer shot as early as I was legally able, same thing with a booster and pretty much have just gone about my life as usual for most of the pandemic while never getting Covid. The rest of it going on - I just don’t even pay attention to it.
- csomar 4y ago
  Covid impacted most people around the world. Professionally and socially. The Ukraine war started as a local war, but now it's affecting Europe and third-world countries who depended on Ukraine for wheat. These last macro-events caught many people by surprised. This inflation cycle is also affecting most of the world (since import prices will factor in lots of goods).
- dkarp 4y ago
  Presumably you don't live in an urban area then?
Spooky23 4y ago
Agreed. Unfortunately, we’ve inherited the mess that our parents and grandparents left for us.
- brink 4y ago
  And we will create yet another mess for our children. Or at least what's left of them because we decided not to have any, which is a problem in itself.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The current government spending sprees are not your parents' and grandparents' fault.
  - lukeramsden 4y ago
    Depends how old you are. Even the youngest member of the UK cabinet is old enough to be my father, but the real decision makers are old enough to be my grandfather. I don't keep close track of US politicians but as far as I can tell, its even worse there.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Think about who the current generation voted for. When politicians are voted in because of their fiscally irresponsible proposals, who is really to blame? People are voting themselves money out of the treasury. This is the result.
      - thawaya3113 4y ago
        Except the previous government gave out a lot more money. Massive tax cuts, votes secured by giving over $40bn to farmers who were negatively impacted by a pointless and thoughtless trade war with China, and most of the COVID aid was given by the previous administration (although they did delay it because the previous President was insisting his name should be on a check that would be physically mailed to everyone).
RockyMcNuts 4y ago
imagine being like 85 and having lived in China through WW2, revolution, famine, cultural revolution, and then the last 30 years of growth and prosperity. a lot of places have to worry about global macro and history, anyone who doesn't is living a charmed life and maybe a fool's paradise.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  My grandfather was born in 1909 in China. When he was 3 years old, the Emperor fell. When he was 7, the Warlord Period began. When he was 17, the country was unified under Chiang Kai-Shek; when he was 18, it fell apart again and the Chinese Civil War began. When he was 22, the Japanese invaded, and he emigrated to the Philippines. When he was 32 (and my dad was 2), the Japanese invaded the Philippines too. When he was 35 (my dad was 5), the Americans invaded, and his house was bombed, and he had to move up to a camp in the mountains and shit in the river. A year later the Americans had won and he made a fortune off occupying G.I.s, opening the only restaurant with a slot machine in the city. When he was 40 the Nationalist government that had been, well, "the government" when he grew up fell to the Communists, and he was left stateless. He ended up sending his kids to North America, one by one, and finally emigrated in the early 80s and lived out his last years in peace, but my dad's obsession with geopolitics is in retrospect pretty justified by world events.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    This is worthy of a book or a movie. Your grandfather has made your life difficult: try filling those shoes ;) Seriously though, what a resilience.
andsoitis 4y ago
no man is an island
spicyusername 4y ago
The reality is that, regardless of time and place, there is always some shit going on. It will be as true 50 (or 1,000) years from now as it was 50 (or 1,000) years ago. > live a normal peaceful life. Being able to blindly live a normal peaceful life, if it really has even ever been possible for anyone, is the exception, not the rule. Most time periods for most people are fraught with risk and conflict. It is the nature of being.
- natly 4y ago
  Certanily makes it really difficult to focus on skill development and improving as a coder. I get that some people can handle it and I'll probably be selected out from the field for my lack of ability to ignore the macro distractions if this keeps going though.
  - Breza 4y ago
    This year, I've really put effort into building my skills and not spending so many hours reading the news. I find myself feeling happier andI'm currently studying for two highly valued certifications.
- coolspot 4y ago
  > It will be as true 50 (or 1,000) years from now Ah! An optimist who believes humanity will exist 1,000 years from now!
  - FooHentai 4y ago
    Even if it's roaches fighting over twinkies, likely still true.
- hoseja 4y ago
  The alternative to blindly living a normal peaceful life is having and exercising meaningful agency, which the modern state really doesn't want you to do.
keeganpoppen 4y ago
welcome to earth?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rsanek 4y ago
How in particular are you affected? You should be able to ignore this if you live within your means and invest passively with a long-term horizon.
- fosk 4y ago
  It depends, an individual may be affected financially or emotionally. I used to say what you just said, and then somebody replied to me that there is value in our time and life too, and sure they could be financially fine in 5-10-15 years but what if they had other plans in the short term? Now those life plans are disrupted. Eventually, will they be fine financially? Probably. Have they lost the one shot they had in their life to do something they really wanted? Without a doubt.
WalterBright 4y ago
The Federal Reserve Bank system was supposed to prevent busts. We've had some pretty big ones recently - 2000, 2008, 2022. Let's face it. The FRB cannot stop busts. The real reason for the FRB is so the federal government can inflate the currency.
- vmception 4y ago
  Yes, there are limitations to the tools available to the Federal Reserve and what can be done with monetary policy. At the end of the day you are trying to control individual's behaviors with gravitational pulls of satellite objects, and that doesn't really work. The analogy continues as even astrology enthusiasts might do things because of the believed influence of a celestial body's location, but can really still do anything they want.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Milton Friedman showed in "Monetary History of the United States" that the free banking era had more stability in its blind reaction to market forces than the Fed ever did with their deliberate "steady hand" on the throttle.
- cyberlurker 4y ago
  They aren’t expected to always prevent busts. Boom and busts are expected.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Um, that was the sales pitch to establish the FRB.
jacquesm 4y ago
Historically speaking that's the norm. The last 70 years are an anomaly.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
The problem is that we vote for people who give us what we want for the short term at the cost of stability over the long term.

Getting really annoying to have to keep track of macro events affecting my life year after year instead of just being able to live a normal peaceful life.

by natly 4y ago

Getting really annoying to have to keep track of macro events affecting my life year after year instead of just being able to live a normal peaceful life.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

You can do both! Live needing little, be humble, spontaneous, help your friends and family! Let go!

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
This.

throwaway_1928 4y ago

Monkeypox is just getting started. Hang in there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/22/biden-monkeypox-vaccines-outbreak/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/22/biden-mon...

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
No airborne spread. Transmitted through sex. We're safe as houses. :p
- throwaway_1928 4y ago
  In that case HNers are safe :-) But I am afraid it is is transmissible by 'respiratory droplets'. > "Monkeypox virus is transmitted from one person to another by close contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets and contaminated materials such as bedding." https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox
  - SilasX 4y ago
    Old crypto joke: "Major STD outbreak; bitcoin users unaffected."
jopsen 4y ago
Reading Wikipedia on monkeypox, there have been multiple outbreaks before, outbreaks that we never heard about. Supposedly, we're better at tracing now, if it really blows up we're better prepared than ever before.
shakezula 4y ago
This is fear-mongering. You cannot predict the future and the CDC tracks dozens of novel virus outbreaks each year that never go anywhere. It’s less transmissible, and responds to vaccines that we already have.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Do you really though? If you are a long term investor, just picking a couple of core asset classes and then rebalancing regularly (rebalancing is key because it is an automatic way of selling thing when prices are higher and buying when they are lower), and never paying attention to the news, it's a winning strategy.

88913527 4y ago
When you buy a home -- the largest single purchase one makes in the middle class -- you lock in the purchase price, but not the interest rate. Housing prices still haven't recovered in Japan to their 1990 highs. So if you don't pay attention to the macro environment, you could be costing yourself a great deal. Fortunately, other asset purchases like mutual funds in retirement accounts are DCA'ed in by the paycheck, and not done all at once.
- jbay808 4y ago
  (This situation might not be familiar to US commenters, who can lock in an interest rate for their entire mortgage).
  - 88913527 4y ago
    US commenters hopefully know they can re-finance when rates go down. Locked in, with the option of re-fi'ing. Only possible when rates drop but we're yet to have a period of 30 years of continually rising rates.
    - jbay808 4y ago
      Yes, I didn't mean to imply that wasn't the case. I meant that in the US, homebuyers can fully protect themselves from the downside risk, an option that doesn't exist in many other countries (like Canada).
      - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

300bps 4y ago

There are lots of people who have not paid much attention to these “macro events” you speak of and it has not impacted them in any meaningful way. Covid came closest to impacting my life. But I got the Pfizer shot as early as I was legally able, same thing with a booster and pretty much have just gone about my life as usual for most of the pandemic while never getting Covid. The rest of it going on - I just don’t even pay attention to it.

csomar 4y ago
Covid impacted most people around the world. Professionally and socially. The Ukraine war started as a local war, but now it's affecting Europe and third-world countries who depended on Ukraine for wheat. These last macro-events caught many people by surprised. This inflation cycle is also affecting most of the world (since import prices will factor in lots of goods).
dkarp 4y ago
Presumably you don't live in an urban area then?

Spooky23 4y ago

Agreed. Unfortunately, we’ve inherited the mess that our parents and grandparents left for us.

brink 4y ago
And we will create yet another mess for our children. Or at least what's left of them because we decided not to have any, which is a problem in itself.
WalterBright 4y ago
The current government spending sprees are not your parents' and grandparents' fault.
- lukeramsden 4y ago
  Depends how old you are. Even the youngest member of the UK cabinet is old enough to be my father, but the real decision makers are old enough to be my grandfather. I don't keep close track of US politicians but as far as I can tell, its even worse there.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Think about who the current generation voted for. When politicians are voted in because of their fiscally irresponsible proposals, who is really to blame? People are voting themselves money out of the treasury. This is the result.
    - thawaya3113 4y ago
      Except the previous government gave out a lot more money. Massive tax cuts, votes secured by giving over $40bn to farmers who were negatively impacted by a pointless and thoughtless trade war with China, and most of the COVID aid was given by the previous administration (although they did delay it because the previous President was insisting his name should be on a check that would be physically mailed to everyone).

RockyMcNuts 4y ago

imagine being like 85 and having lived in China through WW2, revolution, famine, cultural revolution, and then the last 30 years of growth and prosperity. a lot of places have to worry about global macro and history, anyone who doesn't is living a charmed life and maybe a fool's paradise.

nostrademons 4y ago
My grandfather was born in 1909 in China. When he was 3 years old, the Emperor fell. When he was 7, the Warlord Period began. When he was 17, the country was unified under Chiang Kai-Shek; when he was 18, it fell apart again and the Chinese Civil War began. When he was 22, the Japanese invaded, and he emigrated to the Philippines. When he was 32 (and my dad was 2), the Japanese invaded the Philippines too. When he was 35 (my dad was 5), the Americans invaded, and his house was bombed, and he had to move up to a camp in the mountains and shit in the river. A year later the Americans had won and he made a fortune off occupying G.I.s, opening the only restaurant with a slot machine in the city. When he was 40 the Nationalist government that had been, well, "the government" when he grew up fell to the Communists, and he was left stateless. He ended up sending his kids to North America, one by one, and finally emigrated in the early 80s and lived out his last years in peace, but my dad's obsession with geopolitics is in retrospect pretty justified by world events.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  This is worthy of a book or a movie. Your grandfather has made your life difficult: try filling those shoes ;) Seriously though, what a resilience.

andsoitis 4y ago

no man is an island

spicyusername 4y ago

The reality is that, regardless of time and place, there is always some shit going on. It will be as true 50 (or 1,000) years from now as it was 50 (or 1,000) years ago. > live a normal peaceful life. Being able to blindly live a normal peaceful life, if it really has even ever been possible for anyone, is the exception, not the rule. Most time periods for most people are fraught with risk and conflict. It is the nature of being.

natly 4y ago
Certanily makes it really difficult to focus on skill development and improving as a coder. I get that some people can handle it and I'll probably be selected out from the field for my lack of ability to ignore the macro distractions if this keeps going though.
- Breza 4y ago
  This year, I've really put effort into building my skills and not spending so many hours reading the news. I find myself feeling happier andI'm currently studying for two highly valued certifications.
coolspot 4y ago
> It will be as true 50 (or 1,000) years from now Ah! An optimist who believes humanity will exist 1,000 years from now!
- FooHentai 4y ago
  Even if it's roaches fighting over twinkies, likely still true.
hoseja 4y ago
The alternative to blindly living a normal peaceful life is having and exercising meaningful agency, which the modern state really doesn't want you to do.

keeganpoppen 4y ago

welcome to earth?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rsanek 4y ago

How in particular are you affected? You should be able to ignore this if you live within your means and invest passively with a long-term horizon.

fosk 4y ago
It depends, an individual may be affected financially or emotionally. I used to say what you just said, and then somebody replied to me that there is value in our time and life too, and sure they could be financially fine in 5-10-15 years but what if they had other plans in the short term? Now those life plans are disrupted. Eventually, will they be fine financially? Probably. Have they lost the one shot they had in their life to do something they really wanted? Without a doubt.

WalterBright 4y ago

The Federal Reserve Bank system was supposed to prevent busts. We've had some pretty big ones recently - 2000, 2008, 2022. Let's face it. The FRB cannot stop busts. The real reason for the FRB is so the federal government can inflate the currency.

vmception 4y ago
Yes, there are limitations to the tools available to the Federal Reserve and what can be done with monetary policy. At the end of the day you are trying to control individual's behaviors with gravitational pulls of satellite objects, and that doesn't really work. The analogy continues as even astrology enthusiasts might do things because of the believed influence of a celestial body's location, but can really still do anything they want.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Milton Friedman showed in "Monetary History of the United States" that the free banking era had more stability in its blind reaction to market forces than the Fed ever did with their deliberate "steady hand" on the throttle.
cyberlurker 4y ago
They aren’t expected to always prevent busts. Boom and busts are expected.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Um, that was the sales pitch to establish the FRB.

jacquesm 4y ago

Historically speaking that's the norm. The last 70 years are an anomaly.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

The problem is that we vote for people who give us what we want for the short term at the cost of stability over the long term.