4 ms·

If you've seen Margin Call, you know the scene I'm thinking of right now. The "I Built a Bridge" scene. Beginning in the mid-70s something went horribly, horri

If you've seen Margin Call, you know the scene I'm thinking of right now. The "I Built a Bridge" scene. Beginning in the mid-70s something went horribly, horribly wrong with the way capital handles risk management, resulting in "real stuff" being undervalued by orders of magnitude, since it was by nature riskier. Hence that aforementuioned scene. Russian-style command economies failed in some part because they lacked mechanisms for borrowing money from the future. The American system is staring failure right in the face because of its inability to quantify what future value implies. I imagine future history books will look at the two systems in parallel, the latest chapter in the ongoing story of telluric states and the thalassocracies that separate them. With all the non-nuclear states huddled underneath in their shuddering quasi-sovereignty. This is probably the most flame-worthy thing I've ever said on HN, so go nuts.

disqard 4y ago
Tbh, your comment looks like it was authored by an LLM -- what is a "telluric state"?
- cramjabsyn 4y ago
  Whats an LLM?
  - nielsole 4y ago
    Large language model (like gpt3 or chatgpt)
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    Large Language Model, I think.
- nielsole 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurocracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurocracy I fail to grasp the sentence though. What's a thalassocracy supposed to be in today's world?
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    The United States, with its blue-water navy, is commonly viewed as a Thalassocracy by a certain segment of the historian community. You can really go down the rabbithole but basically some people view the US as, at least in part, having the culture of an island scaled up to the size of a continent. There's a similar train of thought that sea-based empires defeat land-based empires when the two do battle and some people view the conflict between the USSR and the United States during the cold war through that lense.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Telluric means relating to the earth. Thalassocracy means a state of the ocean. Or a maritime empire. I take their overall point there to draw a parallel to small states as islands, small spits of sand, connected by the thalassocracies, or oceans, of the US and USSR. In some sense, this is actually reality, especially under the US system of global economic hegemony via free trade (or some approximate, thereof).
- dylanh 4y ago
  Terrestrial state, a state of (the planet) earth. Not an LLM but maybe a francophone or a logophile.
- MilStdJunkie 4y ago
  I'm not an AI, at least, I don't think so. It's been co-opted by Russian weirdos, but the concept of a "land holding civilization" versus a "maritime civilization" is one of those historical metaphors that aids understanding rather than undermining it. In my opinion at least. The two organizational principles are so fundamentally different, they're almost apples and oranges.
kilroy123 4y ago
At least link to it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mc-38C88g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mc-38C88g
britneybitch 4y ago
You're not wrong. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pvg 4y ago
They were Soviet rather than 'Russian-style' and they very much had ways to 'borrow from the future' - externally they were connected to the global economy and there was an internal system of industrial credit and settlement strictly separated from the cash economy individuals used.
- MilStdJunkie 4y ago
  Oh yeah. The invention of the Eurobond was a turning point not just in economics but for the history of the Soviet Union itself. It made the security state the sole gatekeeper, since you couldn't trust a design bureau to approach a London bank. From what I understand, Gosbank-supervised credit system relied entirely on dynamic metrics from Narkomfin and higher up in the government, which made the pricing of such "debt" completely opaque. Like, deliberately so, unlike our Western variants which are theoretically transparent. I won't editorialize that. I am not a super-expert, but the story of Rowland Barin and the Eurobond - and its effects on Soviet economics - captivated me after the Western financial system effectively collapsed in 2007-2008.
GypsyKing716 4y ago
I hate to say this from an engineering stand-point, but that's because the nature of programable circuits and the systems that are derived from them. Thinking in terms of the plight of Bell Labs and how the demise that made them filthy rich, but also started the end of their company. I think you're wrong on a few levels, but mostly undervaluing the nature of how software on embedded systems are infinitely changeable. It's where hardware like SDR USB devices have yet to really be realized, but they almost future proof your hardware. Why innovate in hardware? You don't have to anymore for decades and still find useful ways to flash remote systems and exponentially make them useful. I have a 1st generation Amazon Echo - the thing is so over-engineered it'll last another decade and services will still work on it. I value hardware, but I value versatility more.

disqard 4y ago

Tbh, your comment looks like it was authored by an LLM -- what is a "telluric state"?

cramjabsyn 4y ago
Whats an LLM?
- nielsole 4y ago
  Large language model (like gpt3 or chatgpt)
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Large Language Model, I think.
nielsole 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurocracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurocracy I fail to grasp the sentence though. What's a thalassocracy supposed to be in today's world?
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  The United States, with its blue-water navy, is commonly viewed as a Thalassocracy by a certain segment of the historian community. You can really go down the rabbithole but basically some people view the US as, at least in part, having the culture of an island scaled up to the size of a continent. There's a similar train of thought that sea-based empires defeat land-based empires when the two do battle and some people view the conflict between the USSR and the United States during the cold war through that lense.
rjbwork 4y ago
Telluric means relating to the earth. Thalassocracy means a state of the ocean. Or a maritime empire. I take their overall point there to draw a parallel to small states as islands, small spits of sand, connected by the thalassocracies, or oceans, of the US and USSR. In some sense, this is actually reality, especially under the US system of global economic hegemony via free trade (or some approximate, thereof).
dylanh 4y ago
Terrestrial state, a state of (the planet) earth. Not an LLM but maybe a francophone or a logophile.
MilStdJunkie 4y ago
I'm not an AI, at least, I don't think so. It's been co-opted by Russian weirdos, but the concept of a "land holding civilization" versus a "maritime civilization" is one of those historical metaphors that aids understanding rather than undermining it. In my opinion at least. The two organizational principles are so fundamentally different, they're almost apples and oranges.

kilroy123 4y ago

At least link to it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mc-38C88g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mc-38C88g

britneybitch 4y ago

You're not wrong. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pvg 4y ago

They were Soviet rather than 'Russian-style' and they very much had ways to 'borrow from the future' - externally they were connected to the global economy and there was an internal system of industrial credit and settlement strictly separated from the cash economy individuals used.

MilStdJunkie 4y ago
Oh yeah. The invention of the Eurobond was a turning point not just in economics but for the history of the Soviet Union itself. It made the security state the sole gatekeeper, since you couldn't trust a design bureau to approach a London bank. From what I understand, Gosbank-supervised credit system relied entirely on dynamic metrics from Narkomfin and higher up in the government, which made the pricing of such "debt" completely opaque. Like, deliberately so, unlike our Western variants which are theoretically transparent. I won't editorialize that. I am not a super-expert, but the story of Rowland Barin and the Eurobond - and its effects on Soviet economics - captivated me after the Western financial system effectively collapsed in 2007-2008.

GypsyKing716 4y ago

I hate to say this from an engineering stand-point, but that's because the nature of programable circuits and the systems that are derived from them. Thinking in terms of the plight of Bell Labs and how the demise that made them filthy rich, but also started the end of their company. I think you're wrong on a few levels, but mostly undervaluing the nature of how software on embedded systems are infinitely changeable. It's where hardware like SDR USB devices have yet to really be realized, but they almost future proof your hardware. Why innovate in hardware? You don't have to anymore for decades and still find useful ways to flash remote systems and exponentially make them useful. I have a 1st generation Amazon Echo - the thing is so over-engineered it'll last another decade and services will still work on it. I value hardware, but I value versatility more.