4 ms·

I didn’t need to, the question was about losing 80% of your capital instantaneously. A broken oven is most likely not worth anything.

by yunwal 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago
I don't follow. How is this meant to be interpreted? > What “gaining” capital looks like is “we upgraded our ovens from the 1980s to brand new ones with steam” or something. So losing that capital would look the same as well. We would lose the luxuries, not just a random assortment of capital that would make everything totally disfunctional. Gaining capital looks like buying an oven. Losing capital looks like not having an oven. I'm not sure how you plan to cook food without an oven but it'd be much harder than people having to cook their own food with a fully functional oven. I'm making a guess here and I think you've forgotten to account for depreciation. Gaining capital looks like buying a new oven - a whole new oven - because the old oven is depreciating and probably doesn't work any more. People don't randomly upgrade ovens unless their is either a big enough productivity differential to justify the spending or the old oven isn't functioning well any more and needs to be replaced. If I look at the depreciation rates of my local tax authority ovens only have a lifespan of 20 years or so for tax purposes (typically less). I'm sure there are still 1980s ovens in use somewhere that withstood the test of time but they'd be pretty rare by now and not really a factor in feeding large numbers of people.
- dns_snek 2y ago
  I'm not the person you replied to, but I think you're forgetting that physical capital, for example the oven, is designed and manufactured by human workers. There wouldn't be any capital without human work, so placing more importance on capital than human work doesn't make any sense. Take all the capital in the world away and we'll create more capital out of basic need for survival. Take human workers away and you have machines sitting idle and the world starving to death.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I'm arguing that the people who design and manufacture physical capital are, if anything, most responsible for the economy's output. Can you run me through how you got from that to forgetting it? There is obviously a way of reading my comments that I'm not seeing.
- yunwal 2y ago
  > Gaining capital looks like buying an oven Going from 20% of a first-world country's capital to 100% of our capital looks like upgrading your oven for most people. If had 20% of my current wealth, I'd still have an oven most likely, just not a very good one.

I didn’t need to, the question was about losing 80% of your capital instantaneously. A broken oven is most likely not worth anything.

by yunwal 2y ago

I didn’t need to, the question was about losing 80% of your capital instantaneously. A broken oven is most likely not worth anything.

roenxi 2y ago

I don't follow. How is this meant to be interpreted? > What “gaining” capital looks like is “we upgraded our ovens from the 1980s to brand new ones with steam” or something. So losing that capital would look the same as well. We would lose the luxuries, not just a random assortment of capital that would make everything totally disfunctional. Gaining capital looks like buying an oven. Losing capital looks like not having an oven. I'm not sure how you plan to cook food without an oven but it'd be much harder than people having to cook their own food with a fully functional oven. I'm making a guess here and I think you've forgotten to account for depreciation. Gaining capital looks like buying a new oven - a whole new oven - because the old oven is depreciating and probably doesn't work any more. People don't randomly upgrade ovens unless their is either a big enough productivity differential to justify the spending or the old oven isn't functioning well any more and needs to be replaced. If I look at the depreciation rates of my local tax authority ovens only have a lifespan of 20 years or so for tax purposes (typically less). I'm sure there are still 1980s ovens in use somewhere that withstood the test of time but they'd be pretty rare by now and not really a factor in feeding large numbers of people.

dns_snek 2y ago
I'm not the person you replied to, but I think you're forgetting that physical capital, for example the oven, is designed and manufactured by human workers. There wouldn't be any capital without human work, so placing more importance on capital than human work doesn't make any sense. Take all the capital in the world away and we'll create more capital out of basic need for survival. Take human workers away and you have machines sitting idle and the world starving to death.
- roenxi 2y ago
  I'm arguing that the people who design and manufacture physical capital are, if anything, most responsible for the economy's output. Can you run me through how you got from that to forgetting it? There is obviously a way of reading my comments that I'm not seeing.
yunwal 2y ago
> Gaining capital looks like buying an oven Going from 20% of a first-world country's capital to 100% of our capital looks like upgrading your oven for most people. If had 20% of my current wealth, I'd still have an oven most likely, just not a very good one.