3 ms·

Thunderf00t, is that you?

dools 2y ago
Haha I had never heard of that dude, but I like the look of his content thanks! BTW you can tell I'm not Thunderf00t because he says that "the taxpayer" paid $3 billion. I would never use "taxpayer funding" language, I would only ever call it public money (because Treasury creates money when it spends).
- exe34 2y ago
  by that logic tax should be zero?
  - dools 2y ago
    Not really, if there was no tax there would be no money. The most succinct way that I have found to express the relationship between taxation and spending is that spending at the federal level is constrained by aggregate spending this year, not tax receipts last year.
    - exe34 2y ago
      spending is constrained by whatever Congress says it is. the difference is borrowed.
      - dools 2y ago
        It's logically impossible for a government to borrow the currency it issues. What we refer to as borrowing is just swapping one government liability (reserve balances) for another (treasury bonds).
        exe34 2y ago
        you don't borrow from the present, you borrow from the future and hope to pay it back with growth
  - baq 2y ago
    taxes are how you don't have inflation. the government can also destroy money about as easily as it creates it, too. it isn't a politically (and usually economically) desirable thing to do. when it's done, it's usually via replacing the whole currency wholesale (e.g. brazilian real).
    - exe34 2y ago
      > taxes are how you don't have inflation. or you know, don't print trillions to bail out failed banks.
poulpy123 2y ago
You don't need to be thunderfoot to understand that pretending you will start to colonize mars in the next years lies somewhere between daydreaming and scamming. Although I like when thunderfoot compare the archives of what musk said with what actually happened
- peepeepoopoo87 2y ago
  The punchline is that everyone here thought being called "thunderf00t" was a compliment, even though I meant it as an example of someone who is consistently proven wrong at every turn for casting shade on Musk's tech ambitions. It seems HN's original techno-optimist hacker ethos is dead in the grave.
  - dools 2y ago
    Or is the REAL punchline the fact that Musk has optimised his entire empire to tap into the hacker ethos/ideals as the world's biggest pump n dump scheme? He seems to just do things that have the biggest wow factor because growth stocks need to keep growing otherwise there is no point in owning them.

Haha I had never heard of that dude, but I like the look of his content thanks! BTW you can tell I'm not Thunderf00t because he says that "the taxpayer" paid $3 billion. I would never use "taxpayer funding" language, I would only ever call it public money (because Treasury creates money when it spends).

exe34 2y ago
by that logic tax should be zero?
- dools 2y ago
  Not really, if there was no tax there would be no money. The most succinct way that I have found to express the relationship between taxation and spending is that spending at the federal level is constrained by aggregate spending this year, not tax receipts last year.
  - exe34 2y ago
    spending is constrained by whatever Congress says it is. the difference is borrowed.
    - dools 2y ago
      It's logically impossible for a government to borrow the currency it issues. What we refer to as borrowing is just swapping one government liability (reserve balances) for another (treasury bonds).
      - exe34 2y ago
        you don't borrow from the present, you borrow from the future and hope to pay it back with growth
- baq 2y ago
  taxes are how you don't have inflation. the government can also destroy money about as easily as it creates it, too. it isn't a politically (and usually economically) desirable thing to do. when it's done, it's usually via replacing the whole currency wholesale (e.g. brazilian real).
  - exe34 2y ago
    > taxes are how you don't have inflation. or you know, don't print trillions to bail out failed banks.

poulpy123 2y ago

You don't need to be thunderfoot to understand that pretending you will start to colonize mars in the next years lies somewhere between daydreaming and scamming. Although I like when thunderfoot compare the archives of what musk said with what actually happened

peepeepoopoo87 2y ago
The punchline is that everyone here thought being called "thunderf00t" was a compliment, even though I meant it as an example of someone who is consistently proven wrong at every turn for casting shade on Musk's tech ambitions. It seems HN's original techno-optimist hacker ethos is dead in the grave.
- dools 2y ago
  Or is the REAL punchline the fact that Musk has optimised his entire empire to tap into the hacker ethos/ideals as the world's biggest pump n dump scheme? He seems to just do things that have the biggest wow factor because growth stocks need to keep growing otherwise there is no point in owning them.