gottorf

39 ms·

631.
by gottorf 3y ago
> powerful people meddling with the government to reinforce their power using anti-democratic means As the other commenter alluded to, the solution to this is to limit the power of the government so that even if they meddle and gain infl
632.
by gottorf 3y ago
The combined net worth of all billionaires in America come out to ~$4.5T. Even ignoring the fact that that number is fiction (because those assets cannot be converted to that amount of money in real life), it's not very much money in t
633.
by gottorf 3y ago
> You mean that thing that happened when we gifted huge tracts of lands to a few private businesses so they could pay for the railroads Do huge tracts of land magically become working railroads? The word "happened" is carrying
634.
by gottorf 3y ago
As Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead.
635.
by gottorf 3y ago
I'm sorry, that was poorly worded. What I was trying to say is that if the CPI is 10% and one component of it is 40%, it implies the presence of other components that are under 10% (and of course, the possibility of some that might hav
636.
by gottorf 3y ago
The existence of lottery winners do not mean that all wealth in the world was generated via lottery, or some kind of heavenly manna that a select few were lucky enough to collect. None of the top 10 richest Americans got to that place via i
637.
by gottorf 3y ago
> We live on a planet with finite resources; everything here is zero-sum. This isn't even true at a cosmic scale, let alone in human scales. Planet Earth receives exogenous energy from the sun. You want an example of creating value
638.
by gottorf 3y ago
19th century England was the height of the Industrial Revolution. Trust perpetuity probably had no effect on entrepreneurial expansion, especially considering that the aristocrats who were the primary beneficiaries of these dynastic trusts
639.
by gottorf 3y ago
> inflation-adjustment is inherently naïve. It assumes that everything rises at the same rate of inflation It doesn't. "Real wages" are adjusted to changes in CPI. It makes no assertions that everything inflates at the sam
640.
by gottorf 3y ago
> I agree that wealth inequality is a problem, and we need to do something about it. Why? Wealth isn't zero-sum. Most of the American super-wealthy got that way by providing value to others. I'd argue that the bigger problem to
641.
by gottorf 3y ago
> the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. A "private company" that is fully owned by the government is private company in name only; hen
642.
by gottorf 3y ago
> “44.2 million people lived in households that had difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone in 2022” That line comes from a report[0] produced by an entity that as of last check had an annual revenue of $6.6T. They're probab
643.
by gottorf 3y ago
That's wild! As a (pseudo-) government agency, it seems like the postal service shouldn't be legally allowed to pick and choose whose mail to deliver and whose to withhold.
644.
by gottorf 3y ago
I hate the "subscriptionification" of everything as much as anybody, but there is a cost to ongoing updates to software. Especially on something like a browser, where both standards and exceptional behavior contrary to the standar
645.
by gottorf 3y ago
> why does the wire to the switch have to be 14/2 high voltage? That way, it's easy to extend the circuit later if you make modifications to the structure.
646.
by gottorf 3y ago
Why invite complexity when the situation doesn't call for it? Wires are simple, robust, easy to work with and easily understood.
647.
by gottorf 3y ago
I dunno, I believe in hardwiring things where you can. Stuff in an immobile structure like a house can and should remain actual wire.
648.
by gottorf 3y ago
That is an absolutely fair point. ;-)
649.
by gottorf 3y ago
> A riskless investment in sp500 Just a nitpick, but this isn't the traditional definition of "riskless", which would be Treasuries. I believe the S&P 500 experiences an average drawdown of 14% in any given year, so it
650.
by gottorf 3y ago
> Essentially we need to revert back to capitalism and end the ongoing gilded age. For what it's worth, government spending as a fraction of GDP was single-digit percent in the actual Gilded Age, compared to almost 40% today.
651.
by gottorf 3y ago
On the other hand, places with strong worker protections almost always have higher unemployment rates, especially among new entrants to the labor marketplace (i.e. young adults). So one must pick one's poison.
652.
by gottorf 3y ago
Yes, the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 regulates "any company which has control over any bank".
653.
by gottorf 3y ago
> the frankly asinine idea that it's insurance against government overreach Why is it asinine? It is precisely intended to be the insurance of last resort against a government that turns tyrannical. If your claim is that the might o
654.
by gottorf 3y ago
> to those killed by extreme weather caused by climate change right now. FYI, the number of deaths attributed to climate over the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019 dropped to a third[0], even as the world population more than doubled and
655.
by gottorf 3y ago
> Ohio can safely be written off, like Florida. So are you for or against single-party rule? The way you're putting this makes it clear that you think there is one right party to vote for.
656.
by gottorf 3y ago
I can recommend a visit. It's an easy flight from the Norwegian mainland.
657.
by gottorf 3y ago
> Why did firearms and bullets replace bows and arrows? To many, this sounds like a stupid question with an obvious answer: the firearm succeeded the bow because it’s a superior weapon. This is objectively true now and has been for a whi
658.
by gottorf 3y ago
Whatever else we may all think of him, I strongly agree with this point: > He hungered for advances in the world of atoms, not the world of bits. Though his investment pattern doesn't seem to reflect it. And he seems to have forgott
659.
by gottorf 3y ago
It really is crazy how bad the T is! I suppose the long tradition of MBTA management seats being used as patronage rewards has not helped.
660.
by gottorf 3y ago
> they think technical competence and expertise is what helps someone up the food chain. The truth is it’s who you know not what you know. Well, technical competence and expertise does not necessarily translate to managerial competence a

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