jack_h

8 ms·

31.
by jack_h 1y ago
> A few presidents ago, the chairman of the joint chiefs publicly said that 7 trillion in military spending is unaccounted for. You're likely referring to the fact that the pentagon can't pass an audit even though there have be
32.
by jack_h 1y ago
If you're truly curious I would say the best way to start is to get a basic understanding of economics and how our current system actually operates. It's also important to look up the data as it actually exists rather than consumi
33.
by jack_h 1y ago
I tend to be in the camp that believes capitalism will generally produce better results than socialism but it will not produce anything close to a utopia. However, I don't believe capitalism is a stable economic system within a democra
34.
by jack_h 1y ago
Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Market economies, command economies, mercantile economies, and any other economic system must deal with these scarcities somehow. Even in the animal k
35.
by jack_h 1y ago
As I’ve grown older and witnessed history in action I’ve begun to understand that reality is much, much more complicated than the simple narratives of history we lean on as a society. Just think of how many different competing narratives ar
36.
by jack_h 1y ago
> but I honestly have never worked in such an environment where developers couldn't learn to duplicate the functionality of shitty dependencies while at the same time fixing the problem. I have absolutely seen this. It’s not a matte
37.
by jack_h 1y ago
If five companies competing is anti-competitive, then how many competitors does it take to suddenly become competitive and why? What is the significance of this larger-than-five number? Is it the same across industries? How do you derive it
38.
by jack_h 1y ago
Before the industrial revolution a cabinetmaker would spend a significant amount of time advancing from apprentice to journeyman to master using only hand tools. Now master cabinetmakers that only use hand tools are exceedingly rare, most f
39.
by jack_h 1y ago
So it seems that due to imprecise language people disagree on the exact place of the red line the US (and Israel) were drawing. The post you responded to was indicating that the red line was, as a sibling comment mentioned, the breakout tim
40.
by jack_h 1y ago
> Does anyone think that situation resolved well? I don't think we've seen the resolution of that situation. We will one day, and I think the chances of it being a good outcome are pretty slim. I'm very much against Iran h
41.
by jack_h 1y ago
I don't understand this scenario. If everyone is on UBI then most people are essentially near poverty. Where are these CEOs deriving all of their profit from? I personally think a far more likely scenario is that small businesses of on
42.
by jack_h 1y ago
> I'd have more luck petitioning the Central Car Design Committee because Highly doubtful. Command economies have far less variety in what they offer. This isn't theoretical either just look at western cars vs Soviet cars. Ther
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by jack_h 1y ago
People complaining about the name baffle me; the name of the bill is irrelevant, only the legal effect matters. I’ve been doing a lot of independent research myself since finding useful, non-partisan sources is a huge issue anymore. I’ve fo
44.
by jack_h 1y ago
The polls that I've seen showed something like 30% wanted independence before the election and now it's in the high 30% to mid 40%[1]. The polls could of course be wrong, but if they're any indication it seems as though it is
45.
by jack_h 1y ago
This isn’t a lazy argument at all. It’s based off of millennia of humans questioning the proper role of government and their failure modes. The US in specific took a lot of inspiration from people such as Polybius and John Locke. It’s not t
46.
by jack_h 1y ago
One of the primary reasons I quit using reddit was because of the ideological dog piling that turned so many communities into insular echo chambers. I know you’re just quoting the rules, but I’m noticing the same process happening here. It
47.
by jack_h 1y ago
Thanks for tracking it down. It looks like my browser fails when searching large PDFs. It would still be nice if journalists provided links, sections, etc.
48.
by jack_h 1y ago
It would be handy if they could actually quote the text of the bill and maybe link to a specific version rather than making assertions. I have multiple versions of the bill up in front of me and "contempt" and a few related search
49.
by jack_h 1y ago
Tax rates aren't everything as those affect the size of the economy. Since the end of WW2 the federal government has received ~17.5% of GDP in taxes[1] (+/- ~2.5%). You can decrease effective tax rates, end up with a larger econom
50.
by jack_h 1y ago
The Social Security surplus is used to fund general government operations and the Social Security Administration gets an IOU (Treasury security) in return. So it's still money the government didn't have before that it uses to fund
51.
by jack_h 1y ago
> you can probably pull debt out of any kind of relationship if you squint right. No, this is pretty explicit. To rephrase what the GAO said when the Social Security Administration takes in more than it sends out it invests the differenc
52.
by jack_h 1y ago
It does have an impact on intergovernmental debt. Here's a good explanation from GAO[1]: > Intragovernmental debt holdings represent federal debt owed by Treasury to federal government accounts—primarily federal trust funds such as
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by jack_h 1y ago
> Any argument you can do one and not the other is insane. Challenge accepted :). The argument for lowering spending and lowering taxes is that the size of the economy and the tax base are inherently tied to tax rates and economic growth
54.
by jack_h 1y ago
> In point of fact outstanding debt as a fraction of GDP isn't even all that large, historically; it was much higher in the 80's and literally every one of those bonds is now paid off! This[1] shows in the 80s the total debt to
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by jack_h 1y ago
Relationships change over the course of a century. The 2% GDP defense spending agreement came about during the Riga summit in 2006. So the objective did change twenty years ago and many member nations never abided by that agreement; much
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by jack_h 1y ago
> c.f. shouting "fire" in a crowded cinema In the US this example derives from Justice Holmes dicta in Schenck v. US: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a thea
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by jack_h 1y ago
> I guess I find this so amusing because leftists love to fetishize European healthcare without understanding in European countries the government is much more aggressive about denying care than any US insurer. They actually have to keep
58.
by jack_h 1y ago
> And like the vacuous market theory that claims "market competition solves all problems" I'm not aware of any market theory that makes such a claim. Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" as referenced a
59.
by jack_h 1y ago
> And the method by which autocrats and fascists destroy democracy is make people believe, that when a party loses and it's being replaced by another party, that the ruling "elite" isn't really replaced. I think this
60.
by jack_h 1y ago
Then what is the definition of a monopoly? It doesn’t appear to be the same definition as “the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.” Do they exclusively control all ad inventory? Do they contr

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