pashamur

8 ms·

31.
by pashamur 6y ago
Yes, but as a counterpoint that was due to offshoring of the domestic manufacturing base which was due to the setup of the international monetary system in 1971/1974 as well as a whole slew of policy decisions which made labor-intensiv
32.
by pashamur 6y ago
> Suppressing their views doesn't change their beliefs either. It only increases their feeling of being oppressed. Consider why every dictator strives to have complete control over the media, and you'll see that suppressing vie
33.
by pashamur 6y ago
> If it's a marketplace of ideas, the current situation is equivalent to monopolies stamping on startups to prevent them from ever becoming competitors. An actual marketplace of ideas would work without censorship in the first place
34.
by pashamur 6y ago
This is actually demonstrably false - people have successfully been reintegrated into "normal" thinking by removing corrosive media influences. The key distinction is between people who seek out certain content and people who stum
35.
by pashamur 6y ago
"What I found is that approximately 18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism, according to their answers to four simple survey questions used by social scientists to estimate this disposition. A further 23 percen
36.
by pashamur 6y ago
You're giving the president here way more leeway than is necessary. The leave in peace video clearly had a subtext (he mentioned the election being stolen no less than 3 times in the video) and was not aimed at subduing the crowd at al
37.
by pashamur 6y ago
> The big foundational lie is that there are no biological differences. This is demonstrably false, but you will not see it, or any of it's many corollaries censored. People right of center tend to overestimate how much biological d
38.
by pashamur 6y ago
In theory, yes, but similar amounts of inflows to bitcoin/gold will result in different performances since the market cap of bitcoin is so much smaller (supposedly the circulating supply is ~4 million bitcoin, so functionally ~120 bill
39.
by pashamur 6y ago
> There is a cautious tale of moving to a red state: If enough blue state people move to a red state, they may bring the policies that destroyed the previous state with them. By all accounts blue states are doing just fine: https:/
40.
by pashamur 6y ago
No, this is a bullshit argument. It's the same as telling people who want to fight global warming to buy recyclable containers (when we know that most of the damage comes from companies and not individuals) or telling people who are co
41.
by pashamur 6y ago
Other countries can have that expectation, but they can't enforce it - that's the main difference. The US can.
42.
by pashamur 6y ago
The U.S. has the world's police force, if they wanted to find you, they could. And for renunciation of citizenship, there's a one time liquidation tax where you pay taxes on all of your gains (so Bezos would have to pay a flat ~20
43.
by pashamur 6y ago
The thing about this logic is it breaks down once you replace "workers" with robots (which companies of the future will).
44.
by pashamur 6y ago
Scalping disappears if supply matched demand (with perfect geographic efficiency). Buying from a scalper is strictly riskier than buying from a retailer (might not be able to return faulty equipment, etc). There might be exceptions for rare
45.
by pashamur 6y ago
It was indeed generous if you qualified and were able to access it (a lot of systems were down / not functioning super well early on - especially in states like Florida). That said, it ended in July and there were many people who slipp
46.
by pashamur 6y ago
> From an ethical viewpoint, this is incredibly wrong, as vaccines given to healthy people which cause problems later are very very dangerous. The first two phases are the safety tests, the third one is efficacy (so we knew the vaccine w
47.
by pashamur 6y ago
> At current rates that would happen 4 months from now; it's hard to see how that's not at least plausible. * Normalized by population though, you would be looking at today's equivalent of ~2.15 million deaths in the US fr
48.
by pashamur 6y ago
Yeah, it was an aha moment for me when I understood the reason for the cap gains / normal tax difference. It makes sense that it's an attempt to index for inflation, although strange that there is only one cutoff (securities held
49.
by pashamur 6y ago
There's large variance there depending on demographic factors & income quintiles. Life expectancy is going up for some, while down for others: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44846.pdf "Their most
50.
by pashamur 6y ago
> Inflation is actually really high, but its mostly hidden in rising prices for stocks and real estate. Sort of. There's inflationary forces (fiscal / stimulatory policy) battling deflationary forces (mainly technological innov
51.
by pashamur 6y ago
Generally, the only way to make outsized returns in the market is to go against market expectations, otherwise you would just make market returns. So yes, a bet on crypto is a bet against the market consensus, sort of by definition :)
52.
by pashamur 6y ago
That depends on how good you are at finding needles :) The thing not many people seem to talk about is that the 20th century had unprecedented growth in terms of population around the world (which has slowed significantly in the last few de
53.
by pashamur 6y ago
Technically, everyone in the U.S. was an investor in gold up until 1971 since USD was supposedly backed 1-1 by gold :)
54.
by pashamur 6y ago
*with the caveat that those very few areas also hold a large percentage of the population, since land prices are correlated with population density and zoning regulations (i.e. see Hong Kong for ex.) One thing to not forget is the amount of
55.
by pashamur 6y ago
That's also ignoring the cost of capital, as leveraging risk adjusted returns has to take that into account. You don't get the same rate of return if you use margin, say, in order to leverage. If you use a 3x or other leveraged fu
56.
by pashamur 6y ago
Even domain names follow the same pattern - in the last decade there has been a huge number of new domain extensions that have been approved for use; if you go to namecheap these days you have hundreds of options for your personal site. Yet
57.
by pashamur 6y ago
Holding stocks is also a hedge on the USD, not unlike bitcoin. Perhaps the market is expecting more money printing.
58.
by pashamur 6y ago
Generally house prices are a ~somewhat decent proxy for asset inflation which is driven by monetary policy; I believe the low rates have definitely driven inflation in housing prices (and the gamma squeeze argument above does not apply to t
59.
by pashamur 6y ago
Well, the other party had four years in power (and previously many years as the opposition) to propose a viable alternative plan; however, that proposal is nowhere to be found. There were some small things like price transparency and attemp
60.
by pashamur 6y ago
Obligatory Paul Graham article about that period, since we are on HN: http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html

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