sbenitoj

20 ms·

151.
by sbenitoj 9y ago
TIPS and JGBIs are nothing but derivatives of un-sound money (fiat currency controlled by a small group of people, enforced by coercion), not examples of sound money people can choose as an alternative to fiat currency. The gold standard yo
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Central banks have (without evidence) claimed that deflation is a universally “bad thing” in order to justify inflating the currency every single year (AKA stealing from savers, and transferring wealth to the people who are the earliest rec
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
It genuinely blows my mind that some of the top comments are pro-socialized medicine. This is a forum populated primarily by hackers and people interested in starting or working at start-ups -- should we also have a single payer of all hack
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
I applaud what these guys are doing, there are definitely serious flaws with the current credit markets driven by government regulation, but I’d like to draw attention to one aspect of the post: “In countries rich and poor, access to credit
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Introducing Bloom: The Future of Credit(blog.hellobloom.io)
2 points by sbenitoj 9y ago|1 comments
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
He means he has coinmarketcap.com AND coincap.io opened in two different tabs at all times to ensure he never misses a price move.
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Should you work on accepting your body, or building a body you can accept?(medium.com)
1 points by sbenitoj 9y ago|0 comments
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Even if you personally believe building large buildings permanently disfigures it, the fact that people are willing to pay for and live in such buildings shows that people still value such "permanently disfigured" cities. Why shou
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
What solution do you believe will to lower housing prices in Berlin that isn't decreasing demand or increasing supply? Regarding rent controlled apartments, you're correct that only about 1% are rent controlled, I should've b
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Ha, you're right that making the city less appealing would also fix the "problem" (lower prices), and I almost included that in my post because strictly speaking it's true...but honestly I didn't want to give politi
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
It's also interesting that people genuinely believe this is going to solve the problem rather than exacerbate it. There is nothing any politician can do to change the laws of supply and demand. If this district in Berlin is in high dem
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Technically correct, but my point is that these costs are frequently ignored and in order to make home ownership more profitable than renting these costs must be amortized over a very long period of time.
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Rent is NOT throwing money away, it is HIGHLY dependent on where you're living. There are MANY sunk one-time costs you have to pay when buying a home, including: --realtor commission (averages 6% of home price, or approximately 1.5 yea
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Ha, well in non-major cities you're right, but all the major cities cost an arm and a leg for the most part!
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
You also have to factor in the opportunity cost of what you could've done with that down payment (e.g. What would a $100k downpayment invested for 30 years in the stock market be worth vs how much is that worth in your home in 30 years
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
This is an awesome site, visually depicting how unaffordable housing has become in so many parts of the US. It's truly amazing how much the Fed (with perpetually low interest rates) and local restrictions on building (making it more ex
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Because property rights are inextricably linked with human rights -- if you believe in human rights, you also have to believe in property rights. You can't have one without the other, this short essay does a good job of explaining why
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Because I believe in private property -- the right to do as you please with your own property to the extent you are not violating someone else's person or property. Government taxation, by definition, is a violation of private property
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Wow.
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Well, I'm not intentionally dodging, so feel free to call out what you think I'm dodging. You say "most people are raised to know that paying taxes is right. So taxes aren't coercive right?" I agree that most people
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
This was your original comment in this thread: "There is such a thing as objective value. Stocks have objective value because they pay dividends. Real estate in warm climates has objective value because it's pleasant to be in a wa
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
You're saying Amazon is growing faster than Ford, but they're not growing faster in terms of profitability (even if people perceive that Amazon will be more profitable in the future). Yes Amazon revenue is growing faster than Ford
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Fair point! The broader point I'm trying to make is that violence (or the threat of violence) is wrong in all cases except self-defense (including the protection of private property).
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Not sure that follows from my definition of coercion. Certainly coercion is a deterrent to theft, but most people don't steal because they're socialized when they grow up to believe that stealing is wrong.
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
I fundamentally disagree with the use of all forms of coercion unless its in self-defense.
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Coercion: The use of physical force or the threat of physical force in as a mean to get someone to comply with your wishes. Continuing to run with this example -- if you are the owner of a pack of water that you typically sell for $10, and
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Well, all prices are still determined by the intersection of supply and demand. I'm not saying that the objective features are IRRELEVANT to a consumer's purchase decision, obviously they're not, but ultimately each person va
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Correct, but it's people's perception of value that ultimately drives the current stock price. Take Amazon as an example, in 2016 its net income was $2.4 billion, yet it currently trades at a total market capitalization (the value
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
It won't let me respond to your comment below ("Alright, well I'm sorry about your property but I'm still gonna ask you to go to those bad areas and ask them which is more violent, price-gouged water or government assist
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by sbenitoj 9y ago
Please define coercion.

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