277 karma · joined June 14, 2018
Hard to say what’s worthless or not - jobs change all the time. Few if anyone would study something like Latin or philosophy if money were an incentive.
Also the idea of human knowledge being locked away for only those who can afford it seems cruel to me
Edit: added ‘median’ for the ctrl-f keyboard warrior
The crux of the issue taleb has with silver is showing probabilities without making a decision/declaration is cowardly. When asked about making a prediction he says one thing then follows it up with a “ but don’t be surprised if it could be completely random.” And that’s the point - the fact he covers his ass is the problem. Election forecasting is hard so don’t pretend you know something you don’t if you won’t stake something on your predictions. Oh so it could be anything and you don’t want to be held accountable? Then don’t say a damn thing. Basically Silver never wants to be held accountable for his models but always have uncertainty covering his ass as a cop out. so I’m With taleb on this one. Either silver makes a claim and sticks with it or don’t show probabilities and pretend he knows things
But I haven’t read the book so I could be talking out of my ass
The word Technology means 'the skill of crafting', but its become hijacked to mean anything with a microchip
That so few people can feed so many using such a small amount of land is a massive tech innovation
I wouldnt advocate for a return of BW - but the one core aspect of what it aimed to achieve, namely global stability, can I believe be achieved without the free option call on society you describe as essential for having globalised finance. Keynes' version of BW would have involved a central clearing house of sorts between countries that would nullify the negative effects of unbounded capital flows by using a common currency. I dont remember the exact details but the big wig at the IMF and the Chinese central bank seemed pretty pro this idea.
"And no, your understanding of the financial crisis is not correct. Ireland socialised losses during the GFC, before the Euro crisis..." Well no. The reason they socialised losses has nothing to do with some inherent requirement to make finance work but because the Euro is a dumb idea as it doesnt allow countries to run a deficit (unless youre Italy/France and too big to kick out) so the only solution to paying off debts is austerity. The reason they had to socialise losses was a faustian bargain also offered to the greeks - basically you socialise our private bank's losses (take out an additional loans) else we switch off your banks and you're dead. Only cutting spending in a downturn is stupid and only makes the debt/gdp ratio worse but first rule of politics is never let facts get in a way of a beautiful theory (austerity)
" the reason we came here is because there is no other choice. You cannot control speculative forces and have a productive economy, it is one or the other." - no. Thats a huge leap to make and has little to no evidence to support the claim. The reason lots of Euro countries socialised losses is not because its a universal law like gravity but due to political expedience. Fundamentally its just unfair to privatise profits and socialise losses.
Sorry I cant comment on the Danes! I'll have a read up
"First, the system was not safe...at all. There were pretty much constant financial crises through the 1960s."
I cant find any such systemic crashes that happened in the 60s. The 80s were a return to form following financial deregulation following the stagflation of the late 70s when monetary policy was shifted to technocrats in central banks where instead of following the maxim of full employment the shift went to price stability to reverse the effect of the capital strike going on. Even so what few blips there might have been seemed to have been well isolated enough that its ill effects werent globalised unlike today's hyper-connected financial sector.
"Trade and capital accounts were closed, even ones that were open had significant limitations." this part right here was the bit that made these risks relatively independent of one another. The BW agreement was far from perfect for reasons you mentioned however they did put a cap on free flow of capital unlike what we see today. (Central banks pumped how manh hundreds of billions of $ into the finacial sector with zero increase in inflation as predicted by traditional economics? We're at near 0 inflation and thats entirely down to money being able to funnel its way freely)
"It is impossible to distinguish between productive and speculative finance, " - Fair enough. My concern is who gets burned when it goes up in smoke. In our current environment of 'too big to fail too big to bail' the losses are put on the public balance sheet (Greek debt crisis most recently and I believe the president of the eurogroup basically held a gun to the Irish primeminister's head and forced them to socialise the losses of mostly german banks). So absolutely let them fail/succeed just make sure they do it with their own skin in the game and not others
(I guess we're both getting downvoted today huh)
Jokes - there's nothing wrong with a sensible financial sector but our current over-financialised world of financial speculation with the public being required to bail out financiers is dangerous and needs to be reigned. This to me is just another example of how useless a good chunk of modern finance is
I'd say there needs to be a distinction made between finance going towards funding productive activities and the rampant financial speculation largely divorced from underlying productivity which is where I see a good chunk of modern finance's efforts go towards. Its this latter 'dirty' side of finance I think we can do without - the 40 years post bretton woods period shows its perfectly possible to have a financial system that functions safely.
For large IR type transitions I agree it would have take a lot longer or possibly impossible to see such huge transitions without the power of collective investment. Indeed its no wonder vaclac smil called it the age of Synergy. The chinese may have been coal and natural gas as far back as 10th century but without all the pieces in place they only transitioned to majority coal use in the 20th century
Established insurers that dont start their own incentive program to keep these healthy lives are in for a very rough time as Vitality will spread like a cancer.
DAMMIT THEY WILL BE MADE TO READ THIS LINK
What's being discussed is forcible taking of white owned land 'just because' - there is no subtle point. That is the entire discussion.