samsonradu

Actually 20-30hrs/week might be an overshoot. I'm surprised to see that for a lot of my friends teleworking means about 1h of work per day and an occasional meeting.

I think eventually it will be nation states that bring the endgame, on national security grounds, through regulation.

Looking mostly at the US here. It is highly unlikely the government will sit by and watch trillions of US capital flowing into a Chinese-controlled infrastructure, undermining their reserve currency status.

Also worth mentioning that the US has leverage over the entire world’s banking system, that is how they enforce sanctions. Cutting the link between crypto and major currencies would qualify as an endgame.

I share the same hunch.

I believe that in the very long run (many decades) the growing debt cripples the the government, hurting its productivity along with trust on its proper functioning. (Japan, Italy are around here)

Growing debt is not a good sign even for governments, unless the money goes fully into investments for the future. Many times though it goes into liabilities.

Eventually, currency gets hurt and global capital moves on, leading to its failure. There is always competition, other govs might be doing things a little better.

> the vast majority of the electricity being consumed for bitcoin mining is hydro in China

Side concern but isn’t this concentration a red flag? Likely many miners are in China or Russia due to the electricity prices. Can’t they collude to execute a 51% attack?

Why is it granted they would have gotten an EEA-like deal?

The 'resource curse' might have the causality wrong though in many circumstances.

Maybe those countries would find themselves in a similarly bad state (or worse) without those resources. Maybe their bad state is due to historical reasons - being former colonies with very little power on the world stage - and resources just couldn't help much.

> It's entirely possible (if not plausible: FB doesn't exactly have a good track record) for FB to just self-MitM the E2EE and see everything that passes through their servers.

Why would they even need to MitM in transit when they control the endpoints? They can just analyze the raw text locally (in the app) and extract valuable information.

Here’s another book of his on the topic - Putting Auction Theory to Work

http://www.econ.ucla.edu/riley/271/Milgrom-Putting%20Auction...

It’s not so odd, remember the Rocky Asap event: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-49122557

It doesn't help your point since the US State Dept would likely not host content that's in contradiction with the administration. I'm not saying it's staged of course, but there are chances a convenient opinion was presented.

Also, JP Morgan doesn't really count for expert. That's not because they don't know what they are doing but because their incentives are not aligned, they have a stock to defend.

The US State Dept?

I think it's quite early to say if it weathered the storm, there might be long-term consequences. Also not sure what to say about the experts calling a rally, specially when those 'experts' are politicians.

Still, working remotely hasn't been around for decades, is it all so straightforward? From an EU perspective I can assure you it's a deep mess.

People have a different, long-term relationship with the tax authorities because 'you're not going anywhere' and this makes it possible to settle at a later time. Also tax authorities take action in retrospect specially because things are difficult to prove on-the-spot, but Facebook will need to pay you next month and next year you might be working somewhere else. How will they be able avoid over/underpaying you?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/stranded-...

How can/will the employer check whether the stated location of its emloyees is correct?

This is indeed a complex categorisation. What really defines my location in relation to remote work? Since I’m not bound to one physical location anymore I can split my time between different places. I might move every 6 months, what then?

This is spot on. For all the praise of Belgian welfare I believe there is a 'dark' side to it. It is not doing well in motivating people to perform and there is a lot of systemic slack and abuse, like people claiming they're sick for a ridiculous amount of time every year.

*Note that firing an employee for not performing is quite difficult and the tax bracket at the top is outrageously high.

Indeed, looking at the bigger picture I can't help seeing the absurdity of it. For all the praising of Tesla cars, which might very well be founded, it's just a freaking car in a market where demand fell off a cliff.

I'm also a bit suspicious (apolitically) about the current administration's 'attention' to the stock market. It's uncommon to see presidents tweeting all-time highs every week and it wouldn't surprise me if in a few years from now we found out some shady propping up had been going on.

Just because everyone dumps their savings in the stock market doesn't make it any more functional. I think it's obvious by now, considering the actions of the Fed, that the market is propped-up. The debate is actually whether this action is good to the broad economy. A pro argument would sound much like yours - because many people's life savings went into 401k it would be a disaster to let it fall (read be accurately priced). The cons is that this disproportionately helps the upper echelons of society, further increasing inequality - main street gets mostly decimated.

There was a good analogy I read some days ago by someone on HN:

> Equity markets are not supposed to be so timid that they hide behind the skirts of grandma and cling to grandpa's legs. The picture is more like they're holding a gun to your grandparents' heads.

So basically protecting your life savings is now entirely correlated with speculators winning big. This wouldn't be a problem if we'd all be winning and the pie was large enough for everyone but it definitely is not and it's going in the wrong direction.

Thanks for pointing out the big elefant in the room.

It looks like this is the ‘new normal’ though. Pushing people to take on debt as it’s almost interest-free and you might even get help from the government paying it back, all to double up on past mistakes and sustain the current asset valuations.

Mostly because interest rates went from 1.75-2% to 0.25% and the FED balance sheet increased by 6T as we speak.

Thank you for the link. We mostly have debit cards in this part of the world. It’s hard for me to understand laying any interest for consumption goods purchases.

It is still not fully clear when does the settlement happen? At the end of each month, with a ~1.5% interest applied on the negative balance?

> It's also bullshit to call financial aid from the government, that's needed because of government action, a bail out.

No it’s not bullshit and it’s because of a pandemic mostly, very little because of government action. The government will make it legal again soon to open your business but many will still need aid for time to come because there will be less demand.

Will we be subsidising empty restaurants, hotels and airplanes for an entire year or more because it is not ‘their fault’?

You're very right, being locked down is unhealthy. But isn't the US in an 'advised' lockdown state only? Why not go out (alone) and exercise?

Currently in Brussels, where things look quite bad statistically speaking. However, parks are full of people running/exercising/stretching and even walking just to enjoy the sun.

But when exactly do these get applied? If you can’t settle at the end of a month you go into the next one with 115% of the debt?

Can someone summarize the average interest-rates banks charge for credit-card debt?

I heard some wild numbers a few months ago but they might be outdated.

> This type of "debt" is fundamentally different from private sector debt or other ordinary forms of debt.

It depends. If you are Lebanon and borrowing USD it’s pretty much like a corporate debt and future generations are paying it back.

However, if you can print the world’s reserve currency while borrowing in it at the same time then there are different terms.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Europe is comprised of sovereign states which can and actually have closed their borders. From my understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong, this would be a legal and political nightmare in the US right?

Edit: not endorsing parent comment

I understand your point but it feels like it's not addressing the actual issue: Why did the elderly put their life savings into the S&P 500? And why does everybody encourage pumping all your life savings into stocks?

A possible answer is that people still believe risk-free 5%+ YoY returns is perfectly normal because of purely historical reasons and disregarding the current economic realities (growth rates) of the world. Considering the current demographics in many developed economies it's just not going to happen! How about bailing out their pensions instead of the companies?

Unfortunately, I’d argue the contrary. Housing prices will further decouple from the economical reality and become a safe-heaven like asset that protects wealth from inflation.