No matter how researchers measure this, people on the left will always say they didn't do it properly. I'm personally satisfied that the work that has been done is "good enough" to establish reasonable baselines for many, and maybe most, countries.
1,092 karma · joined October 20, 2016
> Why would I changed?
Exactly.
The federal government has spent the time since 2009 lighting the furniture and the house on fire to support unsustainable increases in domestic standard of living by effectively mortgaging the future. The problem we have dwarfs anything that was happening during the Bush era.
Likely the difference between you and me is this: I'm 50 years old, already wealthy from tech, and planning to leave the US. You're probably still trying to earn your way. Sadly, I'm pretty sure we've pulled the ladder up, and folks like you are going to reap the whirlwind, as they say.
I've spent a lot of time with Duolingo learners. They're all pre-A1. You're just lying to yourself to make yourself think your phone addiction isn't "that bad." Take a real language class.
People who don't need a salary look at the situation more objectively and, in general, can see that a lot of white-collar work is in peril.
The problem is you have the vise of a stock-market decline on one side (something basically everyone thinks is impossible), and AI-induced unemployment on the other side (something a lot of commentators, including Zitron sometimes, seem to think won't happen). Those two things in tandem would be worse than 2009 by a multiple. I doubt the US government will be able to bail it out.
I think something similar is happening with e.g. Amodei's predictions of mass unemployment due to AI. It won't happen in the immediate term, because deficit spending removes the economic incentive for firms to pare down their workforces.
All that said, I don't think these people are "wrong," per se. They're just early. When the sh*t hits the fan on all this, it's going to be a big problem. And, for example, companies whose primary business is collecting money for Internet ads will come face to face with the reality of how low value their products are. I have some insight into this, as I work for such a firm, and I know the true extent of the bot traffic out there.
The reason no one else has lower launch costs is because no one else has a guaranteed customer willing to waste money on pointless rocket launches. SpaceX’s technology isn’t even particularly novel. If space nerds want Star Trek to actually come true, an actually novel propulsion system is needed, not just scaled up versions of the same thing that’s been done since 1957.
I am absolutely certain Musk has committed securities fraud, repeatedly. I hope that one day the US government returns to normal operations and he gets the Elizabeth Holmes treatment he deserves.
And this has nothing to do with DOGE and woke politics. That’s the one thing where I thought he was on the right side of things, more or less. The problem is straight-up low-interest-rate-enabled financial crime.
Even if we assume the numbers you're citing are right and this business is insanely profitable, won't this just invite competition? Or are you assuming the government will make SpaceX a monopoly, as it did for Tesla via neverending subsidies?
Starlink is almost certainly playing games with capex and depreciation to appear profitable when it is not. They're also using political patronage to get contracts from the government to do things that are probably worthless.