139 karma · joined February 1, 2018
Ellison's warning came during an hour-long Q&A at an Oracle financial analyst meeting in September 2024.
I don't really know how you can account for quality either. User surveys? Ingredient sourcing? But then again I think this kind of reporting is just a general barometer. Some other comments are pointing to data sources that might do more of this.
To account for possible changes in package sizes, we focused on the price per unit, whether it was an ounce of salsa or a square foot of aluminum foil.
Finding a purpose outside of work seems like the main issue most people struggle with when doing FIRE. Once you get going, the saving is automatic and addictive to some, but figuring out what to do with your life to give it meaning outside of a traditional work context is not just an issue with FIRE.
China has been building nuclear successfully and worked out the kinks. The US basically paused all production and was trying to start over. You can't seriously blame it all on bureaucracy, when a lot of what was lost is institutional knowledge. Kind of like how your "burn it all down" approach would work for academia.
Despite how things could be structured better, in medicine and science we are making progress. Maybe we could do better, but I certainly think we could be doing much worse.