3,957 karma · joined January 11, 2009
A key part of the problem is that society often propogates such sweeping generalizations to children, reinforcing existing biases based on stereotypes rather than individual merit. This is part of what diversity policies are intended to address.
I think you need to take a while and consider why you believe that statement is true, and how it might be impacting the rest of your view on this topic.
Have you contemplated that you might be in the wrong here, and that your approach on this topic is very, very heavily based on your first person view?
It's extremely hard to control for the success of corporations vs. any single factor, much less "gender balance". For example, more male-founded startups get funded - but it's been shown that's in large part because they're male (not to mention their investors usually are), not because of any inherent merit of their business. Similarly, consumer startups often have an easier time getting funded because they're easier for partners to explain the rest of their firm, but it doesn't actually mean they're better investments than an niche enterprise play that's harder to explain to a layman.
More starts = more exits, more role models => more male founders and more all-male startups. Nothing in that cycle actually proves that that men are better at founding or running tech startups, and say "show me the data" is a poor response, given that we don't have an alternate universe where there's no gender bias feeding into those patterns.
Additionally, the less money you make, the worse coverage you probably can afford, leaving you even more exposed.
You're absolutely right that it's insane that Americans talk about this as if it's just the only way things could work.
My point was that other traditional "store of values" have inherent value based on their utility per amount, which means that the finite supply has implications for people who want to use it. Bitcoin doesn't have that - it's purely useful in terms of what you can trade it for (much like a dollar.) Hence the fact that there's only so many "units" is kind of uninteresting, because a fractional unit is no less useful.
There are some elements of behavior economics that counter this - people like to buy lower-priced coins and stocks because they get "more" of them, from a unit perspective. But rationally, there's no reason to consider 1 BTC @ $10 any different from 0.1 BTC @ $100, hence the number of "units" seems potentially irrelevant.
The nature of a hedge, in particular, is that you do it before a market downturn, not after. Once the market has dropped, you want to unwind that hedge, which in the case of gold or Bitcoin means selling. If you look at gold's performance during recessions since we unlinked it from the dollar, it's as likely to decline as rise. That makes it a poor hedge against recession.
In terms of supply and demand, it's true that supply is constrained, but that's only half the equation. Demand is extremely volatile, as there's no inherent "consumption" of crypto currencies (aside from lost wallets and other breakage), not is there any production occuring that requires btc to continue. The demand is entirely composed of people buying it with the expectation of a future sale at a higher price... that's speculative demand, and it's not a stable or dependable type of demand.
* why would it have an inverse relationship with other assets? It's not a short. It's still valued based on purchase price vs sale price, adjusted for risk. If risk has risen and nothing has changed about purchase or sale price, why would it rise?
* if Bitcoin was at a market-clearing price before a downturn, and other assets are now much cheaper, why would BTC then be comparatively more attractive in terms of expected investment returns?
(And you see this kind of rebalancing effect in general when a major asset class declines - eventually it pulls down other, unrelated asset types because as it goes down in price, it becomes a relatively more attractive investment.)
Objects in the real world have utility that's directly linked to their unit value. That's not necessarily true for Bitcoin... if it goes up 10X, I can just use 1/10 as much and get the same exact transaction result. So why is it "limited" from a supply/demand perspective?
Fraud: I steal someone's credit card and use it to buy crypto, then move that currency somewhere unrecoverable. The card company is unable to recover anything. (This can be mitigated by recovering from the exchange in some cases.)
Fraudulent conveyance: Holder maxes out all their credit cards buying crypto, hides it, then claims bankruptcy. Card companies can't recover anything. (Yes, you could do this with something like gold, but it would be a lot harder to hide and sell later on.)
I commuted in SF for a year, and I'd guess 75% of cars don't know why the bike lane starts getting dashed before an intersection.
The exercise benefits of both are... questionable. Even just cycling as a commuter on a regular bike isn't very intense exercise, and on an ebike it just seems like you're pretending to pedal. I can't imagine it has much health benefit aside from being better than sitting in a car.
Re filtering, is that technically against the rules? It's a single lane at that point, but in CA it's legal to share the lane if there's room. Seems like a cyclist or motorbike has the right to lanesplit and move up.
(Subaru's doesn't do active lanekeeping, but lots of other manufacturers like BMW and Ford do.)
The newer cruise controls have lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control - you don't have to actively steer or brake. On an open road, there's effectively little difference from the Uber vehicle, which would also let you disengage autonomous mode by breaking or otherwise interacting with the controls. (The newest mass-market cruise controls are "stop and go", which means they'll even bring the car to a full stop, then start driving again.)
This has been a not-minor problem for autonomous cars and the Tesla-style autopilots / adaptive cruise controls that depend on vision only. You have to program it to ignore some types of things that seem like they might be an obstruction, such as road signs, debris in the road, etc. so they don't hit the brakes unnecessarily.
There's a calculation here of balancing the perceived risk of an obstruction with the consequences of avoiding it or braking in time. Drivers have to make this decision all the time, on a highway they will generally assume it's safer to hit most things than swerve or panic brake, because it's mostly likely not that dangerous to collide with.
At least one stat I saw from AAA is that ~40% of the deaths from road debris result from drivers swerving to avoid them.
(Contrast that with say, auto manufacturers, who would maybe bring in some managers when opening a plant but would also employ tens of thousands of locals, raising the incomes of the existing resident more than bringing in new transplants.)
Where do the restaurants, and arts, and culture they need come from? Who works at those institutions, and how do they afford to live in that city? (Or do they commute from somewhere else?) How do you fund the international airport that's going to be a must-have?
I think it's possible, but I'm unclear how it would actually lead to a low cost of living. It sounds like most company towns - sprawling, lacking the kind of culture that people want from a city... reminds me of Plano, TX, where JC Penny moved in the 80s, or Bentonville, AR, or Sidney, NE (where Cabela's is HQed).
Companies would have a really hard time hiring highly-educated, high demand workers to move there vs being able to live in say, NYC, London or SF. It's not enough to just offer cheap housing - you have to offer a high quality of life, plus jobs for spouses, and good schools for their kids.