wbsss4412

It’s not the same thing, if you only care about these issues when they are related to Americas enemies (eg China, Iran, etc), then you are inconsistent.

I don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point.

My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.

It is not mostly capitalist.

A system with the property rights that exist in China is a long cry from any reasonable definition of capitalism.

Shift to markets, stringent capital controls, consolidation of massive state owned enterprises, encouragement of joint ventures between Chinese companies, western companies, and the government, lack of stringent IP laws/rights.

Some of the above is “capitalistic” and some of it is not. Commentators have been predicting China would continue to shift towards becoming more capitalist or fail for decades and they’ve been continuously proven wrong. China has developed a completely different model of development from the western consensus, but people still want to have their cake and eat it too.

Western FDI has definitely played a major role in China’s growth, yes.

Note that my comment doesn’t call that into question though, only that the conversation around chinas success is almost always grossly oversimplified to suit ideological agendas.

They are indeed.

It is quite clear, however, that most analyses of their economic successes don’t add that nuance and come to the predetermined conclusion that I outlined above: the success is due completely to adopting western capitalism, and the negatives are due to the elements that don’t fit that mold.

China is dominated by state owned enterprises and many of the private investment is in joint ventures with local governmental authorities.

People like to gloss over the more complex reality that is Chinas actual economic structure when it benefits their personal ideological agenda.

The China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a communist country when they want to discuss their faults.

There are plenty of people who are extremely selective with regards to their outrage on each issue, though.

It’s called not being able to pay rent.

Are a disproportionate number of those people suffering from addiction and or mental health issues? Yes. But make no mistake, the gap between people apartment shopping and people living on the street is frighteningly small in a housing market as expensive as SF.

The west has always been at the forefront of building/creating social credit.

My understanding is that inflation is based on the monthly payment number, not on the sticker price of the house (though I’m not all that confident in that assertion). It’s meant to reflect actual consumer spending baskets.

Allow for a 3% down payment, but add in a requirement for PMI until you’ve hit a sufficient amount of equity, raising the cost of the front end of the loan.

> Housing is another red herring, of course, because the average new American home is 2x bigger now than it was in the 70s. Roughly speaking 1 square foot of the average home costs exactly the same as it used to in the 1970s. [1] And the average family has become smaller. So yes, housing is more expensive in big cities but that's because of zoning as Mr. Andreessen will tell you.

Just because houses have gotten bigger and families have gotten smaller, doesn’t mean you can buy an average 1970s house in major cities for the same inflation adjusted price. A lot of those old homes are either gone, extremely expensive, or situated in different metro areas than younger generations live in today.

My experience having worked in several different jobs across several sectors, both in the public and private sector: email is still used heavily internally and it is the default for most people.

The formality of email has decreased over the years, though there’s still that odd expectation of salutations when writing emails. However, email has been around for most office workers entire working careers, and people don’t give up old habits easily. As is often said, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Another thing to note: many of the people I work with can’t even be reliably reached on something like teams. There’s no expectation that it must be monitored, but they are always reachable by email.

I’m not sure when, but as someone who is in their early 30s, what you’ve described is all I’ve ever experienced.

It seems that it likely started to change post 2008 due to the persistently high unemployment and the shift to online applications leading to much larger volumes of applicants for every open position. Now, despite the much tighter labor market, a generation hr employees have entrenched that same culture and people seem confused as to why it’s so “difficult” to hire.

They stopped printing money last year and have been actively contracting the money supply for several months.

RE: your example, what exactly does that example have to do with the federal government? The guy threatened to sue, those laws apply the same in the private sector.

I’ve personally never witnessed this, and I’ve worked in government and know people who work in government in other contexts, and I haven’t ever heard of an actual anecdote to that effect either.

I’m sure it exists, but the meme seems overblown. From what I’ve seen, government is more frugal than the private sector day to day, the main difference is that the government ends up supporting unprofitable programs and has additional burdensome regulations that drive up costs (eg buy American)

Are those margins only on their broadband business? Comcast has other ventures as well.

That’s why it’s important to help people understand that’s it’s not about eliminating cars entirely, but about substituting significant numbers of trips.

The YouTube channel NotJustBikes has gained a lot of notoriety over the last couple of years, and he made an interesting point that driving is more pleasant in Amsterdam. [0]

The issue is mainly car dependency not cars per se.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k

> When Congress approves an increase of the debt, I presume it's actually allowing the issuing of more treasury bonds, is that correct?

Congress approves budgets, and when the budget has a deficit it implicitly requires the issuance of debt to cover its expenses. There technically exists a “debt ceiling” by law that they created at some point in the past (I’m not familiar with the exact history) but it’s not there as a requirement and has always been raised when the debt has hit the pre existing limit.

> Does the FED have any hard/legal limit to its "printing"? Can it just print and buy stuff like mortgage-backed securities out of the blue? Or does it always require Congress approval, for example, as the executive branch needs to issue debt?

So, to start, the executive doesn’t require congressional approval to issue debt exactly, it’s more so that it’s acting on congresses allocated budget.

The fed doesn’t have any limit in place as of not in money printing, but it is supposed to follow its mandates set by congress: maintaining low unemployment and price stability. It has been granted it’s power by congress, so congress does have the power to change this at any time, but it is generally recognized that “central bank independence” is a good thing, because it’s too tempting for politicians to print their way out of budgetary deficits.

What sucks about the iPhone mini?

1. I never said it was unfounded.

2. I’m unaware of an instance where huawei was used to attack the US.

1. The fed makes loans to member banks, this money isn’t backed by deposits like it would be at a traditional bank. The fed “raising rates” refers to the interest it charges on these loans.

2. The fed makes asset purchases on the open market. Of late, these have been two types of assets: US treasuries, and mortgage backed securities. It pays for these with cash and adds them to the balance sheet, said cash was “printed”. The fed is currently in the process of selling (some of) these assets back onto the market and “destroying” said cash.

All of that is represented as the “M1” money supply. M1 is dwarfed by the M2 supply, which is made up of the M1 supply as well as the money created when banks make loans backed by their own balance sheets.

What’s hard to accept about it?

The US has existed in a state of national security paranoia for a long time.

That’s because it largely is sinophobia (or more reasonably on the American side, blind nationalism).

That said, I would caution against the temptation to “grade on a curve” here. While it’s true what you said, that there’s no direct evidence of spying, the case of proven US spying should demonstrate that government are more likely to be spying and hiding it than not.

The gap between the actual theories and the popular conception is what I’m commenting on.

Note that these theories are actually generally descriptive, no one wholesale invented capitalism. For the entirety of human history we have had systems based on a combination of markets, status, family lineage, etc. this applies both to the past and to today.

What I’m taking issue with is the degree to which all of that is glossed over and people assume that the market will evolve naturally if left unspoiled/untouched.

Your compensation is determined by your power within an organization, not your contribution to it.

What blows my mind is the degree to which people believe that perfect competition exists everywhere and “the market” will fix all inefficiencies.

Edit: I want to make clear that I am not denigrating the value of markets, I’m only looking to point out the idealization that exists in many people’s minds, especially as I have encountered on this exact forum.

> all just 'me too' products levelling the ego system

Apple created what was pretty much the first real platform for selling music online with iTunes. You could call Apple Music a “me too” move, but they really pivoted an existing business that had been threatened with disruption.