> Dogecoin branded as Ponzi by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneaopolis.
Important to note that this is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (misspelled in the article), not the Chair of the Federal Reserve, who leads what we generally think of as the "fed."
While true this is rather important in the finance world. Firstly, that one of the 12 regional reserves would call it thus, is something. Secondly, Kashkari (sidebar: best name ever for a banker) is considered the most soundly minded amongst those bankers, and incredibly well respected - even in these circles. If Kashkari is branding it thus, it means there's something to watch here.
I think the point is that if you want to name the office in four words without being misleading, you should go with something like "Minneapolis Federal Reserve President", not just "Federal Reserve Bank President". I'm familiar with the FRB structure and I did not pick up on that "president" was used and not "chair".
It seems to me that: the title they used is accurate, and if you want them to clarify it in order to diminish the reader's perception of the amount of power someone in that position has over policy, the issue is not with the article, but with your underestimation of how much influence and power Federal Reserve Presidents have.
It's fair to point out because people not in finance colloquially think of "bank president" as leader, not as "not leader, and not even actual president of the whole bank."
As for the influence of a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president, it's complicated. They're appointed by the board of directors of the Minneapolis Fed, and the directors are elected by the member banks — it's not a top-down process. To give perspective on size, the Minneapolis Fed has around $40 billion in assets, compared to the Fed's total of $8 trillion.
There's way more that also matters, but the Minneapolis Fed's president is nowhere near Jerome Powell in influence.
I don’t need to be a federal reserve chairman to reason that Doge is a Ponzi scheme. The problem is that people want to participate in Ponzis, for the most part, it turns out.
Crypto currencies today are basically all decentralized Ponzi schemes inflated in value by the very centralized tether that is is printing something like $4Bn a week of new tether with no US dollar currency known to be backing it: https://youtu.be/-whuXHSL1Pg
I noticed that too, but I don't think it really matters.
Even if Jerome Powell came out every day just to say "Fuck Doge, it's a scam", the response from crypto enthusiasts would be "That's exactly what you would say"
While the conclusion that "Doge pumping is a scam" is very likely correct, the sentiment that an adversary can't give an unbiased opinion is also correct. I'd value the opinion of an expert with no skin in the game more.
Alternatively, Kashkari's comments could be given more weight if he were willing to short Doge over a long-ish (~2 year) timeframe. Then he would stand to lose money if Doge held its value for longer than that timeframe (which would indicate that it has more value than he's stating that it has).
It's all about the fact that there's a not insignificant number of people who won't regard his comments at all due to his position. In fact will assume that he's being intentionally harmful due to his position.
Also, how do we measure "skin in the game" with crypto.
Is holding Doge skin in the game? What about crypto in general? What about currency? If the most fantastic promises of crypto come to pass, it'll replace fiat currency. So the success of crypto kind of comes at the expense of fiat. So by holding fiat, we could consider that skin in the game on some level.
>So by holding fiat, we could consider that skin in the game on some level.
Also yes. However, the leader of the fed is, for all intents and purposes, king fiat. There is no person with more interest in maintaining the current system than someone in charge of the fed.
> There is no person with more interest in maintaining the current system than someone in charge of the fed.
Sure there is; Fed Chair is a job, not an investment, and its a job taken by people who are politically well connected and likely to get other jobs, should they want them, based on those connections.
There lots of people who have proportionately more to lose from problems in fiat than the fed chair.
As someone quite into fashion (and worked in the space before), this is a very astute comment!
Fashion trends in the past few years have often progressed increasingly into a level of irony. It's become about what level of craziness/funkiness you can pull off while making it look intentional and attractive.
This includes hairstyles like dying your hair platinum blonde or purple and buzz-cutting it, or wearing loud, maximalist patterns, or even ironically wearing defunct fashion brands or cultural symbols opposite of your everyday life, like the popularity of Bass Pro Shops hats. The comeback of 'dad sneakers' and 'mom jeans,' while even retaining those monikers but in a positive way, are other good examples.
> Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery.
The way it currently works is what you describe here. Amazon pays the least they can for the most amount of work, and workers work the least they can for the most amount of pay. They meet at the equilibrium where Amazon receives adequate labor, and the workers receive adequate pay.
There's nothing radical or communistic about that idea.
Where "the equilibrium" ends up changes over time though. Over the past 40-50 years in most developed countries, capital's (i.e. businesses') share of gross national income has been rising and labor's has been falling. This means that on average "the middle" has been trending towards companies paying less for the same amount of labor.
This is true, and it wouldn't suggest anything is amiss.
In the US for example, there's a lot of factors in increasing labor supply: (1) From 1955 to today, women have gone from 36% labor force participation to 59%. (2) The percent of immigrants in the US in the 1950s to 1970s was less than 50% of what it is today.
When the labor supply grows, it'll push downward on wages as the equilibrium price shifts.
America's a country designed to be optimized for freedom, which includes women having the ability to participate in equal numbers to men in the workforce if desired, and immigrants having the ability to come and build their lives here if desired. That will lower wages, which is just one part of the picture in terms of economics and policy.
This isn't actually true because the growth of Gross National Income is proportional to the size of the working population. I'm also not talking about wages in absolute terms, I'm talking about the wage share (the percentage of GNI which goes to wages, as opposed to capital). Definitionally, the wage share has been declining since the 1970s because rates of growth have been slowing, which increases the capital/income ratio and (assuming return rates on capital remain relatively constant) will increase the capital share of income (and thus decrease the wage share). I'm not necessarily claiming to know what the correct value should be for the wage share, only that it's significantly lower than it used to be (and will probably continue to decline for the forseeable future). That being said, the wage share is obviously closely tied to inequality; if you reduced returns on capital and/or increased growth, you'd likely also increase the wage share.
There's an old quote: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."
Large companies tend to be more risk-averse, so if there are two companies you can use for a service — $PromisingStartup and IBM — large companies will generally make a decision that's optimal to the specific decision-maker, not optimal to the company.
There are two options if you, as the buyer, choose either $PromisingStartup or IBM: success or failure.
If IBM or the $PromisingStartup succeed, then you've done your job.
If IBM fails, you can tell your manager "Who could've guessed! It's IBM!"
If $PromisingStartup fails, you'll have a harder time explaining your decision, and the fault will be with you.
The "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" idea is useful to look at every decision large companies make, whether it's pivoting, choosing a SaaS product, or hiring.
TripleByte, in its current form, has been beneficial to candidates as well by giving enterprise employees a justifiable signal towards hiring them regardless of pedigree.
America is certainly the country with the most opportunity for the most people.
A shift that has occurred from the 1950s to present is that there is less of a guarantee of an upper-middle-class lifestyle through a moderate [1] amount of effort.
That easier opportunity, however, was unique to the era. Prior to 1930, immigrants knew that America was a place for exceptionally hard work and tons of opportunity and freedom - that was the American dream. Not high taxation and government-funded class movement from lower-middle to upper-middle.
[1] 40 hours a week, one full-time job for an established corporate company supporting a family
You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).
In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of life - judged by quality of food, things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!), freedom from fear (e.g. of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the 'police'), and time to spend with people important to you.
Having grown up in (very) poor rural America (~3k population), gone to work/live in an urban area (close to 3 million metro population), and now live in an extraordinarily affluent but smallish (100k) midwest city, I really don't agree with your view of the US in the slightest.
[edit] I originally wanted to make the point that one of the things we buy is increased quality of life. Wrote the comment up and completely forgot to throw that in.
>You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).
The hours of output from an individual varies greatly, from almost none to 120 hour work weeks (literally, I have seen the pay stubs). In addition, not all work is the same, and there are a _lot_ of cushy office jobs in which people may claim 40 hour weeks, have probably half of that is what one would call 'work.' You also imply that having a lot of things is somehow negative and that it's just 'stuff'. We buy plenty of stuff for plenty of reasons, which includes recreation and entertainment.
To further iterate on the point that it's not just 'stuff', there are a plethora of festivals, museums, theaters, outdoor spaces, theme parks, malls, and community gatherings. There is far more stuff to do than there is time in the day to do it here. I should also note, a lot of which is either completely free or at least pretty inexpensive.
To push the point home, it's also almost trivial to fly over to Europe. It's relatively normal among the middle class to take trips overseas. Airline tickets are not _that_ expensive after all.
>In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of life
This is very true for many in America as well; a great deal many of the people I grew up with are still in poverty or working menial jobs... but they also are out boating every weekend in the summers, skiing in the winters, watching sports on huge flat screens. They may be cash-poor but are still reasonably rich in experiences. This is a tricky thing to measure from the economic lens alone.
> judged by quality of food
The food I've had in the US has ranged from Michelin star to Mac Donald's, both are fabulous, though one is more snobby. Perhaps in deeply rural areas with low populations, the food is more of the fast-food variety. Still, in most mid to large cities, the food has been consistently excellent across both price and quality offered.
> judged by things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!)
I don't think you could back this up by any data, and if I were to guess, this is based on some poor luck you had while visiting. Across the various places I've been, it's pretty unheard of not to have access to washers or dryers due to malfunction. Most areas have at least a couple of competing laundromats, and it costs no more than a couple of dollars to access them. Breakdowns happen to all equipment over time, and thankfully quality can be purchased if desired. If many still choose the initial price tag over that, so be it. Servicing a machine is cheap and easy, as is replacing one outright.
As for public restroom doors, I don't understand this at all as it hasn't been my experience in the slightest. Even in poor urban areas, doors work fine. I can assure you, the VAST majority of doors here work just fine!
> freedom from fear (e.g. of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the 'police'),
This entirely an individual thing; losing one's job isn't exactly the end of the world here either. Opportunity is all over the place. Maybe aside from suicidal people, everyone on earth fears getting ill. And maybe aside from high health care costs, assuming I didn't choose to pay for extra insurance, I'd still rather be 'poor' and uninsured here than most places in the world. It's not 'free' like many other countries, but if you're poor, you're typically not paying for procedures either. As for the police, is there a country where someone doesn't fear the police on some level? Is there any country that doesn't give them the right to put you in a jail cell? The statistics of unjustified police violence point to it being exceedingly rare, so much that when there is a case that it does happen, the people and media take to the streets, and every detail of the matter is covered nationally.
> and time to spend with people important to you.
All choices people make, nothing prevents someone in this country from spending more time with family. People who work insane hours wanting to provide more for themselves are making the decision to do so.
The United States is a _massive_ country, and I caution against painting it with such a broad brush. I'm not saying there are no issues, there are, but the ones you point out seem wrong to me. There are massive lifestyle differences here, and I don't see that as a particularly bad thing. If the people back in my hometown, for example, want to spend their days boating instead of working some stressful job, all the more power to them. If someone wants to burn the candle at both ends to acquire a boatload of money instead, that's great too. I suspect there is a far more significant amount of opportunity to both here than in Europe based on the data I've researched in the past.
No, taxation was not very high. Some tax rates were very high but they had an extensive range of deductions that don't exist today. The effective tax rates, what people actually paid as a percentage of gross income, were similar to today.
They lowered tax rates simultaneous with eliminating deductions, making the changes over time roughly neutral in terms of taxes paid.
If you're conspiratorial about everybody who supports free speech not really supporting free speech, and instead just saying it in bad faith(?), you're going to have a tough time with meaningful debate and enjoying HN. One of the core tenets is a belief in the principle of charity — assume the strongest interpretation of the commenter's argument, not the weakest.
Oh, this doesn't happen at all times on all subjects. There are a few more or less Nazi-adjacent topics where it's gonna happen. Could be worse, on Reddit it happens in a coordinated fashion, here it's a bit more organic.
You are invoking exploitable core tenets. If one is arguing in bad faith the FIRST thing you'll do is invoke free speech, invoke the principle of charity, call for the strongest possible interpretation and insist that good faith MUST be assumed.
For instance: I neither said nor meant that 'everybody' who supports free speech was doing this. That's half the trouble: it's protective coloration among people who are acting in earnest. I'm stating unequivocally that SOME folks in this camp are acting in bad faith: not just hypocrisy, but pursuing calculated behaviors akin to people coaching their peers to 'not reveal their power level' so as to better influence the communities they're operating on.
I don't know how many of 'em there are, but I find it a catastrophic failure of a community's intentions to assume charity. It's nothing more than an exploit, and there are some topics, political topics, that bring this out.
This is great content, and much of it applies to other roles as well!
I've been trying to summarize for my partner (a UX designer) what helps in doing a senior role well and gradually growing into leadership, and this says much of it better than I could have myself.
In my case, I almost always want paste to override most formatting — if I copy something from a website, I want it to match my formatting.
What I'm looking for, though, is particularly for the font itself, the font color and maybe the size to match. If something is bolded, or italicized, that should ideally be retained.
A good configuration could be to ask whether you want the formatting of what you're pasting to match the document, and then ask if they want to set that choice as default.
Being reassigned as opposed to fired is quite the privilege.
Everyone in the comments is viewing it as completely different than the Damore fiasco because this racist blog post was written in 2007, but are we forgetting that Antonio Martinez wrote Chaos Monkeys 5 years ago and was fired for it now? [1]
What's the difference between:
1) Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naïve despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit
2) If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing
I think it's absurd that the former is worth firing and the latter isn't. Google has a reputation to be a more 'progressive' company than Apple; is that just code for undertones of anti-semitism?
You are misrepresenting Kamau Bobb's blog post by cherry-picking a single sentence from it. This is the first paragraph of his post:
> If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired. This reconciliation would be particularly difficult now, in November, 79 years after Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. The anniversary of this dreadfully monumental day in my history would bring me pause. It would force me to reflect on the legacy of extraordinary human suffering. I might wonder how the vicious eruption of cruelty in the mid-twentieth century has influenced the shape of my identity as a Jewish person and our collective identity as Jewish people.
He is imagining a dichotomy; commitment to Israel and to humanist values. "If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented." This does not sound like anti-Semitism to me.
I'm choosing a specific sentence that has been highlighted as unacceptable and is meant to disgust. I'm sure there is much more to the book Chaos Monkeys than "SF women weak," yet he was fired for that comment within his book, with no care given to context.
Have I defended the firing of the author of the book Chaos Monkeys? Is it permissible to believe that no one should be fired for what amounts to political views?
> It preys on and fuels women’s insecurities to sell them throwaway products made by borderline-enslaved Cambodians.
It sounds like you've never used Depop or learned about it before writing this comment. Depop is the exact opposite. It's a solution to what you're framing as a problem. Depop is a way to recycle clothing rather than throwing it out and buying more - it is actually a reaction to the exact fast fashion you're complaining about.
Perhaps, but I think it can be argued that it encourages more consumerism. The market for second-hand selling may encourage those sellers to buy more new.
Fundamentally the idea of an everchanging fashion is problematic, not just environmentally but also otherwise.
What’s really fun is throwing all anything plastic including wrappers, #5, #7, any metal, any paper basically anything but food into the blue recycling tub that someone comes to pick up and then I can smuggly look down on people that “don’t even care about the planet”, I’m doing my part by blankly assuming all my “recycling” isn’t going into a landfill!
... I wish I would still count the number of people that think that, but it’s too many.
I try to “not buy shit”, and Im pretty sure it’s a lot harder than wishcycling.
Unfortunately that's not necessarily the case. People run full on dropshipping businesses on Depop under the guise of handmade/second hand clothing. There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities and sell on Depop for 10x. Depop doesn't do anything to counter the hypercapitalist and wasteful fashion industry - its just another component to it.
This comment is pretty reactionary and maybe doesn't deserve a reply but I've seen variations on this criticism before and as someone that's worked in this space it doesn't make any sense:
> There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities
This complaint seems to be based on a profound delusion, which is that the social mission of thrift stores is to provide cheap clothing for people who don't have much money.
The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.
So in fact the whole point of the enterprise is to have people who have stuff they don't need donate it to a worthy cause, who sell it to people with money who want it, and then they take the money that they make this way and give it to people who need money or use it to provide needed services etc.
Nobody is "ransacking" a charity by doing the exact thing the charity is hoping people will do, which is giving the charity money that can be used to further charitable activities.
> The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.
That's actually completely backwards. The public good that a thrift store provides is to make cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford anything else. Goodwill is a nonprofit because there is no profit in making cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford to anything else.
I don't know anything about Goodwill, but in the UK there are several charities that run shops and their purpose is as the parent describes - the shops generate revenue for the charity to carry out its work.
The first sentence on the wikipedia page on Charity shop [1] (and "Thrift shop" redirects to the same page) says:
> A charity shop (UK), thrift shop or thrift store (USA) or opportunity shop (others) is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money.
The Goodwill.org page About Us > Our Vision for Transformation [2] has a section "HOW LOCAL GOODWILLS DELIVER IMPACT" the third item of which starts:
So, it's possible these things are dual-purpose and intended to meet both goals, or that some thrift stores have the goal of raising revenue and some have the goal of making recycled items available cheaply. But certainly parent's point is not backward - at least many thrift stores explicitly operate in order to generate revenue as a form of funding for charitable ventures. People with money buying things from charity shops helps the charities. It's what they want.
The difference between Thrift store prices and new garments in many cases is less than it used to be. Look at uncool stores, JC Penny, Walmart, and a few others, and you can get clothing for very little.
Your whole original comment just seems pretty anachronistic in 2021. Especially as Pride month kicks off, I’d caution you against holding on to antiquated views that the fashion industry is only something for women or has to do primarily with their insecurities.
Whatever else it is, fashion to me is about both aspiration and inspiration. It is something that is creative not just for designers, but also their fans and customers. It is fundamentally about encouraging people to imagine themselves in new ways.
It is emphatically not just some one-way broadcast aimed at a certain, supposedly more impressionable, gender.
Important to note that this is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (misspelled in the article), not the Chair of the Federal Reserve, who leads what we generally think of as the "fed."