bitcoin in its finite, pre-determined supply and halvings every ~4yrs (formed through consensus) while going through s-curve adoption brings forth its unique number go up technology that has economist around the globe stumped
I just looked at coinbase's about page they have 35MM users now. Bitcoin is going through s-curve adoption like the internet. Fools on here look for conspiracy theories because they ignore demand increasing, for whatever reason.
I have a Coinbase account that I haven’t logged in to since 2017. Apart from speculation, there’s simply nothing to do with this stuff. Ethereum has promised “Web 3.0” applications since forever but they don’t even have the bandwidth for a novelty cat picture exchange service.
This was not the case for any early internet service. They were all immediately useful and became part of my life. The only reason I stopped using something (eg Usenet) was that a better replacement became available.
I think these policies over decades are why we have inequality. While the political class likes to show solidarity with the working class by punishing the wealthy, probably the working class actually cares more about not being stolen from (which to be fair many of the wealthy do). Except for the fact that these policies are explicitly designed to steal from the working class without notice by anyone.
> Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis.
Furthermore, correlation is not causation, but if you look at graphs of when economic productivity diverges from worker compensation (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/) the systemic divergence occurs suspiciously close to 1972, which is right after Nixon Shock, when the dollar ceased to be tethered to a neutral third party (flawed though it may be) and began to solely be in hands of policy interests. Yes, the EPI draws the line at 1979, but really? Do we not have eyes?
Yeah, I think if the average person understood this there would be riots in the streets. It's an unbelievably huge regressive welfare program for the .01%.
Fortunately it's boring and complicated which is a built in guarantee that a large percentage of people will never care about it.
A big irony to me regarding this is that people see the huge inequality in America and conclude "capitalism" has failed and that we need "socialism" as a remedy to the inequality failing to understand that the means that top echelons are capturing wealth right now are more socialistic than capitalistic (ie, using legislation to redirect wealth as opposed to making money by selling products and services). It's essentially a bizarre form of regressive socialism that got us into this mess.
Turns out when you create methods to transfer wealth within a society, whoever has the most power in that society usually uses it to capture wealth. We already have a type of de facto socialism, it's just controlled by the ultra wealthy for their own benefit.
I happen to be in the Hayekian camp that says this isn't really a just a failure to correctly implement socialism, this is an actual property of all socialism. Obviously you could argue that, but this seems to historically generally be true.
I believe that even if a well intentioned Bernie type came in and created a wealth transfer system, over time that system would be captured by the powerful and still end up transferring wealth back to them. You can be guaranteed that at a minimum there will be an attempt to do this.
Ironically, a switch to a more truly capitalistic situation where businesses had to make money in the marketplace instead of rent seeking for conducive fed policy would probably be less friendly to large business interests on average.
>Ironically, a switch to a more truly capitalistic situation where businesses had to make money in the marketplace instead of rent seeking for conducive fed policy would probably be less friendly to large business interests on average.
You focus so much attention on the Fed you lose sight of the fact that rent seeking would shift from the Fed to the Customer.
The problem is fundamentally tied to conservative investment behavior. Given a rational choice, most people lend money to the people most likely to pay it back which are the same entrenched players the lenders are already dealing with.
Throw in the wage growth stagnation incentivized in order to put on the appearance of bigger growth numbers, and you develop a clot in the flow of money to the labor class, therefore decreased mobility from the labor to capital side of things.
Throw in hyperoptimization facilitated value deserts around rapidly consolidating industries, and you have a perfect positive feedback loop to enable wealth extraction from the middle class, while the capital wielders are scratching their heads wondering where all the new blood is.
Crushed with debt, bled dry by the XaaS revolution, exorbitant uncontrolled healthcare costs, and in a distorted market in which the name of the game is to try to keep people buying for the love of God.
Agriculture is already starting to suffer from over consolidation of the dairy industry since Walmart's vertical integration combined with USDA policies favoring the hyperoptimized industrial farmer over everyone else.
Something has to give. Will be interesting toseewho throws up their hands first; Bankers, Business, the Fed, or Labor.
As a small retail investor, and someone who's income puts me in the middle class, I've had big gains in my equities. I consider myself an "average person". Why should this make me want to riot in the streets? Is your implication that only the 0.01% actually own stocks? Even my grandmother, albeit managed by a financial advisor, has a stock portfolio that is benefiting from the current market activity.
Stocks go up and down. When the whole reason that stocks go up is because a arbitrary number inside the fed and treasury databases went up, I'd argue that move up probably won't last forever. If you time the market then maybe you could profit off of this. Timing the market is hard, even when you can see the bigger picture.
But no, the .01% are the PE people who are using this imaginary money to transfer possession of real assets to themselves with 0 interest loans which will be subsidized as "too big to fail" in the event the whole scheme doesn't work out and the executives who are buying their own stock with the money to trigger their own 7 and 8 figure incentive packages before the scheme collapses then further triggering their golden parachutes.
You're not making as much as the tremendously wealthy; your equities likely represent a tiny fraction of your income.
If your equities are going up 10% a year but you only have $20k in the market, but make $100k in salary, and your salary growth is falling behind the cost of living, you're not doing well, particularly compared to the person with $100M in the market and not going to work for a living.
Because it's taking huge amounts of treasuries purchased to simply support the market. You're seeing stability, but your children are seeing a higher debt burden.
Because when gravity reassert itself and the market finally crashes, the hedge fund guys will get out early and you and your grandma are going to be left holding the bag, again.
As a small retail investor, I'd very much like all this artificial growth in my portfolio to stop so I can buy more investments at more reasonable prices and get better returns in the long term.
You're right in the sense that these genes will propagate into the rest of the population. However:
1. Rich people are more likely to get into a relationship with other rich people.
2. At least for the next 100 years, it's likely the tech will improve at a rapid rate. That means by the time those high IQ genes spread to children, we will already have identified even better genes. People who can intentionally apply this technology to their designer-babies will stay ahead of the curve.
3. Sexual reproduction is a random process. If we begin to understand genetics well enough, we will almost always be able to get a better, more effective combination of genes by hand-picking them (or letting a computer decide) than by letting sexual gene recombination spin the wheel of fortune.
We're definitely looking at a future where the ruling class will have a huge genetic advantage, and will be able to maintain that advantage because of the huge cost associated.
A counter point, it seems that wealth and the power it provides already provide such a huge advantage that the effects of genetic editing may end up being a negligible.
I wonder about the preservation of wealth though. As other posts have pointed out, most wealth is lost within a generation or two. Genetic engineering could end up being used to modulate risk taking behavior and decision making, in an effort to mitigate this. That could have a big effect on the structure of society if successful...
Right now, in America and Europe, if you work hard, you have a decent shot at becoming wealthy, or upper middle class. Once genetic engineering enters the picture, wealthy people will have a genuine intrinsic advantage.
True, and to add one more point, poverty presently brings a along environmental factors, such as stress, toxic exposure, poor nutrition, that tragically impact brain development and leave people with an analogous intrinsic disadvantage later in life. On a positive note, I think these things are well within reach of fixing in our society and leveling the playing field.
In 25 years a woman might get this letter in their mailbox after a night with a rich guy: "You are pregnant with patented genes, pay licence fees or be forced to abort the child."
The Free Software Foundation has just released the full sequenced genone of Richard Stallman under the GPL. However, the download volumes have not matched the bandwidth used by Hurd.
XR's main goal is just that politicians be honest with people about how desperate the crisis is, and treat the problem with the seriousness it deserves. They aren't scientists and they're not trying to pre-determine what action should be taken: https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/faqs/
> What does XR think about 5g, Veganism, Nuclear power, smart meters and so on?
> Many people within XR will have strong views on all of the above and we want to welcome a variety of views, rather than adopting positions on controversial topics. We believe a social movement is best built as a “broad church” and that respectful discussions should take place within the movement on a variety of topics (honouring our principle and value of no blaming and shaming). XR does not take a position on solutions to the ecological crisis- our third demand is for a Citizens Assembly to come up with a way to deal with the crisis focussing on climate and ecological justice based on being presented with facts from a variety of experts. We focus on the issues that have a clear body of mainstream science with a large consensus of opinion – for example, biodiversity loss and climate change.
Pink plane reasoning like this makes you dismiss bitcoin as not scalable. The blue idea is to scale off chain with smart contracts whether centralized or not.
Compare cos fighting this to those not like cash app which are building on top of bitcoin.
Does anyone know of the implications of a year-round ice-free artic? Is the artic salvageable at this point? It seems evident that soon the artic will have a short period of being ice-free, kickstarting an inexorable process with yet longer periods of being ice-free.
It is safe to assume at this point climate change is like an asteroid on a trajectory of near term collision with Earth. I'd rather be wrong and alive then right and extinct on this one. But thats me.
Citations at all...In the late 80s the biggest worry was the Ozone Hole and nuclear winter. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Not to worry, Gen Zed is reaching late teens and early 20s now.
