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On November 13 2024 21:33 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 21:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 18:29 Jockmcplop wrote:
So I'm wondering what the people who were obsessed with Kamala's level of qualifications are thinking about Pete Hegswith, who has never run anything at all in his life, being given the entire US military to run just because he has the 'right' politics? They are probably thinking that campaign season is over and that the United States of America has an extensive traditional and constitutional stipulation of civilian control of the military. Personally I would go for a civilian who has had experience of being in charge of important things and making extremely important and sensitive decisions, but each to their own I guess.
Remember when jared kushner was given the task of solving the Middle East crisis among like, the other impossible tasks?
I am sure being presentor for Fox News is more than enough qualifications to run the biggest army in the world in the mind of Trump and his voters.
Now he is the one who made Trump pardon those three guys convicted of war crimes, and said the treatment of inmate at Guantanamo was fine, so i guess we can expect some more atrocities, torture and civilian murders from the US military.
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Welp, I just closed a giant deal with a 60 year old big Trump supporter. This guy is spending money like a drunken sailor and watching Fox News 24/7. This guy is beaming ... he is so happy. You would think his grandson just invented the cure for cancer he is so proud.
I've known this guy for ~5 years. Regarding the deal and the product... we hardly talked about it. We talked about how great Reagan and Trump are for 4 hours. It was Laffer curve this... Greenspan that... LOL.
Any front line sales person with half a brain is filling their pockets right now.
On November 13 2024 19:25 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 16:03 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On November 13 2024 09:34 Impervious wrote:
By all reasonable metrics, the USA did extremely well under Biden over the last 4 years relative to other countries. I would have loved to have both the inflation rate and the GDP percentage growth that the US had compared to us here in Canada, for instance..... To me, it's shocking that the messaging was so awful. While the status quo sucks and the dems were pushing policy that was pretty much just the status quo, Trump's policies and the republican policies seem worse..... All I can say is that it looks like this election was more about emotion than anything else. Things suck right now for most people, and the republicans were able to channel the associated anger and fear better. I think the USA substantially outperformed Canada because Biden's team was average and Trudeau's team is really dumb. The mainstream media is so biased in favour of Justin Trudeau it is comical. One big sign of economic affluence is participation in hockey. Hockey is an extremely expensive sport. The USA now has more kids enrolled in hockey than Canada for the first time ever. The USA is now the #1 hockey power on earth ... As I predicted several years ago. Canada peaked as a country under Chretien. I'd say the USA peaked as a country under either Reagan or Clinton. Both countries are in decline, however, Canada is going down a lot faster. On November 13 2024 09:34 Impervious wrote:
Similar to your partner's sister, we've got struggles affording a place here too. My girlfriend and I have been looking into finally buying a house ourselves, we're in our late 30's, we're both finally doing well financially, I'm 37 and I started working at least part of the time in the USA from the time i was 19. Canada no longer offers economic opportunities on par with the USA. Once Ontario decided to "save the world" by going green in 2007... that was the beginning of the end. I bought my first house when I was 24. May God Bless America. I live a 40 minute drive from St. Catherines, Ontario in upstate New York. The difference in hydro prices between St. Catherines, Canada and Niagara NY is staggering. No wonder there is zero manufacturing going on in Ontario. Nuclear power is far too expensive and far too dangerous. When we have another 3-mile-island, and we will, Ontario is super fucked. The environmental crazies won't want Ontario using Nuclear or Coal. What will Ontario do for power when they have to abandon Nuclear? It’s great that Trump was elected because he is not going to try to save the universe with crazy green energy policies that Justin Trudeau adopted. Ontario ending coal burning provides a great example for Americans about what not to do. If I’m understanding you correctly it’s great that Trump will coal because hockey power got predicted several years ago and America bucked a global trend because it's average. Can’t argue with that.
You nailed it man! Great synopsis. A few years after Ontario stopped burning coal CBC fired Don Cherry. Coincidence? I think not!
Seriously though, I hope Trump can open up all the JFK Files. I doubt he'll be able to do it though. The promise makes him appear more of an independent rather than a Republican. He vows to defend the honour of one of the greatest Dem Presidents in US History.
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/24/trump-rfk-jfk-commission-assassination-attempts
I project no substantial information is released and the JFK assassination will be viewed by the majority of Americans as some kind of conspiracy.
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On November 13 2024 22:04 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 21:33 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 21:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 18:29 Jockmcplop wrote:
So I'm wondering what the people who were obsessed with Kamala's level of qualifications are thinking about Pete Hegswith, who has never run anything at all in his life, being given the entire US military to run just because he has the 'right' politics? They are probably thinking that campaign season is over and that the United States of America has an extensive traditional and constitutional stipulation of civilian control of the military. Personally I would go for a civilian who has had experience of being in charge of important things and making extremely important and sensitive decisions, but each to their own I guess. How did you conclude he doesn't have that?
A brief look at his Wiki.
Feel free to prove that he does have that though.
I can't prove a negative.
He was CEO of a charity for veterans for a brief time before becoming a Fox News guy.
That's definitely not even in the same ballpark as actually running the military.
Kamala was infinitely more qualified to run America than this guy is to run the American military.
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On November 13 2024 22:17 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 22:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 21:33 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 21:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 18:29 Jockmcplop wrote:
So I'm wondering what the people who were obsessed with Kamala's level of qualifications are thinking about Pete Hegswith, who has never run anything at all in his life, being given the entire US military to run just because he has the 'right' politics? They are probably thinking that campaign season is over and that the United States of America has an extensive traditional and constitutional stipulation of civilian control of the military. Personally I would go for a civilian who has had experience of being in charge of important things and making extremely important and sensitive decisions, but each to their own I guess. How did you conclude he doesn't have that? A brief look at his Wiki. Feel free to prove that he does have that though. I can't prove a negative. He was CEO of a charity for veterans for a brief time before becoming a Fox News guy. That's definitely not even in the same ballpark as actually running the military. Kamala was infinitely more qualified to run America than this guy is to run the American military.
You're forthcoming so I won't beat around the bush, the last super qualified SecDef was Lloyd Austin, you and everybody else knew equally nothing about him until his name appeared, and he ended up being garbage and has "run the military" like, garbage, you probably couldn't even name a SecDef that you actually approved of after the fact, let alone before AND after the fact. Who's the last one? I certainly can't.
This next part isn't you but since you opened this by attacking straw people that don't really exist that attacked Kamala's "qualifications" (almost nobody attacks her "qualifications," she has a long resume in government everyone acknowledges, her opponents attack her competence because the resume in progressively higher levels of government is one of failure), I can't help but point out the dumbfounding absurdity of people who are essentially complaining that Hitler's director of the military isn't qualified enough to prove he's competent to achieve Hitler's goals with it.
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On November 13 2024 22:32 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 22:17 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 22:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 21:33 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 21:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 18:29 Jockmcplop wrote:
So I'm wondering what the people who were obsessed with Kamala's level of qualifications are thinking about Pete Hegswith, who has never run anything at all in his life, being given the entire US military to run just because he has the 'right' politics? They are probably thinking that campaign season is over and that the United States of America has an extensive traditional and constitutional stipulation of civilian control of the military. Personally I would go for a civilian who has had experience of being in charge of important things and making extremely important and sensitive decisions, but each to their own I guess. How did you conclude he doesn't have that? A brief look at his Wiki. Feel free to prove that he does have that though. I can't prove a negative. He was CEO of a charity for veterans for a brief time before becoming a Fox News guy. That's definitely not even in the same ballpark as actually running the military. Kamala was infinitely more qualified to run America than this guy is to run the American military. You're forthcoming so I won't beat around the bush, the last super qualified SecDef was Lloyd Austin, you and everybody else knew equally nothing about him until his name appeared, and he ended up being garbage and has "run the military" like, garbage, you probably couldn't even name a SecDef that you actually approved of after the fact, let alone before AND after the fact. Who's the last one? I certainly can't. This next part isn't you but since you opened this by attacking straw people that don't really exist that attacked Kamala's "qualifications" (almost nobody attacks her "qualifications," she has a long resume in government everyone acknowledges, her opponents attack her competence because the resume in progressively higher levels of government is one of failure), I can't help but point out the dumbfounding absurdity of people who are essentially complaining that Hitler's director of the military isn't qualified enough to prove he's competent to achieve Hitler's goals with it.
Your first point is fair enough, I don't really have a response except that its surely just better to have someone with experience in decision making of the kind of complexity that will be required...
When it comes to Kamala's qualifications being a strawman, I don't really think it is at all.
The attacks on her being a DEI hire were specifically that the most qualified person should get the job.
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On November 13 2024 20:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 20:17 Belisarius wrote:
This is an interesting discussion and I appreciate the effort to make the post, but I'm not sure I really agree.
I would agree that share valuation is not "inherently the same" as fiat currency. However, it seems like you're trying to argue that currency is some fundamentally different thing, and I don't think that's really correct either. To me, the blurred line from reserve currency to fiat currency continues to blur into anything else that people will accept as an intermediate barter. The axis is just the fraction of people that will accept it, and the variance on the valuation from person to person.
Obviously, on one end is cash, widely accepted and stably valued. Shares are a bit further across, most people would accept them if you offered a good rate and the variance that you'd need to offer is not a huge fraction of the paper value. Beyond that, we get to pokemon cards, and then pigs and so on - still valuable, but you start to have to offer increasingly unreasonable rates to get the person to accept them.
I don't know that anything you've said convinces me that there's a hard cutoff in that sequence. There's probably a bunch of little villages somewhere where pigs can get a rate pretty close to currency, and places where shares aren't even going to be considered.
There's even situations where cash wouldn't be considered either. If you're in the US and someone offered you a choice of an S&P EFT or an equal value of thai baht.... maybe you'd take the shares. Even though baht is currency, it might be more of a runaround to exchange it at a good rate than it is to just sell the shares. You'd probably take the pigs if they offered you lira or bolivar.
It's interesting that you left out crypto, when to me that's the clearest example of that line blurring. I honestly can't see very much difference between people's collective delusion around bitcoin versus the collective delusion around the island rocks. Neither of them has inherent value, both of them have some features that make them effective as a barter substitute, both of their values depend on what everyone agrees. Currency is an alternative to barter. The fact that you could barter Pokemon cards do not make them a currency. You accept Pokemon cards in payment at a premium with the intent to list them on ebay and convert them into money. You do not accept them as money. Currency is fundamentally different, even though that difference is only because of a shared belief that it's fundamentally different. The belief is what makes it function as a means of exchange and the functionality as a means of exchange is what creates the efficiency benefits and therefore the value. Anything could be money, there's nothing intrinsically special about the token used, but that does not mean that anything is money. It needs the special sauce that is the shared belief. Without that it doesn't give the efficiency benefits, you're back to bartering. The same thing can be a currency for one person and a commodity for another like your example of a foreign currency that could be accepted as full settlement in one part of the globe and accepted as barter with the intent to subsequently convert it to local currency in another place. With the example of bitcoin there's a pretty obvious distinction between users. A commodity user taking it as barter or holding it for speculative resale purposes will tell you that a bitcoin is worth $87k. A currency user will tell you that a bitcoin is worth 1. You described a sliding scale of liquidity based on the ease of conversion. Money market funds are pegged to cash and settle nightly, publicly traded stocks can be converted into cash at a fairly known value within a few days without much slippage whereas pokemon cards may take longer and have greater slippage. You used that sliding scale as evidence of no clear cutoff because wherever the line is you can always put something just over it and challenge the placement of the line. I disagree. It doesn't matter how easy a given thing is to convert into money, it matters that it must be converted into money. The fact that the conversion to money step exists at all by definition renders it not money. That's the cutoff. A money market fund may almost always be readily convertible to cash at a 1:1 ratio but that does not make it cash, it makes it a cash equivalent. Edit: I came up with a test. If two different users within the same economy disagree on the value of X then X is not money. It'd be easy to find two different people in America who disagree on the value of a pokemon card. It'd be reasonably possible to find two different people who disagree on the value of a share in a money market fund. It'd be very difficult to find anyone in America who sets the value of $1 as anything other than $1. You could maybe generate scenarios like "it's $1 but it's far away so it's really worth less than that" but the $1 is still $1, you just also place a value on the labour involved and then perform a subtraction. But in that subtraction you're still placing a $1 value on the $1.
What about coin collectors? They'll often disagree with you on the value of some specific dollar (or nickel, dime or quarter, if you bring them the right one!)  Some dollars are worth a lot more than 1 dollar 
E: Of course, I jest. The overarching point is, as always, extremely clearly explained. Thank you!
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On Hitlers Generals:
Basicly the nazi brass that survived war and trials, literally wrote the books on their personal history themselves - interpreting events pretty freely, and actually straigh up taking credit for dead men's work.. and denying credit for their own actions.
All incompetence and inhumane ideologic cruelty was put on hitler, and dead generals.
They needed to live with themselves, also post-nazi germany longed for a narrative that would paint germans collectively as "having been conned" by the nazis, and just good honest soldiers, who knew nothing of holocaust. Nazi brass assumed high positions in the new government - causing the fallout with the next generation who wanted them all out.
For top brass it was especially important to appear innocent of ideology... but competent, because allies, and most of all the US, was willingly giving leniency to people that would help them to oppose communist russia in the future.
Especially in the US, the Nazi General biographys were often the most cited sources for historic research .. painting them almost as "Heroes from the other side".
Instead of hard research in archives in germany or russia... whatever those X-nazis like Guderian and others wrote was taken at face value... and given a completely wrong picture of "Nazi Generals".
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago".
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On November 13 2024 22:32 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 22:17 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 22:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 21:33 Jockmcplop wrote:On November 13 2024 21:04 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 18:29 Jockmcplop wrote:
So I'm wondering what the people who were obsessed with Kamala's level of qualifications are thinking about Pete Hegswith, who has never run anything at all in his life, being given the entire US military to run just because he has the 'right' politics? They are probably thinking that campaign season is over and that the United States of America has an extensive traditional and constitutional stipulation of civilian control of the military. Personally I would go for a civilian who has had experience of being in charge of important things and making extremely important and sensitive decisions, but each to their own I guess. How did you conclude he doesn't have that? A brief look at his Wiki. Feel free to prove that he does have that though. I can't prove a negative. He was CEO of a charity for veterans for a brief time before becoming a Fox News guy. That's definitely not even in the same ballpark as actually running the military. Kamala was infinitely more qualified to run America than this guy is to run the American military. You're forthcoming so I won't beat around the bush, the last super qualified SecDef was Lloyd Austin, you and everybody else knew equally nothing about him until his name appeared, and he ended up being garbage and has "run the military" like, garbage, you probably couldn't even name a SecDef that you actually approved of after the fact, let alone before AND after the fact. Who's the last one? I certainly can't. This next part isn't you but since you opened this by attacking straw people that don't really exist that attacked Kamala's "qualifications" (almost nobody attacks her "qualifications," she has a long resume in government everyone acknowledges, her opponents attack her competence because the resume in progressively higher levels of government is one of failure), I can't help but point out the dumbfounding absurdity of people who are essentially complaining that Hitler's director of the military isn't qualified enough to prove he's competent to achieve Hitler's goals with it.
Why is this absurd? It's not necessarily a good thing if America's Hitler appoints unqualified people. Hiring an unqualified person doesn't necessarily mean that Donald Trump won't get to devastate the departments and regulations that he wants to devastate. They won't necessarily foil his plan (even by accident). In fact, one of the biggest worries that people have with Trump appointing his suck-up minions, instead of qualified people, is that a qualified person might know enough to handle and tone down some of Trump's insanity before walking our country off a cliff. There will be fewer checks and balances this time around, given Trump's incoming cabinet + Republican Supreme Court + Republican Congress.
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On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago".
You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic?
Who would you make Secretary of Defense?
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On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:
Blumpf
Would you mind explaining why you've changed your nickname of Trump from Drumpf to Blumpf?
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United States42226 Posts
Göring was the incompetent who thought the way to defeat the RAF was to stop bombing their airfields and start bombing civilians. I guess you could spin that as a fortunate break for the British but my preference would have been for someone who advised against fighting Britain at all. A bad plan done badly is not equivalent to a good plan. This isn’t maths.
Hell, take the example of Mao’s collectivization of agriculture. Shitty plan combined with shitty execution starved tens of millions. Improve the execution and millions live but you’re still stuck with the inefficient collective farm model.
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On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago". You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic? Who would you make Secretary of Defense?
Usually, for a job like that, you need to actually show that you can do it by having qualifications. So your question if the wrong way around.
Someone shouldn't get an important job just because you cannot prove they are incompetent. People should only get important jobs if they are qualified. By having actual experience in the field, by having a career in related stuff that is applicable for that job, too.
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United States42226 Posts
On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago". You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic? Who would you make Secretary of Defense?
When applying for jobs it’s normal to have to demonstrate prior experience and qualifications, not simply the absence of prior catastrophic mismanagement.
There’s also a pattern here with prior Trump appointees. The genius behind Trump blowing up soybean exports to China after the crop had already been planted was some guy Jared found on Amazon after searching for books with anti China names. Us taxpayers had to spend tens of billions bailing out the farmers because it turned out you can’t just walk away from making a deal with your customer after you already grew the crop.
Then there’s that time Jared was given responsibility for solving Palestine and he came up with a plan that involved converting Gaza into a luxury golf resort.
I think the presumption of incompetence with Trump nominees is more or less a given.
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On November 13 2024 21:15 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 20:59 Belisarius wrote:On November 13 2024 20:34 KwarK wrote:On November 13 2024 20:17 Belisarius wrote:
This is an interesting discussion and I appreciate the effort to make the post, but I'm not sure I really agree.
I would agree that share valuation is not "inherently the same" as fiat currency. However, it seems like you're trying to argue that currency is some fundamentally different thing, and I don't think that's really correct either. To me, the blurred line from reserve currency to fiat currency continues to blur into anything else that people will accept as an intermediate barter. The axis is just the fraction of people that will accept it, and the variance on the valuation from person to person.
Obviously, on one end is cash, widely accepted and stably valued. Shares are a bit further across, most people would accept them if you offered a good rate and the variance that you'd need to offer is not a huge fraction of the paper value. Beyond that, we get to pokemon cards, and then pigs and so on - still valuable, but you start to have to offer increasingly unreasonable rates to get the person to accept them.
I don't know that anything you've said convinces me that there's a hard cutoff in that sequence. There's probably a bunch of little villages somewhere where pigs can get a rate pretty close to currency, and places where shares aren't even going to be considered.
There's even situations where cash wouldn't be considered either. If you're in the US and someone offered you a choice of an S&P EFT or an equal value of thai baht.... maybe you'd take the shares. Even though baht is currency, it might be more of a runaround to exchange it at a good rate than it is to just sell the shares. You'd probably take the pigs if they offered you lira or bolivar.
It's interesting that you left out crypto, when to me that's the clearest example of that line blurring. I honestly can't see very much difference between people's collective delusion around bitcoin versus the collective delusion around the island rocks. Neither of them has inherent value, both of them have some features that make them effective as a barter substitute, both of their values depend on what everyone agrees. Currency is an alternative to barter. The fact that you could barter Pokemon cards do not make them a currency. You accept Pokemon cards in payment at a premium with the intent to list them on ebay and convert them into money. You do not accept them as money. Currency is fundamentally different, even though that difference is only because of a shared belief that it's fundamentally different. The belief is what makes it function as a means of exchange and the functionality as a means of exchange is what creates the efficiency benefits and therefore the value. Anything could be money, there's nothing intrinsically special about it, but that does not mean that anything is money. It needs the special sauce that is the shared belief. Without that it doesn't give the efficiency benefits, you're back to bartering. The same thing can be a currency for one person and a commodity for another like your example of a foreign currency that could be accepted as full settlement in one part of the globe and accepted as barter with the intent to subsequently convert it to local currency in another place. With the example of bitcoin there's a pretty obvious distinction between users. A commodity user taking it as barter or holding it for speculative resale purposes will tell you that a bitcoin is worth $87k. A currency user will tell you that a bitcoin is worth 1. You described a sliding scale of liquidity based on the ease of conversion. Money market funds are pegged to cash and settle nightly, publicly traded stocks can be converted into cash at a fairly known value within a few days without much slippage whereas pokemon cards may take longer and have greater slippage. You used that sliding scale as evidence of no clear cutoff because wherever the line is you can always put something just over it and challenge the placement of the line. I disagree. It doesn't matter how easy a given thing is to convert into money, it matters that it must be converted into money. The fact that the conversion to money step exists at all by definition renders it not money. That's the cutoff. A money market fund may almost always be readily convertible to cash at a 1:1 ratio but that does not make it cash, it makes it a cash equivalent. I guess my question is, which money? If I sell shares in the US to get USD, now I have money. If I carry that USD to Germany I no longer have money, I suddenly have a commodity that I need to convert to Euros. Then I have money again, until I fly back to the US. I'm happy to agree that for general use, the currency of the country that I'm in is the One True Money by which all things are measured. Obviously, USD in the US is currency and pokemon cards are not currency. However, bolivars are probably not currency in Venezuela, euros probably are currency in Switzerland, and gold would be currency in Moria. I agree with your position, I just disagree with the universality of it. I suppose I'm just trying to point out that the special sauce of shared belief is not constant, and never covers 100% of the population even for USD in the US. Lots of things are not money, but even money is sometimes not money. Whichever money possesses the special sauce. As you say, it doesn't carry the special sauce with it as part of the token. You could tear a USD apart atom by atom and not find a single atom of moneyium. The money status is imbued upon it by the collective belief of the participants in the economy. Change the participants by crossing a border or change the belief by replacing it with a new currency as Brazil did in 1994 and it'll lose the status. The original question was provoked by the challenge of reconciling the value assigned to Tesla stock compared to the fundamentals. How can a company that doesn't produce and sell that many cars be worth so much more than companies that produce and sell more cars and at higher margins with fewer business threats. Make it make sense. I didn't really answer that question because the comparison the asker used to show just how fundamentally hollow the valuation is was fiat currency and that was a much more interesting rabbit hole. There are almost infinite things imaginable with different ratios between the fundamental value and the market dictated value. Hell, I'm an atheist and in theory don't believe in souls but I probably wouldn't take $10 for mine and so in theory it has a value of at least $10 which, when divided by it's fundamental value of $0, makes it an infinitely overpriced asset. But it was more interesting to me to address the flawed comparison because fiat currency is the one thing you can't use as a comparison. Fiat currency doesn't have an intrinsic value of nothing, despite being unbacked. A fiat dollar has an intrinsic value of $1. What a dollar gets you may change, but the value of a dollar is always $1.
One of the main reasons that "a dollar is always $1" is taxes. Even if you live completely off-grid and are completely self-sufficient or part of a self-sufficient community, and you completely rely on your own efforts or direct bartering, you still owe the government taxes. And the government will use force if necessary to seize your land or assets or incarcerate you to ensure payment. Therefore, the government as a whole goes through great effort to ensure that 'a dollar is always $1". There have been massive failures
From there the government develops monetary policy to try to keep it stable as a stable currency is beneficial for it to be a useful vessel to simplify bartering and trade. Additionally, slight inflation is beneficial to ensure money keeps moving in the economy on a macro level (and to keep pumping more money into the government through sales taxes and income taxes), so the government takes action that inflates the value of assets relative to the currency. However, too much inflation is bad, so the government takes further action to prevent too much inflation. Then there's benefits of trying to manipulate currency valuations relative to other currencies used elsewhere for trade purposes. The US greatly benefited from being the global currency used for trading oil and gas for a loooooooong time, driving up demand for American currency (and all the problems that came from maintaining that monopoly). Etc. All this and so much more to help make sure that "a dollar is always $1".
It's not just that people have an understanding that "a dollar is always $1", it's that it is also been maintained and enforced by the government. And it's the same everywhere for all of the different respective currencies used worldwide that are not or are also no longer directly tied to the value of some specific good or service. This is not unique to the USA. It used to matter that currencies were tied to something like gold. It doesn't matter anymore. It's tied to something else.
This is where I see the biggest difference between any currency and something like Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency. It is not tied to anything physical. And unlike something like a dollar, which is also not directly tied to anything physical, it doesn't have anything to maintain or enforce the value. As there are no mechanisms to either maintain the value or to manipulate it to force it to slightly inflate for macroeconomic benefits, I don't see this as being useful as a currency for any government or any society. It seems like gambling to me, so regardless of what the current "value" it has and the historical growth of it, I can't get on board with it as an investment. It's emotional and irrational.
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On November 13 2024 23:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Would you mind explaining why you've changed your nickname of Trump from Drumpf to Blumpf?
Can't at the moment I'm busy debating with someone who calls Blumpf orange sphincter about the merits of a guy neither of us had ever heard of for Secretary of Defense, it's real important.
On November 13 2024 23:56 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago". You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic? Who would you make Secretary of Defense? Usually, for a job like that, you need to actually show that you can do it by having qualifications. So your question if the wrong way around. Someone shouldn't get an important job just because you cannot prove they are incompetent. People should only get important jobs if they are qualified. By having actual experience in the field, by having a career in related stuff that is applicable for that job, too.
So... a general? A defense contractor CEO? Who would YOU make Secretary of Defense?
The fact that you don't personally know why this guy will do a good job doesn't mean shit other than meaningless gossip. We are not the ones who hired him, frankly. He had a career in the military and outside the military dealing with vets and went to Princeton and Harvard. You can have every single qualification, and more, and still be incompetent. You can be extremely competent and still fail to acts of God.
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On November 13 2024 23:53 KwarK wrote:
Göring was the incompetent who thought the way to defeat the RAF was to stop bombing their airfields and start bombing civilians. I guess you could spin that as a fortunate break for the British but my preference would have been for someone who advised against fighting Britain at all. A bad plan done badly is not equivalent to a good plan. This isn’t maths.
Hell, take the example of Mao’s collectivization of agriculture. Shitty plan combined with shitty execution starved tens of millions. Improve the execution and millions live but you’re still stuck with the inefficient collective farm model.
I love history, yet I am no expert and got my knowledge only from talks, podcasts (there is a german podcast inviting scientists and they present their latest work, usually dissertation for phd) and seldom scientific papers and books
From everything I remembered, bombing airfields in WW2 with a raid squad was extremely ineffective, because they usually were a strip of grass and if you throw a ww2 bomb on a strip of grass, it can be patched with shovels.
a WW2 bomb would also often detonate on impact.. but it also would be well be stuck in a muddy field.. so effectiveness was greatly reduced.
You'd need to hit the planes on the ground... which at WW2 Plane speed and bombing accuracy.. wasn't easy...since either the planes could be in the air already.. or you miss anyway.
Airforces from about every nation also totally over-reported their damage and accuracy to fight for funding over ground troops.
iirc the german airforce basicly had no impact on the war against poland if you compare the numbers - yet in propaganda it was totally important.
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Northern Ireland24321 Posts
On November 13 2024 15:36 BlackJack wrote:
There was some debate on election night whether the Dem loss should be blamed on them not appealing enough to centrists vs them appealing too much to centrists and not embracing people further left. I think looking at California election results sheds some light on how people are feeling with the direction they are led.
San Francisco’s incumbent mayor lost her election. This is the one that tried to zing a debate opponent by asking them “Can you name 3 drag queens” because apparently not knowing the names of drag queens is disqualifying to be SF Mayor. In neighboring city Oakland recalled its mayor. They also recalled their “criminal justice reform” district attorney. Just like SF recalled its district attorney a couple years earlier. California voters as a whole also passed a referendum to increase the penalties for theft under $950, passing by I think the largest margin in history but I could be wrong on that. It was also opposed by Gavin Newsom.
These areas don’t have some large contingent of MAGA republicans flipping these elections. This was moderate Dems vs woke/progressive Dems and the progressives got stomped. This was a clear rejection of wokeism. Dems chose to die on the hill of unfavorable policies that don’t work but they will pretend it works because they are good people. Most Americans don’t want open borders, they don’t want biological men to dominate in women’s sports, they don’t want books featuring blowjobs in school libraries, they don’t thinking looting and destroying property is a legitimate form of protest, they don’t want covid lockdowns, especially for children trying to return to school, they don’t want zero restrictions on abortion. Even black people want equal or [i]more police presence in their neighborhoods, they don’t want to defund the police. Even Latinos rejected the term Latinx that woke people decided was better to avoid gendered language. Trump gained black and Latino voters from the last election and it’s not because they are all racists.
Harris tried to pivot in the 11th hour and claim herself to be the moderate but she refused to reject all the woke/progressive policies that she was running from. That’s why all her interview answers were word salad non answers that just pivoted to trashing Trump. Too little too late.
There’s overlap, but I think you conflate the progressive and ‘woke’ cohorts a little too closely sometimes.
There’s certainly a cynicism from some on the left that business as usual, but with a rainbow sticker is still business as usual.
Preferable to being a dick to LGBTQ people for sure.
I think the dynamics of the Presidential election are rather different to that of San Francisco. Not that parallels don’t exist, but there are pretty notable differences too.
Nobody on here at least from the left was criticising Harris for not being woke enough. It was on cosying up to Republican figures, Palestine, not being ambitious enough on policy to help the poor (or, merely not communicating it well enough).
In this cycle, I think you’ve seen two things.
1) Stuff like you’re outlining in particular locales. Where people reject progressive policies in some of the most left-leaning parts of America.
2) Nationally, where Dems struggled to galvanise their base to turn out.
On point 1, I don’t think the problem is progressive policies per se. I think it’s [i]these progressive policies. Some of them touch on areas I think need reform. In implementation, I think some of them are crazy, almost the worst way to attempt solutions to problems. On occasion, I actually agree with the policies, but consider them so obviously unpopular that they will eventually end up biting you in the arse.
On point 2. I’m from over here, so Harris feels a very centrist candidate, relativistically. That’s not necessarily how her candidacy is viewed over there. I think there’s a tendency to say ‘if X candidate did Y thing I agree with, then they’d have won’. Sometimes this is correct intuition, sometimes not.
I think it’s possible that through the American lens, that Harris was too radical for centrist sensibilities. While simultaneously, not being radical enough for the left of the country. So in effect, you end up with not one, but two rough cohorts not enthused to turn out.
I wouldn’t say I’m correct, haven’t looked into it, but I think it’s possible.
Indeed it could be that the Democratic base is now so split in two that a candidate that can unify those halves has to be absolutely exceptional, if it’s even doable at all
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Northern Ireland24321 Posts
On November 13 2024 17:35 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 06:24 WombaT wrote:On November 13 2024 06:06 Byo wrote:
Perhaps the stock market is where the trickle down happens, we all are vested in the stock market. Company x pays bonus of 3 billion to me, which I don't need, so I throw it into the stock market, and it trickle downs to others who already have same stocks as me. See the economy is doing great I remember explaining the mechanics of the 2008 financial crash to someone, partly in explaining technical terms in layman’s terms, partly with analogies (something I never otherwise do) The response I got was effectively that that sounds so stupid that I don’t believe you, these institutions can’t be full of idiots. You must just not understand these mechanisms. Brass tacks, the stock market is also fundamentally flawed, although not worthless either. It’s a speculative beast, sometimes very informed by numbers and data, but crucially also influenced by intuition. Crucially it’s also a value assessment based on prediction and perception. Not reality. In a crude sense if that wasn’t the case and it was an assessment of how a company is actually doing, insider trading wouldn’t be illegal. I don’t have any innate issue with betting and gambling, but that’s effectively what the stock market is. Whereas I think many have the perception that it’s some kind of infallible, neutral arbiter of company or asset values. The stock market wasn’t collectively smart enough to figure out that Theranos not actually having a functioning product maybe was a problem in their evaluation. Or that Tesla was at one valued more as a company than the next 10 automobile manufacturers combined is the insane valuation of a crazy person. I don’t think that Theranos ever IPO’d.
I stand corrected on that point
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On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago". You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic? Who would you make Secretary of Defense?
For a top-level management position?
- US citizen
- Clean criminal record.
- Excellent Academic degree- preferebly law, politics, history or sciences
- At least 5 years of senior leadership experience in the armed forces, or experience in leading government functions or as elected official or senior manegement role in business
- Deep Knowledge of federal government organization
- Certified or proven project management skills
- Knowledge of the armed forces organizatios, mission and law. (eg. provide List of Scientific papers, authorship on legislation)
- Must be able to pass a backround check by all security bureaus.
- Comfortable of working with Microsoft Office
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On November 14 2024 00:30 KT_Elwood wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2024 23:43 oBlade wrote:On November 13 2024 23:11 KT_Elwood wrote:
@ oBlade
Having an incompetent, but eager, sucker at the helm of the biggliest and bestiest Army in the world, isn't reassuring, and shouldn't be.
Competence in this position would be a conflict of interest with stupid ideas. Remember, the US will get president "why not inject bleach?" "Why not nuke hurricanes?"
Which will now only get "What brand bleach, sir?" and "Can we wait till landfall, then the Nuke would be visible from Mar-A-Lago". You have any independent evidence this man is incompetent or is it just that he touched Fox News and got appointed by Blumpf so it's automatic? Who would you make Secretary of Defense? For a top-level management position? - US citizen - Clean criminal record. - Excellent Academic degree- preferebly law, politics, history or sciences - At least 5 years of senior leadership experience in the armed forces, or experience in leading government functions or as elected official or senior manegement role in business - Deep Knowledge of federal government organization - Certified or proven project management skills - Knowledge of the armed forces organizatios, mission and law. (eg. provide List of Scientific papers, authorship on legislation) - Must be able to pass a backround check by all security bureaus. - Comfortable of working with Microsoft Office
I appreciate the detailed honesty. But I'm confused because you basically just endorsed the guy.
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EPT
