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Notably, the 'massive inflation' was a rate of 1-1.5% per year...

Which, for the gold standard, is still rather shocking.

Well only with a fairly fixed amount of gold available. If suddenly a vast new supply of gold is discovered, its not shocking that there would be inflation.

Since the industrial revolution productivity has actually been increasing and automation continues to make this happen.

If you don't have a mechanism for productivity increase matching your inflation it's just making whoever is creating the new money temporarily proportionally wealthier until the money spreads everywhere.


Take a look at Figure 7 on this page, which indicates that (annual) overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2018: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...

If have lived anywhere with a significant drug-addict (opioid or fentanyl) population through this time period, you’ve seen the increase; if you haven’t, you may be lucky for it.


Are you talking about the same China which has repeatedly performed industrial espionage, embedded surveillance into products, and supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

>which has repeatedly performed industrial espionage

Ah yes. Europe and the US are famously not known for performing industrial espionage. They're bestest friends.

https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m... https://web.archive.org/web/20151016000311/http://www.nytime... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/brazil-canada-espionage-which...

> embedded surveillance into products

I'm sorry, did we already forget about the NSA literally running the biggest dragnet the world has ever known and the US CLOUD Act that allows them to spy into absolutely any US company anywhere in the world ?

>supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

As regrettable as it is, China's "support" of the invasion is mostly a matter of them both not giving a shit about the situation, and it helping them geopolitically with regards to Taiwan. They sold weapons. Just like France sold weapons to north african regimes when they were brutally repressing their protesters. The vast majority of Europe is doing the bare minimum for ukraine to keep the fight away without being actually involved.

Countries are not moral, and will do what benefits them. Some of them are more ruthless than others, but as it stands the vast majority of Europeans are considering the US as a greater threat to democracy and general life quality than China.


It's called "competence"

>"Feel free to post one simple link for us.

You can't do that but you can follow the above sentence with 1000 more words?"

Feel free to use a word counter.

The post above yours has about 286 words after the sentence you quoted. Quite ironic for you to criticize the grandparent when you're being even lazier.

Here's how you can find the relevant comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...


Most of these industry guilds tend to be capricious but forgiving, determined to protect members. Almost every (North American) union puts its members' well-being ahead of any possible accountability, which makes sense, but means they cannot be trusted to self-regulate.

I am not a proponent of any of these bans, but it seems like someone needs to decide which books are featured at schools, and these 'bans' are just vetoes of certain books enacted by parents or school boards. I am not sure why a librarian or some school administrator should have complete authority to select any books they may prefer. This seems similar to a curriculum, in that the citizens and/or school board direct the educators what they should be (and should not be) teaching.

> I am not sure why a librarian or some school administrator should have complete authority to select any books they may prefer.

Because it's their explicit job function. Librarians aren't hired to watch over unchanging collections of books like cryptkeepers. They have budgets to buy books with.


Well I certainly don't want school boards to determine the curriculum.

> I am not a proponent of any of these bans, but it seems like someone needs to decide which books are featured at schools

Yes. This is normally done by a school librarian, who has extensive training in curating collections, and who is hired by the school board.


Google has now (mostly?) transitioned to using first-price, and more complicated (opaque) auction-style pricing for many of its advertising products.

https://blog.google/products/admanager/simplifying-programma...


> It’s important to note that our move to a single unified first price auction only impacts display and video inventory sold via Ad Manager. This change will have no impact on auctions for ads on Google Search, AdSense for Search, YouTube, and other Google properties, and advertisers using Google Ads or Display & Video 360 do not need to take any action.

>”we should encourage all of them to spend their money. Even buying a superyacht is a benefit to the economy.”

You’re falling victim to the ‘broken windows fallacy’ here; money which is invested is actually more productive in improving medium and long term economic productivity than ‘consumption’ goods. Even ‘retained’ money (under one’s mattress) is not net-negative, as it increases the value of its circulating counterparts.


Scenario A: Someone breaks a window and the homeowner buys a replacement.

Scenario B: A homeowner adds a new window to their home.

Scenario C: A homeowner buys an online-course to learn how to make windows and then adds one to their home.

Scenario A has approximately no benefit to the economy. The homeowner is no better off (same number of windows) but had to spend money. The window maker might be better off, but only to the same extent that the homeowner is worse off.

I totally agree that Scenario A is not a benefit to the economy. That's the "broken window fallacy".

But Scenario B is definitely better for the economy. The homeowner has decided that having a new window is better than having the money. So the homeowner is better off. The window maker is also better off because they get the money. This is what happens when a billionaire buys a yacht.

Scenario C is the best. The homeowner has a new skill, which they can use to add more windows to their house or maybe their neighbors' houses. Over time, the amount of money spent on window-making will decrease, but the number of windows will stay constant or increase. That's a net benefit. And the online-course creator still made money.

This is what Musk is doing. He is developing new technologies that enable new capabilities and/or make existing things cheaper (e.g., electric cars, access to space, rural internet connectivity).

There is also Scenario D: The homeowner doesn't buy a new window but just keeps his money under his mattress. This is clearly the worst for the economy. Hording money like that means that there is less money circulating and lowered economic activity. The window maker is worse off, and even the homeowner is worse off if they would like to have a new window.

Billionaires who don't spend their money are the real danger, not the ones who tweet too much.

Investing their money is slightly better in that it makes the price of borrowing cheaper. But that only helps up to a point. Someone has to spend money or else there's no point in being able to borrow some. So I wish more billionaires were following Scenario C.


In your original comment, it sounded like you would encourage billionaires to buy yachts, solely "for the good of the economy".

Scenario D: A homeowner adds 10 window to their home because the populous think he is stingy and will send him to the guillotine if he does not start spending his money on new windows!

Scenario D provides no benefit to society.

If the billionaire does want the yacht, then no encouragement is needed.


Your quote would seemingly apply to a number of recent administrations, given the state of federal healthcare programs and legislation.

The difference is that they didn't brag about how easy it would be before failing

Always the asymmetric standards... R may fuck everything up if D made a mistake.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.

But Rs fuck things up on purpose, even things that hurt themselves, just own own the libs, and then complain about how things are so fucked up.

What other administrations have said healthcare wouldn't be hard?

This sort of thing is unfortunately very common in many large bureaucracies, especially across the government. A notable (and likely controversial) case in point is teachers who (sexually or physically) abuse students, and are kept on the payrolls, often in ‘rubber-rooms’. Are public schools worth having?

I guess the equivalent here is the teachers and the teachers unions covering up that abuse, moving the abuses around to other schools, and lobbying for special protection for those abusers even after they are caught and convicted.

Its not perfect as an analogy since police are the state's sanctioned violence and teachers are not, nor are teachers in charge of preventing rape generally, but it kind of works since kids generally do have to go to school of some kind.

I expect in the above hypothetical the person you're asking would agree that yes, all teachers are part of the rape problem. The logic is the same and it hinges on the idea that allowing and intentionally enabling <very bad abuse if power> instead of fighting to expose and stop it makes you part of that problem even if you aren't directly doing the bad thing. Doubly so if your job is to expose and stop that abuse in every group except your own.


Teachers in many jurisdictions (I don’t know about every jurisdiction) are required (and paid) to take training in spotting signs of sexual or physical abuse, and are (at least often) legally required to report it. In that sense, they are ‘in charge of’ preventing sexual abuse.

I don't think many teachers think that abusing students is part of their job, but there are LOTS of cops who think that abusing their power to kill / maim / steal from / rape citizens is JUST fine.

Police killed about 1200 people last year, with 118 happening during a wellness check, 116 during a traffic stop, and an additional 213 for unspecified non-violent offenses.

Only 10 officers were charged with a crime from these cases. What do the 'rubber-room' stats look like?

https://policeviolencereport.org/


The statistics for sexual abuse in educational settings are not quite as clear as those for police-involved homicides (and I am not a subject-matter-expert), but the numbers which do exist are quite alarming.

The Wikipedia article includes a claim that sexual abuse in public schools is 100x the abuse by priests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment_in_education...

This NIH study finds 1% of students reporting grievous sexual misconduct by educators: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35499558/

This Ontario study finds a much higher prevalence of abuse (internationally): https://www.learningtoendabuse.ca/resources-events/pdfs/Teac...


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