Just by the tone of this response I can infer that you did not
People with healthy levels of arrogance and self-confidence don't talk in such a poised manner pivoting against other demographics when questioned about how they fare at the micro level.
72 karma · joined April 27, 2022
People with healthy levels of arrogance and self-confidence don't talk in such a poised manner pivoting against other demographics when questioned about how they fare at the micro level.
Even if you are #1 of 8,000,000,000 , you are still just 1 in 8,000,000,000
To be perfectly fair I think many of the leaders cited in this piece know perfectly well that they are easily replaced.
Like, take the most traumatic instances such as JFK or Lincoln being shot. Yes there were a couple of days of sorrow (or better yet fake sorrow) but after a couple of days everybody moved on.
Pyramids were supposed to be monuments to the Pharoahs, but after a while the fame of structure managed to surpass the fame of the person buried underneath.
When there are so many humans the marginal value of any human plummets to record lows.
Take Jesus, he's unrivaled at #1, but if we are being honest what's really the % of waking hours that humanity as a whole spends thinking about him during a fiscal year?
It gets diluted into almost insignificant levels of attention.
And who do you think is doing all the importing? A young guy in his 20s , who is working 14 hours per day for his family import-export company and helping his dad cooking the books to convince the bank to loan them money to get access to such foreign technology.
That is to me both a survivor and a risk taker, not an American kid getting out of college today.
> You're flat out wrong about young people and their willingness to take risks
Taking risks entails being open to novel experiences and also believing you are invincible and the world is yours for the taking . So let me ask you:
Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you gamble? How many drugs have you tried? Did you violate lockdowns to go partying? When was the last time you stole another man's girlfriend? When was the last time you had sex with another man's girlfriend? When was the last time you managed to outcompete other men in a club and brought a girl home leaving them with nothing?
I am asking because I did all that (well except escaping lockdowns), back when colleges were still vibrant.
Risk taking is correlated with all the above. It takes arrogance to start or takeover a company, you have to fight and push the barriers, you don't get to have selective arrogance which only applies to one realm of life.
Facts are that if you look at places that are experiencing growth at 9% or 10% YoY in real terms, meaning after adjusting for inflation, they are all places which are pretty socially volatile and have a very fast turnover of humans.
Nigeria, Ethiopia, Namibia, Vietnam, Philippines, Honduras...
In the US , the hotspots for unpredictability , high social volatility and fast turnover due to dropouts and new arrivals were colleges.
Those kept propelling US growth after such phenomenons had long subdued in the American society at large.
Colleges just aren't as vibrant anymore, so as the last bastion of vibrant culture fell, so did US growth.
And besides, you don't have to be watching FNC to see how the US transitioned from being a country of go-getters to being afraid of losing all the health and wealth accumulated up to now due to the efforts of the aforementioned go-getters.
If your team goes on the road against the 1st team in the division, you can contemplate both the idea of following the team on the road and make your support be felt until you don't have any voice left AND prognosticating a loss , maybe even making money by betting against your team to recoup the cost of the trip.
Both ideas can coexist in your brain at the same time.
Like people who donated millions to Hillary super-PAC , but kept channels open with the Trump campaign and when he won they were first in line to meet him at Trump Tower.
Just the fact that there are no brawls, no animosity or electricity in the air means that the whole campus is a safe space. Ever since the stone age putting a bunch of young people together in an enclosed space meant huge social volatility and an energetic exchange of ideas. That just doesn't happen anymore.
> who are dealing with real problems like sky high costs of education, health care, and housing, and who don't deserve this kind of disrespect. Young people are survivors.
A median GenZ will live well into their 90s...honestly that's a huge problem, human brains are made to think about tomorrow, next week at maximum, because they developed during a time when you could die at a moment's notice. When you stop thinking about tomorrow and you project yourself 10 or 20 or even 50 years into the future, that's when crazy things start happening such as you saying that young people are survivors.
There is so much abundance, more than ever, that people don't even value it.
If you think that delay is bad wait and see if a pandemic develops in Yemen or in Sub-Saharan Africa...those countries would need 8-9 months to notice an outbreak not to mention sequencing.
We have an example with HIV. It made the leap somewhere in Africa between 1945 and 1952. The world noticed it when it arrived to developed countries in the 1980s...
Hatred against China is cheap talk, when it's time to discuss the quality of life haircut that a complete decoupling would cause all of a sudden each and every person (be it a professor, a dude at the bar or anybody else) is only looking for an off-ramp to get off the conversation and blame Davos/Schwab/the illuminati. This is true in NYC as well as Shanghai
Yesterday absolute evil was represented by short sellers and Big Oil, nowadays it's BlackRock and Vanguard.
Saudis were great friends when prince M(Bonesaw)S expressed the intention of maybe taking Tesla private, then they were evil when they backpedaled, ironically they became good friends again when they decided to roll over their stake in Twitter.
People capitalizing on the goldfish memory of the avg. financial analyst and retail investor.
But it will end at some point. Problem is when these 2 fraudolent clowns go down, 4 new ones will emerge to take their place.
It's the gilded age of fraud out there.
Fed has been doing QE ever since 2008 if you haven't noticed, and interest rates trailed inflation ever since
You mentioned the flu and common cold, given that the results of vaccines for both such illnesses are pretty poor, I think it's kinda strange to complain about COVID vaccines preventing illness but not infection. We managed to get results in 18 months on COVID that we couldn't get in 100 years of battling flu and the common cold.
Something is better than nothing.
If we shoot our shot (pun intended) too early so that if we develop a COVID vaccine that also prevents infection (not to mention an universal vaccine preventing infection for flu and classic Coronaviruses) people won't take it...well it only means that you are up against illogic behavior , and when that is the case nothing will help you.
If you did everything perfect in the realm of vaccines that illogic behavior from the population would show up elsewhere such as drinking and driving, poor political choices, unnecessary violence etc. At the end of the day we live in a society and illogic behavior is also a big epidemic.
Having developed a vaccine that costs less than 5$ and prevents serious illness in just 18 months is a huge victory.
You are suggesting we should have not taken this huge W and keep grinding in the hope of getting an even bigger W and I have to disagree with that.
Even at the very extremes such as Abu Grahib the population attacked George W. not the military.
Snowden overestimated the potency of the material that he leaked, if the public didn't turn against the military for Abu Grahib then his material wouldn't have cut it either.
In order for whistleblowing to work and for the whistleblower to be safe and continue living a normal social life, it has to be political in nature, it has to be a hit to the reputation of a political or social leader who is already dancing around 50% or less approval rating and always in danger of falling off the cliff (like Nixon, Trump, Bill Clinton or given the current partisanship any future POTUS).
If you blew the whistle on Nixon then you had the whole left embrace you and protect you, if you blew the whistle on Bill Clinton affair, all of the sudden the right would love you.
Snowden managed to piss off both the left and the right so he had to escape to Russia, of course he won't repeat the same mistake again
It's no coincidence that most of donations are for stuff which is sure that people are going to care about 10/20/50 years from now. Like diseases prevention, medical schools and R&D, and mostly financial aid for the disadvantaged. Mike Bloomberg still holds the record for his donations to John Hopkins which is the largest sum ever donated to a University and it's all about all the above.
Will people care about ESG 10/20/50 years from now? Who knows? At the end of the day it's a political front in the culture wars between left and right.
The donor clearly voiced the purpose of his donation, can Stanford re-purpose it if needed be?
It's a no brainer to take the vaccine as opposed to therapeutics which are much more expensive and need perfect timing.
> Nobody trusts public health right now.
Talk is cheap, actions matter. 75+ percent of the population is vaccinated, if this was a disease which killed 10% of the infected you bet that the remaining 15% would use their bullying to skip ahead of the queue and be injected as soon as possible as opposed to using it to pick fights on twitter and doxx people because they are related to somebody who attended Davos sometime in the 80s
You can't compare the liquidity of M1 with the liquidity of BTC. M1 USD is accepted everywhere, ranging from a 300M apartment on NYC's Billionaire's Row to a banana stand in Madagascar.
If you believe that BTC would get to that level of acceptance then it's still the early days.
Honestly after looking under the hood the technical part of it seems like a solution on search for a problem, unless the problem you aim to solve is wealth redistribution with the same GINI index (or even higher given the concetration of wealth in the ecosystem).
Similarly the social aspect of decentralization is a really hard sell when you have Satoshi sitting on 30B and Buterin sitting on 15B and they hold so much power.
Bitcoin is like a real time index measuring the health of the cult of Ayn Rand and you can bet on how the cult is faring and if it's expanding or contracting.
Much like Tesla is a real time index measuring the health of the cult of Elon Musk and you can bet on how the cult is faring and if it's expanding or contracting.
If you are interested in sociopolitical and cultural phenomenons you have a way to make money off that expertise for the first time in decades.
If we get Saylor vs. Bezos in 2024 lots of people building prediction markets for political purposes are gonna be disappointed, because at that point people would just bet on Bitcoin or Amazon stock according to their assesment of which cult would prevail and who is gonna win.
When you don't build anything of value the only moat you have is your political ability to convince people that you are.
I mean banks and insurance companies don't have to justify their existence, whereas the massive campaign that crypto enthusiasts mounted on the interwebz is telling that they are not even sure that their movement can survive.
An entity which is invulnerable to market deterioration and solely decides to handicap itself on its own will for the the greater good so the speak...will always attract the majority of investors. Much like everybody wants to be the manager of the best boxer who is also a showman and decides to go down for the good of the boxing business. People who know, do understand that he is the fundamental part of the equation, not the various prop opponents which are matched against him and that manage to win a fixed match from time to time.
> Sure, I get to use the publicly owned land and airports, but to call that a dividend or equity is ridiculous
Quality of life is obviously a dividend, at the end of the day money is meant to be spent to get quality of life. Only serial accumulators get excited about accumulating zeros and ones in the bank account.
> manipulating
Would you say the US engaged in manipulation after 9/11 when 2 wars were started in 3 years?
A country will always do what is necessary to protect its citizens AKA its shareholders. Especially the most vulnerable ones . They will lower interest rates and engage in QE and do money printing etc. It's their job, and besides in a world and a country which is exceptionally partisan , the Fed approval rating is very high [0]. Actually much higher than every POTUS , except Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.
If we look at data I don't see the erosion of trust in the Federal Reserve that you are seeing
[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/04/09/public-holds...
Left-wingers worry about people who'd be alive 100-150 years from now and thus want to stop climate change.
Right-wingers worry about people who'd be alive 6-9 months from now and thus want to stop abortions.
I say we should go full boomer and only worry about ourselves! Rolling coal with our large pickup trucks on the way to the abortion clinic! /s
But actually...if that is what it takes to restore sanity and end the extreme partisanship , I guess why not?
Seriously this is like the regrets of the 0.01%ers. There should be a footnote every time a wealthy or powerful individual talks about regrets.
On the contrary, March 2020 demonstrated that USD is the only game in town, everything collapsed except that. Then the USD "decided" to collapse via tons money printing and zero interest rate. Both policies enacted by the Fed in order to support recovery and its double mandate of stable prices and maximum employment. But there is a huuuge difference between collapsing due to market conditions and actively deciding to debase in order to support market functioning, prices and employment. This seems a subtle difference but it is not, it's the same difference that exists between genuinely losing a boxe match or going down on purpose for the good of the boxing business.
> I'm a citizen yes, but there is no equity
There is equity and also dividends, you just don't see it your portfolio because it's impossible to split the ownership of a bridge or an airport or a port.
> the equity would be worthless and we would be insolvent
A debt of 130% income is actually not even that serious, and besides the US can make that go to 10% or even 5% if it uses all its military might to anness and acquire land and GDP from other countries. The possibility of selling federal land is also priced in.
> It isn't PEOPLE who are doing the lending, for the most part these days
If you read balance sheets you actually see it's not just the Fed, also surveys say that the 60-40 equity-bonds portfolio is still the most popular for family offices, pension funds and even retail investors The 40% is mostly treasuries, so again it's not just the Fed
So is donating to the church hoping to secure a place in Heaven. We all fool ourselves for the sake of peace of mind or immediate gratification, the important thing is to be aware of it.
It's important to be honest with yourself and decide who are the people who can take you for a ride.
For me it's my younger siblings, the sport franchises I support, and attractive women. Because at least in such circumstances it would be a fun and worthy ride.
Being taken for a ride by Musk, Mary Barra, Herbert Diess, (insert automotive CEO), or even Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff...that's pathetic, not fun and will leave you with regrets...but maybe techno-utopianists have a different mindset and their calculus is the opposite of mine, meaning they have a contempt for the small things in life and only get excited about moonshots and pie-in-the-sky ideas even if it means getting scammed.
Not receiving special treatment indeed feels like oppression when you lived a life of privilege above the peasants for your whole existence.
I also said that bigger cars is just one element in the equation, with seatbelt compliance, zero alcohol tolerance, airbags etc.
All those things are much more feasible and practical solutions compared to pie-in-the-sky FSD
I am up for the challenge, but promise to read the whole thing because it took a while to write :)
It is risk free and also think that it's capital preserving in the long run. Every 3-4 years there is a big crisis (health/military/economic) and when fecal matter hits the proverbial fan everything that is not USD gets torn to pieces, like it happened in March 2020. And if you are into any investment that is not USD and need the money (for any reason) or just panic sell...then you take a gigantic loss.
Again, risk/reward. You'll never find an entity with a lower default risk than the U.S. Govt so, by definition that is (for all practical purposes) zero-risk and every other investment entails a non-zero risk of default
As I said, you only have to get rich once, and if you are an American you are already in the top 1% of the world when you are born, so losing 5% or 6% to inflation... that fits the definition of capital preservation much like subbing all the starters and letting the other team score when you are up 72-0 in the 4th quarter of a football game fits the definition of football roster management.
It's also important to stress that you are not really losing 5-6% either, you as an American are a shareholder of the Federal Govt. and as a shareholder you also benefit form the fact that the organization that you "own" can borrow money at a rate lower than inflation.
> You pay to borrow, you get to collect interest if you park capital
If the interest rate of a loan or a bond is lower than inflation you as a lender are essentially paying the borrower for the privilege of parking money with them because by the time they pay you back, inflation ate up your profit and diluted their debt, so they are the ones who come out ahead from the transaction, not you. Big entities with low default risk (zero in the case of the Federal Govt.) and very low for blue chip companies have the advantage of getting loans/issuing bonds at a lower rate compared to inflation expectations.
Leaving aside inflation expectations, if we just look at the past and see what was the rate of inflation in Q1_2022 there are various entities which had the advantage of having borrowed money at a rate lower than inflation, and thus they were de-fato being payed by the lender for the privilege of parking money with them, that's because again...you only have to get rich once. Powell said that inflation wasn't transitory but people decided to lend to those solid entities at below inflation rates anyways in the name of capital preservation because as I repeat again, you only have to get rich once.
The Saudis should have had come through.
In a rare moment of clarity Musk self-diagnosed and understood that he can't be trusted with a public company. He takes the stock price (and generally everything that impacts or perceived as impacting the stock price) too personally.
His best work was when he was at the helm of a private company out of the public eye. Unfortunately I think he became addicted to attention and can't go back.
All the former members of the PayPal mafia became addicted to being high ranked generals in the culture and political wars raging in across the country.
The Fed mandate says "stable prices AND maximum employment". It says nothing about setting the fed fund rate in a way that enables investors to earn money from lending to an entity which has a zero default risk.
They set the rate and investors use that as a reference point to calculate the rate of everything else, starting from the security which mostly resembles the overnight Fed fund rate : the US. Treasury with the shortest duration which if I recall correctly is the 4 weeks US Note.
When investors are very scared it happens that they get very defensive and pay the Fed govt. for the privilege of parking their money in US Treasuries. It makes sense even, you only have to get rich once and if you are born in America you are essentially already rich the moment you are born (on a global basis), the desire for capital and wealth preservation has steadily increased over time and the Federal Govt. like any borrower is taking advantage of this thirst for safety from investors at home and abroad, this phenomenon actually reduces the Federal Debt which was a huge topic of concern circa 2011-2014.