matthest

Regenerative farming is about to make a comeback in America.

From CBPP, a left-leaning think tank:

"The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened."

It allowed government to print $ unchecked. When new $ gets printed, it goes to the corporations/rich first, causing inflation for everyone else. This artificially creates an extremely wealthy class.

Not saying the Gold Standard is the solution - it had its own set of problems. But the untying of money from a real, hard asset is what makes the existence of the ultra-rich possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/magazine/deathbed-visions...

Doesn't mean they're necessarily saying it's real (or not real for that matter), just that it doesn't fall under the strict definition of a hallucination.

Do you see this destroying prediction-based markets (i.e. the stock market and Polymarket)?

Markets exist because there's uncertainty about the future. If LLMs can predict with extremely high accuracy, would there no longer be a need for markets?

Thinking of the OCR vendors who get replaced. Where might they go?

One thing I can think of is that AI could help the space industry take off. But wondering if there are any concrete examples of new jobs being created.

Companies technically have disproportionate power.

It's better that they shift according to the will of the people.

The alternative, that companies act according to their own will, could be much worse.

No matter which way you look at it, we live on a planet where resources are scarce. Which means there will be competition. Which means there will be innovation in weaponry.

That said, we've had nukes for decades, and have collectively decided to not use them for decades. So there is some room for optimism.

So like Twitter, but with 3-4 paragraph essays.

Trump admires Xi and Elon loves China. The people at the very top are more China-friendly than the last administration.

Also worth noting that Denver is experiencing something similar. Not the same context, but also an increase of new supply leading to lowered prices: https://www.denverpost.com/2025/01/24/metro-denver-apartment...

Ignore the "plunge" in the title. I think it mentions it's only something like a 3% drop. But will be interesting to see if that 3% increases over time.

I feel like if that were true, it would mean they're not lying.

Could eliminating it force states to strengthen their own disaster relief programs?

If that's the case, some potential benefits of this might be that states get more efficient with their overall budget (in order to support disaster relief initiatives). And maybe spurs more innovation in disaster relief tech/processes.

The original Adam Smith capitalism basically called for a nation of small businesses - ultra decentralized. Modern American industries are very far from that. Some might argue they're more like state-sponsored organizations. Which definitely wouldn't be Adam Smith's capitalism.

As far as the market goes, I think part of the problem is that most industries are not true free markets, AKA: high competition, low barriers to entry.

Industries that are close to true free markets: restaurants, barbers, spas, handcrafted goods, almost any manner of small business.

These are some of the most ancient industries and have never collapsed or become overrun by corporations.

The issue with something like deregulating banks is that banking is not a true free market. There is no high competition (it's concentrated by a few corporations). So deregulating it can be disastrous because it's basically allowing a corporate monopoly to run wild.

If they deregulated it AND made a massive concerted effort to bring a ton of new, smaller, independent banks to the market, perhaps it could become a self-sustaining free market that truly benefits the people, with little need for government intervention.

But if it's the wrong leadership, the results are far more catastrophic.

Centralization is high risk/high reward.

Mao's command economy had the country stuck in poverty. Deng's market economy reforms turned them into a superpower.

The premise is that in the 1500s, no one thought Europe was going to be the next great power. The dominant civilizations at the time were the Chinese and the Ottomans.

Why did Europe win? Because no one could unify Europe. It was basically a collection of states.

Whereas China and the Ottoman Empire were centralized. The problem with centralization is that if the guy at the top says to do something, everyone must fall in line, even if it's a bad idea.

China used to have the most dominant navel fleet in the world. Then in the early 1500s, their government decided to stop building ships. Which ultimately led to them falling behind in the world order.

In Europe however, even if one country received a decree to stop building ships, it wouldn't stop the others from doing so. This created a hotbed of innovation and competition that allowed them to develop rapidly. And establish dominance.

The trade offs between centralization and decentralization are fascinating.

There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about people travelling the most beautiful parts of China. Free for everyone to consume.

Chinese movies/shows just kind of suck, especially compared to the quality of Kdramas and anime.

To be honest, most of the movies/shows China creates sucks. They're Marvel-esque CGI fests with awful storylines.

Meanwhile, Japan and Korea are creating awesome media.

The whole narrative about the US gov trying to "hide" China isn't really true. There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about how great China is. And we welcome Chinese immigrants every year.

The real problem is that China itself doesn't execute when it comes to soft power.

Or perhaps a boom in small businesses as AI makes it more feasible for entrepreneurs to get leaner?

This is no longer a fringe conspiracy theorist thing (though research on it is still early and relatively sparse).

For example:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/02/health/brain-tumors-cell-...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5417432/

Maybe it is causing certain cancers, maybe it isn't. Science will probably know more in 10 years. But in the mean time, why take on unnecessary risk?