genericresponse

You're not wrong, but the weakness you point out isn't a new concept.

Market cap is, at best, a rough valuation of the company. It has many confounding variables of which liquidity can be one of them. That's part of why investment analysts put out price targets for companies. The counterpoint is that market price is driven by what people are actually paying.

One of the major challenges with valuation is settling on a methodology overall. There are many ways, appropriate and not, to value a company. Many will have different estimates for value. There are also factors, like control premium, that start to become relevant when you try to completely acquire a company.

One of the benefits of an open and liquid market is that future availability of locked shares can be priced in early. We all get the benefit of consensus information.

Obesity is widely regarded as a chronic disease that includes the interaction of genetic and other factors with behavioral factors.

The unbelievably low success rate of diet and exercise programs for long-term weight reduction is widely documented and quite consistent with the earlier poster's experience.

Statistically. Do many trials and measure how often it succeeds/fails.

Ehh... you're both wrong. Argentina ended 2024 with an annual inflation rate close to 100%. That's significantly lower, but still hyperinflation. It should be lower this year, but how much is the question.

Whether that's maintainable long term is probably the decisive judgement. Argentina has had many cycles of hyperinflation, reset, hyperinflation again. The current bailout is not exactly a positive indicator.

That's just not true. The models have real predictive power, they just have limitations. Behavioral economics, which tackles this frontier is still a growing field. Thaler, Kahneman, and Taversky won the prize in 2017 for building the bridge between economic theory and individual decision-making.

At the risk of being inflammatory-- These arguments are the equivalent of saying that Newton didn't really do physics because his models of mechanics break down at high enough speeds and small enough scales.

There are two more steps:

- Demand drops due to increased price to buyers.

- Prices drop so manufacturers can remain profitable.

The key difference in the markets is that it takes a very long time to build more apartments and houses, especially in France. There also isn't an option to not have housing. (Low elasticity) That keeps the short term supply effectively static. Same amount of supply, increase in money spent, inflation.

In a market like solar, there is production of more solar systems. There are also multiple readily available substitutes. (e.g. on-grid power) The effect of the subsidy should drive increased volume from manufacturers, keeping net price stable.

I'm sorry, but that's not what OP said. OP didn't say anything about the essential-ness of the entire workforce. They solely spoke to the larger, well documented and endorsed by major SV players, plan to transform our government structure.

Proof or you're lying. Yelling doesn't make something true.

It's the standard you've asked others to be held to in these comments. It's fair to be held to it yourself.

Can you provide a basis in fact for the argument about a large portion of government spending? I'm asking because I think the argument is specious.

First- 49% of national spending goes to Social Security, Medicare and interest payments. The first is a direct payment, the second is very heavily regulated and has a bounty program for fraud waste and abuse, and the third is paid directly to bondholders.

Second- I'm almost certain that most, if not all, government contracts have auditing rights included. So we could audit them if we want, in fact almost every government agency has an inspector general to do just that.

Two things that frustrate me about this line of argument is a failure to recognize the scale being discussed and an implicit assumption that something that isn't trivially obvious doesn't exist.

On the scale- We're talking about millions of checks a year. You've effectively proposed to ask every congressperson to spend all day signing checks. By doing so, you've also eliminated the time they spend working with constituents on issues, understanding the facts or background of decisions they've made, or even working to find compromises.

On the assumption- There isn't a dollar figure, but there are quite thorough rules. (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46497) This spells out how the rules are established and what governs it. You can quite easily look up the authorizing legislation for USAID and see the allowed purposes for funds. Definitionally- that makes it not slush funding.

This is /s, right?

First- Many of the cuts haven't been legally conducted and, rather, represent waste themselves as they are going to disrupt activities and create litigation. So we, the people, will pay at least as much and have less productive results and have to pay for legal fees.

Second- Federal contracts are usually bid on the free market. There's an RFP, bidders, and the best fit wins. It's usually lowest cost while meeting requirements. I'm not sure why selling to the government is not a "real customer."

Third- It's reductive and inflammatory to say that not detailing out the contracts were for was because you would have seen it as wasteful corrupt spending. How would the prior commenter have even known what you see as wasteful and corrupt?

Definitionally, at least in the US, Autism is a disability. It's a qualifier for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The specific definition: "A disability is a physical or mental impairment that makes it harder for a person to perform certain activities or interact with the world around them." For many ASD makes it harder to interact with the world around them, whether that's overstimulation, communication challenges, or something else.

It's reasonable to wonder if the disabilities were caused by brain damage post-partum or are symptomatic of his autism. At the same time we shouldn't forget the many others with ASD and similar disabilities who lack another explanation. Some of the population with ASD have limited communication skills and cannot pass as neurotypical.

Can you clarify what you mean by "social politics?"

I ask because rural health is effectively its own subspecialty in family medicine. There doesn't seem to be a locality equivalent for other geographic subgroups. This implies, to me, an extra level of focus on the needs of a population.

I think the point was that it's concerning. In fact, to quote the article:

"It’s a direct quote from a 2019 European report about the ethical concerns of the world’s superpowers attempting to engineer super soldiers."

Those aren't the objectives of this group. If you read the prompt about the panel, those are potential upcoming capabilities they're concerned about.

I like how the article did its best to bury the lede that the crux of the discussion was how to better understand and manage these new technologies. To quote the panel prompt "[T]here are some real-world fears and ethical questions that need to be asked. Just because we can, should we?"

Isn't this exactly the type of discussion we want happening in a public forum?

The recent curative hepatitis treatments have paved the way for this. There are a variety of different approaches including statewide cost sharing funds that pool the cost across all the insurers in the state.

Paperclips and Crude Oil value, relative to another paperclip or barrel of oil, can be based on well-defined, finite, measurable standards that can be measured indeterminate of their location. That allows pricing to be indexed based on location, time, and quality relative to the standards.

A house's value relative to another house is an almost infinite number of variations of measurable and immeasurable variables. One example-- Traffic noise. Maybe the amount of noise is an issue for you, maybe the time of day of noise is an issue for me, maybe noise in one room vs. another. Moreover, there are very expensive switching costs for me

I would argue that the cost is less in setting up than in running and maintaining a site at the scale of Recreation.gov. That includes aspects of customer support.

Many of these agencies are forced into uncompetitive compensation structures which means contracting out most, if not all, of their technical work.

A major part of the issue is the government contracting system. In an attempt at fairness, it has massive amounts of oversight burden. That is, in turn, a barrier to additional competition for the work.

Because they aren't writing for a general audience. They're writing for an academic, professional finance, and governmental audience. It's extremely relevant that their word choice is being scrutinized for suggestions of what their future policy will be. Similarly, their use of jargon would be well understood by their audience. Context matters in communication.

You could consider this almost ritualized. That's something very different than corporate doublespeak that seeks to obscure rather than inform.

As with most fields a lot of it relates back to the first principles of the field. A lot of it is around what the best way to classify, measure, and show an economic transaction. One example that comes to mind is the development of Activity Based Costing in the late '80s as an improvement on traditional cost accounting.

You'll see similar models in law firms. IMHO it's driven by two key elements in the business: An apprenticeship-like, up-or-out model for developing talent and a vested owner-operator class at the "partner" level.

These firms effectively operate as a collective for the benefit of the partner class. New partners must invest capital, ongoing partners get returns, and older partners retire with a terminal payout. Some partners may take on expanded leadership roles and get higher annual payouts.

The overarching legal structure is a sort of "modularization" to limit the liability of lawsuits and enable flexible operation. There is a usually a global partnership council that dictates universal operating norms and practices.

Again, fundamentally, it operates as a collective and international units support each other for collective benefit.

Companies that file for bankruptcy don't have much damage done to operations and the organizational structure because its ability to keep operating is usually the highest value outcome. That is- the company's continued operations bring in more money than selling off the assets. Most corporate bankruptcy is about not making enough money to pay their outstanding debts, not having money losing operations. Typically the owners lose all their investment and the debtors lose some of their investment. The debtors, in order of priority, are given ownership of the company by the court.

The ability for ownership to exist separately from the "operating" company, for the owners to only be liable up to losing their investment, not more, and for the management and employees not to directly lose money is sorta the "why" for corporations to exist.

This material is concerning to me on a base level.

To me, it doesn't reflect positively on the cost and complexity to implement a large scale system. It presents much of the material without a simple guide to what should be optional, when, and where.

You almost need a huge number of people to even digest the material and then make decisions about it. It feels like a massive reflection of the government contracting industry. I see it illustrating the value of editorial or architectural control and a willingness to take risks by saying "no".

Are we going to ignore that Google responded that they published this as part of a legal defense rather than a lobbying effort. From the article: "We're not lobbying for changes to any rules." Rather, she said, Google's claim that the Obama-era protections should be overturned was "a legal defense that we included as one of many possible defenses"

I'm not saying that makes it right, but I see a difference between pushing for it as an independent agenda and using it to defend yourself from a legal filing. IANAL, but Legal arguments tend to be set up as: They are wrong because of argument 1, and even if you don't agree with argument 1 they are wrong because of argument 2, and so on through argument n. You include everything that's relevant in that list to preserve it for future appeals even if you have some pretty weak or controversial arguments.

I believe that's why that particular figure of speech is called an analogy...

Two: 1. The leasing company/landlord doesn't get a bunch of free press. 2. Tenants don't think about the real value of the parking space. (Which is probably far in excess of $100/month.)

Flipping through the list, my top 3 are Palantir, Spotify, and Zenefits.

I think Uber or Airbnb will stay and become huge, but they might both be overvalued.

No it's a commodity if it's non-differentiated from others. You can still have non-commoditized work that operates at scaled efficiency. You just have to have something that makes you better or different.