jbkiv

Wait, am I missing something here?

The ONLY way for any government to escape their massive debt is inflation. The US is no different from other countries that used the pandemic as an excuse to prop all kind of businesses.

This is no different that real estate. If you have bought property at a fixed rate, then high inflation (= higher salaries) will make your loan look smaller year after year.

Of course the collateral damage is a weaker US$. But what is the alternative to the US$? Crypto? Yuan (see the recent move of the oil producing countries to accept non US $ payments).

The US knows that there is NO alternative to the US $, hence their reckless borrowing strategy (= issue more Treasuries).

But wait! Isn't what the HN is used to hear? "There is no alternative to the dominant position of Microsoft Explorer, Blackberry or anything else. Until THERE IS a replacement and a newcomer replaces the incumbant.

I am really worried over the long term about the so-called invicible US $ as a store of value.

Facenook, Meta, Google and others will slowly but surely get the squeeze in any way possible. They did EVERYTHING they could to get away from privacy laws. Their sleazy attitude, they contempt for regulators "we have more money than your own country and we will litigate until you run out of money" has worked. Arrogance paid off. Until now. The Feds did not catch the mob bosses killing or stealing but they eventually caught them and indicted them on tax evasion. You see the same thing here. Countries will use any tool they can, and there are plenty: store the data on servers located in our country, etc... It will never end. On the top of the Apple squeeze...

Wait, I don't get it.

Big tech companies don't park servers in the EU. Is it THAT difficult? Of course it is not, and they just don't want to do it.

On the other hand, big tech companies are happy to park their IP in Ireland (a EU country) in a phony company, simply to avoid paying taxes.

What's the logic?

Damn, that's a stupid article - another one - from Forbes. Entrepreneur is a French word, and entreprise is company in French. Jean-Baptiste Say coined the word 250 years ago. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/origin-of-entrep...

I am way way older than you are. I went through episodes like that multiple times. There was always a trigger, work related or personal.

This is depression. Seek medical help. Find a good therapist to talk you. Get 10-15 sessions. Find the root of the problems. But the most important thing to do is talk. Don't go to social media, HN, or whatever. Bars, concerts are to be avoided. When you are there you'll get the feeling that you don't belong.

Medication can also help on a temporary basis until you find that you can get back feelings you had in your 20's.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. It will not go away. If it does, it will come back.

I guarantee that after you seek medical help and handle that with a therapist you will gradually feel more excited about life, there are so many wonderful things to do, experience and good people to meet.

Good luck.

I disagree with your assessment that Bitcoin is worthless: 1. Can't get any better for money laundering, just add a sprinkle of Tornado Cash or whatever your favorite tumbler is today. 2. Great speculation token on a par with gambling. Gambling is not illegal as far as I know in the US. It started in Indian reservation but became legit quickly when they cut a deal with each single state (so they can collect taxes) 3. Greatest Ponzi scheme ever. Same with other currencies. Get in early, make a fortune. Get in late, get screwed. 4. Very aspirational. Millions of suckers hate their government and were ripe to gobble up anything that would get them out of their not so exciting future. 5. Unleashed a massive amount of creativity. Just sign up to the top Crypto "thought leaders" on Twitter. Unlimited entertaining. 6. Petty crime and gangs move over, we are in a whole other league here. Rug pulls, scams,...It is just a matter of time before Crypto Bros will face a handgun in the mouth. Hand me the magic keys or we'll cut your kids fingers. 7. Plenty more to come. (edited spelling)

I am falling off my chair. There is something fishy going on here, or wacko. Or I just don't get it.

Sorry, I just saw your comment. I just replied above.

I am sorry about my semi sarcastic comment on bitcoin. I apologize. But bitcoin is portrayed "as a storage of value" and I wanted to show a REAL case where in fact GOLD was a real storage of value 200 years laters.

The insurance company paid the claim to the owner of the shipb, or whomever bought the insurance contract. This is how Lloyds of London got started.

The insurers are entitled to recovery. It happens in the case of mink fur theft, bank robbery, of ships salvaged and sold for scrap metal. Whomever bought the insurance contract got their money.

Even with a fire where everything is destroyed, there is always potential for recovery (I am not talking about a private house). In a plant or a warehouse storing computers, electronics, the insurance company will reimburse for the loss at a given valuation agreed upon in the contract: replacement value, market value. Then the insurance company will contract with a cleanup company and will sell the equipment (sometimes just smoke damage) to the wholesaler. That wholesaler will clean up the equipment and sell that on Amazon or ebay. More often they forget to mention the circumstances.

Here the insurance company has paid for those gold bullions, the owner was happy and is dead by now. The insurance company claims that they have title to that gold, hence a deal with the salvage company.

I was indirectly involved in such a discovery in the 80s. A Spanish Galleon had been found in the Atlantic, off the SouthEast coast of the US, by a private, commercial, diving expedition. Gold was found (it may have been the main reason for that expedition).

Congratulations were in order. But the question was: who owns that gold? Without getting into a lot of details, if you find a ship floating away or something at the bottom of the ocean, it is yours to keep. Sometimes the owners and passengers are rescued from small sailboats as the sinking is imminent and the craft is sunk as she would present a hazard to navigation. Or that boat is left floating away. I recall such a case in 1994 a sailboat had been abandoned off the coast of North Carolina, the crew had been rescued with a Coast Guard helicopter. That sailboat was found a year later off Cape Hatteras. Bottom line the boat was rescued, her owners were found, and the insurance company had to negotiate a return (they paid the owners for a total loss).

That part is important, so let’s go back to that galleon full of gold coins (unlike bitcoins they had appreciated in value over three hundred years). That load was insured by the oldest insurance company at the time, the Insurance Company of North America (INA). INA became CIGNA, then ACE and is now Chubb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Company_of_North_Ame...

Yes you can mock insurance companies for their archaic systems, flat files and old windows machines. But paper files were kept. They had paid for that loss. Recovering that gold was just a matter of filing legal documents. Negotiations ensued with the underwater gold diggers. A deal was reached.

First, hats off to "Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement". I looked them up, it is a research lab based in France https://www.lsce.ipsl.fr/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast_servic...

They do research but also higher education with 60 PhDs at any given time. Compared to US standards they are very small. Our National Labs have probably a budget 1,000 times bigger.

It is not a think tank like the ones we have in Washington DC where you just "buy opinions" augmented with political endorsements (= lobbyists ready to "fund the political campaign" of any politician, Republican or Democrat).

That shows that good research teams with limited budgets can produce great output. Unfortunately everything is in French, so their audience is limited.

As for the culprits we know WHO they are and WHERE they are. But like the war on illegal drugs against Mexican and Colombian cartels we should not forget that they would not exist without consumers. Consumers who are mostly in the US.

We can target the polluters in Kazakhstan or anywhere else. The White House will issue a press release "condemning those irresponsible operators" and providing reassurance that "we will do everything we can to bring that activity to a complete stop".

But we are consumers, and the US more specifically is a voracious consumer. We have built cities out of nowhere in places where the temperature is so high that you can’t live without A/C. We have golf courses in the middle of the desert and ice hockey teams in places that have seen ice. Our gigantic houses, our culture around freedom (=individual cars and pathetic public transportation systems)

Sure we drive a Bolt, a Tesla or a Prius in San Francisco. But it is our second, third or fourth car. The others are pickups or large SUVs to go skiing on weekends. Uber instead of public transportation, private jets for work or extended weekends, vacations with the family on the other side of the world at least 2-4 times/year. Ask our beloved Senator in California, Nancy Pelosi, who commands a military jet when she heads back home from DC for the weekend.

I don’t know what the solutions are. Shame the largest consumers? Shame and uncover politicians who condemn the pratices? Heavy taxes on gas (very impopular)? Honestly I don’t think I will witness any significant change in my lifetime.

Note: gas in the US is petrol, not natural gas.

Thanks! I learned something new today.

I remember when Mercedes Benz bought Freightliner, the major US truck manufacturer,in the 80s. The Mercedes Benz engineeers were astonished to see how UN-sophisticated the engineering of Freightliner trucks was. Example: no assisted steering!!! That choice was justified as more macho. I was told that assisted steering was not manly enough...

In a previous life I was involved in K&R (kidnap & ransom) insurance. You just pay the ransom and never recover your money, so you price the insurance contracts accordingly.

The police: "we don't prosecute those crimes" , "this is not our juridiction", "why don't you try the FBI?"

I used to work in the Presidio of San Francisco. An ex military base. The only canons left are from the 1800's. I needed to file a police report (car theft), called the Police in San Francisco. OK, what's your address? Sorry, we don't handle those cases, call the Federal Police. Then later we had to file a lawsuit, so based on previous experience we filed in Federal Court. They told us, sorry even though you are on Federal land, you must file in a California court. Go figure.

Just to say that nobody can help our dear crypto bros. BTW did you declare the existence and the amount of your crypto holdings last year? Oops, now you'll regret that police report you filed (goes into waste basket) and you have to deal with the IRS. The crypto world is better than the proverbial kid in the candy store.

Agree, lots of options. Nexus Mtual and others focus on smart contracts on a protocol, rug pulls, and de-pegging risk. Our target: consumers buying and selling NFTs and crypto. As I said when we launch I'll be scared to death 24/7.

Agree.

Got it, the trust level is pretty low when you the very basic due diligence.

I think Nexus Lexus is legit. They had to in order to get UK clearance. But I understand that they want to demutualize now and become a DAO. DAO is the gold standard for no corporate oversight.

Fake profiles on Twitter and Linkedin. Thousand of fake followers. Incorporated in banana countries. And if they are incorporated at all. If the plan is a rug pull, then bypass incorporation, of course.

Nexus Mtual and others focus on smart contracts on a protocol, rug pulls, and de-pegging risk Our target: consumers buying and selling NFTs and crypto. When we launch I'll scared to death 24/7.

Agree. Very hard for regulators (=protect the consumer) to keep up with it. I compare that to the massive fires we have in California, so big that only the rain coming in November saves the bacon.

You have to compare that to the equivalent of the float in stocks. Most crypto holdings are not that liquid and come from early backers. If the big holders (mostly pump and dump) sell, the market will collapse.

We are working on an insurance product for crypto. :-(

The more we dig into it the more scams we find. Everywhere. Wash trading, click baiting, pump and dump, code is law, etc. You will find the biggest bazaar there is in the crypto world. Biggest than the Nevarro bazaar.

The anonymous ecosystem is a paradise for scammers and money launderers. And a terrifying "crypto lord" on Telegram or Twitter may just be your nicest coworker.

I am not sure we will ever find a backer. So far we are working on the private risk management side of the venture.

I would expect more mainstream users, and they will hammered day one. Look at what is going with NFTs, all the wash trading pushing price ups (source: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-repor...)

Gee, I pulled out many years ago. Sounds like FB is going the Yahoo route, just down, trying to catch up to others.

Here is how things work in the US. Sarcastic tone in my reply…

Round one: this is great

Hardware equipment for farmers (funded by John Deere and Caterpillar) lobbyists hard at work.

Round two: here is a water down version

Lobbyists “discover” that there is a risk of sudden death if a farmer accidentally connects two very potential wires… Lobbyists "do more highly paid” work with unions, OSHA, worker’s compensation insurance companies.

Round three: warranty denied, worker’s compensation denied if worker (the word farmer has been deleted) fix anything that presents a risk of electrocution, or could physically harm the worker or co-workers

Hardware??? Apple & Co. lobbyists jump into the action

Bill is killed. Not enough support at the Senate. The people have spoken.

Same here. Unbearable. Stupid suggestions. It has become close to worse than my old yahoo.com email address that I used for junk requests.

Thank you, I struggled with that problem for years. Happy that I am not the only one.

I like them a lot and they are very good at what they do. Disclaimer: I owned an Amel...

So sorry metalised, not much you can do and no legal recourse/appeal as you have agreed to the TOS. FB will not help much either.

The a lesson to be learned here. Zinga learned that with Farmville in other circumstances. If you can, don't build on the top of some other companies, a FB, an Instagram, Pinterest, or a Gmail/Maps. Rug pulls do not happen solely in crypto.

There are exceptions of course: build something good on the top of salesforce and if you get traction (=paying customers) they will buy you.

More and more posts on HN are written to show how evil those companies are (Amazon to their third party merchants, Google or Facebook to their users), but you have choices in life, simply build a different model. The lesson is: don't build your whole business with faceless companies, even worse if you don't pay for the services. What do you expect in return?

Agree, but the rumor is that their social media business (YT, ads) brings US$ 800K/year

Not yet. But we use Iridium + predict wind. Unit cost $1,000 then you pay $250/year for Predict Wind (weather prediction and routing) and $200/month for unlimited data. Video streaming non stop: find yourself another hobby