jollybean

"The normal claim is that police are killing black individuals unnecessarily. The claim you have offered is just that claim dressed in dramatic clothing."

This is plainly false.

Claims that police arbitrarily kill people, or are 'killers' etc. are all over the web..

That you would blind yourself to the radical populism in some corners because maybe you don't want it to exist is not helpful.

Here's a completely random example:

"cops are serial killers. paid, protected serial killers who believe their jobs entitle them to take human life. over and over. they lie. they kill. they lie again. repeat. "

This is one of literally millions of such Tweets.

How could you possibly suggest that such language does not exist when it's rampant?

If that example isn't specific enough for you, then just Google a bit and you'll have your examples.

"a harmful lie like Sandy Hook and mass promotion of same in the fashion you have. Both should be illegal in the same way that starting a house on fire isn't any more legal "

Again, utterly false.

So plainly wrong, that I'm sure you can't have actually thought it through.

Do realize this Orwellian implications of governing speech to the point wherein saying something that is 'non factual' is tantamount to a crime?

It's not even a 'slippery slope' it's already ultra authoritarian.

Again: hop on to Twitter, right now, by your logic, millions of people would be charged with crimes, daily.

"If you don't know that dead children aren't crisis actors or forest fires aren't caused by jewish space lasers and you can't be educated you should probably be fined or imprisoned into silence so that the rest of society can move on."

You seem to have a wilful lack of understanding of what is happening in pop culture and in the commons, and yet want to enact vicious authoritarian violence on people for arbitrary words?

I wonder if you realize that you're a fascist authoritarian?

You are exactly what we are afraid of.

People can believe what they want to believe and say what they want to say, unless it really starts to damage others, and that's a high bar.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/sheerohero666/status/127598615903...

I don't think you grasp the implications of what you are suggesting.

Basically, you're suggesting that 'being wrong' about something, is effectively a crime.

That's one hell of a slippery slope.

Alex Jones has an audience of 400M people.

You and I do not.

You and I absolutely should be able to say 'Sandy Hook children were actors'.

Maybe one of us is a total idiot and actually believes that. Is that a crime?

Proportionality etc. matter.

Also - you are hugely downplaying how much censorship Twitter enacts (I'm not saying this is good or bad, but they do it).

Just like the regular police keep a lid on crime, as in, if they were to disappear all hell would instantly break lose (in Montreal the cops went on strike and immediately there were mass bank robbing etc) - Twitter keeps the total insane hate speech and death threat people off the platform.

In 2020 - the 'Protocols of the Elder's of Zion' - should be hugely and widely disseminated if it were powerful. But it's not. Why? Because we have controls. Google, Twitter etc. tamp that stuff down.

We probably need 'some' laws, but we ought to be very, very careful about it and I suggest it probably be limited to inciting violence and medical misinformation.

So if someone says 'transgenders are sacrificing children' should be illegal, does that mean 'police are arbitrarily killing unarmed blacks' - should that be illegal? Because I think the material reality could be demonstrated that the later is false as well.

I think your argument demonstrates a slippery slope.

I think probably claims should have to be more specific and inciteful to be considered illegal.

Also - I think proportionality matters as well. Saying 'the kids who died at Sandy Hook were not real people but actors' - on a personal level should be legal. But if you have an audience of 400M people and scream that nonsense, I think this might be a problem. Right now it's handled in civic courts, but we could think a bit about what that means.

It's very hard, and there are a lot of slippery slopes. Risky.

'Who deems what a lie is'?

Are you saying we can't agree on what reality is?

If you provide bullshit medical advice to people you should go to jail frankly, for example.

But misinformation, when it's applied broadly, does have consequences and that will have an effect.

Right now we actually do contend with it i.e voting machine lies, lies about Sandy Hook children - but we handle that in civil cases where people sue each other for 'damages' in which case we have to arrive at some truth. Point being - we legally identify 'damages' there.

But the government is responsible for protecting people from 'damage' as well, in which case we could feasibly have the DoJ take people to court for civil-ish kinds of things, or, find some way forward.

I don't know what the answer is, but it doesn't have to be entirely strict or all encompassing and may have thresholds for proportionality etc. or even depend on the integrity of institutions.

We already draw a lot of boundaries around medical information and could do the same. For example, there could be a requirement to indicate lack of authority / seek a doctor's opinion when discussing health matters. Like I like Joe Rogan, but absolutely detest when he starts yapping about vaccines etc. as his position de facto amounts to misinformation which actually can cause harm. If he were required to consistently remind people "I am not a doctor. This is entertainment. Please consult your doctor for advice concerning COVID." (He should have done this without being asked), then I think those kinds of things can help.

And probably we should err on the side of freedom of expression.

But there is a huge risk in getting into an authoritarian situation as people want to regulate others opinions, and yes, as you say, declaring that there are 'only two genders' is considered 'hate speech' by some and they will push hard to stop others from saying this, which is scary.

I'm wary that our governments have the ability to split hairs on these hard issues.

Yeah, no this is authoritarianism in action.

People are not burning down Children's hospitals, moreover, the kinds of 'misinformation' you're alluding to generally fall way, way within the boundaries of 'hate speech'.

Twitter is a private company they can mostly do what they want.

Some companies rise to the point of 'kind of public service' and therefore we might need basic regs (i.e. at least guaranteeing that Twitter act consistently within their own stated rules).

The bar for hate speech out to be very, very high.

Calls for direct violence have always been illegal.

'Disinformation' is absolutely another issue altogether. Lying about moon landing conspiracy theories is irrelevant, but lying about school shooting victims being 'actors' is something a bit different, as is lying about the effect of vaccines during a pandemic, as is lying / providing medical advice without any kind of appropriate designation. Free speeches probably don't like it but those things do have an effect, and proportionality matters: if you want to say something to your neighbour, fine, but if you're going to go in front of 400M people and broadcast it, and it causes serious harm due to direct minsinfo ... most us don't want that. I don't suggest we have the answer there but I bet if we think about it we can find a reasonable way for the insane idiots to be among each other and for them to not scream non-factual things.

Virtue Signalling is absolutely a thing.

Hollow and performative support for an issues that services only to engender the supporter with social points.

Supporting Ukraine doesn't bring anyone brownie points because it's not so much a moral position.

Corporations 'supporting' BLM, especially with donations, which is a totally corrupt charity - this is a problem. Corporations even throwing up the word 'equity' is a bit of a start, but not really there. Corporations making money off of it (Nike) is evil. Corporations doing something thoughtful and material about it, now that's not 'virtue signalling'. If they want to humble-brag about it in some non aggrandising way, then that's fine but it should not be part of company branding.

That is definitely not what this article is.

Just the opposite, I see empathetic, gushing, ridiculous cotton candy optimisim all over places like LinkedIn and the corporate world. Everybody Smile!

There isn't nearly enough contention, questioning, satire (notice how SNL never really goes for that) etc..

Marc Benioff spends the entirety of his time virtue signalling about how he is saving LGBT refugees from this or that, while superficially that's nice, it's ultra narcissistic PR and self aggrandization to use those people as tools for corporate branding. Nobody calls him out.

On the contrary, I see a lot of dour young people, with kind of a 'lack of faith' in the general sense, which is really odd, and I suggest maybe a new concept in the west.

When I was very young we had the 'Cold War' with nukes starring right at us and we were full of ... gumption, positivity, pride, goodwill, hope etc..

Finally - I don't think positivity/pessimism matters that that much - you have to be a 'strong believer' in some capacity to innovate, the rest is head games.

Rather bluntly, this is just not true.

I think there is an erroneous understanding/implication in your statement, which is likely leading you to erroneous conclusion.

The Fed is not 'Central Planning' so much as it is actually trying to make the market more 'neutral' in normal cases.

We'll get to the 'crisis' cases in a bit.

If we just had a hard currency, like Gold (which 'feels' neutral) we'd get into trouble, because of deflationary issues. People would treat it like Bitcoin, and as prices fell slightly would be oriented a bit towards 'store of value' as opposed to currency.

The Fed 'targets' just a 'bit above zero' inflation by policy. That is basically 'neutral'.

That is not really 'central planning', it's more like 'central neutralization'.

As for 'crisis' situations, i.e. when the Fed does start to 'intervene' and does things which you might argue are 'central planning' - well - the government in many cases can absolutely do it 'better than free markets' because only the government has the scale to do it.

For example, 'free markets' could have not have created and executed the Highway road system of the 1950s. It was of a scale and scope far, far beyond any economic actor. That required 'strategic vision' on behalf of the government. Now - private contractors actually did the 'building' - which is how we want it because the government doesn't need to hire individual workers. But it's a government project by virtue of scale and other things.

The meltdown of 2008 was a very scary time - if the government did not intervene, the banks would have collapsed, and it would have taken down the entire economy.

It would be like a human having a 'heart attack' - the heart stops - everything stops.

So the government put together a plan and intervened. A lot of it had to do with 'confidence signals' and other things, extra regulation, but it worked.

There is of course the 'Too Big To Fail' argument i.e. moral hazard i.e. banks take on more risk knowing the 'gov will save' us - that said, the worst actors did definitely lose a ton of money. Also - the problem was not just the banks, it was a systemic failure in a number of sectors.

Basically - the US had an economic cancer and no individual organization was going to be able to contend with it.

So -> intervention. Much like a war, or pandemic.

Having a fiat currency allows that opportunity. If it were a 'Gold Based Economy' it would have fallen down like a house of cards.

Like a brick building during a rare earhtquake: brick 'feels' strong like Gold, but an earthquake will ravage it, which is why you need steel reinforcement - the steel can bend and absorb different kind of tensions.

Milton Friedman is wrong.

Yes, when there is hyperinflation, it's probably because some stupid government is printing too much money, but inflation is not just a function of money printing.

Listen, you are really confusing yourself and others here.

That banks used to print notes in the past is not relevant in this discussion, when we talk about 'printing money' what we are referring to is how money comes into circulation. Physical bank notes are barely relevant to the equation as it makes up a tiny portion of the money supply, and of course, they are only printed by the Central Bank.

Money comes into circulation when the Central Bank 'buys' TBills off the free market. That's when the Central Bank 'creates' money.

Then, through fractional lending, a considerably larger amount of money ends up getting into the system by way of accounting.

Finally, the 'credit market' - which is really 10x bigger than even money in circulation, and which is the real thing that matters in business, develops like a bubble on top of that.

"That isn't inflation, because extra dollars are not being created."

Yes - it is 100% inflation and you are absolutely spreading false information at that point.

The 'result' could be as simple as 'less of that product is bought' - meaning, we use 'less gas' when gas prices rise - while every other aspect of the economy remains mostly the same. That is 100% inflation.

Aside from 'buying less of the product with price increase' or 'buying less of other stuff' we can also borrow, use savings, buy on credit etc. to adjust for the price inflation - so it's not going to necessarily work out to be some kind of net price levelling in the economy.

Increasing prices = inflation [1]. That's it. It's not necessarily related to money supply.

And finally - as the economy expands, more money needs to be introduced into the system just to keep prices even. This is an example of where there is more money supply and it does not change prices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

This is misleading.

There is a 'decision' made and there is always collateral - at the bank, and even at the Fed.

The 'decision' that might be made, is what kind of assets to accept on the Feds balance sheet.

At a private bank, they can do whatever they want with respect to what kind of assets they accept as collateral, within regulatory requirements. They have capital ratios to uphold, but if they take stupid risks, well they are going to go out of business.

The OP is implying that money is printed out of thin air and that is not what is happening.

Your retort that 'money money, in a system of all other things being equal, will raise prices' - but the implication of 'all other things being equal' is never a reality. Economies are usually growing, in which case, they need more money to keep prices from going down actually, and, there can be external shocks, which we see every decade or so.

This is kind of a misunderstanding.

Banks retain assets for loans they make. They don't print money.

But imagine this scenario: you deposit $10 at bank A, they loan that $10 to person B, that person B puts their $10 account at Bank C, thank bank loans out that $10 to person D etc..

You can see all of a sudden, $10 turns into $100! or $1000 in assets!

So what we require banks to do is keep a part of the assets they receive. So if they get $100 in deposits, they can only lend out $90 i.e. they have to keep '10% in reserve'.

This means that banks are leveraged at 90%.

It also means that if there is a calamity, and a 'run on the bank' or it loses 10% of it's assets, the bank is wiped out.

So what all of this means is that there is 'leverage' in the system, and it means there is 10x money going into the economy than is released by the Fed. It definitely adds a lot of flexibility to the system. Banks are still responsible for evaluating risk of their loans and paying the price if they fail.

"The interest on the loan" is mostly a function of risk and the cost of that bank managing that money i.e. getting the depositors to loan you the money in the first place.

The OP's definition of 'inflation' is a bit warped.

Inflation is when there's more money than demand for stuff.

If stuff is harder to make or is more rare, prices will go up irrespective of money supply.

If you throw money in the economy for no reason inflation will happen.

But most economies are expanding a bit, and so they need more money in the supply to keep prices stable, which is why we like to have just a bit of money printing.

All money loaned out - even given out by the central banks has collateral. The Fed keeps mostly TBills (Government Debt) and real estate as collateral.

I think you are misunderstanding fractional lending and collateral.

Fractional lending seems a bit odd, but it's not like there is 'no collateral' - rather, there ends up being 'partial collateral'.

As it turns out, that 'partial collateral' is enough - it's actually reasonable thing to do, because the vast majority of loans are repaid, it's not necessary to fully collateralize everything on the whole.

Banks have to have some capital requirements, which means, if they 'screw up' too badly, then they go bankrupt! So they are acting in a capitalist manner and have to be careful about how they lend, and at what rates. If random bank acts irresponsibly, then random bank will go kaput by regular market forces.

Instead of thinking of fractional lending as 'missing money' think of it more like leverage.

Basically - the effect of fractional lending is that it's a 'multiplier' to whatever the Central Bank decides to do.

So it exacerbates effects in one direction or the other but on the whole, it doesn't change the real nature of the system.

The way we manage money is sound.

We need money to expand and contract, and we have good ways to measure that.

The 'danger' of fiat of course is political intervention, or a failure of controls.

We had a broad intervention in 2008 that favoured home owners over others, and there are attempts to use the Central Bank to do 'Social Justice' type things, which I think is very risky.

It's a bit like Nuclear Energy: it's very potent, you just have to watch it responsibly.

Finally - currency should be a 'current' asset, not a store of value. We just want it as a medium of exchange. So as long as it's not shifting too much one way or another, then it should work.

For 'stores of value' there are other things, like real estate etc..

"Inflation happens when the government prints money that has no collateral, and has no correspondence to added value in the economy and so it dilutes the value of the money that is already in circulation. "

This is misleading.

The 'government' does not print money, the Central Bank does. And as you indicate, the bank ultimately creates credit via fractional lending.

'Inflation' happens when the cost of goods rise faster than the money in circulation.

Thus 'inflation' can happen because 'stuff is more costly to make'. Like gas in Europe, is more expensive, not because 'money printing' but 'Russia'.

Also, inflation can feasibly happen without money printing or even a rise in inherent cost of goods, if the economy shifts in a way that ends up in excess cash.

But ultimately, if during normal course of 'growth' if there is no expansion in the monetary base, then you'll have deflation, which has bad externalizes.

So the goal then is to adjust interest rates / print or extract money from the economy so that prices stay roughly flat, with just a tiny bit of inflation. That is a dynamic process, not a static process.

Because we just went through a massive existential shock with COVID, in which the Fed took on a staggering amount of assets i.e. liquidity - and - we've had material global problems which cause major increase in the cost of goods and fuel.

In 2008 we had a 'banking crisis' but that was an 'accounting crisis' otherwise the economy was normal. We had to re-allocate.

With COVID, we had a real shock to the system, and then lasting shocks due to increased prices.

So both the money printing and regular higher prices are coming back to hit the economy.

I'm wary that this is a problematic articulation.

The government rarely if ever controls markets to the point where it causes material price increase for things.

The US government has not taken measures to materially affect the cost of goods imported from China, or gas, for example.

Yes, the Central Bank sometimes creates more liquidity than is required for a given economic cycle, but in most cases, this is due to economic calamity i.e. banking collapse, pandemic, war etc. in which case the resulting inflation is the 'accounting adjustment' made to accomodate for that 'external factor' (i.e. factor external to the regular economy).

A pandemic, banking failure, getting invaded etc. can be the result of government action (I mean, especially if the nation is 'choosing to go to war', as in Vietnam) but not necessarily.

Finally, and importantly, the Central Bank is not the 'government' rather, part of 'governance' - they are very different things and act for different reasons. If the 'government' did control the money printing we would all be in trouble!

Because the 'simple straight forward explanation' doesn't make much sense.

As economies grow and expand, they need more money supply to keep prices stable. If you're using 100 tons of Gold as your 'fixed money supply' then you run into deflationary problems.

Also, if there is a crisis in which people get really anti-liquid and tend to hoard and do other bad things, and/or the system needs to allocate resources somewhere fast or else face destruction - then if you only have a big pot of gold split between owners, you are screwed. Mad Max style. If a country is invaded or has a pandemic, most regular levers may not work. But helicopter money can help. It implies an 'unfair' re-balancing of who owns what, but so long as the community at large accepts that, then it's fine. It means a price adjustment for everyone.

No - this is completely false.

As an economy expands, it needs more currency to facilitate growth.

A 'very hard currency' would strangle an economy with ugly deflationary issues.

Moreover - with a 'hard currency' the system will fail and collapse when it faces an existential shock such as an internal failure (bank collapse), war, pandemic.

The objective is to provide 'the right' amount of liquidity for the economy as needed, and, during times of crisis to be able to release enough liquidity to see the economy through the crisis.

Yes, the 'price will be paid' in later years for excess liquidity in terms of higher prices, but that's not necessary a bad thing, it's just accounting. It depends on the distortions. If the community accepts that 'yes, resources needed to be diverted to pay for xyz' then that's 'the cost' and it's going to be borne out in higher prices.

And yes, if Central Banks print wily nilly and provide too much supply this will result in hyper inflation.

But fundamentally, this idea that fiat = untenable is completely false.

"Why is that necessary?"

Why is any product feature necessary or not?

If you want to buy something with a USB-C then buy that. If you want Apple to change then let them know.

"Get the government to make a company make a choice I want" is really naive and glib.

There is no systematic issue here - if this were household wiring, there would be, but this is not that.

Every product has different configurations, different requirements. In particular, with smart phones, the extra thickness of the USBC actually makes it harder to design around - the issues has side effects.

Governments should be regulating where there is a material necessity or safety concern, not otherwise.

In particular - your 'bike lamps and power lamps' have totally different product requirements.

The government could conceivably help an Engineering body to promote a narrower set of clean standards, but this is too much.

"The government will force companies to make a product decision that I happen to like"

This is an extremely bad reason to support this legislation.

The government could legislate any number of product changes, they don't do that, because that's not their role.

Apple has always been a leader in these areas, and this kind of thing will definitely stifle from making the decisions they need to, in addition to the fact their are all sorts of unintended design consequences on these forced choices.

There are really only 2 kinds of charges floating around these days, and several mechanisms for handling both, it's not even a 1/10 on the problems we face.

This is really bad populism, the EU is running up the wrong tree here.

The iphone uses the 'thinnest' connector of all, which I find nice.

All phones use 'thinner' and better chargers than they did 10 years ago.

It's unbelievable how people are default supporting this completely unnecessary intervention.

This is exactly the kind of bad regulation we worry about, because it might have immediate populist appeal, it's ultimately not really a win.

There are so many other things that need regulation aka app store rules, pay pal taking your money.

There's nary any real advantage in 'single charger' and it'll make evolution that much harder.

? how did self regulation fail ? There's nothing wrong with the way iPhone charges. This is an unnecessary intervention. There are plenty of bigger, more relevant fish to fry.

More like 1.5,

Depends on competency, commitment etc..

Post-war countries tend to be best served by a truly benevolent, uncorruptable, honest broker who can carry out the necessary plans, which should be fairly obvious if there is decent planning.

China was actually doing well when Xi came along, and there could be a very strong argument that as long as Xi stayed mostly at arms length that they would be doing just fine.

Xi is stepping in hard and it will likely hurt.

Singapore is a kind of authoritarian state and they're amazing in at least many ways.

That said, Putin was mostly hands off on the economy and Russia is not healthy economically, were it not for Gas and Oil they wouldn't be in great shape.

There are services where you can get temp. cc numbers what 'wrap' your 'real' card. You can limit them to certain merchants and limit amounts, cancel them etc..

Bitcoin is not an 'industry' so it's not comparable on those terms, moreover, it provides nothing of value to anyone.

??? history does not care what is boring and what is 'backed by VCs'.

The most applicable things, those that people find useful and gain market share, will be used. How long they are used depends on other things.

Hopefully, Bitcoin will be seen for what it is in 10 or so years, an experiment gone awry, absorbing far too much time and talent, and in 100 years nobody will fathom what BTC was just as we don't remember the names of any 'spindle' manufacturers from 100 years ago.

Digital currency will surely exist.

A lot of arbitrary complexity in our stacks and it can be totally overwhelming for young people just moving through the drudgery.

Look at an Android project: there are maybe 12 different kinds of files! For a 'Hello World'. You have manifests, gradle (which is yet another programming language), snippets in Kotlin and Java, and entirely different xml 'language' for view definition, massive APIs, massive complexity and 'weight' in the simulators.

It's hard for people to focus on the problems space when were are overwhelmed with layers of tooling and abstractions.

Bingo. Every nation should implement an 'externalization tax'.

So USA would implement X% tax on China for their authoritarian stuff, Y% for their aggression against Taiwan and Z% for their carbon emissions.

Every nation gets a tariff.

That would push them into line on some things.

So this is a neat idea, but impossible and it demonstrates the very powerful reach of China.

Major American corporations have deep ties with China and China would pressure them to tamp this down.

Without some kind of institutional support from probably a few media companies it would be very hard.

The 'Tea Party Movement' was basically nothing until Fox News decided to put them up front, for example.

American corporations have incredible influence over media.

In particular, the massive hypocrisy over the NBA, and some players who scream about injustice, and then repeat Xi's talking points when it comes to China. Even NBA players have their marching orders.

Truly grassroots things are really really rare, it usually takes participation from aligned forces.

Do you notice how 'Tibet' used to be all the rage? It was the hip thing in Hollywood about 2000. The Dalai Lama was a thing. China put huge pressure on everyone to "Shut the F up about the Dalai Lama" and so corporations, NGOs, Hollywood, Governments, go the message. It becomes more rare to have him visit, and corporations no longer talk about Tibet.

Marc Benioff of Salesforce fame, is illustrative of this - he's ostensibly a big supporter of Buddhism etc. and the Tibet issue should be front and centre with him if he was in any way legit, but of course he keeps his mouth shut entirely, because, hey: it's just business.

Hollywood dutifully keeps their mouths shut and will happily kill anything in their periphery (i.e. documentaries) with the word 'Tibet'. Actors who want to not be blackballed/banned from China will stay the F away from the world 'Tibet'. Actors are corporations.

And of course the Uyghur issue - can you imagine any other major nation putting people in camps on the basis of their ethnicity? E. China is an open air police state, with stations every few hundred meters, propaganda everywhere etc.. There would be huge uproar over this if it were any other state. But we are told to keep our mouths shut, 'or else' - so we do.

All of this could change however - with a bit of coordinated action and political will, it could flip.

Lastly, Germany, which mostly controls EU, is one of the few nations to be a net exporter to China, and they don't want to mess that up and so they are the most likely to 'acquiesce' on the issue, which means the EU will 'keep their mouths shut'.

There is no evidence in that article.

The intercepts notions of 'this was possibly a false flag' is literally the definition of conspiracy theory.

While there certainly might be more going on than we know, there isn't evidence of that much.

It's not going to be a surprise that a conduit for clandestine money might have some kind of governmental status or what have you.

It's basically insane to suggest House of Saud would want to do 9/11 or even a 'filed false flag', there is no benefit whatsoever in either. 9/11 did not help the Saudis, and even a 'failed false flag' like a pretend attack on a building in NYC would have the objective of what, trying to get more US troops in the Middle East for who's benefit?

More importantly, the likelihood of such a thing getting found out would be extremely high. The ruler of Saudi Arabia is going to blow up the Trade Centre knowing that the CIA/FBI would be able to nail him, and even all of Humpty Dumpty's men probably could not keep that secret contained? And if the US public found out, literally Saudi Arabia would cease to exist?

For what purpose?

No, this insane.

There are ultra Wahhabi nationalists in Saudi Arabia, they have money. We already know that. They are funding odd stuff around the world, just like many other billionaires. As part of the 'war on terror' a lot of that activity was shut down and now it's really scrutinized.