throwaway73838

Having existed pre and post Uber, in my country (Australia), here are my thoughts:

Ordering an Uber is far, far quicker and easier than getting a taxi.

Getting an Uber is still far cheaper. In the old days, if you were traveling after 10pm, you’d very often be charged up to $10 from before you’d even closed the door.

That lead to taxis feeling like luxury vehicles. Catching an Uber seems so mundane by comparison.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Is that one of those cultures that had invented the wheel for a child’s toy, but not for any more practical purpose?

No mention of musical applications. I’d be curious to hear what one sounded like.

I agree. I think eating meat is abhorrent, and genetically mutilating animals even more so. Selective breeding is one thing, but this opens the doors to all kinds of ‘design gene’ questions that I don’t think the world is ready for, or ever should be.

That would work both ways though. Employers could also be overpaying staff by the same token. So what you are saying is just a lie told to stupid people to take their money away from them.

You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.

If you understood economics, you would understand the absurdity of what you just said.

You’re rejecting the most fundamental basic of economics. It’s what you learn on day one. Changes to price will alter the equilibrium point and therefore quantity demanded.

For example: If I raise the price of milk, people will buy less milk. How much less they buy depends on elasticity of demand. But to say that increasing the price of milk will result in increased demand for milk is the equivalent of saying that water flows uphill.

“ The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.” ~James M. Buchanan, 1986 Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 25, 1996

“ The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.” ~James M. Buchanan, 1986 Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 25, 1996

Re: Krueger’s study:

“The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.” ~James M. Buchanan, 1986 Nobel laureate in economics, writing in the Wall Street Journal on April 25, 1996

Krueger’s study was highly flawed. What it amounted to, was, as one economist put it, attempting to prove that water flows uphill, by looking only at the upward movement of water in a rapids. It’s politically correct, feel good nonsense. Just because you’ve found an exception does not nullify the rule - as in chaotic systems, sometimes water does flow up hill. But economics solves this issue by studying the underlying forces.

I think of the economy as a biological extension of our species. Any attempt to control or regulate it can only result in inefficiency (beyond the obvious maintenance of contracts and outlawing of violence).

Another way to look at money is as analogous to energy - and like with energy, it cannot be created nor destroyed (which is different from growth of the economy as a whole due to innovation). So any time you see a policy which appears to “create value” by shifting it around, will create slightly more losers than winners, if you take a holistic view (eg, increase cost of labour, decrease comparative advantage and decrease spending on research and development).

I don’t see the logic. If what you’re saying was true, the free market would do this anyway. Employment is mathematically the same as any other commodity - mandatory price floors will make people who’s real value is lower than the market rate become unemployed.

I think evidence is important here. Look at the unemployment level of Singapore (no minimum wage). Now look at the same for Australia (high minimum wage). A great many jobs exist in Singapore that wouldn’t exist in Australia (such as people who conduct customer experience surveys at airports in SG) because it wouldn’t be profitable.

If you can give me a clear, direct, non vague, logically justified, and non conspiratorial alternative explanation, I’ll eat my hat.

THANK YOU. Finally someone who gets it. We are being taken for a ride, by people who prey on and actively promote ignorance. Economics is an incredibly simple discipline for anyone with more than half a brain, and an interest in learning something new. Unfortunately, we’re essentially living in the dark ages.

That’s silly. Of course increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment. It’s theoretically proven, and you can observe the evidence in the real world. And it’s simply common sense.

Say you have a business which employs ten staff at $10 an hour, who work at 85% capacity, and your business is breaking even. The minimum wage is raised to $11. Now, you have a choice. Either your business starts losing money and will fail, or you lay off one staffer and increase the workload of the other 9. You could also raise prices (which will increase the cost of living and nullify the benefits of increased wages across the board). Or most likely you do both - lay off one staffer and increase prices to make up for the difference in productivity. Your 10th worker is now unemployed, at a time with a great many ‘tenth workers’, and the cost of living has just increased. Sound familiar?

Look at the minimum wage of Singapore. There is no minimum wage. And observe their unemployment rate - one of the lowest of any developed nation. These statistics are closely linked, due to the above mentioned facts which have been known for hundreds of years.

Economics has been poisoned by vested interests, lobby groups and general ignorance for so long, that people don’t understand that it’s an incredibly simple and intuitive discipline. It’s just that so much profit can be made by obfuscation and promises of ‘free money’. People are extraordinarily easy to fool if they haven’t had a classical education in economics (or an ability to grasp the concepts, which many are counter intuitive).

So how many lives were saved by vaccines (to the nearest thousand)? And how many by lockdowns?

The pandemic response globally has been a case study in what not to do. A perfect storm of misinformation and fear, plus a healthy dose of opportunism. Now the CDC is straight up withholding data in case we “misinterpret” it. [1]

[1] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220222/report-cdc-not-publ...

Making you pay for shit that should be free is basically Apple’s entire business model.

But we still do it. “Charge me harder, daddy. You know I like it when you make me pay.”

Well, I think of it like this. I’ve had big nights that I don’t remember at all, from drunkenness. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t experience those events. I just don’t remember them. Similarly, I’ve had experiences in dreams that don’t make sense when spoken about, because there’s no frame of reference. How can you can you adequately describe or make sense of colors which don’t exist in our reality?

I think the mystery of existence is part of what makes it special. And somehow, though it’s a kind of comfort to imagine that there is nothing in the great beyond, I sympathize with those who would hope for the best but plan for the worst.

I would like to respond to you in depth, but I think a better option would be to recommend a good book on the subject. “Economics in one lesson” by H Hazlitt. First published in 1945, it explains, in clear terms, economic fallacies which existed at that time, and I’m sorry to say are still prevalent to this day, and possibly even more so. He explains the concepts better than I ever could. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson

Well, since they’ve been increasingly unionized, they moved places like Texas (Tesla, SpaceX etc) and China.

Take the medical industry, for example - they can’t exactly go on strike, yet they are the highest paying industry in most countries. Which goes to show that unions aren’t necessary to be paid a high wage (also Singapore, unions are illegal, yet they have higher average wages than most developed nations).

In my country of Australia, garbage collectors earn $120,000, which is around $80,000USD. Yet just recently, they went on strike, refusing to collect the garbage. This is despite earning far more than the average person. Or train drivers - they are paid even higher, yet they also go on strike. This is not fighting for basic health and safety rights of Cockney chimney sweeps - this is blackmailing their employer for more money for nothing, for already privilege and highly paid staff in a competitive industry. Which ultimately leads to higher costs for consumers, less competitive industry, and more general inefficiency.

Problem is, unions are actually counter productive to any industry. They reduce available work and further incentivize off-shoring of jobs.

In the post WW2 period, the UK and German manufacturing industries lagged behind the US in both wages and productivity, largely due to the former being unionized and latter not.

An alternative perspective is that the lower performing teachers will relate more to the lower performing students, and the higher performing teachers will relate more to the higher performing students.

And, from a pure efficiency standpoint, we should absolutely seek to give every possible opportunity to those gifted students. For the lower performing kids, focus on teaching values and ethics, along with realistic and practical goals, to make up for any issues in their upbringing. I think attitude is as important as aptitude for the middle and lower end spectrum kids.

Definitely true in Australia. You very often can’t get ice cream after a certain time of night.

I think it’s problematic to reduce human emotions and the human experience to mere cause/effect. Is the Mona Lisa paint on a canvas, a representation of one man’s artistic expression? Or is it a window into the soul of humanity? It can be dangerous to overly simplify consciousness.

Simple answer: economies of scale.

I feel you’re being disingenuous here. Of course I know that Bitcoin cannot be directly used for energy in a system where only BTC existed. But we don’t live in such a system. We live in a system where the scarcity of money is used as an analogue for the scarcity of energy.

Funnily enough, you argue the case for BTC quite well. Money only works when it cannot be created, nor destroyed (sound familiar?), and anything else is essentially corruption/inefficiency (hence why in the 1920s, a dollar had the buying power of $100 today).

You can use money as a representation for energy, using a simple exchange mechanism that allows us to represent our efforts in the form of an agreed standard that is ostensibly finite and scarce. We’re able to convert our efforts into a medium of exchange using an abstraction.

BTC is actually a far better way of achieving this, as it is not as susceptible to corruption (particularly in developing economies), as well as its convenience, safety, transparency, and so on.

But I think we are not being honest with ourselves here if we continue this debate, as it is not meaningful. You can either choose to see what I’m saying, or you can continue to believe in pure materialism - thats fine, but keep living in your cave where BTC cannot possibly represent a way to move energy from a place inaccessible to power lines, while I believe that it can, and drive around in my Ferrari (hypothetically, of course).

This sounds interesting. Will it be available on mobile?

Actually, you’re wrong. Laughably so. Your assertion a the end there about more energy always being used than you get back - if that were true, mining btc wouldn’t be profitable - the whole point is you make more BTC than the value of the electricity you used to generate it.

And to your former ‘points’: I think the issue we’re having here is that I’m talking about an abstraction. To you, the potential energy of a $100 bill is the ability to light it on fire to light your cigar, for example. For me, the potential energy is all the work you can do with it as an exchange of value.

Money is a way to exchange work. Work is analogous to energy. Therefore, money is analogous to energy.

I think where you’re getting bogged down is you Don’t see that to earn an income, you must burn energy in the form of food, money and time. With the Btc farm, you’re saving most of this energy by tapping into a renewable resource to generate the income which you can convert back into value.

In short, there is no other way to derive value from a geothermal plant in the middle of nowhere, within reason. Certainly not significant financial value, other than as a crypto mine.

Internet = star link.

And this is already happening. There are geothermal remote Bitcoin mines in operation.

Full disclosure, I don’t own any crypto. I’m just interested in the technology. I see it as an inevitable transition.

I’ll try and explain it better.

Money is analogous to work. You can’t just conjure up money (that would be illegal).

If I have 50 dollars, I can pay someone to mow my grass. I have just converted potential energy (money) into work.

In the same way, if I have a geothermal power plant in a remote Scandinavian wilderness, I can use that power to generate Bitcoin, and use that store of value to transfer to me which I can then convert into work by employing people, either directly as a service, or indirectly through a good.

I hope that makes more sense now.

To use your oil example - it would be like me mining a barrel of oil in location A, then converting it entirely into Bitcoin, sending the coin to me via the internet, then using the Bitcoin to buy another barrel of oil close to my home. I now have a barrel of oil I did not previously have, because I’ve transferred value (energy) from remote place A to local place B virtually.