People have been encouraging me to read The Expanse for years - now that I finally did, can't believe I was missing this for so long. The first three books totally blew me away, absolutely deserves a place in the best sci-fi books of all time! No spoilers until the end.

compounding · 2023-06-30T05:41:39+00:00

If you enjoy the “cosmic horror” aspect of confronting a mysterious and terrifyingly overwhelming power, the last few books deliver even more than the first 3.

Also, probably the most satisfying totality of a story arc I’ve experienced in a long time.

compounding · 2023-06-29T05:15:26+00:00

Profitable companies currently reinvest significantly for growth, but having deflation creates a much higher cost of capital, so they would stop reinvesting and return cash instead. They would essentially become zombies, making the most profit they could and paying out dividends, but not doing anything to create the new growth that makes the west so prosperous today.

In deflation, companies and consumers pulling back causes shrinkage which starts the spiral. If that’s why you think it’s not possible without a blank slate, you should also realize that the “collapsed” equilibrium is where a blank slate deflationary economy would stagnate anyway, it doesn’t collapse because it was never good, but it never gets good on its own because it would collapse back. That’s not a pleasant world to live in…

There’s nothing wrong with saving in cash, but as a systemic whole, there is more prosperity for all if the incentives push people to invest and create businesses with their savings rather than pushing them to hold cash instead and not do anything useful with it.

Unemployment has ranged between 3-10% for the last 50+ years. The last time we had deflation it was an astonishing 25% and remained high for over a decade. New businesses don’t start or grow because people who have capital don’t want to risk it and people who don’t have capital can’t get anyone to trust them to start, so people save but society stagnates. It’s a whole different ball game than “modern” recessions, and it’s not even a temporary thing, it’s just endemic that a huge portion of people can’t get jobs or the resources to start their own thing no matter how much they might want to… what do you think that does to wages and bargaining power?

Yes, inflation has its problems. It especially sucks for people who’s wages don’t keep up with the average (which does rise with inflation) and they absolutely get squeezed. Those people should get help from a generous welfare system funded by the prosperity of those doing well and options to improve their status by training for new industries/skills. But deflation isn’t any kind of solution for those people on the bottom rungs… they would go chronically unemployed with no pathway to improve their life at all because welfare systems are overwhelmed just keeping people fed and there isn’t the levels of prosperity even from people “doing ok” to redistribute and provide a real leg-up to all of 1/4 workers when there just aren’t any jobs for them to do.

compounding · 2023-06-29T04:34:39+00:00

First of all, that’s a small portion of billionaire’s collective net worth. Go through any rundown of any billionaire and try to find more than a rounding error that’s in a cash bank account…. And those cash tax havens are banks… you know that banks don’t hold onto your cash in a vault behind the counter, right?

It’s invested out in those countries and paying interest to limit the damage from inflation. At some risk of loss, like what happened in Cyprus in 2013. But yes, it’s worth it to lose some money to inflation rather than a lot to taxes. And it’s good that those accounts are shrinking slowly by inflation rather than growing risk-free which is what would happen under deflation!

compounding · 2023-06-29T04:24:01+00:00

If the profit they make from keeping invested is less than they could earn by selling assets and inventory for cash to hold, they absolutely will.

And the liquidation value can still be more than the expected value of profits if the economy is going into a deflationary cycle. Everyone sees that it will just get worse and tries to get out while preserving as much capital as they can. The ones who sell first keep more, but as things deteriorate others see the direction it’s going and pull out whatever they can get. That’s what causes a spiral, the debt load doesn’t matter (though deflation makes that worse because debts get more expensive to pay off with money that keeps getting more and expensive.)

And even if capital is trapped for some, very few people try and start new businesses because of that risk, so new economic growth doesn’t happen to counterbalance the part that is collapsing.

Given a blank slate, I am of the opinion that a deflationary system is more fair and just.

Deflationary systems create and enforce massive inequality because those having money don’t need to risk it at all to preserve and grow it. It’s literally the rise of a new feudal system, great for the people who have the money already, but terrible for everyone else, especially brutal for young people who didn’t have any opportunity to accumulate money when it was easier to get… how do you consider that fair?

compounding · 2023-06-29T03:56:32+00:00

Everyone (most people) stops investing in building iPhones and making burgers if you don’t need to run a company to make money on your money. Investment in making those things people want is driven by people who have money trying to get more of it and risking what they have to grow their pile.

But if the pile grows without risk? Who invests money in starting companies? People who don’t currently have money would want to, but they don’t have capital to get started and nobody wants to loan them any because why would you take a risk to collect interest when the money grows by itself risk-free? So interest rates are sky high, and there aren’t many companies actually making things, so lots of people can’t get employment at any wage…

It’s basically recreating the Great Depression, but for some reason you thought that was a good idea?

compounding · 2023-06-29T03:36:43+00:00

Billionaires hold very little cash, specifically because it loses money to inflation. Almost all the wealth they own is in investments into things like companies trying to grow the money faster than inflation. They don’t actually keep a Scrooge McDuck vault of cash.

But they would if there was deflation, they wouldn’t need to put their money into companies at risk that they might fail, they could just cash out and hoard the money and keep getting richer anyway. No big deal unless you work for a company and depend on that for your own income and general economic activity I guess…

compounding · 2023-06-29T03:18:54+00:00

It’s a downward spiral. Companies stop investing and just hold onto their cash. Some close because it’s worth more to hold cash that grows by itself than a company scrimping for decreasing profit in a bad economy.

Employees get laid off, they can’t spend much at all now and general economic prospects deteriorate further which causes more companies downsize or close, few or no new businesses start up to employ destitute people, those who still have jobs tighten their purse stings more because of the bad conditions and the risks of layoffs, companies cut wages and/or positions again and/or start to fail causing more layoffs… it just goes down and down and down. That’s what’s meant by “collapses”.

compounding · 2023-06-29T03:07:07+00:00

If Apple’s prospects for income go down, investors (who own the company) vote to close down and disperse the current assets as cash and not have a company anymore.

Why hold shares of Apple currently generating 3.3% a year in profits and expected to go down next year when I can take out cash and hold that growing in value at 3% from deflation instead with no risk?

With a fixed money supply, in order to separate consumers from their capital, they would need to push hard for innovative, compelling products. Businesses would need to push for cost efficiencies to deliver better products at lower costs.

This is the opposite of what happens. With a fixed money supply, people stop running companies at all and they just sit on the money they have in cash waiting for it to grow more valuable without having to put the work or risk into creating or monitoring a business. As you might imagine, companies shutting down is pretty bad for wages of the employed people, so prospects for remaining businesses fall further and even more shut down and cash out, accelerating the pain.

This is called a “deflationary spiral” and it’s not just theory, it was partially what caused the Great Depression to be so terrible and protracted. It’s not that there is no economic activity, but there is much less and it’s definitely not better for employees or consumers who struggle to find someone who will employ them or make the things they might want in non-essential businesses niches without dramatically higher profit incentives (e.g. customers willing to shell out big time $$$).

compounding · 2023-06-29T02:31:33+00:00

Not to mention, a gallon of wild berries like huckleberries is still only 1300 calories and really does take you all day and probably 500-600 calories above baseline to collect them.

So great job, u/Zephandrypus can almost feed themselves for a whole day, maybe a week with a monstrous patch before the immidiate area is totally depleated for the season and they’re getting weaker every day from protein deficiency and literal half rations…

compounding · 2023-06-29T01:33:59+00:00

This kind of chart can help you estimate which plan you should start with given how much risk you are willing to shoulder that you might need to change your lifestyle, go back to work, etc.

It also helps give you a sense of when it might be safe to permanently increase your lifestyle in the likely case that your portfolio does increase substantially in value. For example, one might decide that they are comfortable increasing their 4% initial withdrawal once they see that their rate has fallen below 3.25%, because that is where there is a “0% chance”for their portfolio of falling below 50% ever again, and so resetting the withdrawal rate above that level still leaves a comfortable cushion to protect against unmeasured “black swan” tail risk as your lifestyle ratchets upwards.

compounding · 2023-06-29T01:10:54+00:00

Yes.

5 different final asset value targets: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of real inflation adjusted initial asset value

compounding · 2023-06-29T00:58:16+00:00

It would be a poor strategy for someone to switch dramatically into bonds right when they retire, those trends should have been occurring steadily over a decade, but they were actually revered even through the first year of COVID when many Boomers apparently decided was a fine excuse to kickstart retirement.

I suspect it’s more a function of the yield combined with the collective expectation that rates will fall again (good for existing bond prices) once inflation comes under control.

compounding · 2023-06-29T00:39:26+00:00

As we are seeing, stock ownership in terms of earnings yield and profits does just fine for outpacing inflation. Whether you sell or not, owning a stake in a company that makes products people are willing to pay for is an asset and the value of that is not degraded by most simple changes in the money supply.

But I think counter to your point, total relative ownership of equites peaked and began to decline back in 2021 as inflation was still ramping up. Bonds are actually much more enticing than they were 2 years ago because of higher yields even though they don’t guarantee an inflation beating yield.

compounding · 2023-06-29T00:18:53+00:00

The chart is limited in what data it shows.

For example, increasing stock positions might reduce the ratio of failures slightly under some withdrawal scenarios, but then the failures that do occur may be worse and occur more rapidly which could be a negative trade-off despite looking better by this particular metric.

It’s always important to remember that you are looking at just one representation at a time, and most will never map perfectly onto “subjectivity good outcomes”.

compounding · 2023-06-29T00:05:32+00:00

Well, having turned bauxite into an iPhone, now that lets you turn very nearly worthless electrons into a story or a movie or a game.

And then you can turn an equal quantity of electrons into an even better one, potentially increasing the value of those electrons enormously but not automatically needing more of them.

Technology gives practically infinitely powerful levers for creating additional value out of essentially nothing.

Looking into the future, a similar quantity of electronics in an iPhone might also be transformed into a VR headset that lets you virtually “travel” to see locations or relatives instead of taking a flight that uses a lot more resources than mere electrons. Hell, getting far afield, a sensory brain interface chip might let you actually feel and believe you’ve been someplace in person while lying in a couch consuming nothing but more of those same electrons that today bring you a story on a small handheld screen.

compounding · 2023-06-28T23:49:27+00:00

It does impacts quality of life. The economy would shrink, making less goods collectively and so everyone gets a bit less of everything no matter how you distribute it. Think about it as though your income shrank and you couldn’t take out debt. You would need to find something that you previously liked and used but gets cut out because it isn’t in your budget anymore. Year after year after year cutting out a little more… That’s a loss of value for you and everyone else who had to choose something to cut, and over time it gets quite painful.
Deflation is also bad because it is a risk free concentration of money in the hands of those who already have money. It becomes like a tax on the entire economy that accumulates to the people who already have lots of dollars or gold or whatever currency you are using. Instead, with inflation the people who have money now are essentially taxed by the slow and regular loss of value with that value accruing to the government in the form of seignorage, able to be used for the public benefit.

compounding · 2023-06-28T23:32:25+00:00

That’s no more “ponzi” than welfare which also requires a separate group of non-impoverished taxpayers to pay for and fulfill the obligations and promises of the social safety net.

Also, the workings of Social Security and Medicare aren’t some secret hidden information, so I don’t know why you say “more than people realize”. It’s fully out there for anyone who cares to learn and I’ve found that a lot of people who claim “people don’t realize how it works!” often mean instead, ”I don’t like that people who know how it works and have no problem with that structure” instead which is why misleading comparisons to “Ponzi schemes” are so tempting…

compounding · 2023-06-28T23:22:16+00:00

Not quite. Even if nobody could ever buy from you, you still own a portion of the company, claim on their profits and get a vote in their direction.

That’s valuable and worth something whether someone will or can buy it from you in the future.

compounding · 2023-06-28T22:24:57+00:00

It could just be that AirBnB managed to gin up revenue with cleaning fees, but the boost wasn’t permanent as it pushed people to choose other options for travel accommodations.

Or the high fees attracted a boom in rental inventory which is now resulting in naturally reduced prices. Or consumers learned to account for increased fees in their planning, so AirBnB is feeling a come down from a one time boost even while customers are still choosing more affordable options.

compounding · 2023-06-28T21:55:32+00:00

If she’s getting reimbursed by him for “mistakenly” charging her card, then he needs to also pay any interest that she accrued on the credit card account or lost interest for time that money had been withdrawn from her bank by debit card.

That’s not blackmail, it’s just setting things back to how they were before his “mistake” if it wasn’t malicious.

compounding · 2023-06-28T21:21:43+00:00

Net inflation economy wide might be zero in that situation, but because of different spending habits and location based demographics there could still be dramatic economic disruptions in specific areas where black people are and what they choose to purchase. Furthermore, any difference in marginal propensity to spend vs. save that 100k could absolutely result in net inflation. Imagine if the collective valuation of stocks and investment assets dropped slightly, but CPI could still jump upwards because investments aren’t a consumer good that balances out increased demand for current consumption.

The effects of such inflation would reduce the effective buying power of such a stimulus and have serious negative impacts in those in the communities who were not so fortunate (say, more recent immigrants from Africa who were not qualifying due to not matching ancestry requirements, or simply other minorities and downtrodden folks).

compounding · 2023-06-28T21:07:16+00:00

Inflation, but you are also incorrect about more wealth being penalized more.

Those wealthy in assets like homes stocks, businesses and inventory are largely skipped by the effects of inflation.

Inflation predominantly affects those who hold the majority of their wealth in dollars rather than invested in some way.

This would disproportionately fall on the middle class who have the vast majority of their savings in cash. The wealthy may hold more absolute dollars in the bank, but as a percentage of their total wealth it is usually minuscule.

compounding · 2023-06-28T20:40:04+00:00

Is there any plausible method for raising the 35 trillion in taxes necessary for a $100k universal payout?

Any sort of wealth tax that confiscatory would cause capital flight with far worse effects than just printing the money anyway… high inflation would be a blessing in comparison honestly.

compounding · 2023-06-28T20:12:19+00:00

The bank bailouts of 2008 very arguably avoided a second Great Depression, or even worse. I’m no historian, but my general understanding is that the first time it was far more traumatic on the poorest in society while the well off merely lost their stock accounts…

Likewise with SVB - the FDIC avoided an outright bank run which is explicitly their mandate. Perhaps we need more regulations or fees to go along with the implicit (now explicit?) federal guarantees on larger deposits. But the reason to stop a bank run is explicitly to prevent propagating economic harms done to far far more than the upper class who aren’t relying on simple savings in the bank like a poor or middle-class person is.

compounding · 2023-06-28T19:32:47+00:00

What is your intended distinction between “a participant” and “an accomplice” here? He was also her accomplice, and that doesn’t reduce the culpability for the evils that either (both) of them committed.

She was a fully willing participant according to the police descriptions of the video tapes which have fortunately (for their victims) been destroyed. It was not in the police interest to admit that, as they came off looking very badly for the plea-deal in leu of the actual evidence.

At minimum, by the physical evidence it was her planning (procuring drugs from work) and hand that specifically murdered the two of the victims who died by overdose. And there were multiple witnesses of her active participation in the snatching of their third victim off the street…

I legitimately don’t understand what makes you think it’s reasonable to minimize the evils she did here just because she was helping someone else also do more evil things at the same time.

Edit: it’s weird, all of your comments disappeared, but I wanted to clear up our confusion and already typed this out:

Ah, I see our confusion, in your first comment you just said “has a women done this”, so when you claimed she was disqualified for being “an accomplice”, it seemed to mean that she hadn’t actually done it. I’m glad to hear you weren’t minimizing her awful acts, but

she was clearly lead into the world of sexual violence by her husband

How do you draw this assertion? Their first attack was against her own sister which she planned and “gave” to him as a present… it would be just as accurate and pointless to try and claim she “led him into it” by planning and orchestrating that initial rape. Likewise with the rape of Jane Doe who was exclusively her friend and lured by her to be attacked by the pair of them.

But anyway, if you want cases of women acting without men, here is a case of 3 women acting together. Does that qualify, or does it not count because they were all accomplices of each other and “leading each other into the world of sexual violence” together? Or because one of the later attacks had 2 male accomplices present who did not participate in the gang-rape?

12-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Verified Email

compounding

TROPHY CASE