Crowflies
5mo ago
Apart from @EvanTh remark that the 6% of the voting class were not top 6% of the IQ, people 125 years ago had significantly lower IQ. This phenomenon is known as Flynn Effect and it has only recently started to plateau or even reverse.
Crowflies
10mo ago
Why not just torrent games for free or get repacks?
Physical good differ from digital goods that (barring Star Trek tech), you cannot multiply physical goods. If you take a scarf, the total number of scarf stays the same and somebody is short a scarf. With digital good, magical act of multiplication happens and there are more of them than before. Therefore, digital copyright infringement is never equal to stealing. It may still be wrong but it is definitely significantly less wrong than stealing.
Crowflies
10mo ago
Sort of. He was the front runner on the "Papability Index" but dropped to the fourth place just before the conclave due to the "bad press" factor in his model. Still, this guy was better than anybody else in predictions. Prevost had about 1% chance on betting markets.
Crowflies
11mo ago
This ideas were actually explored by Georgists. But the conclusion is that ownership only of natural (non-renewable) resources (with land as the main natural resource) is depriving others. Ownership of these is a zero-sum game and allows the owner to extract a rent. I have and you have not so pay me for having or using it. Anything else is not. Creating anything else brings value.
If I buy a car (or crate my own with my labor), only the ownership raw materials make the effort of buying (or creating) your own car harder. But the whole non-scrap value of the car is not. If I paint a painting so good than many people find it valuable, I created the value from nothing using only raw materials worth only cents. Nothing prevents you from using your brain and skills to create something valuable on your own.
Most of the things people own (with the exception of real estate that Georgists single out) have this non-exclusive part of the value as the main component. Owning that is not "psychopathic" at all.
The Georgists solution was to tax the rent value of owning these natural resources. And getting rid of most (if not all) other taxes.
Crowflies
11mo ago
That's actually fairly credible although on the high end as an estimate I would guess
Yes, these are high end of credible estimates.
However a full million out of the Russian workforce would leave more ripples than we have seen I would assume,
Take into account that a significant fraction of these numbers are prisoners and there is a non-negligible number of non-Russians, mostly LPR/DPR (some volunteers but mostly conscripts) and a small number of North Koreans. These all are of the order of 200-250k. And there are ripples: there is a significant increase in wages for men in Russia.
Crowflies
11mo ago
but the propaganda numbers for each side go up 800k Russian KIA
Official Ukrainian numbers (which are 933k+ as of today) are for casualties (the term that is used in the MoD reports is "combat losses"). Casualties include killed, wounded, captured, and missing.
Crowflies
11mo ago
You are doing a classical motte and bailey tactic. The context given by @ResoluteRaven was about "researchers working in hard science fields" and you are withdrawing to tech companies.
Big Tech is just a subset (and it is questionable even to label Google, Meta, or Netflix as tech companies, they are advertising and media companies with some tech undertones) of the field and not a place, where even a significant part of research is going on.
Europe leads in pharmaceutical research and is, for example, a place, where the longest sustainable fusion reaction was achieved. It's a place, where "researchers working in hard science fields" can certainly find a place to flourish. Will they? Who knows but it's not a research desert.
Crowflies
11mo ago
but the Europeans have demonstrated a complete inability to make use of them either;
Could you be more specific? There is a lot of cutting edge research going on in Europe. You can't get these chemistry/physics/medicine Nobel prizes without doing seriously successful research. USA has an edge but Europe is strong, too.
Crowflies
11mo ago
It is counted in service exports but services were not included in Trump's formula, only goods trade.
Crowflies
11mo ago
VAT applies equally to imports and domestic goods. It is a consumption tax which of course affects the consumer but any tax (maybe apart from property taxes) affects the consumer. My argument is not that VAT is some kind of magical tax that is free of consequences but that it is significantly different from tariffs.
Crowflies
11mo ago
This might seem bad, but to put it in perspective, countries in Europe have a VAT tax (similar to sales tax) of 20-30% on the retail price, and that's on top of any customs import duties/tariffs.
Tariffs work completely differently. VAT does not affect trade and VAT affect only the end consumer, tariffs affect everybody. You have a business that imports aluminum and makes cans and exports them abroad. With VAT you pay zero. With tariffs, you are hit with tariffs. Now your competitor abroad imports aluminum tariff-free and has 20% cheaper cans and squeezes you from your export market share.
Even for end customer, it works differently because VAT is applied effectively only once. Tariffs will hit you each time the product crosses border. You set up the supply chain that you import aluminum, make cans, ship them to Canada, and fill them with soda. Congratulations, you pay tariffs twice, first on aluminum, then on the soda can. If Canada retaliated, you pay them three times and basically your product is gone from the market while you scramble to reorganize the supply chain. If there is nobody who can fill your soda domestically (or there is shortage and will charge you exorbitant prices), you are even out competed with Canadian sodas that pay the tariffs only once.
Crowflies
11mo ago
I have recently came across this YouTube video that was the first one I found that provide a plausible explanation for this whole tariffs mess. The gist is that the Trump administration tries to strong arm trading partners into allowing them to trade with US tariffs-free provided that they introduce reciprocal tariffs on US's rivals and sign "Mar-o-Lago Accords" that would 1. weaken dollar that would allow for the manufacturing to return to US but 2. keep the dollar as reserve currency. That's why this is so messy and trade-deficit oriented. The chaos is intentional but temporary.
Needless to say, 1 and 2 are simultaneously impossible. It is the reserve currency status that creates non-trade related demand for dollar and makes it stronger and allows the trade deficits proceeds to be "sterilized". I find it baffling that Scott Bessent cannot see that this plan cannot mathematically work.
The video also present an argument that for the plan to work the partners must agree to this strong-arming tactic and this is another potential point of failure,
These are named after Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who was, well, Persian and who in his youth was likely Zoroastrian. Though kudos for Arabs who after conquering Persia allowed such a talent to flourish.
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