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26d ago
Maybe. Maybe not. I’d prefer to cover it up if I were him because being a war POTUS would fundamentally change why we voted for him.
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26d ago
Enforcing “you can’t touch Americans” can get very expensive. That’s basically the Iraq War. Which is why you might want to cover up “touched an American” so you largely preserve the taboo against touching Americans without needing to spend $10 trillion.
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26d ago
Probably fine with current plan. But depends on more specific time horizon. Personally I like owning long term US rates here so maybe you could go 20-30% there. If it’s a couple years you might be able to do something like 30% equity, 30% mbs/tlt, 30% t-bill type things, maybe 10% REIT/listed private credit.
PC maybe a small amount here because of the high yields and discounts to NAV. Small equity + Fixed income I much prefer to try to get some returns instead of doing a listed covered call etf
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26d ago
What are you disagreeing with?
I am saying Trump does not want to escalate either war so would have motive to cover up an assassination if it would greatly increase war risks.
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26d ago
Whether you could successfully muzzle it is a different question than whether you would want to muzzle.
Trump is 100% would want to cover it up because he 100% does not want to be a war time President. Atleast at the group group escalation point of war.
His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.
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27d ago
You said exactly why Trump etc would hide it.
“It would justify whatever with a large portion of the American public”
If your goal is to NOT have a Presidency defined by war then you do not want the populace inflamed for war. Reverse if your George Bush and you already decided to war Iraq.
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27d ago
I would say we don’t have this self driving car pushback from the groups you speak. A big reason is that no one views themselves as a member of the uber driver union except maybe some semi-legal immigrants. No one views it as a career versus something they just do for money which absolute kills the ability to unionize. Taxi-cabs had medallion investments which 10k or so people viewed as a huge asset to protect and gave them somewhat of a union.
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27d ago
Well yes your not suppose to contemplate and it’s for your own benefit. International Diplomacy kind of works like that sometimes. You, us, the government may not want to escalate things if he was actually killed by Russia/Iran.
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27d ago
No. You still have downside and weird exposures to volatility. A better move is to change your equity allocation to a lower amount. Retail quant investment strategies just work worse than holding a cheap index fund. It’s more trading in those vehicles and the funds themselves don’t have any alpha.
Now if you personally have a correct view on volatility they would outperform holding spy I guess, but if you have alpha in predicting volatility then you should be running a volatility fund and be quite wealthy. And you would generally be running your own trading execution at a smaller fund size then the retail products and avoid some slippage. There is nothing wrong with being a trader and many people make money doing the job but the retail products in general are going to be worse performing than a simpler asset allocation with lower fees and less slippage.
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27d ago
I mostly support older people being in politics. I think politics should be a 2nd or third career. You should need to be successful in something else before becoming a politician in most cases. Maybe 25% of politicians should be career politicians. You do need some young blood. And term limits are bad because you actually do need people with relationships and experience with running government. If the ideal political career starts at 55-60 then you are going to have a fair amount of old people.
I think people complaining about old people in politics are essentially just doing the grass is greener over there. We might be a too old now but I think the argument for the average politician should be well above the median age is fairly strong.
Biden was too old. Feinstein probably too. RBG should have retired. Personally I think people who say Trump is old could mostly not do his job at his energy level. I would say stupid things all the time if I were on camera and kept up his schedule. We may be on average 5-10 years too old for the average politician but they are not way too old in my opinion.
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30d ago
To some extent a modern state has to be less free and some definitions of Democracy. The Commons are much bigger today and there are a lot more regulations that need to happen to make society work. And everything happening all at once to. Relate a modern economy is more complicated than any one person can track at once to vote so you have to outsource a lot of decision making.
1-2% of GDP tax rates are a thing of the past. It’s likely much smaller than we have now but 1-2% of gdp to state capacity wouldn’t work at modern living standard. You actually do need a FAA. Though the TSA and the rest of the parasitic class attached to it probably not. Someone has to coordinate the commons.
Like one example today is the skascraper that had structural issues in NYC and maybe might collapse. I think they have $700 million in it. A libertarian world I don’t think can deal with that coordination. You can wipe out the builders money but if it collapses it’s probably 10-40 in damages and then the builders just bankrupt.
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1mo ago
I always thought about working in a kitchen as a post-made enough money leisure job. It’s hard work but seems more fun than a lot of jobs. Big issue would be the pace of cooking and probably gets repetitive like any job. But cooking is essentially a leisure job for the wealthy.
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1mo ago
I think most people would prefer clean streets and nice things versus whatever freedom means.
Isn’t that what Heaven is suppose to be? Ruled by a dictator but nice things?
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1mo ago
I didn’t know Yudkowsky blogged there. So then it’s more of a direct seeding. I never see Hanson talked about here but was aware the marginal revolution blog was basically the right leaning pathway into the community.
I don’t believe this is true in all environments. It is better for European societies, but a lot of other areas seem better with other systems. The Monarchy has worked well for the Saudis. Africa hasn’t been great with Democracy or much of Latam.
It’s not the overwhelming thinv that Capitalism has had over communism.
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1mo ago
I have not looked into them closely. But Hanson did have a full model for probability of alien life and great filters so he’s clearly thought a lot about aliens and what seems possible in what we know about physics. His academic training in physics and Econ/social sciences is a good of background as anyone to think about these things. He is smarter than so I give his opinion some weight.
I also don’t think he’s at 100% it’s aliens but he does have a probability that’s what is going on.
I mostly posted him because I think he’s a solid thinker who was early on 2 themes (prediction markets/crypto). Someone who is early is often wrong. I’ve quit reading him because I’ve already internalized a lot of his models but probably should be read more.
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1mo ago
You are behind the times. Embracing aliens is within the Overton window now. Tyler Cowen jumped on board too. I still think it’s a long shot to be true but we do have a lot of military evidence of something going on.
If you start with a Bayesian view that aliens are retarted but then you keep getting new military grade video showing unexplainable crafts then at some point you need to move to a % that it’s real.
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1mo ago
Robin Hanson wrote an article recently on how his politics have drifted. For those not familiar with his he was one of the early rationalist adjacent that likely filters a lot of people here. As a GMU professor he blogged like the rest of their Econ department and marginal revolution which was much bigger for leading people to SSC. Also early intellectual promoter of prediction markets like in the ‘90s and use to co-blog with Hal Finney.
A few highlights: “ While it is okay to fiercely resist the immediate decline of a cherished value today, like say democracy or gender-equality, 3 top LLMs agree that is now taboo to explicitly work to help your culture persist, reproduce, and have continued influence centuries into the future.”
“ I’m not especially into liberty, democracy, legal due-process, or immigration, beyond their instrumental values in achieving other things.”
A lot of comments on cultural drift and risks with that. The second comment strikes me because I feel like I’ve been thinking about those issues a lot lately. And I feel like I too am moving to a political philosophy of common goodism and the other ideas are just means to achieve the good. Perhaps this is just the standard libertarian to fascism pipeline but I do think a lot of people are questioning whether America is still on a workable path. It’s easy to be a liberal-libertarian when society is broadly good/stable but in harder times more pragmatic ideas emerge.
Then he just comments on things everyone else has noticed - parasitic classes in big cities (often unions) just crushing QOL for the non-rich.
I use to read Hanson a lot, but I only read him a few times a year now. Some of his early insights turned out coming true. It’s interesting to me how minds that shared a lot of common thinking patterns end up developing similar conclusions today. Democracy, Liberty, due-process, and immigration were likely things I viewed as very positive a decade ago. Now I would likely consider them unimportant.
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1mo ago
I would prefer to have health insurance. There are no free lunches. The costs of prep makes health insurance too expensive for normal people.
Your irrational fear and the gay union made health care too expensive for people.
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1mo ago
Maybe I am not using walkable in the vernacular in the US but basically do all functions of life within a 10 min walk. Gyms, bar, Church, grocery store, potentially work all without needing a car. Houston even if we just limit it to walkable neighborhoods I remember limited options.
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1mo ago
I did live in Houston for a month during Covid. I’ll be honest I not consider most of that video as highly walkable. And most would seem like you need to drive into a strip of things to do and not walk from him.
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1mo ago
I am not a microbiologists but I don’t think it’s possible for blood borne viruses to just mutate into an airborne disease. And my gut says that when it becomes airborne it would need to change its structure to an extent that would activate other immune defenses.
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1mo ago
I feel like a country should be able to be fairly rich just doing things that seem basic well. A country that adopts modern tech but doesn’t invent it. Has a good bureaucracy that doesn’t mess things up too much. Basically running a lot of constant costs businesses with limited moats. This feels like Australia to me. Which has mining instead of cattle. Especially if you do not have large amounts of minorities that are purely on welfare/cause crime. This is likely where Argentina should try to get to and become Australia of S America in terms of wealth.
Mexico is the opposite of this kind of economy as they have two better international cash crops (US trade/Drugs) which make the wealthier but always feels like a poor country because they have a lot of dysfunction.
He should be disqualified for not being American. Trump admin literally had their birth tourism case last week and he’s exactly what they and (me) are against. The only exposure he’s had of America is being born here for 2 months and leaving.
Edit: wanted to add I think it’s the right call reversing this red. All the post saying corruption or US bullying but honestly I think they just fixed a mistake. I don’t think he should be playing for US team because he’s not an American.
There are two strong arguments against mass-migration for a smart liberal they need to consider provided they are open to HBD:
They want a European style welfare society. That doesn’t work if you have a large population with significantly lower productive and potentially higher crime rates ruin the commons to enjoy your European style welfare state lifestyle.
The Indian conundrum. I think at this point it’s obvious there are a lot of smart Indians. But domestically no innovation. Can having a society that’s 20% Einstein and 80% much lower productivity innovate? Or does dealing with social dysfunction sap a lot of a societies surplus to do tech/external things?
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