georgioz
1yr ago
Or is the Anti-war movement silent because this is Putin and he's now coded pro-trump and Anti-gay... (yet somehow everyone else in central Eurasia isn't)
I don't think that this has anything to do with woke or anything like that. I am following the war but also internal "debates" on Russian state media with personalities such as Solovyov, and let me tell you it is the most unhinged shit I have ever heard in my life, casually calling for nuclear strikes or more atrocities and so forth. Couple that with horrible conduct of Russian forces on the ground and it really is something. Heck, even pope turned somewhat and he now all but declared military support of Ukraine as part of just war. You may not think that this is war of good vs evil, but look at Russian side and you will see exactly that - only of course US being evil and Russia being good.
Also this is still only proxy war, so far there are no boots on the ground and military support of Ukraine is so far sending mostly obsolete or soon to be obsolete weapons with rare (but important) exceptions like HIMARS systems, but even that with some caveats.
It looks like the closing price was 60.56 on Feb 19, 2020, and then it dropped to 41.65 at the close on March 18. That is about a 33% drop.
Yes, this is the infamous COVID drop many people "bragged" about how they managed to time their shorts. Only then many of those people continued to short the stocks "knowing" that COVID will be even worse and that markets will crash completely any time soon. Except the rest of the year stocks experienced strong growth that basically erased all the losses by the end of the year and the growth continued for the whole 2021 as well. Some people lost all they gained in February/March and then some. I am strongly against timing this stuff, I did not lose the nerve during the drop - I actually bough a little bit more as usual.
PS: Your annual gain is actually a bit less -- 10.27% per this formula: 72.28 = 53.11e^(3*x)
My formula was (72.28/53.11)^(-3). It also works backwards when you calculate 53.11(1.1081)^3 = 72.262. There is of course some rounding error. Also my gains were in EUR and it benefited from lately stronger dollar. In dollar terms the ETF had around 7.6% annual return, which is more then reasonable.
It has a higher cost (0.20 %) than VOO (0.03%), but that might not matter much.
Yes, it is literally World ETF so it also holds some Emerging Markets which results in slightly higher expense ratio. But in my eyes it is worth it, no need to construct some complicated portfolio rebalancing it all the time and losing money on fees.
I think that the key "soft power" export of China is their surveillance technology such as Social Credit System, their censorship apparatus and more broadly exporting their system of corruption and management of power. So they can be leader in population control, enforcing "social harmony" and promoting collectivism and top down authoritarianism.
Now it is hard to see how it would really look on global scene, China is now driven by domestic concerns mostly and their relationship to other countries is based on very limited considerations such as securing resources from Africa or forcing other countries to support their policies such as dominance over South China sea and so forth. This is not something that can really work in multipolar world. Even today China does not exactly have the best relationships with countries like India or even their supposed ally of Russia.
However I do not necessarily even see "USA" as being cultural hegemon. What I see now is handful of powerful corporations including big Hollywood studios, streaming services or huge Tech corporations like Alphabet or Meta having outside influence on what is pushed. We even seen in the past that these corporations are not beyond adopting whatever censorship rules are necessary to secure their business. If China was the ultimate hegemon I can see them influencing these companies in the same way they influence their own domestic giants such as Tencent.
So how would it look like if I have to force myself to imagine it? I'd say it would be your standard "5-year plan" propaganda. If it is global "Covid Zero" plan, then we will have movies and influencers promoting that. If it will be something technological we would have I don't know "hydrogen economy" or some similar theme pushed as well. Dissent and certainly most woke things would be suppressed as going against social harmony, unless it can be used in some sort of power grab inside the global aristocracy.
georgioz
1yr ago
The harmony type of society can ossify and be myopic toward social issues. If any criticism is seen as disturbing social harmony, it is hard to make any improvements. And of course this is also seen in personal life where the difference between public and private face can produce various psychological issues.
My question: Is this a valid system of judgment? What have I neglected to think about? Can I really Schindler my way to retirement?
Somebody below linked Kolmogorov Complicity article by Scott and based on my family/family friends history, it certainly is a viable way not only to get to retirement, but also to reverse the situation. Even the current woke march through institutions had to start somewhere, meaning that there had to be groups of "Schindlers" in various spaces pretending to get along with all the oppression and the rest of it.
georgioz
1yr ago
Martha's Vineyard is obviously not equipped to handle any number of migrants. If Florida can't take them, they should have sent them to an urban center that could.
As far as I know DeSantis sent migrants only to so called sanctuary cities and Martha's Vineyard is apparently one of them. So this explanation does not fly - if your local government had "courage" to call your city as welcoming to immigrants, then sending the immigrants over there is no-brainer. You want migrants, so you get them. It should not be a problem.
This is ridiculous for me. Not UK resident, but I got my first small folding knife when I was maybe 6 and I was given knives to do stuff by adults even before then. It was part of the ritual to get your own knife from your dad for your birthday, it was source of great pride and acknowledgement of responsibility of kids. Having a knife was seen as one of the hallmarks of boyhood/girlhood. I do not remember any type of "knife crimes", quite to the contrary it was a step on the ladder for kids to mature. Learning how to handle knives was commonplace - one did not have to hide the ownership of knife, self-teaching oneself in secret - which would exactly be the source of injuries.
Knife is incredibly useful for all types of things: making stuff from wood, serving as scissors to cut rope when you construct anything, when you gather some type of fruit or shrooms and myriad of other things. I carry knives with me very often, I have multiple of them in various places such as a car or work, etc. And it is not only me but also my wife.
This emasculation of society in the name of evermarching safetyism is starting to piss me off big time.
This happens a lot, however it can become an ugly thing - I have seen partners getting into arguments over games. And vice versa, ruining the game just because a player wants something from somebody in real life. It is even more unhealthy in RPG style of boardgames like D&D or VtM as it is hard to play certain role if real-world social considerations interfere constantly. So if greedy wizard screws over stupid naive barbarian, it breaks suspension of disbelief if pissed barbarian player invents some elaborate revenge scheme. Just embrace the role with knowledge that it is a game and have fun. Plus in context of CW where one has to always be on alert in every context, it would be more healthy to immerse oneself in the game world leaving real life at the door.
There are other "games" more suited to real-life bonding, go camping or on roadtrip with your buddies to find out what they are about.
As others said, in general price gouging is using supply shock or other emergency to increase prices dramatically. Especially if the supply shock is manufactured. One example in history is that of ultrarich Roman patrician Lucius Licinius Crassus, who got monopoly with his slave fire brigade and if building was on fire he offered the owner to buy it for low price and only if the owner sold did the firefighters extinguish the fire. This was the main source of his immense wealth. Of course Rome being what it was, Crassus's monopoly was enforced with underhanded tactics. Another example from modern times would be taking unconscious person to expensive hospital.
In my old extremely "free market" phase I was against any price gouging legislature with classic "better to have something for high price than nothing in crisis" , however now I think that threat of price controls may prevent creating artificial supply shock or monopolization of the market if one thinks of it as repeated game. Also monopolization of the market actually may result in monopolists selling less goods and keeping some in his storage, in order to maximize profit thus creating deadweight loss. Setting price controls for such a situation can actually result in monopolist still being profitable simultaneously with larger supply and consumer surplus. Incentivizing monopolization is even more destructive if you have more monopolies especially in essential intermediary goods such as electricity or basic infrastructure, which can lead to serious economic problem of Double Marginalization.
georgioz
1yr ago
If this was happening before Covid then I would agree. However post COVID I think this will not be such a problem. There are numbers of things that governments can do to decrease energy demand. They government offices, schools etc. can move into online mode again to save on heating, they can even motivate businesses to do the same. Governments can shutdown certain energy intensive industries temporarily like Aluminum production offering subsidies. They can close "nonessential" things like ski resorts - especially those which require energy intensive artificial snow.
Of course there will be considerable damage especially when it comes to competitiveness of manufacturing industry with certain countries that have energy independence. But if we lived through COVID we will get through this.
georgioz
1yr ago
Sure, it will depend on type of childhood one has. When I was a child it was normal to take bike around with my friends, play soccer or do some mischiefs like making slings, or climbing trees, making a "bunker" in bushes near railroad and so forth. That is why I am talking about emasculation, nowadays boys are probably expected to sit at home, doing homework or reading books and be docile enough when transported between piano lesson and Spanish lesson after school. Knife is a basic universal tool that can serve as scissors, saw, screwdriver, can opener and of course utensil. It is meant for anybody who likes to do some manual work assembling/disassembling stuff - a thing especially boys always liked to do and that is now demonized by certain class of overbearing people who want to enforce their lifestyle as some universal moral good. That is what pisses me off.
Sure, even more effective "solution" would be to have forced curfew for everybody under 18 so they can only go out under adult supervision. I also strongly suspect that those "feral" gangster kids will be the ones who won't care about bans, ending up in juvenile detention centers for possessing forbidden item. Of course I am not surprised, the instinct is to immediately go for draconic control measures at least to look as if we are "doing something" seems to be the first idea nowadays, ignoring all unintended consequences.
georgioz
1yr ago
I am from Slovakia and there were enough Gypsies around. I had a "fistfight" with one when I was 8, which led me to getting bad marks for next two years until I transferred to next teachers.
There was also a mythic "Gypsy" weapon called "razor on aviation rubber", like from some Chinese martial art movie. The only thing that we had when we saw Gypsies was the protection of the group that knew what's what. It is hard to explain, but back in the days of 90ies Slovakia there was an ethos of what I can say as "Scout Movement" except it was much more organic. There was kid culture, we carried around the knives, we shared secrets where the best spots to hide are, we knew of cool places to do stuff. We were not like rats hiding in our nests - but we knew where to not fuck around and if you went to certain neighborhood you knew what was the proper thing to do with local kids.
It is hard to explain, but this knife ethos was part of it. We did not go to the "authorities" for each and every problem and there was acknowledgement from the other side - including Gypsies.
georgioz
1yr ago
One suggestion regarding user pipeline would be maybe to use the old /r/TheMotte for certain things? Maybe posting links to Quality Contributions over there or even posting links to regular weekly threads? I am not sure how reddit mods would look at it, but it may work to some extent.
I have one comment about "reformation". In general there were always three main streams in Islam as well as in Christianity. The first one is reformation, for which there is in my opinion a very skewed perception in the West. Reformation in Islam and Christianity is about "going back to roots". Take bible literally, implement sharia law as it is written in Quran and so forth. The second stream is modernization: this is about incorporating new findings or influences in prevailing culture. An example here may be scholasticsists who incorporated antic philosophy and learning into Christianity. The last stream is that of traditionalism which is mostly concerned about stability, hierarchies and status quo. This is the one that is most frequently tied to political powers and state.
I think that one of problems of Islam is that unlike Christianity which originated as persecuted heresy, Islam was since the beginning a state religion tied to the government and is spread via conquest. This is quite unlike Christianity which was during various periods and locations forced to make compromises with power-at-be like Roman empire or Japanese Shogunate to survive underground, so it has tradition of ideological flexibility that supports modernization. There were several modernization efforts in Islam including that of the early conflict between modernization school of Mu'tazila with its push for rational understanding of god through natural world and that of reformist school of Ash'ari who saw sacred scriptures as basis for understanding of god with latter becoming victorious. Paradoxically Mu'tazila school had great influence on Maimonides and Christian modernizers who incorporated it into Christianity. So if anything Islam lacks modernization, it was for centuries embroiled in cyclical conflict between traditionalists who created ossified structures until "reformists" came along and turned the cycle another revolution further. In this sense Daesh are your cookie-cutter reformists which existed in Islam for thousand of years.
Another thing that is Islam did not go through religious wars like 17th century Europe. It was a century of bitter religious conflict that made all sides sick of the whole situation until the policy of religious tolerance was grudgingly accepted by both sides in order to not devastate the continent again. This was one of the main conditions for other even non-religious ideologies to thrive including enlightenment. I have read that the current conflict of Iran vs Saudi Arabia has some similarities with that European era.
georgioz
1yr ago
Mu'tazila school had influence in Cordoba Caliphate, which is unsurprisingly also where Maimonides was born and where Irish and other traveling Christian scholars studied. However it has to be said that it is not only theology that was important here, Cordoba was also a center where more philosophically as opposed theologically inclined learning was accessed by the West including writings of Ibn Rushd and others. Mu'tazila was not exactly secular in that sense, but there can be direct comparison with later Catholic church that tolerated various philosophers studying natural world although with implicit assumptions of the findings not threatening dogma too much.
Many academics posit that the concept of mammalian sexual dimorphism is a conspiracy of straight white men to oppress everyone else. The true believers are 100% convinced they are making the world a better place with their feminism/leftism. The only reason one would disagree with their theories is deep rooted misogyny/white supremacy.
What I think is happening is something that happened in Soviet Russia before. It also required all scientists and everybody really to say the politically correct things, you know the original 1917 Soviet style "political correctness". You guys in the west are just slowly and step-by-step finding out how really feels to live in such inherently dishonest society full of Havel's greengrocers. Of course it won't work and it will cause destruction and damage morally, mentally and for sure physically as well. And then the history will be rewritten as if "no true progressive" ever really believed it, possibly blaming it on reactionary corporate neoliberal fascist forces that distorted the original pure message, and it took some progressive heroine in 2030ies to push back against it proclaiming that true social justice was never tried. Rinse and repeat after two or so generations.
I agree with you, gender wars make least sense when it comes to conflict. Mostly because men and women do (or at least used to) literally live together. Everybody has some mother and father or some brothers and sisters or cousins and nephews. Also it is very hard to be hardcore misandrist feminist if you happen to raise a boy.
I think that the modern gender wars are fueled by mostly technological but also social changes in the west in 20th century. There are several important milestones there: the first one being invention of home appliances which made it easier to take care of household production/chores freeing mostly women to pursue other things in life. Second was overall servitization of economy where unlike agricultural or industrial economy the physical strength is no longer advantage. And the last and huge one is of course the pill which gave women control over their reproduction.
What happened as a result of all three of these technological changes is basically emasculation of women who could go out and take over traditionally masculine roles of a provider and also ability to adopt more male style of sexual behavior. One can easily see this in all cultural product where a woman can get away with some pretty nasty and outright insulting stuff that men would not be able to get away with. But this is still incomplete transition, there is still a lot of friction there. We still see lingering women are wonderful effect which basically gives them license to behave this way. It also has to be said that while emasculated women and effeminate men are a thing, they are not necessarily viewed as a model for ideal partner.
I like how Louise Perry described it - if you are a modern woman in office setting you can go about your life without ever encountering any situation where sex really matters, that is if you do not go to a gym or similar setting trying to lift weights or something like that. You would be correct to assume that there is no distinction between men and women and possibly perceive any challenge to that experience as somehow weird or even insulting. Having a widely accepted conspiracy theory about how patriarchy is beyond all this, that any differences are unnatural and a result of these nefarious forces distorting the natural equality of sexes for millennia can look very appealing - especially if believing or at least espousing ideas of such a conspiracy can get you advantages. However this is less tenable view if one becomes a mother of a boy or if one wants to have long-term partnership or if a woman is faced with some really nasty things like financial stress, crime in the neighborhood or myriads of other situation when actually having masculine man would really come in handy.
Some comments. According to Statista the difference between starting salary of people with high school diploma vs college degree is $30k vs $50k. However I think it would be interesting to see also the whole calculation, college degree has a lot of costs, namely tuition plus all the necessary costs of living such as rent, food, books and so forth accounting to around $35k a year. Additionally there is opportunity cost of not earning any money and delaying one's career by 5 years. If we compare apples with apples of somebody who can work and save all the income because all his needs are taken care of by parents, then we really have a difference of fresh college major out of school compared to high-school graduate with 5 years experience with around $100k minimum already put into real estate or stocks, more realistically it would be $200k or more. This difference is even larger if college education was debt financed to large degree (probably the only possibility for child of poor parents). In such a case instead of having 100k+ assets bringing interest you may end up with 200k+ debt with 5% plus interest rate.
Second elephant in the room is also quality of college and one's major. The most popular degree now in USA is "social science and history", these graduates earn around $42k after graduation compared to computer science graduates with $75k. So it would be worthwhile to actually calculate which majors are actually worth it. Of course there are also gated profession like doctors or architects and so forth where college is by law necessary to get the job in the first place. I think these professions should be automatically removed from any comparisons as they literally hold the students hostage. Of course the problem is that in last couple of decades we experienced runaway credentialism where jobs that used to be "free" now require some degree or certification by state, like for instance even simple hairdresser job. The problem with mass college attendance is the classic problem of people standing up to have better view of the game in stadium. Eventually most people will have to stand to view the game with experience of aches and tiredness, while those incapable of standing will be completely cut out not seeing anything. Of course this does not change the calculus of degree being worth it for every individual.
Third, college already counts with some survivorship bias. You mentioned possibility of college dropouts, which is massive - apparently around one third of people do not finish their degrees and will thus count as high-school graduates. So there is risk involved which should change the calculation for any prospective college student. Also college self-filters people capable of adhering to schedule and so forth. If you are a teen with family or drug/alcohol or crime problems, you will not be able to finish college no matter how subsidized it is but you may be able to finish high school. This to me is not a relevant comparison when calculating the benefit of college for individual. Again to have an honest comparison we should really compare college graduates with high-school graduates who are fully capable of finishing college but who decide to go and work right after high school.
Fourth and a major assumption is that all salary advantages are solely the result of college education. As if nepotism, corruption or even plain old social networks that can find a good job for young Ariston do not exist. There is huge correlation between parental income and college attendance. Children of rich parents have high income is of course no-brainer. I would wager that if one did similar comparison of future income of children flying first class on intercontinental flights we would get similar results - however it would not mean that your average schmuck should have his child fly 1st class to Paris every ear in order to improve their chances of good income when adult.
Germany and Russia have history of long periods of peace and mutual economic development with burts of wars or proxy wars as they inevitably clash for geopolitical reasons only to make peace again for economic reasons.
Poland has history of being subjugated by both, although economic background is similar. This makes Poles much more cautious and paranoid.
My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.
You underestimate how recent the whole woke/proimmigration bent is. In late 90ies when EU negotiated expansion with new members, the negotiations were tough. As part of the acceptance criteria there were temporary periods where free movement of labor from eastern members were suspended for years exactly for fear of mass economic immigration from east to west.
Back in the day there was also strong debate about what EU is: is it Europe of nations and just pact of economic convenience, or is it European superstate with its own army and foreign policy and so forth? The overall makeup of EU institutions was skewed to the former with deeply rooted principles of subsidiarity and voting system with multiple veto possibilities. It was before Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 that amends 1992 Maastricht Treaty and which brings more power to EU structures compared to member nations.
So one can say that EU left some member countries as opposed to member countries somehow not realizing where they entered.
I think Putin did it. Goal? To force Germany out of support for war. Russia tried some tricks with Germany by pretending that they need some new equipment to start the gas flowing so Germans were supposed to break the embargo and cooperate on reopening of the pipeline. Blowing the pipeline up is a stronger signal, it is not just about turning the flow on, it is about forced cooperation with Russia.
People underestimate to what extent Germans depend on cheap Russian gas. Just BASF chemical plant in Ludwigshafen employs over 30,000 employees and consumes 4% of total German gas consumption. Cheap gas is necessary for renewable energy mix of German electricity production. No access to Russian gas has potential to knock down the very base of the whole complex German supply chain - no basic chemicals and expensive electricity will make export oriented German industry not competitive worldwide an it can lead to deep recession. Any alternatives look grim, for instance Qatar would be able to sign contract for LNG, but they require 20 year contract fixing in high price. Germany is between a rock and the hard place: negotiate with Russians and immediately become pariahs in diplomatic scene not only with US but also with rest of the EU. Do not negotiate with Russians and sacrifice your economy.
So Putin is rising the stakes, it may no longer be possible for Germany to play the double game of supporting Ukraine while holding their nose when buying Russian gas. Putin will ask more commitment from them if they ever want to access cheap gas again. This is a show of strength of sorts, Germany is on the crossroads independent of the outcome of Ukraine war. This is about strategic pivot and ability of Germany to truly turn away from Russia even for upcoming years with huge impact on the structure of their economy but also on their climate strategy and basically everything Germans touted last few decades - it all now hangs on a thread.
georgioz
1yr ago
They could become neutral. Meaning no transport of goods, no panzerhaubitze 2000 and most importantly a major diplomatic ally for Russia when it comes to diplomacy in the west. It would also throw screws into the whole sanction mechanism given that Germany is together with France the major player when it comes to EU internal politics. Even easing on some of this stuff could serve Putin very well.
Those who choose to have themselves put to death in such a fashion will, I presume, lack the creativity to come up with solutions to their problems, and/or the energy to solve them even if they knew how to.
This seems implausible to me since I would hope that going through approval process for euthanasia should be much more difficult and "energy" requiring process compared to any attempt at suicide. I think that the OP is correct and the biggest obstacle is just that those people are cowards and cannot bring themselves to do it. Apparently that Belgian woman even attempted suicide two times, with many people suggesting that this was scream for help.
I also kind of agree with OPs critique of oppressive progressive state which turns into dystopia in front of our eyes. Apparently compassion with homeless is to provide them with needles, drugs, tents and then picking up their feces or even their dead bodies after they literally shit themselves after some drug induced episode. All people should also offload all their responsibility and agency onto "experts", who can better calculate all the priorities like if you going out for a walk on the beach is not somehow dangerous activity. And if you still have some nagging feeling of being wronged, do not engage with anybody but immediately call your school administrator, HR representative or other designated moral authority certified by Twitter with blue checkmark. These are the only experts equipped to fully incorporate your grievance into the newest and definitely scientific psychohistorical model of how to make society effectively altruistic. And of course you have to accept the result, if you disagree it means you may have been infected with some version of wrongthink so you should follow the advice and go for sensitivity training therapy with certified psychologist. And if you still feel ignored, then you can always work with your assigned psychologist to utilize evidence based life affirming care specialized at ending your suffering with "dignity and compassion" in nearest medical facility.
You picked wrong stocks, calling "Apple" as "very safe stock" is absolutely off the mark. To me it seems that you invested into a lot of tech stocks and you now see losses after they got massacred. I have majority of my investment in MSCI World Accumulating ETF and this is the result.
Value on 09/18/2019 was EUR 53.11 and value on 09/16/2022 is EUR 72.28 which accounts for average 10.81% yearly returns over last three years. The big COVID drop as well as recent drop barely registered for me, the overall investment performs very well so far.
However I also disagree that people do not talk about this. In fact even mainstream media report on large stock drops, if anything they report negative news, but do not report on increases - except in negative terms of "overheating" or "bubble" and so forth. This is why they are always happy if their doomsday scenario pans out for a week or a month.
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