sliders1234
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User ID: 685
sliders1234
12d ago
Scott shut this argument down. You can’t just play nuclear blackmail games. Maybe Ukraine is the right place to back down. Maybe it isn’t. That is a complicated question.
The solution to Russia has nukes is not back down anytime they want something. Then the whole world would be ruled by Russia. A thing worse than nuclear war.
The one big issue with not defending Ukraine is it raises a question of who really is under the umbrella of U.S. protection. Any country that thinks they might be outside of the security arrangement would be very interested in being a nuclear state. And as N Korea has proven just about any civilization can get nukes and a missile program. The reason even places like Taiwan do not have nukes despite real risks is because getting nukes would piss off the U.S. and they view security help from the west as more valuable than nukes.
Even places like Georgia would probably buy some nukes and launcher systems as soon as possible. And those type of states do have some political instability which means eventually some people you don’t like are nuclear.
sliders1234
12d ago
Very few people invent things any more. I think someone can claim they invented mRNA. Everyone else builds on the backs of others. Products are too complex now for one person to invent a rocket. Which of course already existed by Musks rockets seem a big leap forward from what existed before. The process of creating a new tech today is having a lot of domain knowledge on what is now possible (Theranos not possible but reusable rockets were possible), hyping enough to finance (or being rich from last product), capability of hiring/inspiring enough of the .5% IQ to work with you on the project. Musks didn’t invent AI, but he had enough domain knowledge to make a play when certain techs were ready to create the product. It seems as though he has a much better ability to step in at the right time than others.
He seems a lot like Ken Griffin. Who has a good feel for building out organizations that win. He also shares a trait with Ken of firing a lot of people.
sliders1234
13d ago
Software makes it harder and easier to make money. Profits scale a lot more. But it’s a lot harder to get to initial profitability because the competition to be the one who scales is more fierce.
In the physical world every real estate developer can make a building with positive unlevered free cash flow (harder to create a yield above capital costs but fundamentally the project will have profits).
sliders1234
13d ago
He didn’t make them popular. He got them to the point of being economically competitive and profitable to sell which is a huge step forward.
We did nuclear fusion decades ago. We still can’t do it economically.
sliders1234
13d ago
The smartphone is probably the early 20th century innovation but it was going to occur with or without Steve Jobs.
Which I think is the big fundamental difference between Musks and Jobs. Rockets and electric cars did not have any meaningful innovation before Musks.
sliders1234
13d ago
The product was stickier than people expected. Turns out 50-60 year olds who are often the boss now don’t feel like saving $100 to learn how to use google sheets. Which means everyone else has to use excel. Even though the products are incredibly similar. But the learning curve was enough to prevent switchability. The product would have obviously been toast if it operated on pure value creation like if it was Coke versus Pepsi and Pepsi was free and Coke costs a $1.
sliders1234
13d ago
Not founding Tesla is a technical difference without a real difference. The company was an idea before him with I believe no revenue but maybe they sold some hand build cars. And now does $100 billion in revenue. Warren Buffett didn’t found Berkshire Hathaway. It was a shell company with a cheap asset or two he completely build and revolutionized. In a meaningful use of the word he created Tesla.
sliders1234
13d ago
I’ve personally thought Tesla was overvalued for a while.
But even if you just use reasonable valuations like 2x sales or a 10 pe and give little value to breakthrough tech then Tesla is still a $150-200 billion company. He has $95 billion in trailing sales. That is still a huge accomplishment and something no one else has done in physical tech. This is why I feel like your arguments are like holocaust deniers. Maybe 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust but 1-2 million is still a lot. Same thing with SpaceX maybe he doesn’t put us on Mars, but as others have said it’s verifiable he’s lowered the price of putting a kg in space by 10x after essentially no improvement in decades. It just has the same feel of maybe this detail is a lie, but if you take away all the exaggerations the verifiable bottom in accomplishments is still extreme.
If the hype is all fake then it’s like he’s only Ken Griffin level accomplishment. Not a messiah but easily in the top 10 innovators of my lifetime. He wouldn’t be Tom Brady only Ben Roethlisberger.
For the record I’ve never owned a Musks investment. I have been short Musks before.
sliders1234
13d ago
That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s a reasonable opinion at all. The guy has founded three different companies with huge market values. SpaceX trades hands at over $200 billion in private markets, Tesla has a public market value of over $200 billion, OpenAI has a weird market structure as a nonprofit but if was a normal corporate probably would have trades happening at over $200 billion market cap. Now I don’t necessarily need to agree with the valuations specifically, but I do believe in some form of the efficient market. Trying to say he’s a loser when there is fairly obvious signs that he’s very well accomplished. I can see the market being irrational short term but 2 of these firms have been trading >$100 billion for over 3 years.
That’s the only position that I see that feels similar to me.
sliders1234
13d ago
I am curious why are you so driven to go after Musks? I get vibes that are the same as Holocaust Deniers. Where you might be right he’s overrated compared to popular opinion similarly like how a HC might be correct deaths were a good bit lower than reported but the whole obsession with it is backed by a deep hatred of Jews.
sliders1234
13d ago
I feel like this is maximally negative on huge accomplishments.
And you can do the same thing for Steve Jobs. He invented nothing. Animation and smart phones existed before him. The gap between electric cars and electric golf carts is far more than BlackBerry to Apple. You can always repeat that’s not a big accomplishment. But I think those are big accomplishments.
I don’t even understand these arguments. The motte for Elon Musks is he’s the most important person of the 21st century to date and the most important engineer since probably 1900. Electric cars didn’t exists before him. I believe he’s the only person to start a car company from scratch in a 100 years without state backing. Rockets had completely had no advance for 60 years before him. His satellite internet is an entirely new industry. He’s also the first backer of openAI which is like Microsoft’s entire bet the company bet.
Bill Gates invented a computer operating system and excel. Steve Jobs improved smart phone tech that already existed and created an animation company. Also competed in computers. Musks accomplishments seem above these two guys.
What is the Bailey for Elon Musks? He’s literally god or at a minimum a comic book super hero here to save mankind?
The motte for him is no reason to dump Musks as an ally. There is no human on earth I would prefer as an ally.
sliders1234
14d ago
The one article is interesting because it says the far-right is being spread on tick-tock. In the U.S. we generally view tick-tock as China spreading ideologies that weaken our nationalism (transgender, river to sea Hamas stuff).
Perhaps this is just counter-culture that the young do because they are young and rebel. But rebellion for rebellion sake implies that the rebellion is wrong and fueled by misinformation. What if this is real and being fueled by a realization that the old emperor has no clothes? And open-borders suck for Germans? That Germany as they know it won’t exists in 50 years and they will be a conquered people?
sliders1234
16d ago
The I have a black friend argument.
I do too. I’ve had a few. One went to Northwestern, they all pretty much have corporate jobs doing normal blue tribe stuff.
The thing in the whole debate is nobody doing the debate had George Floyd type black friends. It does go too far too call black people in general animals. We all know many who function quite well in western civilization. However, there is an underclass that seems to need a huge amount of intervention in terms of policy and financial aid to develop communities looking anything like the rest of western civilization. They are not self-sustaining without aid from other parts of society.
sliders1234
16d ago
“Extractive Empire”
Many a MAGA and probably some leftist would argue we are the exact opposite of an extractive empire. Thru things like free trade and open borders we actually weaken our empire and act not in our own best interest. We sacrificed our industrial base to China. I myself will argue we give too good of a deal to otherwise in terms of security guarantees. I agreed with Trump when he says he would kick countries out of NATO who are not contributing to NATO military strength. America does subsidize the national security of a lot of rich nations (I am looking at you Germany).
We offer a very good deal for a country to be a country that uses dollars. We let them not spend on national defense and dump their products on the U.S. market. While America will flex our muscles with our rules at times we also offer them very good terms that are against our interests all the time.
sliders1234
16d ago
Opsec explanation seems fine to me. Yes if you liquidate your dollar account the world would be asking why are you doing that and assume it’s something like war.
That being said I am not sure Russia was capable of liquidating dollars even if they wanted to.
They could have gone to Goldman Sachs and told them here is $300 billion give me gold. They would move the price of gold significantly. Then they do war. Let’s say they win war. Now they want to use the gold to buy real things. Selling 300 billion of gold would drive the price down. A second issue is now the global market doesn’t like Russia. Trading in gold gets a negative reputation. Maybe Chile’s central bank wanted more gold but now gold is known as Russian money and buying gold helps bad people.
My point is I agree their is an opsec angle but de-dollarizing into something else is perhaps impossible but definitely not easy.
The simplistic and correct issue with a gold backed currency is the supply of gold does not correlate with productivity growth + population growth + 2% inflation (can ignore the inflation but I think modestly positive inflation is positive).
If the growth of the gold supply is 1% and my above equation is 5% you end up needing the risks free interest rate that balances demand for risks free savings and the demand for investment to have a positive 4% nominal rate. Historically, I actually read the book, 4% nominal rates have been mostly the peak interest rates (for govvy debts or equivalent lowest risks debt).
For whatever reason the market clearing interest rate is below 4% you will see gold being better than investing. Since the currency is backed by gold the currency becomes better than investing. Which basically causes people not to invest which causes a depression.
Alternatively you could live in a world on the gold standard where Elon Musks invents a magic gold making machine. He can increase the gold supply by 50% per year. At this point a gold standard is hyperinflation. The reverse side still indicates that there is a lack of correlation between gold supply and changes in economic activity. This scenario is roughly speaking the Spanish Empire.
sliders1234
17d ago
The use of the word class probably confused. I was referring to a particular course not class in the sense of the class of 2027.
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Tlt bad investment. You compared long term investments where the market was priced at 0% (historically high prices) to now higher rates. This is just bond math. Interest rates change. T-Bills did not lose any money. 30 year bonds are a bet on rates.
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US took Russias money. If I have $20 of Jeroboam’s money in my pocket. And you Jeroboam punched me in the face he shouldn’t be surprised when I don’t give him his money back. Seems rational. The funny thing before Jeroboam punched me in the face he knew he was going to punch me in the face. Yet he also knew I had his money. Why didn’t he get it back before punching me? Something something there are good reasons why Jeroboam had his money in my pocket before punching me and it’s very sticky.
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No accounting for a risks free asset versus a hunk of metal that only has value if someone else values it. Gold is a Ponzi scheme depending on a new sucker getting talked into owning gold. The Dollar is not a Ponzi scheme. People have to use it and if they don’t use it a military takes them and puts them in jail.
Edit: Too emphasize point 2. His argument for dollar weakness is the dollars greatest strength. Russia chose to go to war with America. They fully knew we would confiscate $300 billion. And could not liquidate before going to war. I complain that Apple is incredibly sticky and people just buy IPhones so they don’t look ghetto with green text. The dollar is so sticky you can go to war with America and can’t get rid of the dollar.
sliders1234
17d ago
How so? If you mandate B+ average. It doesn’t matter how hard the course is. If one person gets an A another person has to get a B-.
sliders1234
17d ago
The Ivies really need to set mandatory GPA’s at the class level. UC mandates every class has a B+ average.
Sometimes I take fitness classes. My body gets tired out. But there is someone in charge and other people in the room. The teacher is sort of yelling at me. I have peer pressure to get the reps in because someone will see me not doing the work and being a failure and I would feel ashamed by quitting. If I did the exact same workout in my living room I would tap out earlier. Grades serve the same purpose. If you just give everyone an A in every class then the natural human competition doesn’t show up.
Either that or Harvard just wants to be a school for socialization. You get better results when you force people to compete and it adds to their internal motivation.
sliders1234
18d ago
This generalizes for basically every profession and even moreso since the internet exists now.
That being said 50-80% of the population likely doesn’t have that IQ I need the relatively smart doctor who can do the read the internet for cure thing.
sliders1234
18d ago
This seems obvious if you run some numbers. I am not going to look up what percentage of the population dies a year or total deaths in America but 1-1.5% sounds about right.
I would guess 4-5 million deaths per year and the 440k number would imply 1/10 of deaths are medical error.
Either the definition of error is very low - like a mistake costs a person 10 minutes of life or the number is wrong. When people say medical errors they would assume they died youngish because the doctor did something like gave them the wrong drug or cut an artery during surgery.
sliders1234
18d ago
Is this a fairly recent thing with Harvard? And is there a big gap between Harvard and 10-20 ranked American schools? I can’t think of people I know who went to the second tier of schools and one who went to Stanford who were ADOS. This article sounds like there are basically none. I think they said perhaps 17.
I think it is fair to say if ADOS at Harvard basically do not exists then all of DEI is just a grift. If your concern is structural racism then Harvard shouldn’t just be recruiting in Nigeria if they are extremely concerned about structural racism. If you believe the issue is structural racism as oppose to lack of ability admitting a ton of ADOS would be an obvious solution and something Harvard has the ability to fix (training plus credentialing) a ton of Nigerians and no ADOS would be a refusal to do the hard thing for laziness or tacit admission that ADOS are just too dumb to be at Harvard.
Also there is a big difference between padding the stats and the article sounding like there are a dozen or two ADOS at Harvard.
NATO is just an arbitrary line you are drawing right now because it excludes Ukraine. The rest you are just asking questions.
I can just as easily say would you risks nuclear war over Estonia. Population 1.3 million? That’s stupid to cause millions to die in nuclear war.
There is of course no obvious line for brinkmanship.
You pick NATO. I point to The Budapest Memorandum. So yes we have treaty obligations with Ukraine.
Ukraine of course is white. Which does count for something in US discourse.
Ukraine also has strategic reasons it’s easier to defend than waiting for the brinkmanship to occur somewhere else.
The larger population means they have more meat to throw at the problem. Drawing the line at Ukraine would mean that the next line is probably something like the Baltics. Where you would need to put German and American soldiers at risks versus Ukrainians. And if you let Russia have Ukraine then you enlarge their army as Ukrainian meat becomes Russian meat to build their army.
So yes Ukraine has a lot of strategic reasons to pick Ukraine for brinkmanship versus waiting.
My opinion is that yes Ukraine is the right place to fight Russia. Russia would take all of Europe if they could. History tells us that.
My big issue is you act like these things are obvious. But they are not obvious. And if we let Ukraine fall in 2022 there is a strong chance a test in the Baltics would come. And my guess when that day comes you would make the same argument. Russia wants the Baltics more and we should have never let them into NATO.
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