domain:aporiamagazine.com
Corvos
11hr ago
I think ‘buying trinkets’ is an okay way to say essentially ‘frivolous spending that has no long-term advantage’.
Since we’re talking about literal spending here, perhaps more context would be better in this case to be clear that you aren’t literally talking about buying physical things like jet planes.
MMT is a relatively accurate model of how modern Western monetary policy works. But have you sit down for a second and asked yourself if that's a good thing that it works like that or not?
Because if you did not, I don't think you're equipped to engage with its actual opponents.
Does the State having control over the rate of interest incentivize good or bad investments? What's a good rate of inflation and who does that good rate benefit and harm? And most importantly, what happens to all this the day that people stop buying US debt no questions asked?
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
Exploration isn't part of the Chinese national character. Having satellites is actually beneficial; having pretty pictures of Jupiter is pure status display. China doesn't have the people to need to build on Mars, Venus, etc, either, their fertility rate is 1. Chinese space exploration exists to outcompete the west, not because the Chinese think it's valuable.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
12hr ago
It's only different because it has the most powerful army in the world. Well that and dwindling traditions of people using the dollar to price things that come from it.
The day that people stop fearing the US is the day that it collapses. And those soldiers, like the praetorian guards of old, need to see real value to remain loyal, not mere debt.
America's doomed like all empires are doomed, the only way out is growth. Ironically the MAGA people refusing to look at the number are the saner party here. There is no government cut that could ever pay this off without completely destroying the US and the world.
Musk is smart, but you can't outsmart that abyss.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
I mean the even bigger issue with raising taxes on 'the rich' is there just aren't enough of them.
campfireSmoresEaten
12hr ago
There is a common human thing where someone gets into a hole and takes a huge risk in hopes of getting out of that hole, which makes the problem much much worse.
If politicians embrace AI for this reason and then superintelligence kills everyone, I would describe this as that
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
I hate to break this too you, but Democrats-as-they-actually-exist are pretty NIMBY.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
12hr ago
Do you really not think people would flock to competent governance like corporations once did to Delaware?
Any other answer is acceptable, I was genuinely asking. It just seems mysterious to be allergic to the concept of scientism in a world where this building exists.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
12hr ago
Why don't you just send your confession directly to the feds instead of their best friends and save a judge some time?
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
America is long past the point at which most countries would have seen fiscal collapse, default, or otherwise serious consequences from the debt.
It's not unreasonable to note that at the moment, America(and Japan, apparently) Is Different.
Yeah but you always run the risk of being captured anyway. See what happened to El Chapo. There are no safe countries from the reach of the US anymore except perhaps North Korea.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
12hr ago
I saw that. It's amazing how much MTG cards have appreciated over the past 25 years that the market can absorb such a large transaction. It's like an asset class in and of itself. someone should make a MTG card ETF or an ETF of MTG and Pokémon.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
12hr ago
MMT is propably not a popular position here. Your comment mostly assumes its true, and your very long quote is entirely about why the reactionaries wont see the light. The justification is essentially this:
To be economically literate, one would have to know that saying the government deficit should be cut is identical to saying the non-government surplus should be cut.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Government deficit & debt are good things, and the only problem is along the lines of 'too much of a good thing' (inflation, which is the self-correction mechanism)
Why is inflation correcting it? We have over the last few years heard from many left-leaning economists that inflation is actually fine, the lower classes are just irrationally afraid of it, go right ahead Mr Biden. In a mostly cashless economy like the US, even the logistical problems of hyperinflation can be handled pretty well.
dr_analog
razorboy
12hr ago
Unclear. Employers in the US vary on how comprehensive a health plan they will buy for their employees. Additionally, some households will have one spouse enroll in their employer's family plan while the other opts out entirely (and maybe even gets a monetary rebate for declining it).
Another complication is even with 65%+ total employee cost going to taxes, professionals in France opt for additional supplemental insurance so they don't have to share services with the poors.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
12hr ago
Cherry studio is great for this thanks to the knowledge base and regular expression features. With the knowledge base you can grab a bunch of books you like and add them to it and the ai will adopt the style and theme of the books. Add a bunch of Sanderson books and you'll get a different style than if you added a bunch of Salvatore books for example. Or you could add a bunch of Tom Clancy books and watch it spend paragraphs describing guns.
If you want Lovecraftian horror though, don't do Lovecraft - it's just not fleshed out enough in the works themselves. The best I've found so far is a mix of Thomas Ligotti and Brian Lumley - Lumley's Titus Crow books are kinda dumb, but meticulous in their coverage of everything in the mythos, so pairing him with Ligotti gets you cool shit like taking all your missions from brains in jars and the hounds of tindalos coming for anyone who uses time manipulation, plus the occasionally beautiful turn of phrase.
And then there's the new regular expression feature, which is regex, so you can very easily set up a basic randomised combat system with it. It won't be particularly intricate, but it will give you random attacks that whittle away your hp, you can add status effects like sleep (character can't act) and paralysis (roll 1d5 to see if the character acts) and critical hits. The only caveat is that you have to keep track of your hp and mention it frequently, or set your prompt up to always mention party hp and status. Or better yet both, otherwise the assistant will forget.
nopie
12hr ago
I am sorry, I had seen this usage in some writings and thought that it is a standard English. But I am not a native speaker and make a ton of mistakes in every sentence.
Wealth and income have nothing to do with each other in Sweden. You become wealthy by either starting wealthy, starting a company, or in extremely rare cases invest your way there (or win the literal lottery). Capital gains are practically not taxed in Sweden so being wealthy here is great! Having a high income what's taxed and that doesn't lead to wealth.
zoink
12hr ago
Seems like it works OK for organized crime based out of countries antagonistic to the West.
campfireSmoresEaten
13hr ago
I am fine with returning art, but I would object to returning Gibraltar or the Falklands. They seem very different to me.
striker
13hr ago
This is helpful, sounds like a great process. Daily word count targets are essential - getting it down, can all be edited later. Will consider this. You can’t beat a good spreadsheet.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13hr ago
How much of a window do these LLMs have? Presumably, as a completely new user, I wouldn’t get much out of this prompt.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13hr ago
Practice.
Someone wrote a good post about it a couple months back, but I couldn’t find it. It basically said you could train the skill efficiently by drawing real objects every day. Sufficient experience lets you move from drawing what you see to drawing what you saw, once, in a different pose and setting.
it_is_so_weird_to_be
13hr ago
True. In the years since I’ve discovered that when online dating, I get posted on private Facebook groups for women. My ex then shows up to talk mad shit including completely fabricating scenarios that didn’t happen. Social ostracization in action.
That is definitely the case, but I would be surprised if anyone could do the t-accounts for various government & banking accounting operations and actually put the liabilities & assets on the correct sides, etc. Even most economists mess it up completely. It's just not something most people learn or care about. My guess was definitely about US officials and how their actions may be explained by their private knowledge, rather than an estimation about our forum members' beliefs.
Identities are a basic check to make sure you're not getting something totally wrong. If you think the government deficit is a bad thing that should be reduced, you have to explain why you think that of the non-government surplus as well. It is quite literally the same thing. As Kelton said in that presentation, people goof up on this all the time. The WSJ in the late clinton years proudly proclaiming in one column "isn't this wonderful? This is the longest sustained budget surplus since 1929!" while the next column over is hand-wringing "this is very worrying, the private sector savings are plummeting!".
When collectively the private sector has more monetary savings than we want, we will value money less and increasingly try to spend it away - the hot potato effect. Prices will get bid up high enough from this economic activity (falling value of a dollar) until we have the correct/desired amount of savings again. Or before that, the increased economic activity will cause the excess monetary savings to get shed off in increased tax payments (monetary destruction, IOUs returning to their issuer).
So taxes being set at rates instead of flat amounts is therefore one of our main automatic stabilizer policies (the other being safety net spending): the government deficit automatically shrinks & grows depending on the state of the economy. Demand-pull inflation is the final relief valve after that, re-valuing money downward until we have the amount we want.
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