domain:aporiamagazine.com
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr ago
Seems like it works OK for organized crime based out of countries antagonistic to the West.
campfireSmoresEaten
9hr ago
I am fine with returning art, but I would object to returning Gibraltar or the Falklands. They seem very different to me.
striker
10hr 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
10hr 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
10hr 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
10hr 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.
campfireSmoresEaten
10hr ago
There was that guy who bought a bunch of boxes of magic cards using bitcoin gained from some sort of criminal activity. The guy selling the magic cards was not a crypto-savvy guy. (And then the criminal sold the magic cards.)
quiet_NaN
10hr ago
Per WP, the federal debt amounts to some seven years of federal revenue. This is clearly not great, but it is also not obvious that this will cause a spiraling hyperinflation.
One early warning sign for being over-debt is that lenders are no longer willing to lend to you with low interests. The US still has a rating of AA+ with most agencies, and from my reading of Bloomberg, treasury bonds yield about 5% per year.
Also, the US is similar to Bolivia in that both have debts denominated in US$, but unlike Bolivia the US has the option to debase that currency.
Realistically, I think that the worst outcome for the US would be a bit tamer than the Greek debt crisis. Surely painful and something best avoided, but also not something which will end democracy and give rise to the next Hitler.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
10hr ago
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, in my view, Defense spending should absolutely be as touchable as entitlement spending, maybe even more so.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that, even though it would be to my personal detriment. But on the one hand, you are talking about things we could do to improve the economy and the country. On the other hand, you argue that we should not bother to do that because you don't want the other party to have a stronger economy to work with when they come into power. So I am a little confused what you actually want if it's not "Assume everyone is in defect mode and loot what we can."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
10hr ago
Because lots of government debt is bad, so less debt is good... Yes but the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that government should never do anything, lest it gets undone in a few years. That sounds like a fucking awful society.
The part you are failing to engage with is that "fiscal responsibility" is electorally unpopular, while "fiscal irresponsibility" is electorally popular. Implementing "fiscal responsibility" will obviously cost one political power, while implementing "fiscal responsibility" will obviously gain one political power. So long as this is the case, actual fiscal responsibility is not a possible outcome in any but the shortest of terms.
To the extent that this is fucking awful, I direct you to the litany of Tarsky.
This is true but again if this stance was held at all levels of power you're basically just advocating for anarchy?
No. I am positing that political power is a scarce resource, and it should be used where it plausibly might deliver positive results. "Fiscal Responsibility" fails that test. If you don't like that fact, well, legibly admitting that it is a fact might just be the first step to changing it.
Western nations have gotten pretty cooked, but seriously man you should consider therapy or something because your outlook is profoundly nihilistic, pessimistic, and defeatist.
Aiming to secure what value might be gained under the conditions that observably exist is not nihilism, pessimism or defeatism, but rather realism and applied rationality.
Because perpetual defecits that exceed GDP growth eventually lead to massive inflation, economic collapse, or both? This is bad.
Does the Democratic party agree? What's their plan for solving this problem? Is that plan realistic?
Kind of? You're incredibly negative and myopic though, which is a lens you are viewing reality through.
Perhaps. Can you lay out an equally-realistic assessment that's less myopic and more positive?
It's not, but I think the deficits feel worse coming from them, hence the focus. They did love going absolutely ape shit over any/all democrat spending during the 2000s/2010s, so it feels hypocritical.
Yes, and we also spearheaded the GWOT, which added trillions to the debt. But notably, we have since exiled the faction that spearheaded the GWOT, and are trying to an isolationism that is the best possible path to reduced defense spending.
Unfortunately not really, I'm honestly kind of worried about our societies inability to deal with anything, but if we give up then we go from "maybe fucked" to "definitely fucked" and I don't see that as an improvement.
Alternatively, maybe making it clear that the Republican Party does not consider the debt to be a problem we're in charge of fixing will make it clear that someone else has to step up. Or else, we all accept that there is no fixing it, and at least we have the maximum warning possible that disaster is not, in fact, going to be avoided.
Unfortunately not really
Then your plan is that Republicans should sacrifice their scarce political power for nothing, correct? Why would you expect Republicans to do that willingly?
You have many harsh words for my perspective, and many admonitions for why I ought to think differently, but no actual corrections about what is, no more credible account of the realities actually facing us. It appears to me that you are objecting to me pointing out obvious facts about how things actually are, and would prefer that I argue based on fantasy. I decline to do so.
bonsaii
10hr ago
What do you think makes someone good at drawing? I’ve always been terrible at it despite relatively strong visuospatial skills (in the mental shape rotating sense) and decent manual dexterity. For whatever reason, this doesn’t translate at all to my ability to imagine the distances, angles, and ratios of objects well enough to recreate them accurately on a page. Sometimes it feels like I only imagine things topologically.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10hr ago
I think it's at least worth considering the other direction too. "What jobs are not currently worth paying a human to do, so nobody does them?"
One place that IMO would be unsurprising (and is probably happening, if quietly) is ML for trash sorting. It's not really worth paying someone to pick recyclable cans from the trash can (something something minimum wage and homeless people redeeming bottle deposits, but that isn't really at-scale anyway), but it seems like something AI could do without hazard pay.
LateMechanic
10hr ago
I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure a lot of members of congress have learned at least some MMT stuff about banking & government finance accounting. They pretty much all still use the deficit, debt, and fear of large numbers as rhetorical weapons against their opponents when out of power. But we seem to see fewer people than ever signing up for the mistaken sucker play of being in power and actually crashing the economy with austerity. Maybe more senators than house members understand the reality; surely more democrats than republicans have been incentivized; and definitely more congressional aides and rank&file treasury/fed people know how the financial plumbing works compared to elected & appointed officials (but in the US in particular, these types seem to effectively be able to get the word out to stop politicians from wrecking things usually). This time around, Trump even potentially had Elon as a perfect fall guy to take any blame, if Trump actually wanted to cut the deficit (luckily he didn't).
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. Or that the government's debt is not "our" debt, it's our asset: the government is just a balance sheet entity we made up, which we use to emit IOUs that we (the actual people) get to hold & use. It's much more akin to a scorekeeper, tracking the points everyone has. The national debt is essentially the net money supply, and that money is being created by running a deficit (constantly for hundreds of years, with no reason to stop if the people keep wanting to accumulate monetary savings). 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).
I think MMT was especially catching on amongst politicians around like 2018-2019. The inflation of 2022 probably put it on the backburner for awhile. But even back in 2012, here they are talking about how a load of congress members understand things but just can't say anything publicly: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ba8XdDqZ-Jg&t=1h4m25s
Moderator: Can you answer the question of why does the system not adopt what you're saying?
Mosler: Yeah so last year we had the debt ceiling drama. Remember that last summer? And right after the State of the Union, Paul Ryan got up and said 'Look the US could be the next Greece, we're going to be on our knees to the IMF, interest rates are going to spike, we might get downgraded, we might default, we have to take $1 trillion out of the deficit, and we're not going to vote for the debt ceiling increase unless we do that'. And Obama actually agreed! The president agreed, and he had a plan to take 6 trillion out, but they didn't like what each other was doing, they got right down to the wire, they kicked the can down the road with a compromise... Interest rates had gone up in anticipation of something terrible happening, the stock market was crashing, and we got downgraded by S&P... And what happened? Okay, interest rates went down instead of up. 3-month treasury bills were going through at 0%. Everybody was like 'what's going on, how is this possible?' No move on the deficit, we're up over 16 trillion...and, you know this is supposed to be the end of the world. And then suddenly it started sort of coming out: you had Alan Greenspan come out and say 'well you know, we print our own money'. And Warren Buffett came on and said 'we're 4A not 3A, because the Federal Reserve prints the money'.
So I compare this to the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans. The Battle of New Orleans was fought after the war was over. So what's happened is that moment when they came out realized that we weren't going to be the next Greece...okay the US was not going to be at its knees, that deficits don't drive interest rates up (and there's absolutely no reason to think they would when you understand monetary operations--they never do)... the war was over! Okay, we had won the war. The reason for deficit reduction was gone. It disappeared. All the reasons that, you know, Ryan and Obama..."we've run out of money", all these things were over! Okay, but they kept fighting the war anyway! And it's kind of the strangest thing. They just started pushing ahead with, 'okay, now we got to do it towards the end of the year...'. And nobody talked about Greece for a while, and then now all of a sudden in the last few months you're starting to hear Greece sneak into it again. Okay, that war is over, you're right, it should be over! Okay we know that deficits don't cause any default risks, they don't cause interest rates to go up, they don't cause any of that. Now, they might cause inflation, if we overspend. But let me say two things on that.
Japan's been trying to inflate as hard as it can for 20 years, and hasn't managed to get out of deflation. The Federal Reserve has been trying to inflate with everything it's got, every trick in the book, every tool it can imagine, for four years and hasn't done it, it's utterly failed. It's not that easy. I've been writing for years that central banks cannot cause inflation no matter what they do. And I think we've seen that proven out. So #1, inflation is not that easy. (The causes of these other things were all special circumstances, all the hyperinflations I won't get into that). But if there is any reason to think that we do need deficit reduction, that we should cut spending or raise taxes, it has to be inflation. Because none of the other things are a factor. So let's look at our inflation forecast: there isn't one analyst out there who has a reputation to defend that's forecasting any kind of inflation. The treasury index bonds, 30-years, are forecasting very very low inflation. There's not a single inflation forecast out there.
So I talked to representative, what's his name, Hollen--he's on the deficit reduction committee from Virginia, he's a progressive Democrat. I said "okay the war is over, why are you pushing for cuts in social security, cuts in Medicare? Isn't the burden of proof on the other side to tell you that we have to cut or else is going to be inflation? Maybe they have to do a little research, and prove to you that there could could be inflation and therefore we have to cut Social Security and Medicare? Because there's certainly no forecast out there. Why are you just voluntarily (the left, the Progressive Democrats) out there proposing these cuts?" He goes, "well, it's a pretty large number and I think we need to do something about it." It's like 'What??'
Okay there's something very wrong with the political process. And I think what's happened is they become victims of their own propaganda. They've gotten it so instilled in people that we have to do something about the deficit, they can't even begin to talk otherwise. Even though they know the war is over, even though they know they've lost any possible reason for it, even though they know the burden of proof is on the other side now to show that spending needs to be cut or taxes need to be raised for some reason... The polls show and the reactions show that if they come out and aren't for deficit reduction, they get laughed off the stage and they they lose their spot. So this is the the Battle of New Orleans being fought after the war is over because people don't realize the war is over. So even though the policy members might know that, they're dealing with a population that doesn't know...and is just an economic disaster, a real tragedy.
Let me say one more thing about taxes, if I can, and the size of government because I want to make this entirely apolitical (which it should be). The size of government is a political question. How many teachers do we want in the classrooms, how many soldiers do we want in the army -- if you take too many there'll be nobody left to grow the food and we're going to starve, if you take too few we're going to lose the war. These are all political decisions of what resources we want to move from the private sector to the public sector. And you'll have differences of opinion: some people think we need more government, some people think we want less government. But once we've settled politically on the right size government, then there is an appropriate level of taxes that allows the right size deficit, so we have the right amount of savings, to offset our pension needs and stay at full employment. So given that the size of the government is a political decision that shouldn't be based on whether the economy is good or bad -- 'we need a a legal system, how many judges and clerks do we need?' Well you know if there's a 10year wait, maybe we need more. If they're calling you up asking you to see 'why don't you go out and sue somebody, we have people waiting around to have a trial', maybe we've got too many of them. See, you've got to come up with the right size legal system and everything else.
But once you've done that, taxes are the thermostat on the wall. If the economy is ice cold and unemployment's high: you're taking too much money out for the size government we have, and you need lower taxes for that size government. If on the other hand it's overheating, there's too much spending, and prices are going up too fast, and unemployment is too low (whatever that means): then taxes have to be raised because for the size government we have, taxes aren't high enough (we're not taking enough money out). So for this right size government, taxes are the thermostat on the wall. They're not there to balance a budget, to bring in money. We're just changing numbers down, we're changing numbers up. The deficit is a residual. You find out afterwards if it was a right size deficit by counting the bodies in the unemployment line. Not by worrying about 'paying it back' or 'becoming Greece' and all that nonsense -- there is no such thing.
So your question now is "why can't the political process get us there?" And now that you know all this, I'm going to ask you for the answer. Because it's becoming more of a mystery every day. Because the more people I know who know the right answer.... you know, it's almost like the less willing they are. I talked for hours to Senator Blumenthal who read my book Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds (you get it free online, it's an easy read). And he gets the whole thing and he won't do anything -- just sits there. Same with Lieberman from Connecticut (I ran for Senate from Connecticut a couple years ago). Talked to these people, I talked to Hollen, I talked to all kinds of people over the years... and they're not going to be the ones to move us off the dime on this. We've got the academic community starting to get some of the right answers and through the blogs. And it's called mmt: modern monetary theory (somebody gave it a name, wouldn't be the name we chose). It's been expanding rapidly. But it's not there yet: that the only thing between us and full employment and prosperity beyond what anyone can imagine, is the space between our ears. There's nothing else in the way right now: there's no food shortage, there's no shortage of housing, we have surpluses of everything.
Kelton: Warren, remember. I won't say who it was, but Warren and I met with a member of Congress together. And we went through all of this with this person, and when we got done, this person looked at us and said "I can't say that". Not "I don't believe that", "I disagree with that", "you're wrong", "you're crazy" -- "I can't say that"! We have to make it increasingly safe for these folks to say that, to take these positions. And wasn't it FDR who said 'I can't do things, you have to make me do things'.
Mosler: And this is pro-agenda for all of them. The Republicans would love to cut taxes and not have to cut spending. They could agree to that. But they can't...if they cut taxes, they've got to cut spending even more because they think they have to balance the budget, so they don't even do their own tax cuts. Democrats would like to increase spending.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
10hr ago
Right. Making paperwork easier to handle just meant the major constraint on the increase of paperwork was lost, so paperwork increased vastly.
GBRK
10hr ago
but that a good number of people would renounce citizenship and simply go to a place with good infrastructure and low taxes.
That's trivially (although I admit not easily) fixable. Just make it a US government policy to seize noncitizen wealth in or outside its borders. Make lettes of marque great again!
fmac
11hr ago
In the first place, it is not obvious to me how implementing "fiscal responsibility" measures actually results in the country being better-off in any meaningful sense.
Because lots of government debt is bad, so less debt is good
What can be implemented by one government can be overridden by the next government.
Yes but the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that government should never do anything, lest it gets undone in a few years. That sounds like a fucking awful society.
Why invest in defense to preserve sovereignty if the Democrats will just cut it later? Why improve the medical system if the Republicans will rip it up later? Why build this bridge to facilitate commerce if the $OTHER_TEAM might tear it down later?
In the second place, it does not seem prudent to maintain a commons that others have no interest in maintaining and benefit greatly from depleting.
This is true but again if this stance was held at all levels of power you're basically just advocating for anarchy? Why collect garbage and take it to a landfill if other people don't bother to dispose of their garbage properly? Because "most garbage goes to the landfill" is infinitely better than "no garbage goes to the landfill"
In the third place, "my country" is a phrase, not a reality. We are well into the "voting on our rights" stage of the split. Large portions of the country are places I will not willingly visit, much less consider moving to. Increased state capacity is not a benefit to me if I believe that state capacity will be used to violate my rights as a human.
Western nations have gotten pretty cooked, but seriously man you should consider therapy or something because your outlook is profoundly nihilistic, pessimistic, and defeatist. It's making me sad to think about how you think about the world.
Also again, if your beliefs were scaled I'm pretty sure it would immediately lead to anarchy.
How does balancing the budget improve the country's long-term well-being, in concrete terms?
Because perpetual defecits that exceed GDP growth eventually lead to massive inflation, economic collapse, or both? This is bad.
Why is securing this long-term well-being solely the responsibility of the Republican party?
It's not, but I think the defecits feel worse coming from them, hence the focus. They did love going absolutely ape shit over any/all democrat spending during the 2000s/2010s, so it feels hypocritical.
It seems my position has more of a connection to bedrock reality.
Kind of? You're incredibly negative and myopic though, which is a lens you are viewing reality through.
You are appealing to ideals. What evidence do you have that these ideals are workable, and that pursuit of them is likely to lead to an improvement of our actual situation?
That's a good question, but I think you should ask it of yourself. If your ideals were implemented at a government scale, would that make the situation better?
Do you think implementing Fiscal Responsibility will improve Republicans' electoral chances?
Unfortunately not really, I'm honestly kind of worried about our societies inability to deal with anything, but if we give up then we go from "maybe fucked" to "definitely fucked" and I don't see that as an improvement.
Do you think Democrats, having won the subsequent elections, will scrupulously maintain those measures?
Unfortunately not really
fmac
11hr ago
I think this is a really cool idea, and I appreciate being introduced to it. Thank you.
How on earth does it work with buying a house vs renting?
If I buy a house for $100,000 and then sell it for $150,000, is the new buyer taxed on the incremental $50,000? How does that change if that $50k comes from land appreciation vs renovation? What about if you sell a house at a loss?
Does this play as an absurd penalty to rent vs buy? Does renting get 30% more expensive while purchasing used housing stock stays the same price?
quiet_NaN
11hr ago
I think that the narrative that LGBT makes the US weak while rejecting LGBT is what makes the Taliban strong rings even less true than the usual version of the Fremen mirage. The US has the Taliban beaten by a mile on every civilizational and capability index I care about, GPD/person, infant mortality, education attainment, military capabilities, freedom of speech, etc pp. The Taliban clearly beat the US in TFR, but that is not all that hard to do if you are willing to subjugate half of your population and ban non-reproductive sex. "Don't sell your 15 yo daughter to some man twice her age who will breed her continuously for her fertile lifespan" is not a trans agenda. It is not even a feminist agenda, unless your definition of feminism is something wholeheartedly embraced by 95-99% of the US population.
I will not claim that transpersons will make superior frontline soldiers, having gone through male puberty and then continuing to produce male sex hormones is clearly advantageous physically, but I do not think that a few percent of trans people matter. Look, the obesity rate in the US is 40%, and even that is not an insurmountable difficulty for military capabilities. The US army tooth to tail ratio in Iraq was 1:8.1. Think about it as a pyramid. At the base, you have a ton of taxpayers. Then, you have people working in arms manufacturing, writing software for guided missiles and all that. Then, you have eight actual members of the military who are supporting one frontline soldier. Obviously you want that person to be fit, where your gender-neutral criteria may end up excluding many cis-males and almost all of the people who are not cis-males for the job, depending on the specifics (a commando has likely different requirements than a tank commander). But below this, your care for raw strength drops rapidly. Perhaps the person driving the supply truck is a cis-woman. And the guy operating the drone from 50km away is wheelchair-bound. And the person who wrote the software for controlling the drone is a trans-woman and so on.
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.
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