How did I know that there would be a comment like this at the top, someone criticizing the research for not being science?
What is wrong with making up and using a narcissism metric and seeing what it correlates with? It's how social science is done, and how you discover results that are worth exploring. Get off your high horse.
>I like his disdain for targeted ads, in spite of the fact that this could probably be profitable for his company.
I don't agree with the idea that all a company has to do is tack on ads and they'll be wildly profitable. I think that ship has sailed; the more ads we're bombarded with, the less effect each individual ad has on us. There are diminishing returns to ad optimization. We can only buy so much stuff.
There will be some interesting times in the near future surrounding this ad-driven ecosystem.
I don't know what SnapChat will end up "being", but the idea that the worst-case-scenario is, for all intents and purposes, "incredibly successful" is so far off the rails. How people can read things like this without at least contemplating a tech bubble is beyond me.
>It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.
It's our fault, they're catering to our demands. You can't run a media company any other way. No one wants to read read (although I'd bet on average everyone spends far more time reading). So you get wham-bam, buzzfeed-esque content. Even on HN, long form articles will inevitably be met in the comment section with a "tl;dr?".
>you realize that all those people suckered into ARM loans they couldn't afford during the housing crisis was precisely because they couldn't read between the lines?
Maybe, just maybe, there were a few who said, "I'm going to flip this house before the interest rates adjust, so who cares what it says between those lines?" or "I'll live in this house while I can afford it, and when I can't I'll mail in the keys and leave the bank hanging for a loan I agreed to pay back in good faith."
>Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why?
I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. While I don't agree with user=irrigation's comments, I think he's been pretty clear: the claims don't jibe with his experience as a consultant and he's skeptical about the self-promotional aspects. It's hardly ambiguous.
So why are you demanding he come out and call patio11 a liar? That would be an asshole move. Instead he's saying "I don't believe it", and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We're all just "some guy" on the internet, who cares?
What makes you think that the people involved in the disruption of the banks won't partake in the same shenanigans? Do you think "bankers" are inherently evil, while their replacements will be inherently good? The Bitcoin world says otherwise. "Tech people" are stealing people's money left and right.
>If the banks are "too big to jail/fail" then maybe we should make them smaller...
Sure, and then we'll let all the pseudo-government-controlled banks in say, China, or even Canada do all the large-scale banking business globally.
The business of banking is vastly larger than cheqing accounts and ridiculous ATM fees that people like us deal with day to day and complain about. That's why the industry is heavily regulated, and why the banks are so large, and why the local credit union in Podunk isn't underwriting the Facebook IPO. It's also why some SV startup isn't going to ride in and up-end the industry without itself becoming some financial behemoth that needs to be regulated.
I'm not going to deny that much of what you describe is occurring. America is a harsh, dog eat dog place. I'll only comment that it isn't unique to this point in time, and isn't a result of Fed actions regarding the Great Recession (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
But what does irk me a bit is:
"My major point is so many of us are losing net value in this low interest rate economy."
This is a weak form of Bastiat's broken window fallacy in action. You see the money you are losing, but don't consider what higher rates mean for others, like less discretionary money in the economy because more income is going towards car loans, student loans, credit cards, mortgages. There could even be less entrepreneurship occurring due to the higher hurdle rate. Have you included this in your net value calculation?
You don't "deserve" to earn more interest on your CD any more than I "deserve" to pay less interest on my mortgage.
>If someone signs up for e.g. Taskrabbit and does a few hours a week, they're then "self-employed" and no longer count against the unemployment statistics
Are you implying that this is having a significant effect on the US unemployment statistics? And that, in the context of the article and discussion, there is no economic recovery?
Every time unemployment statistics are brought up, anywhere on the internet, these edge cases get presented. Read how the BLS measures are calculated. Yes, the unemployment rate is based off of surveys and statistical inference, so isn't a 100% accurate representation of the real world. Yes, the dynamics of the labor force change over time, and it isn't necessarily stable over decades or centuries.
But the U6 measure, which includes "discouraged workers" who are no longer looking for work, as well as those forced to work part-time for "economic reasons" has fallen from a peak of 16.7% in 2010 to 11.3% today. That sort of move just isn't explained by people signing up for TaskRabbit, or anything like it.
I think part of the reason people deny a recovery is occurring is that they conflate it with boom times. Recovery doesn't mean everything is running at capacity; it doesn't even mean we've recovered yet. It means the trend is up. Looking back to 2009, that's hard to deny.
You are a sophisticated investor, who has been very successful wth complex derivatives, predicted and profited from the housing bubble for 6 years...and you don't have $1MM in assets?
What is wrong with making up and using a narcissism metric and seeing what it correlates with? It's how social science is done, and how you discover results that are worth exploring. Get off your high horse.