Hard asset type investors were saying this in 2007/08 with the oil spike.
Gold bugs were saying this in the mid 80s.
Of course this is a misunderstanding of what is being measured but if inflation is in the news someone will be saying it is under reported. "What about food and energy!!"
This is the same exact thing that has been happening the past 40 years with this company and Windows.
Windows 10 was my fav version because that was the straw that broke the camels back for me and I would never even consider installing Windows at this point.
KDE Plasma is so vastly superior to Windows it isn't even close. I don't even work in IT either. A Dev intentionally using Windows is just embarrassing.
You would think we barter and haggle for unproductive hours for the goods and services we need.
90% of what I buy at a store I walk in, grab what I need, go to self check out and swipe my credit card.
Our society has such a strange obsession with new technology that does exactly the same thing as old technology but with additional benefits for someone that isn't you.
It was a change in sports betting. You really couldn't gamble on sports legally outside of the major casino sport books previously.
Keep in mind that black market sports betting is/was a multi billion dollar industry in the US so much of what you are seeing now is just more visible.
Even to take it down a notch, what has happened in the US is just boring. You almost can't have a conversation without one of 5 of the same companies coming up.
Been back full time for 3 weeks by choice instead of being remote as people trickle in.
I think when people start going back we will quickly see that most aspects of the office are actually worse.
I am a hard worker but I am also social and with just a few people back I end up wasting at least 1 hour talking about non-work related things. This isn't even an open floor plan.
If you are going back to an open floor plan, forget about it. Things will be so obviously less productive.
I am enjoying going into the office but I also know this time is limited. At some point in the future going into the office is going to be a perk with remote standard. Bet your ass on that.
You don't even have to bring in the cost savings but the cost savings will be the knockout punch.
Commodities have value in and of themselves though.
Bitcoin is a security for an electronic trading game that takes inputs and gives back less than that input.
Then on top of that there is this technological/economic quasi religion that is a random bundle of economic half truths but the followers beliefs are reinforced by the price going up.
The difference is you buy a stock/security with the expectation of some future cash flow. The value of the stock is an attempt at pricing the future cash flow at a discount rate.
BTC has no future cash flow and no expectation of future cash flow, of course everyone knows this.
It is an open ponzi scheme that you even kind of understand but you just don't use the language quite right. "Nobody believes that there is some sort of economic activity that is sustaining the growth"
You really mean to say that everyone knows it is a security with no payoff.
It really has nothing to do with fear mongering. An open ponzi is the best description.
No doubt. We are so spoiled we just take all our advances as a given.
On top of all this so many people are doing more interesting work. My father didn't just work 7 days a week, sometimes 16 hour days but he did that doing something so boring to me I would rather be homeless or dead.
Healthcare is more expensive because it saves people's lives.
Healthcare is really the best example that we are just spoiled children who can not be satisfied no matter what Santa brings for Christmas. Even getting extra years of life isn't good enough because it "cost too much".
I have looked up before that the average person in 1914 worked 60-70 hours a week for a 2020 inflation adjusted wage of 5 dollars an hour. 60-70 hours a week in deplorable conditions.
At that time you basically worked to pay rent and buy food, then drank to find some kind of happiness.
I mean you could see the black plague as what loosened a 1000 year grip on society the Church had.
At this point, liberalism could be in the same position with COVID. I don't even see the evidence that liberalism is compatible with the internet so it might have already been in trouble in 2019. When you add Covid on top of that only digital authoritarianism seems compatible with what you get.
I think people right now would even vote for digital authoritarianism if given the choice so you can't blame politicians for following the will of the people in a democracy.
I am an American that loves to read the Global Times sometimes because it often has brilliant pieces. Media like we use to have before the internet.
Chinese leaders might even understand America better than we understand ourselves.
I had just read an op ed the other day how America has no strategic thinkers in positions of power at this point. Someone like Kissinger. I don't even know how to argue with that because we don't. We don't even have the political will to want someone like that. We want a circus. China can see this, we are basically blind to it.
It pains me we almost can't have a real discussion about this topic without it being hijacked almost immediately.
I have thought deeply about this and I am not sure we can really have experimental evidence that isn't kind of meaningless. There are so many variables to control for and with the time aspect it seems non-ergodic.
We are not an intellectual enough society to have more than "mask don't work" or "Ipse dixit, science says masks work".
Hard asset type investors were saying this in 2007/08 with the oil spike.
Gold bugs were saying this in the mid 80s.
Of course this is a misunderstanding of what is being measured but if inflation is in the news someone will be saying it is under reported. "What about food and energy!!"