I especially detest the constant romanticization of losing sleep, injuries, and abusing oneself to achieve a business result, which seems to be a constant theme of most of this AI generated content. Some of the incidents might be real but they shouldn't be romanticized.
Without naming names I saw one post where a certain team was taken to a high altitude location to lock down together and the founder was proud of people using oxygen and still getting work done.
Exactly. My point is the price of everything has gone up, and the authentic "original" brands are no longer affordable. The knockoffs are still affordable, and with them I'm doing great.
I have no incentive to change anything about my spending habits. If the "system" changes itself so that I have a ton more disposable cash lying around then sure I'll re-consider the authentic brands.
About the only situation I still buy authentic brands is if there's an electrical safety or lithium battery involved. But yeah, I'm not spending $52.99 on a nice-looking bike bell ([1] with shipping and taxes) when there's a $10 knockoff of it that looks exactly the same and works just as well.
Back in the days when the original was $5 and the knockoff was $1, I might be willing to pay for the original.
Reality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now.
My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff.
If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every other weekend, and then we'll talk.
> No dual citizenship at all, most probably no citizenship.
Citizenship is basically impossible unless you are born to Chinese parents, but work visas in China are lightyears easier to get than the US H1B shitshow. In China all you need is an employer's invitation and you can more or less get a work visa, especially if it's for a skilled job in science, technology, or finance.
> Not going to even mention the obscene difference in racism
I'm non-white and I've felt far more racism in the US than China. That isn't to say racism doesn't exist, but it's much less.
> OR the language barrier, both of which are enormous factors.
Language is not a barrier unless you think it is. The IQ of people in China isn't particularly different than the IQ of people anywhere else in the world. If 1 billion people can learn a language, you can.
1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week
2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.
3. City sponsored exercise events and sports competitions open to everyone, not just athletes. Give tax deductions to those who participate and demonstrate attendance.
The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence. But I have given the solution.
It literally is. You're buying a YES token on a black swan event that pays you if that event happens. The entire American system is built on gambling, and that's my point.
If you want, and you're good at math, you can even buy such insurance from Kalshi. Hell, if you're worried about an alien attack, you can buy insurance against that on Kalshi by buying the $0.05 YES for that. If aliens attack and mess us all up, you get a payout of $1. You can insure yourself against politics, against a market crash, against war, lots of other things. See my point? Insurance IS gambling.
BTW, there are other countries where healthcare is almost free and you don't need to buy insurance.
> there are plenty of over-the-counter everyday goods
Yep, that's how you've been sucked into the system. Oh, you didn't spend as much as you planned? We'll steal the rest of the budget unless you go buy some name-brand Tylenol that you don't actually need just to fill up the hard-earned money that you marked up as FSA that are on the verge of being stolen. That's the flip side of the casino: either the FSA admin pockets your cash, or Tylenol (TM) pockets your cash, or the IRS pockets your cash, depending on which direction in the triangle you mis-priced your needs.
Also, generic acetaminophen is cheap, and works just as well. If you're buying name-brand Tylenol just to fill up remnant FSA dollars, you aren't saving money.
> you WILL use up that FSA. Every. Single. Year.
It's strictly better to abolish the FSA and just let you tax-deduct your medical expenses. You win, the young ones also win. But no, the system wants to put the FSA casino in the way so that it can bank a few extra dollars off the young folks.
If you don't see it blindingly obvious that this is strictly better, and STILL want to play the FSA game, you've either been brainwashed by the system as well, or you've become part of the system in upholding something that is predatory.
> We can (and should) try and regulate away this kind of gambling
No, instead we should tackle the actual root of the problem, and fix the economy. If everyone can make a living, afford housing, find jobs, and find something they love to do that pays, and get medical care they need, they won't turn to these things.
Nobody should be asked to make bets on their medical needs. They should just be allowed to tax deduct everything when the need arises.
You ARE almost-guaranteed to lose the FSA game, basically. You'll either bet too much or too little, and the collective house wins either way.
In my opinion, it's even more sickening that the system is designed to scalp a few extra bucks off of peoples' medical situations in this way. The gambling on sports, I could care less about.
> discrepancy between paper and physical crude prices
If you see mispricing, trade the hell out of it and pocket the cash before some hedge fund does. The system is rigged against us normal folk and given any opportunity to take money legally from the system, I absolutely would.
(Now sometimes, there are good reasons for paper and physical to differ, most particularly if the paper is structured in a high-risk way, and you need to be aware of that.)
I mean, it's instilled into society at every level in the US. If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year. The "smart" way to write the tax law would be to just let taxpayers deduct whatever medical expenses they have at tax reporting time. But instead, they want you to make a bet because you're highly likely to either (a) not use all of it and lose it, or (b) realize you haven't spent all of it and spend it on random shit you wouldn't have otherwise bought, handing over profits to some suppliers who are in on the whole game, or (c) underestimate your medical needs and the tax man gets to tax some more of your money.
Stuff like this is all over the place in American life.
E-mail: `echo qurren | awk '{print $1 "@" $1 ".arg"}' | tr a-z n-za-m`
MIT (SB Physics, SB EECS, MEng EECS, PhD EECS)
Work: Diffusion models, autonomous vehicles, robotics, computer vision
Other interests: AI for science, smart home, quant trading, energy, sustainability
Fun: Photography, Travelling, Hiking, Gadget-building
Current location: SF Bay Area
https://dheera.net
https://github.com/dheera/
https://instagram.com/dheeranet/