That is impossible because each Vanguard mutual fund is a distinct legal entity. Assets cannot be moved between funds. See Vanguard safety for more details: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Vanguard_safety
The default settlement account, Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund, has incredibly low credit risk because its assets are short-term US Federal gov debt and Federal Reserve repurchase agreements. [1] Neither of those entities have substantial default risk. Further, the global financial chaos of significant defaults from either of those entities would likely render FDIC insurance ineffective because too many banks would fail simultaneously due to their assets in those classes.
Homeownership cannot be both affordable and a good investment because a good investment has returns that at least beat inflation. That implies housing costs for new buyers will become increasingly expensive in real terms.
Think about how cars generally depreciate over time such that a used car becomes more affordable. During the pandemic, this trend broke to supply side disruptions and used cars actually started to appreciate. Housing always has supply side constraints to zoning regulations to guard the entrenched interests of existing homeowners, and thereby housing generally appreciates in value.
The closest that we can come to balancing both affordability and investment interests in a growing area is to constantly increase housing density. Then the land itself can appreciate in value as larger buildings are built in a fixed footprint. Yet the price of an individual unit of housing can stay roughly constant in real terms due to the ever increasing supply.
Exactly! We are all already the beneficiaries and casualties of the unearned rewards and punishments due to the randomized genetic combination we received at conception. Kathryn Paige Harden brilliantly explains this ethical challenge in her book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th...
> In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health—and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
> In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents. A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control any of us have in the genes we’re bestowed at conception.
Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie, veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we’d accept other injustices.
Yes, and if their banner ads for donations focused on that then many of would be more comfortable donating. Our concern is their deceptive ads that give the impression that Wikipedia is struggling to pay the bills for serving Wikipedia.
I'm generally in favor of unions as a one of many tools for helping workers get a better working arrangement.
Yet I personally don't see the need for this tool in tech. The labor market has been red hot for years with demand exceeding supply and numerous options for each worker. Firms and their management seem exceedingly responsive (sometimes to a fault) with regard to addressing worker requests.
Sure there are still plenty of suboptimal tech employers and no firm is ever perfect for every worker. Yet worker choice seems to be sufficient to let tech workers find a firm that meets their requirements.
Some people are still choosing employers that many of us would reject, yet those workers are likely just prioritizing different things. Some people want to maximize their pay or progress more quickly in their career. Some people might even want to center work in their lives and seek a demanding employer. Whatever; to each their own.
There's plenty we can do to improve things and therefore fighting a losing war against money in politics is a distraction that simply wastes our limited time and effort.
Yep, if direct political donations are banned or highly limited, then SBF (and Thiel) will just fund a bunch of media startups that promote their preferred policies and candidates. These firms can appear to be profit seeking ventures while staffed with ideologues who are incentivized to optimize reach and influence.
Universities have mixed incentives at best in terms of certifying graduates. A degree program that routinely failed a high portion of students of the program would soon find few students entering the program. Because universities see students as a customer first, there is a strong incentive to give the customer's the product that they're paying for.
University degree program do care about rankings, which entails some concern about the quality of graduates awarded a degree. But they mainly address that by filtering students at admission time. Some program still have weed out courses to nudge students into alternative programs early on. But once the student is committed to the program, there is a strong incentive to award a degree regardless of their demonstrated capabilities.
> Safe assets are much riskier than risky ones. This is I think the deep lesson of the 2008 financial crisis, and crypto loves re-learning the lessons of traditional finance. Systemic risks live in safe assets. Equity-like assets — tech stocks, Luna, Bitcoin — are risky, and everyone knows they’re risky, and everyone accepts the risk. If your stocks or Bitcoin go down by 20% you are sad, but you are not that surprised. And so most people arrange their lives in such a way that, if their stocks or Bitcoin go down by 20%, they are not ruined.
> On the other hand safe assets — AAA mortgage securities, bank deposits, stablecoins — are not supposed to be risky, and people rely on them being worth what they say they’re worth, and when people lose even a little bit of confidence in them they crack completely. Bitcoin is valuable at $50,000 and somewhat less valuable at $40,000. A stablecoin is valuable at $1.00 and worthless at $0.98. If it hits $0.98 it might as well go to zero. And now it might!
Yes, it is unfortunate that ordinary Russian citizens are being harmed by the sanctions. But that is unavoidable and an acceptable side effect of weakening Putin’s war machine. We need to eliminate his ability to wage an inhuman war of aggression and asphyxiating the Russian economy that power’s his war machine is our best available option.
War, including economic war, commonly involves massive harm to civilians. That includes civilians who oppose the war and are powerless to stop it. If the western powers and their allies could surgically snuff out Putin’s war machine without harm to innocent Russians then they would. Unfortunately that option is not available. So we accept that innocent Russians will suffer as we drain the financial blood from Putin’s war machine.
Agree that hopefully Spotify can resist calls to stop distributing content that other users find objectionable. As you point out, fashion will change and hopefully it does so in a way that shuns calls for censorship.
While I agree in principle with this line of thinking, I do worry that this will just lead to platform fragmentation. My thinking is that if Spotify (or any other platform) gives in to one online mob then that will only encourage more future mobs. I imagine that there are numerous podcasts and artists that some group finds objectionable. E.g., I imagine many cultural conservative prudes find music with a lot of profanity to offend their sensibilities. Should Spotify start removing artists if such a mob forms and demands such an action?
The end result is that a content distribution platform will have to curate a specific brand that targets specific consumers and only distributes conforming content. Whereas we currently have a half dozen or so music streaming services that all have roughly the same content, we’ll soon find content fragmented across 20 different platforms; each corresponding to a specific slice of consumer preferences. Many of us will have to subscribe to multiple services to get the content we seek and will not be able to mix content. E.g., many of my current playlists on Spotify would be split across several disjoint streaming platforms.
Instead, I think platforms should never be reactive in calls for dropping content. Instead they should have a general principle of broadly distributing all but the most extreme fringe content. They can regularly update their principles used in determining what content they distribute, but that should never be done as a quick reaction to some mob. Otherwise they’ll constantly be facing a series of outraged customers that want the platform to stop distributing some content that those outraged user’s don’t even consume. And I believe that will only result in platform fragmentation as distributors curate a brand around specific segments of consumers.
I agree that Spotify has the legal right to stop distributing any content they find objectionable. Anyone arguing that Spotify’s action is a first amendment violation is simply wrong. A private entity, like Spotify, can decide what content to distribute at their own discretion. I don’t think many people are making this argument.
Instead, I think many of us are arguing that Spotify shouldn’t exercise that option just because of an outraged online mob. That includes those of us that aren’t particular fans of Rogan and wouldn’t be affected if we couldn’t consume his content anymore. Many of us are arguing that as a general principal; don’t give in to a short-lived and irrational angry mob.
I am arguing for Spotify and other content distributors to ignore angry mobs because I worry that eventually such a mob will come for something I do value. E.g., I listen to plenty of music that includes gratuitous levels of profanity. I imagine that such music greatly offends many people, chiefly culturally conservative prudes. Should such an online mob form and demand Spotify stop distributing some of my favorite music then I hope Spotify resists that mob.
Maybe one day I’ll even be a member of such a mob demanding that some platform stop distributing something that offends my sensibilities. While my emotions of hate and outrage may cloud my rational judgment, I hope the platform will have the courage to tell me and my compatriots to pound sand. If we don’t like the content, then we don’t have to consume it.
*Edited to fix a mistake as pointed out in a reply.
They aren't forcing any single property to be a duplex. Instead they are preventing a ban on allowing the property to be a duplex. The property owner can still choose to build a single family home at their discretion.
The comparable car example would be preventing a local ordnance that bans minivans. The car buyer can choose a car or minivan based on their discretion if such a ban is prevented. Some localities don't like minivans for whatever reason and would like to ban them, thereby forcing everyone to buy cars.
I was surprised by that also. Here's what I found and shared in an earlier comment in this submission.
I asked a friend who has a CPA, but doesn't work in tax law. Their first comment after briefly scanning the legal code is that "disqualified person" is only used within the context of "prohibited transaction". The definition of "prohibited transaction" concerning "disqualified person" doesn't seem to address this case. Instead, it seems to focus on dealing with the Roth IRA assets in a manner to benefits ones accounts outside of the Roth.
I was surprised by that also and asked a friend who has a CPA, but doesn't work in tax law. Their first comment after briefly scanning the legal code is that "disqualified person" is only used within the context of "prohibited transaction". The definition of "prohibited transaction" concerning "disqualified person" doesn't seem to address this case. Instead, it seems to focus on dealing with the Roth IRA assets in a manner to benefits ones accounts outside of the Roth.
No. If anything he exaggerated the value of those PayPal shares at the time of contribution. Assuming he made the contribution for tax year 1998, then PayPal hadn't yet raised any money and had no external valuation. The company was worthless at the time and the price-per-a-share was a formality of the initial incorporation. This is similar to most other early stage startups that are similarly worthless at founding.
I agree that Thiel did stretch the law, but all of this only matters because PayPal was exceptionally successful. Almost all founders who buy their early shares prefunding and place them in a Roth IRA will end up with worthless equity for retirement.
Further, there are disadvantages to having this portion of his wealth in a Roth IRA. For one, you cannot borrow against equity in a Roth. So while he can sell and buy something else tax free, none of these assets are available to him until retirement age. Whereas his PayPal shares outside of retirement accounts can serve as collateral for loans, which would allow him to access a portion of these assets tax free , while allowing the equity to continually appreciate.