ksdale · HackerTrans

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Haha yeah, I was reluctant just because I don't personally know much of that particular history and it was hard to imagine that the Japanese intended to commit genocide against all of China, but I agree that genocide is fair classification of their actions.

ksdale

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Good question! Genocide is not just another word for mass-murder. It is defined as killing with the intention to destroy the targeted ethnic group/culture/religion completely. That certainly wasn't the American plan anywhere during WW2. Germany's actions were obviously genocidal, and Japan's actions in China arguably were as well.

ksdale

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

So you're trying to argue that the U.S. is actually the bad guys? Perhaps the good guy/bad guy dichotomy simply isn't that useful. The U.S. did terrible things during the war, and there is no excuse for that. The U.S. is also only directly responsible for a very small fraction of the total civilian deaths in the war, and for none of the genocidal deaths. The world today is a better place for the Allies having won the war, and the U.S. effort is a major reason that happened. It's silly for Americans to cling to the narrative that we're always making good choices, that's obviously untrue, but I think it's equally silly to argue that the totality of what the U.S. did during World War 2 was worse than anything any other country did, especially worse enough to make the U.S. the bad guys. But I don't think you need to call them the bad guys to acknowledge that they committed atrocities.

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It seems like maybe he confused positive and negative feedback? But if you think he's created a situation where positive feedback is going to cause massive problems down the line, I was interested in knowing specifically what you had in mind.

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I don't think this is unique to HNers talking about government, the reverse is also true, with many government officials assuming that most businesses are awash in cash that they can use to solve any problem (true of many businesses to be sure, but in the same way that government officials are scoring own goals, sometimes, not universally).

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

*A local city mayor who also happens to have one of the busiest ports in the world in his city. The back up is literally in the global news. It doesn't seem unreasonable for him to, at the very least, ask someone on his staff to give him a gigantic list of problems at the port and spend quite a lot of time figuring out which problems he had the power to solve. He probably speaks at least monthly, if not weekly, with who knows how many people connected with the port.

I agree that the fact it was changed so quickly should be celebrated, but it also gives me pause to think about just how many things could instantly be improved if the people with the power sat up and paid attention.

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

What new timebombs do you think he has installed, for example?

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Yeah, it's certainly true that the financialization of everything allows for a lot more of every type of investment to be made (including in productive capacity).

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It doesn't necessarily though. When I buy an IPO, my dollars go straight (kind of) into a company's bank account. When I buy stock on the market, my dollars go to whoever I bought the stock from, who will probably use those dollars to buy more stock. The only time a company ever receives dollars it can use is when it sells stock to the public or gets a loan, and the vast, vast majority of transactions on the stock market do not involve dollars going to anyone who will use them to invest in capacity.

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I like that Graham quote, and you make good points. I guess when I say "investing," I mean more like - Purchasing an equity entitles you to a share of that business' income and potentially assets, but if you buy the equity on the stock market, you're not actually investing in capacity, the way you would be if you bought an IPO or even just a piece of equipment you could use to make something.

And I think people have always given the stock market more credit than it's due as being "the economy," when really the stock market is a set of signals about the economy. The economy is the people and machines and the buildings that do stuff and make things, and the economy remains regardless of what's happening in the stock market.

If a bunch of silliness happens around a certain stock, or if the stock market becomes wildly detached from reality, it doesn't have anything to do with peoples' ability to produce value.

ksdale

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I think in regards to finance, the only thing that's under attack is the idea of "stock market as source of knowledge about value." But I'm not sure that the stock market has actually served that purpose for decades.

IMO, it's good that people are beginning to see the stock market as a casino. If people want to "invest," they'll figure out more pro-social ways to do it than the stock market, and if they want to gamble, well, there's always the stock market.

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