Recessions happen with the regularity of a heartbeat, and we're right in the spot on the curve where a downwards slope is expected. Stocks are stupidly overvalued at the moment. It's time for a recession aka a-badly-needed-splash-of-cold-water-in-the-face. If we engage in all sorts of shenanigans to put it off, it'll just build up trouble and make the eventual recession worse.

2 hours of partying is fun and a slight hangover. 12 hours of partying means 3 days of recovery and permanent liver scarring. The current stockmarket party is well past the 2 hour mark and getting into the stupid zone. Time for a small recession.

The AI companies are bleeding cash out of every orifice. They're throwing money around without even thinking. Buy whatever building we can get our hands on! Power grid issues? Buy jet engines! Maybe nuclear! Need more chips? Buy the entire TSMC production capacity and sign a 6 year locked-in contract. Price? Pffffff whatever they want. Why are you asking questions about revenue or ROI? What are you, some sort of boomer? The singularity is coming in 12 months and you better be on this train or you'll lose out! FOMO! FOMO! FFFooOOOOmmMMMooOOO!

Apple is just gonna wait this out. They sold smartphones last year. This year too. Next year won't be much different, and same goes for 2030. Will something will eventually replace the smart phone. Sure. Those AI-enabled smart-pins have a lot of potentiaaahhhhahahaha I couldnt say that without laughing.

Maybe Apple will hike their prices 50 bucks. Oh no! The cost of a durable good that I keep for 6-8 years just went up by 5 percent. Guess I'd better grab my stabbin knife and murder a few neighbors for their resources, cause society is clearly in flames.

Anyone who thinks that people in the west have "superior intellects" are knuckle-dragging supremecist idiots.

The west has some real, tangible-as-a-mountain advantages, but it has nothing to do with the intellect of the people. Our capitalistic systems, the rule of law, freedom of speech, association, religion, etc. etc. The devolved governmental structures and strong civil society. All of these things are genuine well-documented advantages that result in stronger, more productive societies that thrive in the long term.

But the individual people are no smarter or dumber at the population level.

When it comes to scientific output, you're right. It's the absolute number that matter. 200 scientists can produce twice as much science as 100 scientists, and per-capita numbers don't matter. Turning that science into useful things is another matter entirely.

The USSR was our equal when it came to science, but it didn't do them much good, did it? I have no doubt that Chinese science can match ours.

Your post was interesting and informative right up until the last line. What a shame.

You point out that slavery exists in Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and it’s facilitated by China. Then, somehow, you manage to blame the west for it? Wut?

I’m not denying the past crimes that the West has committed (although there really isn’t a unified “west” in the way people like to think). But, blaming the crimes of Laos and the Chinese triads on the west sounds a lot like look-what-you-made-me-do minus the snappy hiphop beat.

Someone is losing heaps and heaps and heaps of money. You can’t even buy the lowest end Cessna for that money. And, they’re providing training? Nothing about human rated aircraft is cheap. Somebody has bled out $100 million. The moving part count is highly problematic as well. If there’s only 18 moving parts, then there’s one rotor on each electric motor, a door handle, one or two moving parts in the cockpit, and that’s it. I’m not even sure that’s possible. If it is however, low cost and low part count isn’t consistent with high levels of redundancy. I respect people who are willing to sink money into ambitious projects like this, but this is about as safe as a hangglider.

Incompetence isn’t baked in to authoritarianism - it’s left entirely up to chance. So, the posse of an authoritarian figure is gonna be a distribution that largely reflects the human population aka a bunch of average joes, some smart ones, and some really dumb ones.

For example, Stephen Miller is a monster, but there’s no denying his competence.

Wait - do the legit brokerages sell the same share multiple time? Is that a legit thing? This is news to me.

Wait, do the legit trading houses do that? Or are you referring to Robinhood? If you are, you need to realize that they too are a known scam - a gamified gambling site disguised as a stock trading firm.

COVID deaths are down, because almost everyone who is really susceptible to COVID is either heavily-vaccinated or already dead.

Drug overdose deaths are down, because fentanyl killed almost everyone who was susceptible to opiate addiction.

The lower death rates in the US is probably a real effect. However, it'll be temporary. In a few years, the new "don't vaccinate and eat all the beef tallow you can" guidelines will kill enough people to reverse the gains.

Evolution is alive and well in the US human population. This country is NOT kind to the weak and stupid. Ok, I'm done edgelording. Please downmod.

Private equity always had tons of zombie firms. The spread of performance on private equity was always huge. The top performers can multiply the money by 3x, 4x, or even more. But, most of them show a loss.

If you're willing to take that level of risk, the overall performance of private equity is actually better than the stock market, but you're playing Russian Roulette with 4 of the chambers loaded.

It depends. If this is a transient thing, then there will be a hiring spree in a year or two, or maybe at the start of the next president’s term, and things will be fine. Turnover happens, even for PhD types.

Several hundred people quit the US federal government every day. Being temporarily down by a few thousand isn’t armageddon.

If this is the new normal and it continues for too long, that’s another story, and our capabilities will slowly degrade over time. We’ve seen how it plays out in other countries that abandoned their experts. It’s not pretty.

Meta’s goal was to lock users into their ecosystem. Um, yeah. That’s basically a rephrasing of the statement “businesses want to keep their customers”. The wording is slightly more psychopathic, but that’s about it.

Except they utterly failed. As soon as a slightly fresher social media stream showed up (TikTok), a billion young people transferred their attention to the new ecosystem. The effort to move involves creating a new login and password. Meta’s “lock-in” had the half-life of a typical internet meme.

Some things are truly so addictive that they can’t be allowed (fentanyl). I agree that there are places where social media should be banned (aka school classrooms). But, it’s a stretch for a psychiatrically-diagnosed 19 year old kid to blame their problems on “all the social media” and then claim that they’re entitled to “all teh $$$$$”. This kid has my heartfelt sympathy, but they should lose the case.

Heck no. His chunk is tiny. If a surgeon saves the life of a 30-year old making 35k per year, the productivity of that individual, for the rest of their life, could easily be north of 500k. And, 35k annual is pretty low-end nowadays. And a good general surgeon will generally do several surgeries per day. Even on a surgeon salary, they’re only getting a tiny fraction of what they add to the population.

I’m arguing a ridiculous point to support my argument that the idea under discussion is probably bad. This is the way it’s supposed to be. In the aggregate, people need to give at least as much as they get, or the society collapses. And, teachers and doctors are probably some of the most added-value workers in our society.

If a retail outlet is struggling financially, they need to a) raise prices, b) lower costs, c) bring in more customers d) change locations or e) change businesses. I have a hard time thinking of a single case where government directly subsidizing retail would be a good idea.

In a high-end San Francisco neighborhood, a small starbucks mocha latte should probably run somewhere around 25 bucks.

I should get a cut of the wages of every student that went through one of my classrooms. I mean, it was *my* effort that made them productive, and I’m only harvesting a tiny fraction of the gains that I create. Unfair!

I’m a surgeon, and I basically save the lives of several people per day. Without me, their productivity would drop to zero. But, my salary only captures a teeny tiny fraction of the gains from my work. We should force every patient of mine to sign over a chunk of their lifetime income to me, and use the power of government to enforce it.

I could keep coming up with examples of why this is a bad idea, but it’s already gotten too easy.