- The EU Omnibus I proposes to deregulate a bit, let's see where it goes.
- The Western European elite hasn't changed in ages, the same families control London, Milan etc. as 800 years ago. European class structure is roughly: super elites with assets, wealthy politicians gaining from their place in the apparatus, middle class bureaucrats (earning less than a McDonald's employee in the US), poor working class, lumpenproles (indigenous and foreign) including retirees which consume 1/3-1/2 of GDP (bribes to keep riots down). Politicians (in nearly all parties) don't understand how to drive economic growth besides by hiring more bureaucrats (but there's no tax base left for this.) In the US, it's been possible to work hard, even at McDonald's and invest everything and build enough wealth to retire early (although consumerist culture infects people away from this). In Europe, most remuneration comes in the form of mandatory expenses (like bureaucracy controlled retirement funds with below market returns or high taxes for social services). Everything functions better than the US, with less waste for transportation, healthcare, school etc. (similar to better results for far less GDP expenditure) places you can physically socialize in (because you don't have a long commute far from work and friends) etc. but it's rarely possible to do better or excel. Class mobility is almost impossible - certainly not creating generational wealth. The middle class is tiny, because big business is structurally encouraged and even amassing capital to start or receive a loan is difficult. (Hell, after 20 years the EU still lacks a common capital market..) And well, I made a few million working in Eastern Europe which would have been impossible in the West. All this is to say: The West European elites truly hate you and me and structurally tries to keep everyone down (high income and capital gains taxes retard capital accumulation, so generational wealth in Europe remains the only wealth around.) The US at least has competing elites, rising through entrepreneurship (vs. the bureaucrat happy establishment side).
veqq
1d ago
current estimated lithium reserves are not sufficient
"reserves" are economically recoverable resources. As the price changes, reserves increase. There was a brief lithium bubble where ignorant players thought lithium worked like copper with multi-year lead times etc. but there is more lithium than we should ever need. Bubble -> overcapacity -> price collapse -> reserve decrease. Everyone in commodities knows how this works. But lithium doesn't give you long periods of profit because it's a salt and production ramps up in weeks. You can fill a bore with water then pump the brine out, let the water evaporate and boom lithium. There are plenty of easily accessible molecules, refining is more difficult but you weren't worried about that.
Base metals are in a far worse situation with all recent copper exploration presenting dreadful grades (significantly worse than the gold mining ventures I'm involved with). Grades are half of what they were in the 90s and brownfield expansion costs have ballooned to rival greenfield. Only 14 deposits have been discovered in the past decade! Marimaca and Glencore are still interesting here.
Now, I believe the peak oil narrative was 100% correct and fracking only caused a 10 year delay as incinerated a trillion in capital (because of short well lives and gassing out) although there are still great conventional opportunities e.g. Prio in the Brazilian presalt layer. But even without nuclear, China's found a way forward with much to most of its heavy vehicles already running on LNG instead of diesel and build outs of synthetic gas, which I suspect will build a price ceiling around $80 BOE by the end of the decade, powered by cheap solar (which certainly has a positive EROI in their deserts.) I suspect there will only be one more oil bull market. I am rather pessimistic about the West (baring Chinese largesse) here. In the US, Trump finally cut the Gordian knot and freed mines from (in some cases) 30 year permitting hell - his talk of price floors and raw material tariffs makes me suspect auto-genocide from the right too. Financing is still hard abroad (ESG inertia still keeps US funds away and EU banks still have such laws, royalty companies have also seen massive consolidation with all 14 I'm involved with going through M&A this year)...
veqq
1d ago
We're not retreating from the Pacific
The US already lost the Pacific. I'm surprised but impressed the current admin might realize this.
The numbers are heavily manipulated. Very few people, especially in industry, actually look at them. I occasionally talk about accounting and metrics, e.g. imputed rent where the rental value of assets are included in economic growth without actually being measured - accounting for all of these, yearly growth numbers can be greatly reduced. Quality adjustments and awkward exclusions make CPI almost irrelevant - not counting housing/rent at all (while it's imputed to 10% of GDP). Healthcare and insurance are covered by CPI, but in a very distorted way (while this is 20-25% of total GDP... they only include out of pocket expenses, while employer-paid premiums skyrocket ... and are actual compensation, another 1-20% everyone forcibly allocates to the cartel):
- Ex NAt. Econ. Council Head: Inflation Hit 18% in 2022 using old formula
- How GDP hides industrial decline
In different periods, the proportions of spending vary greatly, e.g. 40% of income on food, 10% on housing, 20% on clothing etc. to 50% housing, 15% food, 20% mandatory car... Inflation calculations do not account for this, but measure the overall basket's change. My company buys people's personal budget histories to see what actual costs and spending habits look like. From my Christian perspective, consumption patterns have grown to 30% sin. From my growth-is-good perspective, people are using less molecules. When it costs millions of dollars to change an electrical pole because of increased bureaucracy, there's no increase in utility but everyone in the community is saddled with more debt.
At the core, utility is about ranking choices, preferences. Unfortunately, our society has shown preference for sin and our system enables wealth-destroying consumption and work-breaking with seductive choices, gambling, easy debt, taxation increases etc.
veqq
4d ago
if I'd be better off eating a shotgun than going back on the job hunt if I end up unemployed
You could of course sell your assets, move to Asia or South America and live well...
veqq
7d ago
has made Down's a bit of a CW item
Lately, I've noticed many disabled babies and children on Twitter. While I want them to be happy, I'm not sure to what extent they can have enriching and productive lives. I wish I could push a button and make them all better (and make the billions of abled people better too, and myself. We sinful creatures all fall short of our abilities and obligations.) It took me a while to realize this was anti-abortion advocacy.
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee(, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations). - Jeremiah 1:5
Theology tells us we existed before birth. As a wretched modern, I wrestle with the temptation to overcome disabilities with technology. Ultimately, it seems the key's when the soul's coupled to a body - past that point its murder. But if we could get rid of bad bodies before hand, more souls would have a chance. Is that akin to Talmudic legalism trying to one up God and ignoring the spirit, that for whatever reason these souls/people are born with different potential and context than us? I know nothing. But I feel very uncomfortable.
veqq
7d ago
I have met him and his wife a few times. I have bought a few properties in the rust belt area he lives in and we're both from the same area elsewhere. Very good guy.
veqq
10d ago
So Dad, how much did it cost back in 1959 to have DoorDash deliver a poke bowl to my apartment?
$2 in Santa Monica according to the movie I just saw. Restaurants all knew drivers and many had their own.
veqq
12d ago
But the point stands that in an organization theoretically inclined towards "cultivating masculine virtues", the first five years were mostly run by women
RAND just published: The Limited Presence of Male Mentors in the Lives of Boys and Young Men
veqq
12d ago
My current favorite is Keturah Hickman
I had no idea she had a blog; I met her and her husband some months ago.
veqq
16d ago
Christianity is alien
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-believe-by-ross-douthat
if He didn’t rise from the dead, then wasn’t it actually the worst advice ever? The example Jesus provides is an example of how to get killed: first you make people jealous, then you make them mad, then you confuse and demoralize your followers, then you refuse to speak in your own defense. If the real story ended with the Crucifixion, then surely it’s a story about what not to do.
...
just taken at face value, it’s a really weird story ...
And then there’s the wandering part — most of it just seems to involve upsetting or confusing people. Zero monsters are slain. Zero Roman legionnaires are ambushed or waylaid by this supposed revolutionary folk hero. His only really heroic acts are miracles of healing, but whoever heard of a legend of a Great Physician? And the people who get the healings tend to be ones who, in the view of this society, don’t deserve it — heretics, prostitutes, lepers, the possessed — all of them “unclean.” Some of the healings even deliberately violate the law. Is he the first ever anarchist, come to overthrow not only the Roman occupation but also the rules of the Jewish religion? Is he a prophet of just using common sense and being nice to each other?
No. At other times He makes the law more restrictive, sometimes to an almost unbelievable degree. There were already rules against adultery, but this new hero, or prophet, or whatever He is demands perfection. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” (Matthew 5:28-29). I’m sorry what? Just who does this guy think He is? And yet His morality gets even weirder than that. Many of the worlds religions, philosophers, and sages have roughly converged upon a recognizable set of ethical principles for being a just and righteous man. You know what it doesn’t include? “…do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well… love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5: 39-44). This is an impossible standard and seemingly insane advice. In most places, following it is the equivalent of slow suicide.
He seems oddly unconcerned about fairness. Often, as He wanders the countryside healing and upsetting people, He explains His view of the world in simple stories. The stories are about everyday things familiar to the agrarian population of first century Palestine, sheep and vineyards and olive trees and rapacious officials, stuff like that. But think a little too hard about any of these stories, and they make no conventional sense at all. “You know how sometimes you have a hundred sheep?” I imagine everybody nodding along at this point. “Well, if one of your sheep went missing, wouldn’t you ignore the other ninety nine, and spend all of your time looking for the lost one?” Yeah, totally… hey, wait a minute! No, I would not do that. That is not what any sensible shepherd would ever do! Ninety nine is a bigger number than one! But He’s already moved on: “So you know how when you have a group of vineyard workers who work all day, and another group who only show up at the last minute, and then you pay both groups the exact same amount, and…” NO! I do not know that, because that does not make any economic sense at all, ARGH. But He has no time for your arithmetic born of scarcity, because He lives amidst infinity, and keeps telling you, maddeningly, that you do too, and that by giving yourself away you’ll have more left than you started with.
Third world countries tend to be third world countries because the people there have absolutely retarded attitudes about the world and society
Context: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sick-societies-by-robert-b/
I was guy C. But it was just the random last straw, other removals happened and they were already preparing to migrate.
veqq
23d ago
When practicing accountants cook the books, they're embezzling or misrepresenting the company's operations. The professionalized field emerged to protect investors from false data. Presuming this works and public data is real, we may wonder if this data is also useful. A few basic valuation practices which violate regulations:
- Capitalize internally developed intangibles like a "name brand" using marketing spend (while the law requires them to be expensed) (otherwise they're only capitalized when acquired by another company, but goodwill is often a red flag) (a building lease, trademark, customer list or patent are types of intangibles, which may gain value over time, perhaps in relation to money spent building them... Under normal practice, a patent's R&D costs are e.g. expensed as incurred...)
- John Myers' Critical Event Theory recognizes profits at the critical decision (instead of the sale specifically) with cool impacts on how profits from a loan are worked out
- Where dividing normal metrics by revenue gives you a percentage, I advocate doing this far more aggressively. Mining uses AISC, but factoring money out gives you something more like EROI (over LCOE), recycle ratio etc. for businesses to really compare operational efficiency (e.g. COGS misses the point; you'd want, say, to look at CAC but by hours spent, facilities and ads used and depreciate by your repeat customer rate). (Going further, many operations derisk by bartering mineral streams for oil streams. Typical accounting practice treats the royalty buyer as making a deposit, an upfront payment - with convoluted structure adjustment for tax planing. My company happily receives payment in mineral streams for software.)
- Industries closer to commodities do this, e.g. time charter equivalent, scrap value,
Some of this might seem tame, but accepted metrics like COGS leave a lot of alpha on the table because of various violations, which e.g. make illegal some methods to compare companies at different parts of the same industry (e.g. midstream and upstream companies) which help you gauge the cycle.
Similarly, in my system of national accounts, "government spending" is not included in the net material product, a term inspired by the Soviet style which excludes most services and nets out capital depreciation. I use this to forecast growth and market expansion. It's also really import to even out imputed values. From 3% in 1985, now 10% of US GDP is arbitrary imputed rent while e.g. China takes construction cost and depreciates it at 2% per year. This means China's imputed rents on are 1/10 of Germany's for comparable housing, after purchasing power adjustments, when habitable area/person is only 42m^2 vs. 48m^2. In Japan, imputed rent went to 14%.
Now, I don't count "government spending", because monetized transfers like social security directly increase GDP, which is bad. But many governments pay for healthcare and tertiary education - those should be imputed for their real value. This is why I don't count services. After all, greater US healthcare output does not give Americans healthier lives than Italians or Singaporeans, higher European education attainment does not result in greater incomes than Americans; there are obvious confounders for all of this.
veqq
24d ago
Such incentives made accounting stagnate and be all about compliance with precious little insightful metrology. If you really think about operations and valuations, you can easily beat the market (but "non-GAAP" is mostly bs). To practice accounting at work, you must be licensed; if you are the end user, you can do plenty of "illegal" and useful things.
veqq
1mo ago
when he speaks ex cathedra where his words have binding power
And both were "just" about Marian doctrine.
veqq
1mo ago
John McCain types in the GOP who have national profile but haven't kissed Trump's ring?
Thomas Massie
I have multiple friends who visited recently. I can PM some travelogues, instagrams etc. if you're really curious. (You can e.g. enter by land from Tajikistan and just enter with a US passport, no issues.)
Tl;dr: Ok, for men outside capital. "Ok" means better than the impoverished half of humanity in Africa and India, but way worse than Colombia, El Salvador or such (and far more expensive for luxuries). They're trying but we shouldn't expect economic growth or anything since the huge subsidies disappeared.
The capital's facing a water shortage, which will probably lead to mass deaths. International agencies were transporting supplies and subsidizing life in the capital, whose metro population doubled or tripled (depending on source) since 2000 while the aquifers sunk 100ft. The Taliban aren't particularly competent, but worse: They don't receive massive subsidies.
Pakistan's bombing the capital because the Afghani Taliban are harboring some group.
Otherwise, life in the North is "ok". Some Ismailis are being forced to convert. Beauty salons, women on TV etc. have been banned (but only after a few years). There's a "Fachkräftemangel" since women can no longer work in many fields (but are still common in medicine, education...), while the previous government exerted great effort to train them in particular. (I know some Afghan women in e.g. Indonesia or Turkey, now.)
Much criminality, drug use, pedophilia etc. have been eradicated. Thefts may or may not be up.
Orthodox in the Soviet Union
Ukraine had over half the surviving churches, and 2/3 of convents by the the fall of the USSR. Sergius pledged total loyalty to the state and is goals, feeding believers to hungry quotas until only a few hundred priests remained (100k were executed). When Stalin (responsible for many of those deaths, and a former seminarian) rehabilitated the church during WWII, the NKVD staffed most of it. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church serves the state, not Christ; he current patriarch worked for the KGB from the 70s on. This is no more survival than if the literal anti-Christ headed it. I pray the church cease to exist, like the blessed martyrs of the Assyrian Church of the East in China and the wider East, than actively damn its followers like today.
veqq
1mo ago
fighting in Russia during Winter
Napoleon and Hitler failed, but the Mongols, Swedes, Poles and Imperial Germans all won.
veqq
1mo ago
There hasn't been a single piece of media anywhere that I'm aware of that made the fighting in Vietnam look 'honorable' or 'cool.'
Randy Weaver
That's precisely the point. You can only radiate heat which isn't particularly effective compared conduction and convection. This telescope has to be in space for other reasons - it's not in space in order to be cold. Sending compute into space in order to cool it is ludicrous. The guy above seems ignorant of basic concepts and falls for marketing buzzwards which the company's own prospectus disagrees with (they are trying to enable computing in space, not going to space in order to compute. In other words, space is not a welcoming environment for this.)
Edit: Circling back, I believe my interpretation was correct and this other guy doesn't understand basic physics nor that things carry costs. Indeed, resorting to space because you don't trust the grid is hilarious considering how much private grid you could build on Earth instead.
A German girl was jailed for ...defaming (cyberbulling?) a gang rapist whose sentence was entirely suspended. Similarly, in Oragen a stabber was acquitted because the victim said a racial slur.
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