Free markets don't exist, or they only do for a very brief period of time. It's the same fundamental force behind why social hierarchies naturally form, and communism doesn't work in practice.
When governments kowtow to corporations, it's the corporations who are then acting as the government. For example, in states like Texas, Alabama, and Wisconsin, laws prohibit automakers from selling vehicles directly to consumers. But these laws only exist because dealer associations wanted and lobbied for them to protect their business. Which is to show that freedom itself isn't a matter of who is kowtowing to whom, but merely whether or not kowtowing is happening whatsoever. If it is, then someone's freedom is being restrained, and said market environment could be argued to not be "free". In fact, this is what Tesla has argued multiple times in court in such states in that these laws are anticompetitive, and violate due process and the commerce clause.
I'd argue it's a subsidy/incentive problem. Since every subsidy works by raising a cost somewhere which is used to subsidize a cost elsewhere, I'm inclined to believe in the Bennett hypothesis. Our government mostly subsidizes demand, and does little to incentivize productivity/outcomes. You see high prices everywhere the government funnels money: in education, healthcare, even the military - as where's the incentive to lower costs if the government is on the hook and will fund it no matter the cost?
Yes, instead of banks lending sub prime mortgages directly, it's as if they are lending to private equity groups who are then lending rather undiscerningly. Within the last week, we now have Blackstone, Blackrock, Owl, and Morgan Stanely limiting withdrawals on private credit funds. Not a good look...
That's not necessarily a result of AI, you also have to consider the broader economic environment. I mean, it was also difficult to get a job as a graduate in 2008, whereas it's typically been easier to get a job when credit is cheap.
Isn't it, for something like 70-80% of families? Just in slow-motion?
How long have we been hearing about crushing affordability problems for property? And how long ago did that start moving into essentials? The COVID-era bullwhip-effect inflation waves triggered a lot of price ratcheting that has slowed but never really reversed. Asset prices are doing great, as people with money continue to need somewhere to put it, and have been very effective at capturing greater and greater shares of productivity increases. But how's the average waiter, cleaning-business sole-proprietor, uber driver, schoolteacher, or pet supply shopowner doing? How's their debt load trending? How's their savings trending?
There’s a difference between a collapse and a slowdown. We don’t need a collapse for hiring to slow down [1,2]. I think we’re finally just seeing the maturation of software development. Software is increasingly a commodity, so maybe the era of crazy growth and hiring is over. I don’t think that we need AI to explain this either, although possibly AI will simply commodify more kinds of software.
In that case, you spent $80 to produce an item and exchanged it for $100 worth of their stock.
Now if you check, these companies selling their stock like this tend to have large amounts of debt. If their stock becomes worthless, you just wasted $80 producing an item that their creditors have first dibs on. And liquidating your shares immediately to ensure your gain, would weigh on their stock's value, potentially to the point where their stock would be only $80 worth, and you wouldn't be gaining anything anymore. Your earnings would then tank, alongside them.
It's just hard. I mean... it could very well be, that there's so many deeper layers underneath what we know in particle physics, but from our scale, also so infeasible to build something to analyze and decompose the nuanced behavior happening at that level, to the point that it's practically impossible to do so. Just like it is impossible to split an atom with your bare hands...
Because they're not actually equivalents. Gold has unique properties as a material, unique properties that are useful. It'd be more widely used in industry if it wasn't such a scarce and expensive material. Bitcoin on the other hand, has no use other than for conducting trade. Because of this, they inherently carry different risks as an asset.
Yeah, I personally believe women's longer lifespan mostly stems from a lower caloric intake. Studies have long suggested that reducing caloric intake can be one of the best things you can do for health and extending lifespan. And this has been shown true across many species including: yeast, worms, flies, mice, monkeys, fish, and others.
We also observe that larger animals tend to live longer than smaller animals, but intra-species it tends to be the opposite (e.g. small dogs tend to live slightly longer than large dogs). It also makes some sense biologically speaking, as we now know that most genetic mutations and errors happen during cellular reproduction when DNA is copied, and cellular reproduction rates correlate with nutrient uptake, alongside mutations with age.
Of course too much caloric restriction can be detrimental, but seems to me this could explain much of the difference in life expectancy between men and women. That and perhaps the genetic advantages from having two X chromosomes.
When governments kowtow to corporations, it's the corporations who are then acting as the government. For example, in states like Texas, Alabama, and Wisconsin, laws prohibit automakers from selling vehicles directly to consumers. But these laws only exist because dealer associations wanted and lobbied for them to protect their business. Which is to show that freedom itself isn't a matter of who is kowtowing to whom, but merely whether or not kowtowing is happening whatsoever. If it is, then someone's freedom is being restrained, and said market environment could be argued to not be "free". In fact, this is what Tesla has argued multiple times in court in such states in that these laws are anticompetitive, and violate due process and the commerce clause.
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