hpkuarg

7 ms·

1.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
It's more possible than you think for people who share the same ethnic background to have had radically different experiences from each other, and people who look very different from each other to have gone through very similar life st
2.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
> Refusing to give alms to the poor "because it would discriminate against the rich" seems obviously fallacious to me. In what way is this obviously fallacious? Alms have to come from somewhere, and if you take them from the ri
3.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
Why would anybody want to trade with Mr. Smith's contract in particular when a market for the contract still exists, with market makers and other participants providing bids and offers that is better what Mr. Smith can do? At least, as
4.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
"Some government intervention" has dramatically increased over the past century (after having stayed relatively flat for the century before that, since Adam Smith first came into the scene with groundbreaking ideas), so the boring
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Obviously we cannot do controlled experiments here the same way we can in the physical sciences, but it seems that historical evidence is pretty clear by this point on whether freer markets perform better than ones with more government inte
6.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
That's not how it works! You can't just make up a valuation when you donate things, and whatever higher valuation you get, you have now incurred capital gains on which you must pay taxes.
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Only tangentially related, but let's not fall into the fallacy of the middleman -- middlemen are only bad if they are legally or otherwise monopolistically required to be there. In other situations, they add value in the connecting of
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Thank you for pointing me to this -- apparently it's not so classic that I have read it already. ;-) Since I assume you didn't write it, I won't go into a point-by-point rebuttal of the points raised in this piece, but in the
9.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
It's not some immutable law of capitalism. There is such a thing as diseconomies of scale, where firms that are too large end up being less competitive and unable to innovate as quickly. Once they reach that size they might borrow the
10.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
One man's environmental crisis is another man being lifted out of crushing poverty by the abundant energy and wealth produced by that same industrialization and profit motive. Unless you think cavemen shouldn't have burned sticks
11.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
Seems strange that we'd optimize for making modifications easier, when such modifications are much fewer and farther between than the everyday living that fills the time between, during which people value a solid wall with no gaps or s
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Larry Haun's book The Very Efficient Carpenter. Comes with companion videos that you can find on YouTube, as well.
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
"In any market" is too strong a statement. In markets with high barriers to entry or other factors that make it less competitive, sure, and we call them natural monopolies. But you're claiming that every market is a natural m
14.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
There's about four thousand four-year-degree-granting institutions in this country. How much recruiting should Jane Street do at all of them?
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Why not? Having a company with multiple billions of dollars doesn't in itself produce any returns without high quality labor to work it, especially in competition against other such multi-billion dollar companies. It might not fail thi
16.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
Yes, folks are being priced out of healthcare, but the healthcare that is being provided is of superior quality than can be found in other countries -- even first world countries with socialized healthcare. I mean it in that narrow sense, t
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
That's fine. Considering the business Jane Street engages in is highly competitive (maybe even the most competitive in the world), if their hiring practices cause them to have lower productivity, the market will force them to correct t
18.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
Not the OP, but Americans as a whole are very unhealthy (with 42% of the population being obese and over two-thirds being overweight) and culturally have very high expectations of what medicine can do for them, as opposed to making difficul
19.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
See North Korea for a contemporary example of a country that produces everything internally.
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Neutral and elected are mutually exclusive. ;-)
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Similarly, a lot of people think it's inherently wasteful (at least in terms of climate change-related sensitivities) to live in the southern US where it's commonly accepted to run air conditioning for many months of the year, whe
22.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
> it’s much easier to warm up in cold weather than it is to cool down in hot weather May be true for the human body, but when you're talking about heating a living space to a comfortable temperature versus cooling the same, in the m
23.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
That's because the consumer has the ability to choose (at least currently in the automotive market) a different manufacturer that won't control and squeeze them like Tesla or BMW would. If the big bad government is doing it instea
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Sandia National Labs working on the big questions of our time, I see ;-) Disclaimer: I love New Mexico -- I'm just taking the piss. It's probably one of the most underrated states in the union.
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Every day there's more evidence that we live in a simulation. ;-)
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
And, as we all know, they will remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
Unrelated, but it always amuses me how much Dutch sounds like drunk English ;-)
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
> Dems appeal among actual working class people (read: usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar trucks) remains extremely strong. The latest NYT/Siena poll suggests exactly otherwise for the coming midterms. Dems
29.
by hpkuarg 4y ago
> what does it mean to be a US company? Easy enough question to answer by looking at the beneficial owners of a company's stock. I'd wager every "US company" as commonly understood is, in addition to being listed on U
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by hpkuarg 4y ago
> the Nobel Prize Another product of the free market, if you will ;-)

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