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Thread: COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Gillenwater View Post
    The senior executive that I reported to would make an implication. His operations guy would then meet with me on the side and press me hard, trying to convince me of his methods. I advised him that my models were based on purchase orders that had been committed to. Anything one unit above or below that number is fraud and I am unwilling to commit fraud. On at least one occasion they sent their "projections" to head office instead of mine, this was in an effort to conceal declining demand and secure more budget. The manufacturing team ordered parts based on those projections and we had to write off millions of dollars. This was all part of the company culture - conceal poor results and ignore reality to get through the next quarter. I started raising alarm bells in 2010. I warned that if this behavior continues and we don't refresh our product portfolio to become more relevant, the whole company would come crashing down. I raised this in every senior-level meeting for the next two years and finally quit when I realized the people running the company were self-interested and not wise or brave enough to make a short-term sacrifice for long-term benefit. One of the many reasons that I left.
    Shit like this is why leadership in every sector seems to fucked up in this country. Everyone is getting ahead and making bank by outright lying about everything. Public and private sector both.

    It makes me happy to see hispanic people in the comments who are offended by this and also realize it's basically a recipe to redo the housing crisis fiasco.

  2. #23402
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    My question is: what precisely is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin?
    I think this might matter a little less than it seems.
    Gold is pretty useless at most things apart from remaining itself, which is why it's useful as a means of payment. A substance that has wide use in some productive process would not be suitable.

    For example, if used as money, Oakwood, or mackerel (salted, to avoid rotting) or titanium would run into a problem, because they can be used to make stuff. Hence, if titanium was money, and you needed for example to pay for a batch of titanium to forge a high-end motorcycle spring, you would find yourself in the paradoxical situation of needing titanium to acquire titanium.
    You would need barter to get what you need, but that's by definition a non-monetary exchange.

    All imho, of course.


    IPB

    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Gillenwater View Post
    when I realized the people running the company were self-interested and not wise or brave enough to make a short-term sacrifice for long-term benefit.
    In some systemically important sectors this is not just pervasive, but encouraged behaviour.
    For example, traders working in investment banks are rewarded by the amount of money they make, with (almost) no consideration for the risk they take in. Making a lot of money for nine years in a row, and blowing up the whole company on the tenth is way more profitable (for a trader) than making steady, secure profits for ten years in a row (actually, you will be fired after three, for not making enough money).

    I think this could be extended pretty well to all places where the people running the business are not the owners; this means that they are exposed to the upside (share of profits) but shielded from the downside (cleaning up the mess when the whole enterprise goes tits up). In this situation, it's not surprising many of them don't care about the long term.

    IPB

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    Quote Originally Posted by Yngvi View Post
    Not the first time I have heard this story.
    Other than quitting and becoming an entrepreneur, is there a solution to this generally pervasive problem?
    At the core of most of these problems is the impetus for short term quarterly results over doing whatever the company does to make money well. Ultimately publicly traded companies are owned by shareholders, who hire directors to act in their interests. And those interests are generally short term gains because most of the shares are purchased by traders and hedge fund type people who are in turn hired by you and I who just see a number on their 401k statement. Bigger numbers are better then smaller numbers, hence the demand is pushed for short terms quarterly results.
    The original shareholders are the ones who put money in and took risk, the current shareholders purchased the shares and are after an increase in their investment. If there's a solution I would say it would be around this area in some fashion.

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    Richard Werner is on the money here: Tom Zwitser en Richard Werner | Science Summit Uncensored 2022
    Jump to 1:18:00 for Bitcoin, but the whole lecture is very very good.

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    Ray Gillenwater is offline Administrator, Starting Strength Gyms
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yngvi View Post
    Other than quitting and becoming an entrepreneur, is there a solution to this generally pervasive problem?
    I think "we" can support small business and intentionally avoid supporting bureaucracies (organizations with limited individual accountability) wherever possible. Taleb summarizes it well: "Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision."

    Systemically, we'd need fraud at every level to become a serious crime. A crime that's easy to report that is accompanied by a minimum sentence. Ideally it'd be a punishment to hit the perpetrator where it hurts - let's say an increased income tax rate as a minimum sentence, even if no harm was done. The trouble is we can't trust our government to use increased taxation punitively. They're too corrupt and they won't regulate themselves - and they're the worst offenders. The federal government, at it's current size and in it's current state of degeneration, is the biggest threat to our future.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Gillenwater View Post
    I think "we" can support small business and intentionally avoid supporting bureaucracies (organizations with limited individual accountability) wherever possible. Taleb summarizes it well: "Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision."

    .
    While this definition of Bureaucracy probably captures the essence well, I disagree with “designed”.

    I believe Bureaucracy occurs naturally out of attempts to make increasingly more detailed rules and laws. This as opposed to very general and simple definitions. Foolish humans, which are most humans , mistake precision and specificity for fairness.

    There are a few better examples than the US tax code, insanely complicated, highly bureaucratic , and utterly inconsistent, vs. Starting Strength which is simple, minimally administered and predictably consistent.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mkm5 View Post
    --------------------------------

    Anyone else notice that whenever someone you know gets the sniffles, it's a case of the coof?

    Whatever happened to seasonal allergies, summer colds, flu, bronchitis, etc?

    Did Covid cure every other ailment known to mankind for the past 1000 years?
    Cure? No, no... It's assimilated them, Borg style.

    Clearly, that's why (natural) resistance is futile.

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    Quote Originally Posted by francesco.decaro View Post
    Again, if you or anyone else can explain to me how big banks or governments can disrupt Bitcoin, I'm all ears.
    Listen carefully: They have guns, authority they give themselves, and power. They come to your house and shoot you. You then stop using Bitcoin. There is ample precedent for this kind of thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by francesco.decaro View Post
    Same logic applies. In what world would the government cut all your power off arbitrarily? Is that the only thing this authoritative government would do to people? Is money the thing you'd be concerned with?
    Do you actually read the news? Did you hear what "The Most Powerful Man in the Free World" said last night? They froze the thermostats in Colorado a couple of days ago. They turned off the power in Texas last year. They won't let you plug in the electric cars they are making you buy in California. You are far more simple than I thought you were.

    I think it's just catastrophic thinking for the sake of being right.
    I think it's simplistic thinking for the sake of being right.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    Listen carefully: They have guns, authority they give themselves, and power. They come to your house and shoot you. You then stop using Bitcoin. There is ample precedent for this kind of thing.



    Do you actually read the news? Did you hear what "The Most Powerful Man in the Free World" said last night? They froze the thermostats in Colorado a couple of days ago. They turned off the power in Texas last year. They won't let you plug in the electric cars they are making you buy in California. You are far more simple than I thought you were.



    I think it's simplistic thinking for the sake of being right.
    How does that stop Bitcoin?
    Let's say every government kills everyone with bitcoins, which is an absurd idea already. They would also have to kill anyone who knows how to recreate Bitcoin, along with every single copy of Satoshi's whitepaper. Erase it from history basically. That is one hell of an effort to justify to the rest of the world.
    Freezing thermostats and cutting off all of the power are different things. Was that thing in Texas caused by governmental orders? Even if they did, for how long can they keep it going? Before people realize how to self-sustain in some way or turn it back on or revolt aginst the government?


    This goes back to my main point, central governments need to disappear, and there is no better way than slowly creating a whole separate economy that they can't get a hold of if not with extreme and counterproductive violence.
    Deep down I believe Bitcoin will literally end governments because they will destroy themselves trying to stop it.
    Now this doesn't mean that shit won't hit the fan or that Bitcoin solves every single problem on Earth, but if you think about it like the disruptive technology that it is, like the Internet, it is simply unstoppable. Without the Internet we would be going through WW3 already and there'd be a lot more violence around. But this technology is making that very hard to happen. The things that Bitcoin will allow us to do in 20 years are simply unpredictable.

    I try to keep things simple, because the magnitude of bullshit out there is so great I just can't deal with it. I just know times will be hard. And I know who's to blame

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