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Lack of inflation is not easily understood through the lens of individuals.

Better to look at the fractional reserve system. The Fed creates money (M0), a lot of it in the shape of quantitative easing. But it was offsetting the deleveraging banks (reduction in M, M2 and M3). M0 = cash, M1= M0+ short-term instruments, M2= M1 + medium-term, M3 = M2 + long-term stuff /mortgages.

Even now, banks are less leveraged due to more stringent capital requirements (think Basel accords).

Translation to inflation is tricky. It's about demans vs. supply at its fundamentals - too much supply them you introduce inflation. Since banks can create money, supply is governed by M1,M2,M3 depending on the horizon. Demand is the economy which looks to be booming. Plus in the case of the US, the dollar is still the global reserve currency. So we have China, developing countries wanting more dollars. And the world still uses it as a vehicle currency, trade in brent oil is in dollars.

And we have inflation expectations - which is why the Fed is independent. And Trump should be quiet. The Fed will target 2%, thus we expect it to be 2%.


Do helmets help in full on collision - yes they do.

https://youtu.be/ivQHuU-Ykws


Netherlands, housing market so screwed up that it'll cause braindrain...


What's wrong with Netherlands? From my understanding, it's one of the most affordable European countries for housing.


Any details on that?


I have SoftEther running at home - which is the opensource free enterprise version (development driven by Japanese university from what I gather). Which offer enterprise features and supports OpenVPN. This looks functionally rather poor compared so Softether...


+1 softether is great. Highly underrated and very fast.


- capitalism, inequality and desperation... A toxic combination.


Wouldn’t the last be toxic regardless of the economic system in play?


Even in the "absence" of an economic system, i.e. lawless decentralized areas, it would still be a problem.


Have communist societies that had inequality and desperation resisted the temptation of poaching?


This is less about capitalism more about status-seeking.


I think he was referring to the poor economic conditions of the poachers, and how they are pushed to this line of work. Not dissimilar to drug dealers in inner city USA.


This is definitely true, though many of the big-time poachers are foreigners. A key mechanism that's been shown to reduce poaching is to let the local people derive an economic gain from the animals without killing or maiming them. Like safaris or photo shoots, etc.


That’s surely covered under “inequality” and “desperation” though?


The fact that the rich take the cake and hide it through tax evasion... Pikkety self enforcing cenrralization of wealth...


"If it’s easy for you to imagine a conscious robot, then you probably side with Dennett."

The Zero shot translation for google translate is system generated language that a computer created itself. If we were to extrapolate that to a computer that can do the creation of sometjing and go about its own path of creation that is to some extent random - can't we create some form of conscious...? I side with Daniel - consciousness is a muscle the brain.


I was taught pinyin at Chinese university - too bad the Chinese textbooks didn't include the genesis of pinyin - interesting, R.I.P.


I am taking Mandarin classes and our textbook has both pinyin and characters for almost everything. There is always a section in each chapter that is entirely in characters.

I have been buying books on Amazon to help accelerate my reading. I need a story to follow along with. These book indeed do not have any pinyin.

Pinyin is fascinating to think about. Sometimes words are created from pinyin when you say them. Example: New York is Niǔyuē (纽约). Another is how in English we say "ha, ha". In pinyin it has been adopted exactly that way: Hāhā (哈哈).


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