Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

I agree to an extent. But the software industry / tech has made a special farce of it.

Imagine if you went to buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket, and they said, "No, we don't sell bread by the loaf, we use a bread as a service (BaaS) model." So you ask, "What does that mean?" And they inform you that they've "partnered" (colluded) with all the markets and bakeries in a 50 miles radius to offer $30 monthly subscriptions that "allow you" to take 5 loaves of bread per month from any market or bakery in their "network."

At this point, you think, "Well, I only really use 2 loaves per month. But screw it, I came here for some bread, and I can't buy a single loaf easily, so why not. Screw it. I'll sign up."

So you go to sign up, and they hand you the contact. Dozens of pages of fine print, but they hurry you along to the signature. You take a quick look and notice it's an autorecurring subscription. But you figured they'd screw you like that.

Then, after you sign and pay, you find out they're sending a store clerk over to rifle through your underwear drawer, bug your phones, and put a tracking device on your car. You ask why the hell they'd do that, and they just say, "you agreed to it in your contract." You don't remember that, but there was so much fine print, maybe.

So you say, "screw this, this deal's getting worse all the time, I want out!" And they reply, "Fuck you, what are you gonna do? Stop eating sandwiches? Hahahaha!" Then they brag about their CEO's billions and their new luxury cars and great benefits and playful work environment and free busses that only they can use.

I mean, if you imagine other "non tech" industries try disruption, it's obviously ridiculous. Yet because it's software and you can't look them in the face (or punch them), they get away with it. But the business model is ridiculously exploitive. The only thing worse is healthcare.

[metalman]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

it's hard to imagine the next war being fought by minimally trained conscripts. in some sense the next war has already begun, but it's being fought in cyberspace with both state and non-state actors participating. because of the hazy nature of assigning responsibility in cyberwar, and because our physical weaponry is potentially suicidally effective, we avoid labelling the cyberspace war as a real war.

if the great war between great powers migrates to meat-space the first thing to go would be the satellites. as long as the telecommunication, gps and spy satellites are still circling the earth overhead, meatspace will host skirmishes between great-power proxies, local wars which displace millions of refugees but affect the great powers themselves very little except as advertisements for each power's arms industry.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...vladimir-putin

&

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...facebook-tesla

cool stories, bros.

both of these dudes are running scams... 'driverless cars' & 'consumer as product'.

[jk]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

it's hard to imagine the next war being fought by minimally trained conscripts. in some sense the next war has already begun, but it's being fought in cyberspace with both state and non-state actors participating. because of the hazy nature of assigning responsibility in cyberwar, and because our physical weaponry is potentially suicidally effective, we avoid labelling the cyberspace war as a real war.

if the great war between great powers migrates to meat-space the first thing to go would be the satellites. as long as the telecommunication, gps and spy satellites are still circling the earth overhead, meatspace will host skirmishes between great-power proxies, local wars which displace millions of refugees but affect the great powers themselves very little except as advertisements for each power's arms industry.

[metalman]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

FWIW, vt, I see lots of problems with tech across the spectrum. The easy things people want are all gone. Nearly the entire sector has shifted to scams like SaaS and lobbying to violate laws and regulations with impunity and other sorts of chicanery. Everything wants to be a subscription service. Everything wants to be price-variable with downloadable content. All the products arrive broken to be patched later (for money) because of it. Neighbors swore off new video game consoles for the kids because of it. They want credit card numbers and monthly fees on top of buying the console and the games just to play the games now. You can't just buy a game anymore, half the time. And more and more tech is like that. Monthly subscriptions or annual, auto-renewing, going up without telling you, doing nefarious things without telling you, or burying it in fine print. Customers absolutely hate their guts, and only tolerate it due to oligopoly. Apologies like this more or less unique one 5 years ago have become common today.

10 years ago the industry had all the good will in the world and actually seemed like it was helping. Now it just seems like a bunch of scams and brutal power grabs. Innovation gave way to disruption. Nobody in the tech sector is looking to make new, creative things people want that solve real problems. They're only looking for a way to disrupt@scale, no matter how many people they have to hurt, and no matter how many laws they have to break. It's a craven money grab at this point. Compare a 1998 PC to a 2008 PC and they're worlds apart. A 2008 PC keeps up just fine with a 2018 PC. You can say things have shifted to mobile, and maybe, but the new ones don't really do much more that the iPhone did a decade ago. They track you better. But they don't provide more or better services. The cell networks have gotten faster. I guess that's something. But overall, when I look at digital tech this last decade, I'm amazed at how little innovation there has been and how advancement has slowed to a meaningless crawl doing stupid useless things nobody ever wanted or asked for like putting a wifi chip in your stove, or worse, doing malicious criminal things.

I think there's one niche where you might see continued unabated growth, and thats in luxury goods. Regular people got no time for this nonsense, though. Worse, they got no money for it either.

gotta study the credit cards monthly to locate all the crap that shows up out of nowhere... it's ej's monthly payment consumer economy run amuck. silly valley followed the fire boys down that path, right?

here's metalman's conspiracy theory of the day... that chart of student debtors funding the fed gov't... tomorrow's army for the next war? who needs conscription when ya got millions of young debtors who can't miss the future op to work off the debt in fatigues?

'thank you for your service' sez the fire boys. they think... 'thank god my kids don't have to serve'

ok. touching the 3rd rail, i know... am i the only one here thinking this?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

FWIW, vt, I see lots of problems with tech across the spectrum. The easy things people want are all gone. Nearly the entire sector has shifted to scams like SaaS and lobbying to violate laws and regulations with impunity and other sorts of chicanery. Everything wants to be a subscription service. Everything wants to be price-variable with downloadable content. All the products arrive broken to be patched later (for money) because of it. Neighbors swore off new video game consoles for the kids because of it. They want credit card numbers and monthly fees on top of buying the console and the games just to play the games now. You can't just buy a game anymore, half the time. And more and more tech is like that. Monthly subscriptions or annual, auto-renewing, going up without telling you, doing nefarious things without telling you, or burying it in fine print. Customers absolutely hate their guts, and only tolerate it due to oligopoly. Apologies like this more or less unique one 5 years ago have become common today.

10 years ago the industry had all the good will in the world and actually seemed like it was helping. Now it just seems like a bunch of scams and brutal power grabs. Innovation gave way to disruption. Nobody in the tech sector is looking to make new, creative things people want that solve real problems. They're only looking for a way to disrupt@scale, no matter how many people they have to hurt, and no matter how many laws they have to break. It's a craven money grab at this point. Compare a 1998 PC to a 2008 PC and they're worlds apart. A 2008 PC keeps up just fine with a 2018 PC. You can say things have shifted to mobile, and maybe, but the new ones don't really do much more that the iPhone did a decade ago. They track you better. But they don't provide more or better services. The cell networks have gotten faster. I guess that's something. But overall, when I look at digital tech this last decade, I'm amazed at how little innovation there has been and how advancement has slowed to a meaningless crawl doing stupid useless things nobody ever wanted or asked for like putting a wifi chip in your stove, or worse, doing malicious criminal things.

I think there's one niche where you might see continued unabated growth, and thats in luxury goods. Regular people got no time for this nonsense, though. Worse, they got no money for it either.

[vt]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

A pullback in techs was expected, and some sectors like the chip stocks and social media my not go back up much.

However technology is not dead:

"No, I’m not worried about tech for the long term. There is no analog company that can compete with a digital company anywhere in the world.Accounting for 26% of the stock market capitalization and 50% of its profits, it’s only a question of when we get a major new up leg in share prices, not if."

John Thomas

The key is to find the right subsectors and avoid the wrong subsectors of the technology industry.

[touchring]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

You could be right. Really, I'd reach back to September when Theranos imploded. It's the first unicorn that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be 100% fairy dust. If all the best minds and best VC firms in Palo Alto with all the smartest people and wonks on board couldn't keep humpty dumpty together, what could? And where else were the eggs teetering on the edge of the wall? Investors lost everything. Once bitten, twice shy. Still, those were accredited investors. The general public didn't get bit hard until the late-comers bought into the height of the bitcoin bubble, as you point out. I still don't think we're scratching the surface of this iceberg, though. There are literally trillions locked up in nothing. All it would take is typing a different URL into the bar en masse, and half of it goes kablooey. It's a whole lot bet on a bad habit that's a whole lot less fulfilling than smoking and a whole lot easier to kick.

Another bubble is cloud computing. I think it's a disaster waiting to happen if there's a major sabotage from the inside.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

I think no matter what happens to the Fed, or Trump or trade war, the tech bubble has peaked. On hindsight, it really started in January when cryptos imploded. Bitcoin was the last straw. The mania has exceeded the 17th century tulip bubble. But the implosion is slow motion, quite unlike the dot com bubble in 2000.

You could be right. Really, I'd reach back to September when Theranos imploded. It's the first unicorn that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be 100% fairy dust. If all the best minds and best VC firms in Palo Alto with all the smartest people and wonks on board couldn't keep humpty dumpty together, what could? And where else were the eggs teetering on the edge of the wall? Investors lost everything. Once bitten, twice shy. Still, those were accredited investors. The general public didn't get bit hard until the late-comers bought into the height of the bitcoin bubble, as you point out. I still don't think we're scratching the surface of this iceberg, though. There are literally trillions locked up in nothing. All it would take is typing a different URL into the bar en masse, and half of it goes kablooey. It's a whole lot bet on a bad habit that's a whole lot less fulfilling than smoking and a whole lot easier to kick.

[touchring]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

I think no matter what happens to the Fed, or Trump or trade war, the tech bubble has peaked. On hindsight, it really started in January when cryptos imploded. Bitcoin was the last straw. The mania has exceeded the 17th century tulip bubble. But the implosion is slow motion, quite unlike the dot com bubble in 2000.

[metalman]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

If the Fed can forestall a crash, then in theory they can deliberately bring one on. If Trump is a fly in the ointment of globalists as many think, then we might expect a recession timed to ruin Trump's reelection chances. That begs the question... is Trump really a fly in their ointment? If so, is it bad enough to influence the Fed to deliberately sabotage Trump? Or perhaps, if there needs to be a recession anyway, why not conveniently time it if that can be done?

other way around maybe? odds makers showing trump doing himself in. said so hisself that impeachment will crash the markets... started a new thread on a trump impeachment crash

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

Is a tax cut for the wealthy a fair assessment? Is it possible to cut taxes without cutting for the rich?

Yes and yes, but that's not what happened. The corporate side was a shift from a worldwide tax system to a territorial one. This was an old RPC goal that predated President Trump's election. I'm not saying that you have to view the major domestic policy of this President as good or bad. I'm only saying that it's largely very standard GOP policy. Put another way, Paul Ryan would have assembled a nearly identical bill regardless of whether Donald Trump or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush sat in the White House.

[davidstvz]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

From the introduction of your first link: "Certainly, the sum total of these changes represents a significant expansion of the base of cross-border income to which current U.S. taxation applies." Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it seems like they're saying that on balance, Trump has increased taxation on cross-border income not decreased it.

My judgment that Trump is anti-globalist mostly stems from the opposition against him which doesn't make a lot of sense unless he is costing a lot of powerful people a lot of money. Anti-globalist doesn't mean withdrawing from the global economy, Trump may just be changing the way that we compete in a way that favors his base. Even if the changes are small or even if they only slow down the former trends, they may still be significant to the powerful people whose fortunes have declined as a result. The point is that aggregate numbers might not make sense of what's going on if wealth is being re-distributed in the process.

Is a tax cut for the wealthy a fair assessment? Is it possible to cut taxes without cutting for the rich? If you want to cut taxes for the middle class, maybe you have no choice but to tack it onto an even bigger cut for enough wealthy people that the Republican half of congress can justify passing it. It was also my understanding that some of the tax changes targeted liberal states with high property values (and I assume there were other changes targeting those outside Trump's base).

I'm only posing hypotheticals here. I really don't where to get a trustworthy all encompassing view of what Trump is doing and what effect it's had on the US as a whole and on any given segments of the population. For example, I really don't know anything about how the new trade deal compares with NAFTA and if I read any articles on it, I wouldn't have any idea whether or not to trust it.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

If the Fed can forestall a crash, then in theory they can deliberately bring one on. If Trump is a fly in the ointment of globalists as many think, then we might expect a recession timed to ruin Trump's reelection chances. That begs the question... is Trump really a fly in their ointment? If so, is it bad enough to influence the Fed to deliberately sabotage Trump? Or perhaps, if there needs to be a recession anyway, why not conveniently time it if that can be done?

For a supposed "anti-globalist," the dude's biggest domestic policy practically eliminated taxes on foreign corporate earnings. He just got back from a G-20 meeting in Argentina where he promised a new spate of cooperation with China. He replaced NAFTA...basically with NAFTA2 electric boogaloo. Despite all the talk of tariffs and the media hand wringing, action has been quite mild. In fact, the giant corporate tax cut and elimination on foreign earnings tax was worth more. So it's cheaper than ever to make most things overseas. And we have the highest trade deficit since just before the Great Recession to show for it.

I'll give Pres Trump this: He seems to be so far genuinely more hesitant to use ground troops than the Bushes. But despite all the theater, his domestic policy seems almost identical to theirs. Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, one or two symbolic social issues to appease the evangelicals, it's mostly the same playbook insofar as I can tell.

[DSpencer]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

vt,

"There are none so blind as those who will not see"

You keep asking questions that have already been answered. You keep making statements that have already been refuted. It's clear that you will continue to believe what you already believe and nothing I post will change that.

Best of luck.

[davidstvz]

Re: Economic Crisis Avoidance Deus ex Machina - Part I: Active Asset Price Inflation - Eric Janszen

2) I argue here that the Fed has the means to at least forestall an untimely crash, perhaps indefinitely, and has used it in the past

If the Fed can forestall a crash, then in theory they can deliberately bring one on. If Trump is a fly in the ointment of globalists as many think, then we might expect a recession timed to ruin Trump's reelection chances. That begs the question... is Trump really a fly in their ointment? If so, is it bad enough to influence the Fed to deliberately sabotage Trump? Or perhaps, if there needs to be a recession anyway, why not conveniently time it if that can be done?