Recent submissions

Comment · 9 months ago
It's all a policy choice, though. The USA could, for example, increase property taxes on non-primary homes and offset investor losses by adding an incentive to sell non-primary residences for some length of time (say, 2 years). The problem isn't that the solution is a mystery. It's that we barely live in a democracy and the people that own multiple homes have more power than the young-ish (median first time home buyer is up to 40 years old now) population that doesn't vote in large (enough) numbers to offset the power imbalance.
Comment · 3 years ago
That seems to be the sentiment based on our founding origins or if you talk to an individual, but the fact is that we imprison more people per capita than anyone else. It's hard for me to believe that all of the criminals just live in the USA.
Comment · 3 years ago
Generally speaking, low unemployment leads to the Fed raising rates, the anticipation of which, hurts stock prices.
Comment · 3 years ago
Similar story here. I've been remote for 9 years. I don't live that far from a minor tech hub, but it would still be an hour commute each way.

Housing here is below the national average, so there is a huge savings there. I've only put maybe 10k miles on my 2007 Corolla in the last 5 years, so I pay much less in gas/maintenance/replacing vehicles. I can have delicious, healthy food every day for half the cost. If I need someone to come to my house for repairs (or other reasons), I don't need to take a day off or miss hardly any work time. I don't have to be mad when they don't show up (maybe a little). My daughter can attend a great school that requires pickup, because being away from my PC for 30 minutes every day in the afternoon is just not a big deal. If I want to take a break and get in a quick jog in the middle of the day, it costs almost nothing in lost time; I just walk outside and start running.

I don't know what sort of raise I would have to get to convince me to give all of that up. I think I've settled on 40%, which is untenable without relocation.

Comment · 3 years ago
I think the experience just isn't mainstream enough. I think there are a lot of people that would drop $200-$300 to get a beat sabre experience if they were aware of the option. Is there any reason it should be less compelling than the "Wii as exercise" craze, for example?
Comment · 3 years ago
Any solution here is just an arms race. The better AI's get at generating text, the more impossible the job of identifying if an AI was responsible for writing a given text sample.
Comment · 4 years ago
Yes.
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
I put a 20% downpayment on my house and it involved a wire transfer that was scheduled for days in the future that required my physical presence at a centralized authority (bank). With Bitcoin, that process takes less than an hour, with very little "fee", and doesn't involve any of the "trust", which was represented in my example by time delays, scheduling, and traveling.
Comment · 5 years ago
It would mostly be for primaries, where the field is wider, but don't discount how ranked choice voting could lead to more than 2 viable parties.
Comment · 5 years ago
If the government wanted to help people do taxes more easily, they would just simplify taxes. Lobbies (from TurbTax and competitors) are standing in the way.
Comment · 5 years ago
It seems likely to me that the cap will just be expanded at some point, but that is likely tens of years away and its expansion will likely be equal to or less than the replacement value of lost coins.
Comment · 5 years ago
The reduction of a technical problem to a word problem is the application of years of accumulated knowledge, including, in many cases, Computer Science concepts.
Comment · 6 years ago
I understand the attitude that this isn't a new phenomenon, but degrees can't be ignored. The labor force participation rate has been consistently falling for a long time (at least 20 years) in the USA (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti...). I'd argue that the data there still doesn't cover the full force of what's been going on: career positions have typically been replaced with a gig economy.

It's not hard to see that the scope of automation could increase in areas that would more drastically affect employment in the short to mid term than the other developments we've seen in the last 20 years. Either full long-haul automation or almost full automation with remote intervention could be a reality in the very near future, but almost certainly will be in 10 years. Call centers will be almost completely automated. Factories are automated to a much higher degree than they have been in the past. Every industry is solving problems with software that increase efficiency of workers (ie, fewer workers needed) and that trend is accelerating.

We can always say "this time isn't different". History tends to repeat itself. My point is: the trend is already there to see and the evidence suggests that it may accelerate very soon.

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