I don’t think Americans would enjoy the alternative of defaulting on that debt, or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place
> or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place
I'm pretty sure most of us would enjoy a different timeline where we didn't sink over $1 trillion in the Iraq war or another $2 trillion on the F-35, where we didn't mindlessly increase the military budget every cycle, where Republican administrations didn't cut taxes on the wealthy every time they won the presidency in the last half century, or where the TSA and DHS weren't created.
Every item I mentioned either increased government spending or reduced its income, both of which contribute to increased deficits and debt.
You're welcome to argue whether I'm correct that americans would be better off without any of them, but it's simple math that every single one of them contributed to our current debt.
I think this might depend on where you intend to sell them. I think in life plus 50 countries (Egypt, China, many others) it should be out of copyright already. IANAL, so consult one before doing anything.
His theory on the cause is wrong, and using the wrong number is dishonest here. I agree he more or less correctly cited labor force participation rate (still basically the best in the world) but badly misrepresented what that number is such that he should be apologizing and not doubling down. Dishonest.
I actually think we should only be using labor force metrics for everything, if someone stops looking because their depressed and can live at home - suddenly that's ok? I don't think we should stop counting people like that
The problem is differentiating between those who've given up and who do not want to work (have other means to sustain themselves).
In general, either is fine by me as long we are consistent: they are both proxies for percentage of people needing work and should correlate to a large extent.
Countries have centuries of experience providing attestation services through notaries. Germany is even infamous for requiring them for things that would sound ridiculous even in Brazil (both movie and country)
I can’t see why governments couldn’t incorporate this existing infrastructure into the digital world. Make them sell hardware ID wallets, enforce the real identity owner to be present to invalidate a previous ID or whatever, and add legal restrictions for the government not be able to alter these registries
According to the article itself, ARR’s definition is clear and strict: annual and recurring. This means that “margin” doesn’t factor in, so I don’t think calling these AI companies’ revenue GMV is all that sensible either.
I do agree the market is eager to conflate run rate and arr, though
> It’s art that bursts the seams, demanding that the world bend to it and not the other way around, refusing to comply with the arbitrary bounds of property law—those meaningless slips of paper meant to legally confer ownership of land, buildings, bridges, trains, and anything else that might serve as the artist’s canvas.
I won’t touch on the property issue because it’s really tiresome - sometimes I wish there were working communists countries so these people could simply go there and we wouldn’t have to suffer them.
But it’s really the first part of this quote that gets me: it’s precisely the fact that graffitti is forced on us that makes me despise it so much. Imagine having to listen to anyone aspiring artist’s bad poetry when you’re on and about. It’s not much better than appreciating strangers’ music taste on the street or public transit. It’s worse than advertisement: at least ads are bland and repetitive, you can easily filter them out.
> When I see DEFUND BPD hovering above North Avenue in enormous, spray-painted letters, I don’t see the opinion of one idealistic graffiti artist; I see someone expressing an increasingly common sentiment.
There are many graffitis out there asking non-politely that refugees go back to their homeland or that certain kinds of people are not welcome. I suppose, maybe unfairly, that the author would consider these demonstrations a noisy hateful minority speaking for themselves and their little minds. That’s the positive side of living in a democracy: we shouldn’t need to trust that rogue public demostrations, due to the central limit theorem or something, converge on the public sentiment. We have elections for that.
And I don’t disagree that graffitti has artistic merit, however illegal or unpleasant to my eyes. I’m not that egocentric. I just think there are things more important than art.
Property rights are not absolute (except when powerful people have property and want somethign).
> I just think there are things more important than art.
Sure, nothing is absolutely important, but what's the higher priority here?
> It’s worse than advertisement: at least ads are bland and repetitive, you can easily filter them out.
... that you can 'easily filter them out'? (Ads are generally far larger, well-lit, more prominent and designed to be hard to filter.)
> That’s the positive side of living in a democracy: we shouldn’t need to trust that rogue public demostrations, due to the central limit theorem or something, converge on the public sentiment. We have elections for that.
A side of living in democracy is that free expression is restricted to voting? ???
Democracy is… an organized group toppling decisions made by popularly elected representatives within the confines of the law?
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