Why do the "pollution" homeless simply not exist in so many other wealthy countries, to even a fraction of the degree that they exist in the United States?
Don't know why this -- or a bunch of your other posts -- are dead.
But the reason is the rest of the countries that don't have this problem take care of their people (positively and negatively, e.g. social services or prison).
For example much of the EU has:
- A social safety net that allows people to reintegrate into society if a catastrophic event happens, rather than throwing them out and letting natural selection decide who gets back up on their feet
- Better health care (for mental health and addiction, to simply not being a constant drain financially and emotionally on patients)
- Housing is more accessible and egalitarian, leading to -- unsurprisingly -- less homeless. The ones that do end up homeless will likely be able to find state-funded housing with reintegration programs (rather than homeless "shelters" and halfway "homes")
- Less income inequality and less "otherism." Homogenous populations and a lack of individualism == "that could be me at any point; I should help when I can, so if I ever fall into such straits, others will do the same." Reminds me of how I haven't heard of the "golden rule" (treat others the way you want to he treated) in decades
- Notable mentions: homelessness in the U.S. pretty much guarantees you do not have: a permanent address, so you most likely cannot apply for jobs or other programs (which necessitate a permanent address). Bank account? Good luck with the prehistoric KYC laws. Also in most of the country barring massive cities with public transport, you need to own a car for transport to most jobs. Don't? You're automatically disqualified from 95% of jobs that you could be eligible for. Cars are expensive
Basically, a lot of systemic problems that culminate in a not insignificant portion of homeless being forever locked out of society
correct. the process is called texture baking. however, displacement uses displacement maps, which are grayscale, essentially depth maps. displacement is not very useful for realtime rendering because then the displacement has to be calculated in realtime. displacement is mostly used in offline rendering. realtime rendering just uses normal maps.
Exactly. It's like when Uber started and flaunted the medallion taxi system of many cities. People said "These Uber people are idiots! They are going to get shut down! Don't they know the laws for taxis?" While a small number of cities did ban Uber (and even that generally only temporarily), in the end Uber basically won. I think a lot of people confuse what they want to happen versus what will happen.
Perhaps. But a reasonable license requiring you to pass a test isn't the same as a medallion in the traditional American taxi system. Medallions (often costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars) were a way of artificially reducing the number of taxis (and thus raising the price).
This. Medallion systems in NYC were gamed by a guy who let people literally bet on its as if it were an asset. The prices went to a million per until the bubble burst. True story
They succeeded commercially, but they didn't succeed in changing the regulatory landscape. I'm not sure what you mean by waiting for it to even out. They refused to comply, so they were banned, so they complied.
So? They have a market cap of $150 billion. If at the start they had decided "oh well let's not bother since what we are doing is legally ambiguous" they would have a market cap of $0.
Americans are incredibly ignorant of how the world actually works because the American living memory only knows the peak of the empire from the inside.
Very simple. Because those jobs were once available in mass without an extremely expensive risk of college debt, often unionized and provided good stable salaries that raised many millions of healthy families and provided pensions that have allowed for healthy retirement.
I live in a former socialist country, many kids saw their profession just like this.. elementary school (8 years, ~7->15yo), technical high school, and then work at a local factory for 40 years. And they did exactly that. Only the best few in class went to gimnasiums (general highschools, thought of like prep for college), and then to colleges to become "more". The wide middle of the bell curve was for high school graduates working in factories. And not just factories, some wanted to be automechanics, some electricians, etc.
Now everyone wants to go to college, many to study something where there are literally no real jobs (with added benefit) available (ancient greek, comparative literature, sociology, etc.), and then end up in the public sector, where it doesn't matter if you studied electrical engineering or latin language, all college diplomas are worth the same.
I mean sure, everybody wants to be a superhero, etc. (or pewdiepie-sized influencer for the more younger generations), but once you're 14yo, ending elementary school, you have to choose your next level of education (general gymnasium, one of the technical highschools, economics, construction, cosmetics, etc.), and back then a lot more people chose their actual future careers at that moment than now, where parents push them to gymnasiums, colleges, where some fail (and some somehow succeed), and you then have baristas and warehouse workers with masters degrees and not enough electricians, construction yard workers, factory workers, etc. (electricians etc. are especially bad, because you actually need a high school diploma (or similarly hard alternatives) to do the job).
>It is not the number of base stations that is important, it is the ability to use 5G to create new goods and services (or be more efficient in the use of existing goods and services) that is important, and this is best measured by the monetization of new 5G enabled services and products and their revenue.
In other words, profit is the only thing that matters.
Can an activity be sustainable without involving profit or depending on profitable activities? Please share examples.
When transactions are informed and voluntary and there is profit in a competitive market that is wealth created. The key is to have these conditions and many real economies struggle with this because the payback for corruption and monopoly is high.
Obviously yes. For example a nonprofit municipal communication network that people use for direct video calling with their loved ones, or that a public university uses to distribute free lecture courses.
A great deal of computerized products/services are today intentionally made to require constant upkeep so that they can produce an ongoing revenue stream when when no real work is needed. That's obviously not economically ideal, and their revenue is in some sense a measure of drag.
Consider for example music streaming. At 3 minutes per song and using 128 kbps Opus, you could have your favorite 100,000 tracks stored on your phone for about $15 worth of flash storage. From that perspective, Spotify revenue seems like an absurd thing to include as a measure of "progress", particularly if you mostly listen to music from 30+ years ago, which of course is not being made anymore.
You mentioned a public university as an example, but it's important to note that such institutions rely on funding from fees, taxes, and donations. Taxes are generated from profitable activities, donations often come from the surplus income of profitable entities, and fees are paid from income earned through profitable endeavors. Thus, wealth creation, measured by profit, is essential for spending.
Non-profit organizations, on the other hand, depend on donations or service payments for their revenue. While they do not declare a "profit" at tax time, any surplus they generate is typically reinvested in their operations or distributed to employees or members. Therefore, while they don't show a profit for tax purposes, they do generate surplus funds (aka profits) or depend on for funds from other activities that do.
The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth.
My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't.
In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth.
Anyway, the other poster's point was that profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity. And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion. There are other benefits to having a good communication network, and it makes sense to measure the coverage and capacity of the network, not the amount of money people make using it, which is just one small part of its use.
> The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth.
Profit is the difference between the cost of some activity vs the benefit of that activity. How else can you measure wealth creation?
> My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't.
Have you considered that the university may fear getting sued?
> In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth.
To explain why the above statement is nonsensical it would take a couple paragraphs but I expect most readers will not need that. It speaks for itself.
> profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity.
To spend and benefit from wealth you have to create it and profit is a measure of wealth creation. How did you read my words and reach the conclusion that I think profit generating activity is “the only activity or the most important activity”?
> And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion.
Yes, we are enjoying leisure time because of activities that generated surplus wealth (including knowledge) by millions / billions of individuals now and in history. Without surplus wealth our lives might be more like those of our relatives in the animal kingdom.
If getting into the weeds, I don't think you can accurately measure wealth creation since any reasonable definition of "wealth" is going to be dependent on utility metrics that vary from person to person. Whether an action net creates or destroys wealth is not even going to be consistent.
Profit, as in dollars in minus dollars out, is much easier to calculate, but only tangentially relates to wealth.
Whether a regulation may prevent it doesn't change the fact that they could generate massive wealth with no one profiting or incurring a loss by distributing it. For the purposes of the thought experiment, assume it already had captions for the remote students for whom it was recorded.
What do you think is nonsensical? That the government (or the Fed under the direction of the government) intentionally pushed down interest rates with a policy of QE? That lowering rates increased the price of existing assets, generating a profit for the owners? Or that this was just inflation, not wealth creation?
In any case, when rates dropped, first thing I did was buy a house, which almost immediately went up by 30% (based on comps). So apparently the reasoning at least had some predictive power. I also made some large stock gains going 100% into the market, but was too timid to use margin to multiply that.
The original comment that you quoted and responded to was criticizing the article for implying that profit generating activity is all that matters (and hence the metric to measure instead of e.g. network deployment), ignoring non-profit activity which is arguably more important.
> any reasonable definition of "wealth" is going to be dependent on utility metrics that vary from person to person
Yes any reasonable definition of "wealth" will depend on utility metrics that vary from person to person. Despite these differences there is ample evidence that societies are able to measure wealth just fine using conventional currency units such as dollars, shekels, euros, ... These units can be exchanged back for things that depend on utility metrics that vary from person to person. It is these utility differences that drive the modern economy. If two parties have the same value for a good or service why would they transact with each other? Always there must a difference in value for a voluntary transaction to happen.
>That the government (or the Fed under the direction of the government) intentionally pushed down interest rates with a policy of QE? That lowering rates increased the price of existing assets, generating a profit for the owners? Or that this was just inflation, not wealth creation?
By design currencies lose value and they are meant for short term holding. When a ruler shirks all the measurements using that ruler are larger was there wealth created? Obviously not. Wealth is "stuff": factories, power plants, roads, cars, houses, farms, ... The amount of currency may double and prices of everything double but wealth can be unchanged.
> In any case, when rates dropped, first thing I did was buy a house, which almost immediately went up by 30% (based on comps). So apparently the reasoning at least had some predictive power.
A lotto winner shares their "system" with you, do you believe "its predictive power"? So let's consider your logic: When zoning restrictions or lots of immigration causes a housing shortage so a few houses sell for double the price does that mean the wealth in all houses has doubled? What do you think will happen to cost of housing if populations decline? Are populations due to decline anywhere? What happened to price of oil when there was too much of it during COVID?
> I also made some large stock gains going 100% into the market, but was too timid to use margin to multiply that.
So next time maybe you and certainly others like you will be tempted to use leverage causing valuations to climb ever higher pulling in others to do the same thing and how do you think this will end when the price bubble pops? Do you think price bubbles create wealth? They create the illusion of wealth because people think the paper wealth is wealth but paper wealth is not wealth. When Telsa stock price doubles in a day it is unlikely that the amount of Tesla stuff has doubled in a day. What happened is a few shareholders changed how they feel about Tesla and stock prices represent those feelings rather than wealth. This is true about all bubbles including housing.
> Profit, as in dollars in minus dollars out, is much easier to calculate, but only tangentially relates to wealth.
Surplus value can also be measured in heads of cattle, pork bellies, bushels of wheat, gallons of oil, units of energy, hours of labor, ... all of which convert to universal currency units based on supply / demand for these goods.
> The original comment that you quoted and responded to was criticizing the article for implying that profit generating activity is all that matters (and hence the metric to measure instead of e.g. network deployment), ignoring non-profit activity which is arguably more important.
Yes, I asked "Can an activity be sustainable without involving profit or depending on profitable activities? Please share examples."
Notice so far I have yet to get any examples.
I also said that "When transactions are informed and voluntary and there is profit in a competitive market that is wealth created."
So what is the purpose of those who deploy communications networks? Create wealth? Spend wealth? If spending wealth is the purpose then profits do not matter. If wealth creation is the purpose, how else to judge success if not by whether the benefit is more than costs (aka there is a profit)? Why do it otherwise?
Societies don't really agree on measures of wealth though. That's why the inflation rate is controversial (we have a pretty good idea of how many dollars there are; the controversy is how much wealth they represent). The disagreement is large enough that it's not particularly uncommon to find people who believe the government is so far off that they must be lying about the numbers.
I explicitly used covid inflation as an example where wealth was not created. Asset owners made large profits not because they created anything or provided any value, but simply because the unit of account changed to their benefit (notably here, the government did not report increased inflation for almost 2 years after it happened. Anyone looking at asset prices saw it immediately).
I gave an example of a highly valuable activity one can do using a network which generates no revenue and has no cost (keeping in mind the original statement being criticized was purely about revenue from services that use the network, not the network itself): having 1:1 video chats with your loved ones. It neither spends nor creates wealth, but it can nonetheless contribute to our notion of "success" in creating the network.
The purpose of a communication network is to enable communication. There are plenty of non-commercial reasons to do that. In fact the Internet originally had rules against commercial use.
> The disagreement is large enough that it's not particularly uncommon to find people who believe the government is so far off that they must be lying about the numbers.
You're absolutely right that there is often disagreement and controversy around how to properly measure inflation and the real purchasing power of money over time. Reasonable people can disagree on the right methodology. That said, I don't think the disagreements are so large as to render inflation measures meaningless. There are established economic principles and data sources used to estimate inflation (CPI, PCE, etc.), and while imperfect, they do provide a useful gauge. The Fed and other economic authorities put a lot of work into getting the numbers right, even if some will inevitably dispute them.
> I explicitly used covid inflation as an example where wealth was not created. Asset owners made large profits not because they created anything or provided any value, but simply because the unit of account changed to their benefit (notably here, the government did not report increased inflation for almost 2 years after it happened. Anyone looking at asset prices saw it immediately).
Do you think that when the amount of money in circulation doubles and prices double this creates “large profits” for those selling at the doubled prices? You seem intelligent so I am struggling to make sense of your comment above.
Certainly tax laws should be changed so that citizens do not pay capital gains taxes due to gains that are due to government money printing and inflation. This is controversial because the wealthy would benefit far more from fixing this.
> The purpose of a communication network is to enable communication. There are plenty of non-commercial reasons to do that. In fact the Internet originally had rules against commercial use.
I did not ask what the purpose of a communication network is. I asked “what is the purpose of those who deploy communications networks?” Do you see the difference this makes? Governments may deploy them for reliable communications during war as was the purpose of the early internet - what matters is robustness and performance and profit is an alien concept for such projects since they are funded by taxes. When communications networks are built by sellers of communication services however (potential) profit is the number one concern to make sure the business is sustainable.
“Mandatory service” is not sustainable else you would still see slavery around. “Mandatory civil service” does not depend on a government funded by taxes? Somewhere a surplus (aka profit) must be generated else what is there to tax.
Like I said, taxes are essentially an abstraction over mandatory service. Currently, 3 months out of each year, my work belongs to the government. They also don't care whether I have the "profit" to pay them; if I can't pay my living expenses after paying my taxes, that's my problem to figure out. The taxes are due regardless. That aside, I don't know why you'd characterize it as "unsustainable". There are countries with mandatory military service today and they're doing fine. Slavery is perfectly sustainable; it existed across the globe for thousands of years. There are reasons it's not great, but sustainability isn't one.
> Currently, 3 months out of each year, my work belongs to the government. They also don't care whether I have the "profit" to pay them;... The taxes are due regardless.
In Western countries tax due depends on there being some surplus to tax and if there is insufficient surplus there is no tax and you may qualify for government benefits instead. Taxes paid can only be earned sustainably from activities that generate a surplus. How else could it be?
> There are countries with mandatory military service today and they're doing fine.
How many of these countries have governments that do not depend on taxes? If the government depend on taxes and military service depends on government then military service depends on taxes as well does it not? And if military service depends on taxes it also depends on the surplus that these taxes are collected from else how can military service be sustainable? Solider need food, housing, etc some surplus generating activity must pay for that. It used to be an army would pay for itself by looting etc but clearly that is not sustainable.
> Slavery is perfectly sustainable; it existed across the globe for thousands of years. There are reasons it's not great, but sustainability isn't one.
Societies that use slavery have difficulty competing with ones that do not. If the use of slavery was sustainable why did slave using societies not have the geopolitical power to keep doing it? You think slave owners gave up their slaves from goodness of their hearts?
At least in the US, the government essentially taxes individuals based on revenue, not profit. With some specific limited exceptions, they don't care what your living costs are or how "sustainable" the taxes are for you.
The whole notion of "a surplus" also doesn't really make sense. Beyond food and basic shelter to keep people barely alive, everything can be considered to be "a surplus".
I'm not familiar with how the EU works, but in the US, we control our own currency. Since 1970, there's been 4 years that enough taxes were collected to cover spending. "Governments need taxes to buy things" is not how things work. We've also had a trade deficit since the 70s, so no "surplus" there.
Legal slavery still exists today including in the US (the constitution still explicitly allows it), so I'm not sure where it was outcompeted. But yes people are now uncomfortable with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. the US abolishes it during my lifetime.
This is again all beside the point, which is just that non-profit-seeking activity is important too.
> At least in the US, the government essentially taxes individuals based on revenue, not profit. With some specific limited exceptions, they don't care what your living costs are or how "sustainable" the taxes are for you.
How it that a significant portion of Americans, typically around 40% to 45%, do not owe federal income taxes? This includes people whose income falls below the standard deduction threshold, which varies depending on filing status, and those who qualify for enough tax credits to offset their tax liability. Does 40-45% of America have no revenue? Where do they live? What do they eat? They have revenue but not surplus revenue (as defined by tax code) so they pay no tax on their revenue.
> The whole notion of "a surplus" also doesn't really make sense. Beyond food and basic shelter to keep people barely alive, everything can be considered to be "a surplus".
That some complain about Western “basic food” and “basic shelter” is an indicator of how wealthy we are. Add to this “basic medicine”, “basic safety and rights”, “basic entertainment”, “basic transportation”.... What fraction of the global population alive today would trade places with those who enjoy these modern western “basics”? Same question but roll back time a few centuries? On the flip side, would you be willing to have your family and friends trade places with random people from centuries ago?
> I'm not familiar with how the EU works, but in the US, we control our own currency. Since 1970, there's been 4 years that enough taxes were collected to cover spending. "Governments need taxes to buy things" is not how things work. We've also had a trade deficit since the 70s, so no "surplus" there.
You raise tangential topics that it would take paragraphs to explain. Hopefully readers will not be confused.
> Legal slavery still exists today including in the US (the constitution still explicitly allows it), so I'm not sure where it was outcompeted.
You seriously believe today there is slavery in America? EU? Do you think your credibility improves when you argue as you do above?
> This is again all beside the point, which is just that non-profit-seeking activity is important too.
How did you read my words and reach the conclusion that I think non-profit-seeking activity is unimportant?
How wealth is spent is far *more important* than how wealth is created since if you are going to squander wealth what is the point of creating it. Notice to spend and benefit from wealth you have to create it and profit is a measure of wealth creation.
I'm not sure how your first question is germane; they don't owe taxes because there's a standard deduction and various credits (many of which are tools for social policy and aren't really related to expenses, e.g. the EITC or savers credit). That works quite differently from a system where you actually deduct your living expenses. Those deductions and credits generally have limits (so don't care what your actual expenses are), frequently don't require you to have any sort of documented expenses, and may only provide a partial offset against the expense. You also have the 0% bracket for capital gains being several times the standard deduction. Do rich people living off investments just automatically have 3x the living expenses of W2 earners?
On slavery, I'm not familiar with the EU, but of course we have it in the US. I thought it was common knowledge that slavery (i.e. forced labor) is one of the punishments we have for crimes? I see news articles from as recently as 2018 about prisoners being given solitary confinement for refusing to work (I'll leave you to look into the psychological and physical effects of that and decide whether it qualifies as torture).
Arguably, the way we do child support is slavery-adjacent as well; support orders are not based on the child's needs or the level of expenses pre-separation, but on the level of income. So if you were frugal (and e.g. planning to FIRE) before separation, suddenly you can have a very large liability until several years after they become an adult (including needing to pay for college even if you otherwise wouldn't have done so), essentially requiring decades of additional work. Falling to continue producing that income can result in imprisonment.
> they don't owe taxes because there's a standard deduction and various credits (many of which are tools for social policy and aren't really related to expenses, e.g. the EITC or savers credit).
The standard deduction and various tax credits are indeed designed to account for basic living expenses and ensure that those with lower incomes are not burdened with federal income taxes. While these deductions and credits may not cover all living expenses for everyone, they serve as a proxy for the essential costs of living.
The fact that 40-45% of Americans do not owe federal income taxes demonstrates that the tax system does consider the financial situation of individuals and their ability to pay taxes. The standard deduction is set at a level that is deemed sufficient to cover basic living expenses for most people. If an individual's income falls below this threshold, they are not required to pay federal income taxes because their revenue is essentially going towards covering their basic needs.
Furthermore, tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are specifically designed to provide additional financial support for low-income working individuals and families. These credits are a way for the government to acknowledge that these individuals may struggle to make ends meet even though they have revenue.
> You also have the 0% bracket for capital gains being several times the standard deduction. Do rich people living off investments just automatically have 3x the living expenses of W2 earners?
Regarding the 0% capital gains tax bracket being higher than the standard deduction, this is a separate issue related to how different types of income are taxed. It does not negate the fact that the standard deduction and tax credits are intended to account for living expenses and reduce the tax burden on those with lower incomes.
> On slavery, I'm not familiar with the EU, but of course we have it in the US. I thought it was common knowledge that slavery (i.e. forced labor) is one of the punishments we have for crimes?
While it's true that many US prisoners do work, characterizing it as "slavery" is misleading. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery but allows "involuntary servitude" as punishment for a crime. However, forced labor and slavery are not equivalent. Prisoners who work are paid wages (albeit low), have basic labor protections, and work as part of their rehabilitation and to offset incarceration costs. Solitary confinement, while highly controversial, is not used solely for refusing to work. The comparison to slavery ignores the profound historical differences between the brutal chattel slavery of the past and modern prison labor.
> Arguably, the way we do child support is slavery-adjacent as well;
On child support, you oversimplify how support is calculated. Child support is based on the child's best interests and seeks to maintain their standard of living. Support calculations consider both parents' incomes, time spent with the child, and the costs of the child's needs. While wealthier parents may pay more, the goal is for the child to benefit from the totality of both parents' incomes as they would in an intact household. Characterizing this as "slavery-adjacent" because a parent must work to pay support is hyperbolic - parents have always had to work to provide for their children. Imprisonment for nonpayment is rare and occurs only in cases of willful refusal to pay despite having the means.
I think, and this seems obvious to me hut apparently it's not, that what the author is trying to say is that 5G is useless unless it provides a benefit in peoples lives, and so measuring base stations doesn't actually tell you anything, if it's not useful to people no number of base stations matters.
Insanity it may be, but a foundational rule of Capitalism. It has always been like that, except occasionally the activity happened to improve human lives. But it doesn't have to.
>Enfranchisement for women and racial minorities in the United States took centuries to codify, and these citizens are still disproportionately excluded from participating in elections
No acknowledgement whatsoever of poor people. Clearly this is a trash article.
Given this attitude, the answer to your other comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40511726
"As a junior employee, I have no patience for your point.
Going into office is one thing juniors can do about the "problem with the culture" so my stance stays the same until the so-called culture changes.
In my experience, the number of seniors who complain sbout RTO and don't hoard knowledge is tiny."
... is that it is likely that nobody is hoarding knowledge, they're just avoiding you because you're unpleasant.
