What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Lexicus]

Nonono... the german government deliberately engineered the hyperinflation to get rid of much of its debt, a lot of which but not all resulted from the Versailles Treaty. Hyperinflation then wasn't inevitable. It started years after WW2 ended, when Germany had much better "economy" to produce stuff than during the war: its work force demobilized from the army, international trade restarted, and the internal political revolution crushed by the SPD and allies in 1919-20.

Whatever the case here may be, the point is that hyperinflation did not happen because everything in Germany was 100% fine, and then suddenly one day the Weimar government decided to deficit-spend for a public-employment program, or paying for healthcare for its citizens. That is essentially what people are claiming when they say that the US will see hyperinflation if we spend on Medicare For All or a jobs program. It's a completely nonsensical argument, and I assume you know it is.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The amount of money the Americans threw at Germany wasn't much in the grand scheme if things.

Korea the military troops stationed there was a bigger stimulus.
.

you keep simply making statements, acting like they're universally true without backing them up. also.. what? how was American troops stationed in S Korea enough of a stimulus to propel their economy?

I don't know exactly what you mean here. "Inflation of currency" is the only meaning of "inflation" I'm familiar with in this context.

oh, nvm then. In German, "inflationary use of x" is a phrase we often use, for example with buzzwords. inflation can be any form of increased spread coupled with debasement

Planned obsolescence is a problem but quality stuff is available, most consumers simply don't demand it.

Consumers have been trained to want new shiny things.

I do agree with you in a way, because in capitalism there is always "higher quality" stuff simply to distinguish itself from the lower quality stuff and create a niche market. this is however not affordable and also not necessarily available for anyone.

the US has some incredibly meat and produce, but they're expensive, compared to, say, Europe where you can buy organic vegetables in a discounter for a steal. now there are many rural parts of America without a whole foods, maybe even without a farmer's market, where access to quality meat and quality produce just isn't a given.

also, speaking especially on the topics of food, since that is kind of my expertise. did you know that Nutella artificially inflates its own worth by offering alternatives that are deemed as "cheaper" through advertising/packaging? one of the paradoxes of the 21st century is this:

Aldi has a nutella clone. Their product costs much less than a regular jar of nutella. But it is literally the same stuff, from the same factories, they're now because of EU regulation even forced to admit this on the packaging to some obscure degree. Do people then buy the cheaper product, since it is the exact same? No, they don't. The opposite is the case: People think because Nutella is more expensive that it's actually better. Nutella sales soar through controlled food opposition. They can now justify their own (very high) prices for their sugar spread by pointing to the discounter variant.

 

[Zardnaar]

you keep simply making statements, acting like they're universally true without backing them up. also.. what? how was American troops stationed in S Korea enough of a stimulus to propel their economy?



oh, nvm then. In German, "inflationary use of x" is a phrase we often use, for example with buzzwords. inflation can be any form of increased spread coupled with debasement

They were so poor the American troops spending money and the military spending got their economy going.

At University I spent a lot of time looking at the wartime economies, recovery post war and recovery from the great depression.

Military spending gets a lot of flak from liberals but it can do good things for an economy.

For example after Japan list WW2 Korea and Manchuria benefitted from Japanese investment in factorys and electricity. Manchukuo outproduced Japan 1940 iirc for steel.

Post war Germany benefitted from Nazi wartime slave labour.

The "miracles" are easily explained.

America workers started producing weapons for France and UK in 1939. They ran out of money in 1940 FDR took over some of the contracts. They didn't magically flick a switch for the Arsenal of Democracy in 41-44 they had already started.

Military spending isn't always the best form of government spending.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

They were so poor the American troops spending money and the military spending got their economy going.

American troops, making up probably 1% to 3% of the population, managed to propel their entire economy just through their purchases? Mate, the numbers aren't adding up, like at all. Expats in Korea are not where Samsung came from. Dominant Korean companies came first and foremost from global contracts and technological as well as financial support from the west (not just America) and incredible amounts of money from Japan (so this is wher we agree. in some years it was more than the US, which is amazing considering how much smaller their economy is).

Post war Germany benefitted from Nazi wartime slave labour.

yes, that is true

 

[Zardnaar]

American troops, making up probably 1% to 3% of the population, managed to propel their entire economy just through their purchases? Mate, the numbers aren't adding up, like at all. Expats in Korea are not where Samsung came from. Dominant Korean companies came first and foremost from global contracts and technological as well as financial support from the west (not just America) and incredible amounts of money from Japan (so this is wher we agree. in some years it was more than the US, which is amazing considering how much smaller their economy is).



yes, that is true

Korea was very poor in 1950. Wasn't just GI spending but the other money as well.

Same thing happened in post war Germany. The British started up the VW factory 1945 iirc.

The allied bombing wasn't as effective as they thought a lot if industrial plant survived. That plant was built in the war years and prewar and it was more modern than the UK.

UK industrial base was older and once the Germans started exporting consumer goods instead of building more weapons under the Kaiser/Hitler the economic miracle happened.

The Marshall plan in the grand scheme if things wasn't much but you don't need a lot in situations like this. German government just got to spend 20 or 30 years focusing on internal development.

Japan and China are also other example's if what can be done in a very short amount of time. Japan taxed the hell out of farmers (we didn't).

Effective government spending and not having idiots as leaders.

 

[Samson]

Only a very small part of the transaction cost is actually funded by fees. Most of the funding is provided by the reward for miners (in bitcoin). Currently you get 12.5 BTC for mining a block in addition to the transaction fees in the block. At the current price this is around 95k USD. A block contains around 2000 transactions, so you are looking at a cost of around 50 USD / transaction. This would buy about 1 MWh of electricity and that electricity generated about half a ton of CO2. Of course, miners want to make a profit and need to spend money on hardware as well, so not the entire cost of a transaction is spend on electricity and the true amount of CO2 generated is certainly only a fraction of that. But it is safe to assume that electricity is the main cost factor, so this fraction is not small.

Are any of the other major cryptocurrencies any better? On monero the transaction fees are really low, like 0.1 penny.

 

[uppi]

Are any of the other major cryptocurrencies any better? On monero the transaction fees are really low, like 0.1 penny.

I don't have a complete overview, but I actually expect bitcoin to be the worst out of them, just because it is the most popular. The fundamental problem with proof-of-work algorithms is that they need a lot of computational power thrown at them, just to stay secure. If it becomes feasible to control over 50% of the computational power working on it, someone can take over the whole system. So the more popular such a cryptocurrency becomes, the more valuable it gets and the more computational power needs to be used to keep it secure. The problem is that these extra computations bring no additional value except for security, so the transaction cost rises without this additional cost benefiting anyone.

The number of transactions per block can vary by protocol, so there is a parameter you can tune to make transactions cheaper. But the scaling problem remains, so any cryptocurrency will get much more expensive the more widely it is used.

If you want to estimate the cost of a transaction, you should not (only) look at the transaction fees. In almost all cases, transactions are subsidized by mining. So you need to look at how many transactions there are per block and how much reward there is for a block. In case of monero this ends up at roughly 5$/transaction. How much of that is electricity is obviously a guess, but I would always expect electricity to be a major cost factor.

 

[Cutlass]

yes on the first, no on the second.

is that why we get mobile phones, consumer electronics, headphones, clothes, and a sheer infinite list of other products that are deliberately designed to break, fail, fall apart, or require maintenance which for some reason.. is more expensive that the product itself, so that we have to rebuy it again? no, the reason for that is that capitalism needs us to constantly buy things, even when all of our biological needs are met, even when all of our "modern" needs, like access to internet, healthcare, vacation, exotic foods, are met. when we continously produce more goods, we need to artifically create reasons for people to buy things. be that via low quality products, illusion of choice, illusion of prestige, exotism, or in recent years most of all, predatory mechanics, addiction, preying on insecurities: just see the video game industry and it's love for gambling, microtransactions, lootboxes, it's psychologically designed mechanisms to control impulse decisions..

You don't think that my car, which can do 100 miles per hour all day long, gets better fuel economy and emits less pollution, has all wheel drive and and an automatic transmission, has air conditioning, power windows, locks, keyless entry, AM/FM/CD and other features on the stereo, cruise control, and a bunch of other things, and can be expected to last for 300,000 miles, isn't better than anything on the market anywhere 50 years ago?

Don't let the fact that some items aren't built to last a long time blind you to the fact that there's a host of low cost items available which are capable of doing things that weren't possible at all when you were born. You're using one of them at the moment.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

You don't think that my car, which can do 100 miles per hour all day long, gets better fuel economy and emits less pollution, has all wheel drive and and an automatic transmission, has air conditioning, power windows, locks, keyless entry, AM/FM/CD and other features on the stereo, cruise control, and a bunch of other things, and can be expected to last for 300,000 miles, isn't better than anything on the market anywhere 50 years ago?

Don't let the fact that some items aren't built to last a long time blind you to the fact that there's a host of low cost items available which are capable of doing things that weren't possible at all when you were born. You're using one of them at the moment.

very true, both our points seem to not be mutually exclusive. many things have indeed become objectively better insofar as they are less damaging to nature by virtue of fuel efficiency, for example. however I personally would still much rather see a world with as many cars as we had 50 years ago, even if they're more pollutant. I don't think the american colonization wet dream of every single person having a car as means of their personal freedom is in any way sustainable, nor is it desirable even if it were. cars are a necessity purely because of the nature of work arrangements nowadays and the horrible state of public transport. no one genuinely needs a car like they need air or food or shelter.

 

[Cutlass]

very true, both our points seem to not be mutually exclusive. many things have indeed become objectively better insofar as they are less damaging to nature by virtue of fuel efficiency, for example. however I personally would still much rather see a world with as many cars as we had 50 years ago, even if they're more pollutant. I don't think the american colonization wet dream of every single person having a car as means of their personal freedom is in any way sustainable, nor is it desirable even if it were. cars are a necessity purely because of the nature of work arrangements nowadays and the horrible state of public transport. no one genuinely needs a car like they need air or food or shelter.

It's not about everyone having a lifestyle equal to what Americans currently have. But there are people across Africa who have cell phones, but never had land line phones. Because the technology evolved.

You are conflating 2 different situations. Just because they often go together doesn't mean they are the same thing.

 

[IglooDame]

is that why we get mobile phones, consumer electronics, headphones, clothes, and a sheer infinite list of other products that are deliberately designed to break, fail, fall apart, or require maintenance*** which for some reason.. is more expensive that the product itself, so that we have to rebuy it again? no, the reason for that is that capitalism needs us to constantly buy things, even when all of our biological needs are met, even when all of our "modern" needs, like access to internet, healthcare, vacation, exotic foods, are met. when we continously produce more goods, we need to artifically create reasons for people to buy things. be that via low quality products, illusion of choice, illusion of prestige, exotism, or in recent years most of all, predatory mechanics, addiction, preying on insecurities: just see the video game industry and it's love for gambling, microtransactions, lootboxes, it's psychologically designed mechanisms to control impulse decisions..

***Citation required. Consumer electronics, including phones, computers, and TVs, aren't (typically) replaced because they've broken somehow, they're replaced because better ones have been developed. Cars do tend to "wear out" mechanically, but how often nowadays do you see a car rusting through? Kitchen appliances last for decades. There's a huge difference between intentionally designing something to have a shelf life, and designing something to last as long as possible but not having the materials or needing to adhere to cost limitations to do so.

I'll readily concede that Apple and similar companies do angle for "you must have the latest and greatest!!!!!" but that is marketing, not engineering.

 

[Lexicus]

***Citation required

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so that it becomes obsolete (i.e., unfashionable, or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.[1] The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").[2] It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force consumers to purchase replacements.[3]

 

[Samson]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so that it becomes obsolete (i.e., unfashionable, or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.[1] The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").[2] It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force consumers to purchase replacements.[3]

Also, Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone.

It is bad for the environment as well as the economy.

 

[IglooDame]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so that it becomes obsolete (i.e., unfashionable, or no longer functional) after a certain period of time.[1] The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").[2] It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force consumers to purchase replacements.[3]

Thank you for that, but I'm already familiar with the definition and the concept. I just don't seen it being a factor in all of the products you speak of. I'll concede smartphones, at this point.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

***Citation required. Consumer electronics, including phones, computers, and TVs, aren't (typically) replaced because they've broken somehow, they're replaced because better ones have been developed. Cars do tend to "wear out" mechanically, but how often nowadays do you see a car rusting through? Kitchen appliances last for decades. There's a huge difference between intentionally designing something to have a shelf life, and designing something to last as long as possible but not having the materials or needing to adhere to cost limitations to do so.

I'll readily concede that Apple and similar companies do angle for "you must have the latest and greatest!!!!!" but that is marketing, not engineering.

I mean both are true, you're wrong in thinking they're mutually exclusive. also, as @Cutlass has correctly stated, many products did get better over time, and I agreed with him. none of that means that planned obsolescence isn't a thing.

It's not about everyone having a lifestyle equal to what Americans currently have. But there are people across Africa who have cell phones, but never had land line phones. Because the technology evolved.

You are conflating 2 different situations. Just because they often go together doesn't mean they are the same thing.

I do not think I understand, sorry. what are the two things I am conflating?

 

[Cutlass]

To be fair, there are a lot of things built cheaply. But this is a matter of cost savings, and in some cases companies taking advantage of low information consumers to commit fraud.

But this shouldn't be conflated with the average product being designed to fail quickly. Most don't.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

To be fair, there are a lot of things built cheaply. But this is a matter of cost savings, and in some cases companies taking advantage of low information consumers to commit fraud.

But this shouldn't be conflated with the average product being designed to fail quickly. Most don't.

I agree with all of this. I also did not mean to say that all products nowadays are designed to break, but that this is a recent trend, especially in regards to tech.

I also think it's important to not forget that science and capitalism are not one and the same, and that a lot of improvements to goods or services in modern life were a result of research (which is sometimes publicly funded, sometimes privately) and that conflating the two is problematic. or, to say it another way: I think the amount we have advanced in research and production (insanely) is not equivalent to the amount in which products have gotten objectively better (a lot). I think if there were less capitalist (and government!) incentives to rely on coal/oil, to produce cheaply, etc. we would have seen an even stauncher rise in product quality and quality of life.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I do agree with you in a way, because in capitalism there is always "higher quality" stuff simply to distinguish itself from the lower quality stuff and create a niche market. this is however not affordable and also not necessarily available for anyone.

the US has some incredibly meat and produce, but they're expensive, compared to, say, Europe where you can buy organic vegetables in a discounter for a steal. now there are many rural parts of America without a whole foods, maybe even without a farmer's market, where access to quality meat and quality produce just isn't a given.

also, speaking especially on the topics of food, since that is kind of my expertise. did you know that Nutella artificially inflates its own worth by offering alternatives that are deemed as "cheaper" through advertising/packaging? one of the paradoxes of the 21st century is this:

Aldi has a nutella clone. Their product costs much less than a regular jar of nutella. But it is literally the same stuff, from the same factories, they're now because of EU regulation even forced to admit this on the packaging to some obscure degree. Do people then buy the cheaper product, since it is the exact same? No, they don't. The opposite is the case: People think because Nutella is more expensive that it's actually better. Nutella sales soar through controlled food opposition. They can now justify their own (very high) prices for their sugar spread by pointing to the discounter variant.

I am certain most 'generic' brands are coming from the same factories as the 'name brand'. I think only once have I seen a "Not produced, distributed or affiliated in any way with x brand" statement on a package.

Even if coming from same factory, most of the time if you look at the nutrition label there is a difference between the generic and name brand, even if many times you can't tell the difference by taste. Most often the generic version has higher fat %, sugar and/or sodium content. Sometimes there is a bit of a tradeoff "the generic actually has less sugar, but it has more sodium than the name brand" (or vise versa) for example.

Name brand also invests more in advertising and giving away discounts in the form of coupons, so much of the cost difference goes towards paying those. I just can't imagine the 10% of the can's ingredients that are different justify the name brand charging 50%-100% or more than the generic.

 

[Zardnaar]

I am certain most 'generic' brands are coming from the same factories as the 'name brand'. I think only once have I seen a "Not produced, distributed or affiliated in any way with x brand" statement on a package.

Even if coming from same factory, most of the time if you look at the nutrition label there is a difference between the generic and name brand, even if many times you can't tell the difference by taste. Most often the generic version has higher fat %, sugar and/or sodium content. Sometimes there is a bit of a tradeoff "the generic actually has less sugar, but it has more sodium than the name brand" (or vise versa) for example.

Name brand also invests more in advertising and giving away discounts in the form of coupons, so much of the cost difference goes towards paying those. I just can't imagine the 10% of the can's ingredients that are different justify the name brand charging 50%-100% or more than the generic.

Here it varies by brand. Some generics are the exact same brand in different packaging.

Sometimes it's not worth their time to clean the machinery. It's cheaper to put it on a different label and keep going. Portion sizes might vary.

Other brands they stop the machines and change the inputs.

Worked in Warehouse you discover what's coming from where and the difference to the wholesaler is the colour of the package blue line vs red and a stamp. Supermarket shelf it's different for the consumer.

One of my favorite mixes was a generic brand which was a premium brand in different label. They changed suppliers though.

Ate a generic $2.50 frozen pizza from Italy for lunch. Was good:; Some generics are good in their own right.

Here cheap bread, premium bread and McDonalds buns all made in same place. Or they were at least.

There were differences between McDonalds patties, premium ones and cheaper ones all made in same factory.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Here it varies by brand. Some generics are the exact same brand in different packaging.

Sometimes it's not worth their time to clean the machinery. It's cheaper to put it on a different label and keep going. Portion sizes might vary.

Other brands they stop the machines and change the inputs.

Worked in Warehouse you discover what's coming from where and the difference to the wholesaler is the colour of the package blue line vs red and a stamp. Supermarket shelf it's different for the consumer.

One of my favorite mixes was a generic brand which was a premium brand in different label. They changed suppliers though.

Ate a generic $2.50 frozen pizza from Italy for lunch. Was good:; Some generics are good in their own right.

Here cheap bread, premium bread and McDonalds buns all made in same place. Or they were at least.

There were differences between McDonalds patties, premium ones and cheaper ones all made in same factory.

I do seem to recall many generics coming in on same truck as name brand when working on receiving, but I'm not going to start listing them off in case I'm mistaken on which brands those are.
I just looked at a Wal-Mart brand in my cupboard to see if it says who manufactures it and all it says is "distributed by Wal-Mart".

Some companies could be switching their assembly lines from name brand to generics, or they could have separate lines (8 lines dedicated to name brand, 2 to generics for example).
When toilet paper was running low, even in the warehouse, I do think the toilet paper companies were doing less 'switching' of production from one type of paper to another, so less down time so they can put out more of whatever paper they were working on (favoring name brand over generic).