Total topics: 4
I read an article about rising wages in this tight labor market and its contribution to this inflationary environment. It was a decent article, imo. Then… I perused the comments section. Now, I’m just a dabbler in economics, but the waves of confident, angry ignorance in many of the comments was just a facepalm assault for me. I’m talking merely basic fundamentals here, not “Keynes vs Friedman” or anything close to that. It almost caused me physical pain. Why such arrogant ignorance regarding economics??
Well, I read another article which pointed out that, unlike so many other esoteric subjects such as physics, chemistry, engineering, horse breeding, etc., people have a personal stake in the economy and their place in it. We all make and spend money and are part of the economy. That lends itself to becoming highly opinionated on the subject, even if one knows very little about it. In fact, it said, we all need to be mindful of what we don’t know. Excellent point!
Finally, I got to this article, which is simply awesome in its use of irony (I hope people in an economics forum both read it and “get” it):
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Economics
For anyone curious about how cryptocurrency actually works, I'd recommend this video from 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 .
I was considering making a debate about this at one point, but I decided not to for whatever reason (most likely lack of confidence). When it comes to proof-of-work, there's no way for anyone to create a block that contains a transaction that didn't happen, send out that block to only one entity (if you were trying to fool them into thinking you had sent payment, for example), and always have a longer-block chain (validity is always based on the longest block-chain) unless you controlled over 50% (let's say 52%) of the computing power involved in mining the particular crypto.
If you controlled over 52%, you would, per the law of big numbers, be capable of finding the hash needed enough that your block-chain that contains the fraudulent transaction that you never broadcast to anyone but the person you're attempting to deceive faster than anyone else on average and would be able to make it seem like your block-chain is the valid one. This isn't possible with things like bitcoin (as far as I know), but what if we reached a point where a government managed to somehow, maybe by preventing mining from anyone but the government (if that's even possible), control said 52%? They would be able to have complete control over the currency and be able to buy things without even having to spend currency as long as they hold the longest block-chain for long enough.
Having immaterial currency backed by a nation-state has worrisome implications for their ability to control money as well. If the government managed to have complete control over the currency, there's nothing stopping them from declaring all their currency worthless, forcing people to spend it in a certain period of time, taking it away from people without even needing to be near them or their assets, etc...
I am very open to the possibility of being wrong in a lot of things that I said. It's been a while since I researched it, but I'd be curious if anyone else has similar or differing thoughts on nationally-backed crypto, especially with China's creation of one.
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Technology
If we had a world where there were no import/export tariffs and economics was purely about trade between consumers and providers of goods/services, economics itself would ve both simpler and in fact more closely linked to productivity than it currently is.
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Economics
Simple yet accurate political quiz. America/modern-day specific. 2 Options per question, 9 outcomes.
Note: You can remain neutral on a question by clicking 'Next' without answering it, I recommend not doing so if you do lean either way. I did this for a question and retook the quiz after realising it was possible, I got the same result though.
My best fit is...
Solid Liberalsalong with 16% of the public.Highly educated and politically engaged, Solid Liberals hold consistently liberal values. They back a robust role for government and are strong advocates of the social safety net. Large majorities view the current economic system as unfair and see economic inequality as a major problem. They take broadly positive views of immigrants, and fully 99% think being open to people from around the world is an essential part of the nation’s identity. Most say more needs to be done to address both racial discrimination and obstacles to women’s achievement. They support same-sex marriage and believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. Solid Liberals are the most Democratic of all typology groups: nearly two-thirds (64%) identify as Democrats, another 35% lean toward the Democratic Party.
^ Link to the quiz.
More on the types (this is a spoiler and I suggest you DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING LINK BEFORE TAKING THE QUIZ, it will subconsciously drive you to push for a result you want rather than what you actually are.
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Politics