No idea. What about Asian culture? Has anybody figured out why they like Disney even more than we do? Or was your point not about fetishizing Disney characters so much as the other aspects of the dating site?

No idea either. I find Disney worship incomprehensible, so I'm not the person to ask why. I just have a gut feeling that there's something really off about it. Death of god or some ****.

To be fair, it is in Utah, so it's heightened.

I don’t care where you fall on the Huawei dispute, the fact that an American supply boycott can be so disruptive to a foreign interest (no less one that actually works to avoid exposure to that risk) should be extremely concerning to everybody not living in the United States.

Hmm, didn't we oppose all those pesky trade agreements because of those lawsuits foreign companies could file against countries pulling this ****? Does anyone know if America has one of those agreements with China?

Other than the WTO, I doubt it, but the US doesn’t honor its treaty obligations so it wouldn’t matter anyway.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/europe-says-737-max-won-t-fly-until-its-design-review-complete

Well, hi there

Government oversight is literally Stalinism and I will not back down from this true statement.

Real talk though, does the U.S. really even regulate anymore? When was the last major antitrust suit? Microsoft?

No, it’s great. If the government cracked down on corporations then you might lose your job, and then you couldn’t afford to treat the rare cancers your employer gave you.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/us-saudi-arabia-arms-sales/

The dictatorial antics continue.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/us-china-trade-war-who-pays-for-donald-trumps-tariffs.html

Heh. Everyone agrees it's U.S. consumers paying for Trump's tariffs. And he wants to expand them to India. Y'all ready for prices on random **** to rise even more?

I mean, it's pretty obvious that tariffs are going to raise prices. Is it even surprising? But Making America Great Again is going to take sacrifice I suppose...

I'll take a recession for $500, Alex.

It's not jeopardy, it's just you paying alot for a recession.

Are we in a recession? Seriously asking, I don't know. I have heard unemployment is at somewhat record lows but I don't pay much attention to unemployment rates as that game is rigged. I've just heard that there are good things in the economy but, again, I don't really pay attention to that stuff now so I really don't know. My general opinion has been for years now that this whole thing is a sham and a house of cards. I don't really hold any strong opinions about the current state.

Speaking of Jeopardy, I heard some guy failed spectacularly to break the record recently.

The wonks think one is likely if Trump doesn't pull back from his trade war.

[quote=Not The Onion]That’s right. Hydrocarbons shall henceforth be known as “molecules of U.S. freedom.” Proud Americans are fracking compounds of liberty from the glorious shale beds of Texas and shipping it ‘round the world.

Anyway, it gets better. The actual news here is that the Department of Energy gave Houston-based Freeport LNG approval to export gas processed at a new liquefaction plant that the company is set to build at a facility off the coast of Texas. Elsewhere in the government’s press release, U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes explains, “Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy.” (Bolds are mine.)

Freedom gas. It appears that turn of phrase originated earlier this month, when Secretary of Energy Rick Perry signed an order aimed at doubling U.S. liquefied natural gas shipments to Europe. At a press briefing in Brussels, he explained that the move would help European nations diversify their energy supply away from Russia, the region’s major supplier of gas. “The United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent,” he said. “And rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas.” Afterward, a cheeky reporter from EURACTIV asked whether “freedom gas” would be a correct way to describe the new fuel shipments. “I think you may be correct in your observation,” an apparently inspired Perry responded. [/quote]

https://slate.com/business/2019/05/freedom-gas-molecules-of-freedom-department-of-energy.html

Huh, leave it to the US government to find a way to make "they hate us for our freedom" true

Silly as that is, natural gas emits far less carbon per unit of energy generated compared to coal, which it is replacing. LNG plants are also much more flexible which makes them capable of accommodating wind and solar generation without wasting a bunch of fuel. LNG is absolutely a necessary step toward reducing carbon footprint, and all the people pitching a huge fit and demanding and end to fracking are exactly why environmentalism gets nowhere. The loudest voices are idiots who haven't bothered to educate themselves at all, and spend half their efforts shooting themselves in the foot, and the other half can mollified by lame policies that accomplish little beyond transferring tax dollars to corporate rent seekers who want to take advantage of the situation.

Also, FWIW, the monicker "freedom gas" has more to do with this whole "Iron Curtain" view, where the US is liberating Europe from Russian tyranny. (In this case, the idea seems to be to free Europe from needing to buy gas from Газпром).

I just thought the name "freedom gas" sounds completely idiotic.

Taco Bell farts: freedom gas.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/06/radio-silence-how-the-disappearance-of-rural-stations-takes-americas-soul-with-them

[quote=Someone on a site not run by private equity]

Private equity markets killed radio. Radio stations were simply worth more to a large broadcasting company than a small local station because large broadcasters could leverage their massive advertising network.

We're going to eventually look back and wonder how much damage the rise of private equity and modern finance has done to so many things that were once of such high quality. Financial engineering is distorting the original intent of market forces and leaving more and more consumers with an inferior product.
[/quote]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20132229

Amusingly, just as was listening to Big Star, I read the
[quote=next comment down]
Even before private equity, it was very difficult for indie musicians to get their songs played on the air, due to collusion with the recording industry.

[...]
[/quote]

This is a little funny though as I think about the case of Big Star, a band which (I have read) was known because of their airplay, but whose record label apparently didn't know how to market the band, and most of their albums went straight to the bargain bin, and people couldn't find them on the shelves. It probably didn't help that Stax soon went bankrupt altogether....

Financial engineering is distorting the original intent of market forces and leaving more and more consumers with an inferior product.

🤔

Of course, for the last couple decades at least, the airwaves have been dominated by Wookie's favorite entertainers:

[quote=Some other guy]
Deregulation enabled Clear Channel to effectively monopolize terrestrial radio finance was the tool but without deregulation it would have been legally impossible.
[/quote]

I think you're forgetting that "market forces" actually means "magic forces".

oh

Also, you guys should check out magicforce.com. Capitalism was made in JkEdit.

Mistakes from paying too much attention in Econ 101: Firms in capitalism don’t compete against each other to provide the best value at the lowest price. Firms in capitalism compete against each other to provide the highest returns on investment. Goods market performance is an artifact of capital markets strategy, not vice-versa.

It’s an easy mistake to make, because most people think capitalism and free market mean the same thing.

Well duh, if you can offer the same (or better) product than your competitors for less than them, why would you charge anything but 1 cent less than them? Charging as little as possible without incentive to do so makes no fiscal sense.

Individually, they don't. Collectively, markets hill climb toward profitless production maximization. In the short term a business ends up pocketing the benefit from investment, but in the long term, as other companies make similar investments, the price approaches a new lower equilibrium and most/all of that benefit gets passed on to consumers. This is just what happens when you have a lot of people all making individually rational investment decisions and selling at the highest prices they can get.

Unless, that is, their goal isn't to maximize profits, but instead to be good stocks. In which case TL;DR: MAD is a Nash equilibrium.

i.e.

If you invest rationally to maximize your profits, everybody else will be forced to invest rationally, too. Even if your investment (technology) is better and you're ultimately going to win the game, your growth will at first explode (as you take a much larger market share) and then go negative (while you wait for inventories to deplete from the dearly departed). At the end you're in a stronger goods market position, a larger firm in a less competitive market, but your stock looks gross. You look like you're in an unstable market where large firms get routinely toppled.

If you carefully manage your investments around what your competitors are doing, then everybody can show consistent growth with good profit. You aren't maximizing your profit, but your company looks stable and that means your stock is a good store of wealth (therefore more valuable and also more liquid). And if your minimal investments are M&A, then you get the benefits of a less competitive market without the capitalist crisis of trying to be competitive on goods markets.

it's insano crazy that so many people are doing mental backflips and contortions so they don't have to acknowledge that Iran was behind the attack on the fuel tankers. Jeeeeeeez.

Gulf of Tonkin incident

I mean, I agree. Governments are super trustworthy and it’s insano crazy to be even a little skeptical that they might lie

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rcmp-bombed-oil-site-in-dirty-tricks-campaign-1.188599
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War

It’s not at all unreasonable to be suspicious, especially with the current administration. It’s not as much the skepticism or the caution that is preposterously misguided, as much as the straight-up conspiratorial thinking that some are falling into in order to protect their priors, or, in other cases, ignorance of what Iran has been doing in the region combined with an overly charitable interpretation of Iran’s intentions (which is required because orange man bad, Obama good, and, subsequently, JCPOA good, and then, and here’s the weird part, Iran good and Arab states bad).

Never mind that comparing this incident to the Gulf of Tonkin incident hardly works, as, according to Pompeo, this incident isn’t being used as a justification for escalation — especially not military escalation.

The comparisons to the lead up to the Iraq War are especially preposterous. And I say that even if it were true that everything up until this point with Trump and Iran were somehow completely fabricated. If that were the case, the extent of the similarity would go about as far as “the White House lied as a pretext to engage in an armed conflict in the Middle East.”

also jim morrisons dad was in charge of the gulf of tonkin incident, but theyre both dead now. hard to make comparisons id say

It’s a comparison that only intuitively makes sense because it’s become collective wisdom in certain circles, not because it holds up to any degree of scrutiny at all.