When you discussed on nostr:npub1preu2djgj2ua47l277myu8ak30v95m6ar59n6k23tyu3ylkv53sskpeujk WBD on how many minutes it takes to purchase some things, it made me wonder about quality vs quantity.
Is the quality of the product worse, better, or the same? For example, cows fed grain, grass, or some combo of mass produced GMO. On that, another would be cut of meat vs ground beef.
Also, are there people suffering somewhere to cut minutes/costs? Maybe the IMF taking the actions nostr:npub1csuq0wzew7r6nynh97vjfamxrcqk70hgk8a3hvqz9ftzuu0sshtsm5xfjj mentioned in his book to the benefit of reducing our minute costs?
Thanks for pushing the conversation to consider the topics you brought up!
I think it’s mostly a fallacy that product quality has been falling across the board. It’s been a common trope. Even when I was growing up in the 80s, my parents would say the old adage that “they don’t make things like they used to”. But this relies on an incredibly distorted false nostalgia.
How often does a television repairman come to your house and replace the vacuum tubes? When was the last time your radiator in your car exploded because you were running the air condition in hot weather? How often does the compressor in fridge break down, and refilled and re-pressurized with coolant? When was the last time you heard of a car needing its transmission to be rebuilt when it had less than 150,000 miles on the odometer?
These things were all common occurrences and were considered par for the course in the past. But people will swear up and down that all these things were built to much higher levels of quality in the past.
People’s common retort is to point out that a lot of these goods have a lot of “plastic” in them, instead of metal. As if, it’s always preferable to make everything out of metal than plastic. Metal is heavier. It bends. It conducts electricity (when maybe you don’t want it to). When it bends, it doesn’t bend back. But people will swear this is a hallmark of “quality”. Which I think is complete nonsense.
Anyways, I know you’re talking about food, here. And there is some reason to believe that fruits and vegetables have become somewhat less nutritious over time, as a result of nutrient-depletion in the soil from intense industrial farming. However, to attribute that to inflationary monetary policy, instead of the Green Revolution — which by the way, has almost completely eliminated famine from the entire planet, would be a very silly thing for people to argue.
when nostr:npub1hyqrsvl6hle8r5rc9cpshesm0mpcee75tgde4p5lhke5h83dyqqqdwk7cp talks about the ride or die’s, he’s talking about the freaks
Basically.
You are certainly in control of what you're interested in.
Kind of surprised: a lot of the people I thought my most recent WBD interview would really irk, have had pretty positive things to say about my arguments -- even if they didn't fully agree with me!
Democracy theorists have been thinking about this for a long time. Technically, electing representatives through lotteries is still completely democratic.
Democracy just means that everyone has equal political rights and equal political franchise. A random lottery still fits this definition!
The arguments for it are reasonably compelling. Trial juries are often cited as an example of how randomly selected citizens do a much better job at making dispassionate decisions than self-selected groups are.
Who thinks I should return to Nostr?
nostr:npub1hyqrsvl6hle8r5rc9cpshesm0mpcee75tgde4p5lhke5h83dyqqqdwk7cp do you think the AI will save us from ourselves?
🤷🏻♂️
... like the TikTok of microblogging.
Tried Threads. If I'm being honest with myself, I think it might be widely successful. But not necessarily because I think it's good. I think it's because they've clearly chosen to go all-in on algorithmic dopamine hits, and engagement farming to maximize addiction. Which, let's be honest, is bad for humanity and democracy.
I know nostr:npub1hyqrsvl6hle8r5rc9cpshesm0mpcee75tgde4p5lhke5h83dyqqqdwk7cp is going to have fun with this one. 😂 nostr:note1upjt573dcsht5ky7t4waetk0vyzyua69h45kma62cxzke2qpujzsea4rpc
The thing about aliens is: it's never aliens.
New track drop by my daughter, Autumn! https://tidal.com/track/299386433
A lot of armchair economists in bitcoin seem to think that there's such a thing as a true equilibrium price (my words) for things. Especially US Dollars and Bitcoin, and that that this price differs greatly from the marginal price, as a result of naïveté of participants in the market. This allows you to deduce the inevitability of future price trends with high certainty. Personally, I think this is nonsense. The marginal price is all that exists. Period.
I think this is true of *all* exchange markets, without exception.
Lot's of exciting things happening in Lagos! 
I have officially confirmed that Chicken Republic in Nigeria is way better than KFC. 
Hi Nigeria. 👋
I prefer to think of it as a rolling cauldron of incoherent normative ethical claims.
Well, the politics of virtue is not terribly logical. It’s filled with arbitrary lines being drawn all over.
Hey, it’s my first blog post in like 20 years. I feel like I have stuff to say. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/the-politics-of-virtue-versus-the-politics-of-consequence-dfbe6932ab83