Month: October 2019

Spandrall put out this interesting post THOSE WHO SHOW UP about the risks posed by falling birthrates, and possible solutions and outcomes. That was 2013 though, and a lot has happened since. Most of it bad. Some good things too: Russia grew a spine, annexed Crimea and kicked USG out of Syria. China grew two… Continue reading The Population Crisis

Many pundits online, either on the dissident-left or the dissent-right, but also many centrists and moderates, too, predict increasing upheaval and societal change. They predict that Trump, the rise of populism and increasingly partisan politics, or the rejection of globalization, will change the status quo and fundamentally restructure society. Francis Fukuyama is frequently invoked, as… Continue reading Investing for the ‘Singularity’

A few days ago I discussed how Trump’s prediction market impeachment odds are too high. I still stand by my prediction that Trump will not be impeached in his first term. But there are factors working against this: The dems may decide to try to impeach Trump anyway as a sort of symbolic gesture and… Continue reading Calculating Trump impeachment odds for prediction markets, part 2

Tesla stock surged 20% on yet another quarter of huge earnings and posting a surprise profit of $342 million (versus expected losses of $256.9 million). This just goes to show how media narratives are often wrong. Everyone for the past 2 years has been saying Tesla is dying due to losses and Elon Musk’s supposed… Continue reading Tesla’s huge quarter…right again

ECONOMY Ray Dalio says the world is in a ‘great sag’ and echoes the 1930s Hedge fund titan Ray Dalio believes it is too late for central banks to reverse a global slowdown.   Dalio is warning that current conditions remind him of the Depression-era environment.   He says the world is currently entering a… Continue reading Ray Dalio wrong about ‘great sag’

Predictit.org gives 73% odds of Trump being impeached by the end of his first term: And a whopping 46% chance by the end of 2019: Both these odds seem way too high, especially the second. The first contract implies that by taking the ‘no’ side of the bet you can quadruple your money after just… Continue reading Trump impeachment odds are way over-inflated

In America’s hyper-efficient, hyper-capitalistic, results-orientated economy and society that is increasingly dominated by capital and wealth, individual opinions matter less and less. Moralizing is on the way out. No one cares what you think about things. That is not to say that there isn’t a distinction between right and wrong or that morality doesn’t exist–there… Continue reading Post-opinion era

I found this passage (for some reason I am unable to find the original link to his blog) attributed to Scott regarding dissent, to be interesting: Western society has been moving gradually further to the left for the past several hundred years at least. It went from divine right of kings to constutitional monarchy to… Continue reading What does it mean to be iconoclastic?

The S&P 500 keeps going up. Had you bought in early 2018, when Trump initiated his tariffs, you still would have still made 15% in spite of all the dire media pronouncements. The media and pundits are pushing this narrative that society is on the brink of economic and social collapse due to politics, Trump,… Continue reading Using the interest rate cycle to predict the market

On Saturday Trump announced yet another trade deal with China (for some reason these deals always happen on Saturday). But I thought I must have been hallucinating because I was sure that Trump announced such a deal at least a few weeks ago. No, my suspicions were correct. It seems Trump announces this same sort… Continue reading The trade deal merry-go-round