yoused @yoused@talkedabout.social

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin My hero was the mechanic on Black Sheep Squadron who was always throwing down his cigar saying “fix it yourself, college boy”. I read a lot (Sci-Am is great) but have never been properly educated. I just pay attention and see how things really work. And there is a whole lot of not-pretty.

@annecavicchi Because, men are quite frankly afraid of the power that women can have over them if they are afforded that freedom. They want women kept well under control, and imagine that if women had real power, they would treat men the same way that men have treated women down through the ages. I have no idea what a society run by women would look like, but I doubt it would be what most of us imagine.

@annecavicchi It may be troubling that the small successes of feminism has made us blind to how it used to be. We only see this world and cannot connect to the time of Margaret Sanger, or Rosie, and we simply cannot believe that the Reactionaries want to take us back to a place we cannot even comprehend.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Perhaps you cybertraders can be designed to not be as myopic as human traders, look at the vectors that drive an instrument and pursue an investment strategy that is optimal all the way around. But you would have to design out the natural sociopathic tendencies that most traders seem to fall victim to.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin I understand the basic econ sense of utility. But it is just like a shovel: it has utility when you need to move dirt and when you need to kill someone (actually convergent utility there). How the information is used does matter. And if the effect of targeting increased profits has side effects that damage the underlying elements, then you have just boned yourself.

@LaNaehForaday Yes, but the same chart for Ms Harris also shows her in minus territory. A little less minus, but still minus.

However, this is not Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight and they are not using his algorithms, so do not put too much faith in their stats.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Talk of signals and stuff sounds awfully Austrian School to me. Yes, instruments and their prices provide information. The problem is, the information is related to the real world, but the nature of the market tends to obfuscate that. Investors look at the capital and spend very little time looking at all the related vectors.

@stargazersmith @Eve How about if you flip the old Will Rogers quote to “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Republican.”

@dougfir @ai6yr Culverts? Have you ever been to Moab? Arches up to the right, the plateau of Canyonlands to the left, the town is in a freakin’ ditch. Surprising it does not flood more.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There are companies with data centers devoted to trading large blocks of instruments in millisecond time frames in an effort to extract profit in tiny changes in value. What value does that provide? Sorry, but I think one of the big problems with modern capitalism is the tunnel vision and only this thing matters, I do not need to look at anything else.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin except that the vast majority of stock/instrument trading does not involve actual investment but just passing notes around. The money goes from one investor to another, not to the company itself. There is a tradable instrument called ^VIX that lets you bet on the net price volatility of the market itself.

@zkrisher @piatpod 12 years ago, and I think they deleted that part after getting bad pub over it.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin There are really only two ways you can own something: by some sort of title document recognized by the government or by having the biggest and best guns to protect you from the people who want to take something away from you.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin The crucial aspect to any form of capitalism is support from the underlying system. The libertarians who advocate for minimal government obfuscate in the inextricable role the government plays in making the system work.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin Then we have this whole raft of shit with the Stock Markets, where people make money on the change in perceived value of a business. Instrument trading and profiting on value shifts does not look to me like it contributes anything worthwhile to anyone other than the trader who profits. It is a big casino.

@cykonot @Huntn00 @MichaelTBacon @mapachin We have immortal corporations in contemporary capitalism, but is that a defining quality or just what we call it right now? My mother was fond of saying that corporations were originally temporary collectives formed to accomplish a thing (e.g., build a dam) and then dissolved, which seems to sound preferable to what has been imposed on us.