Dad, business owner, investor, engineer. I debate ideas to achieve a higher level of understanding. If I am wrong, roast me.
Queensland, Australia
Joined October 2022
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Lead like an Engineer retweeted
One of the reasons I don’t like socialism is public bathrooms.
A public bathroom is about as basic a shared resource as you can get. Everyone gets to use it, and everyone is expected to show a little consideration for the next person. The rules aren’t particularly complicated.
And yet, a shocking number of adults can’t even manage to throw their paper towels in the trash. Some will pee all over a toilet seat and leave it for the next person. And the next person, who didn’t make the mess, certainly isn’t going to clean it up either.
Now imagine trusting these same people to collectively manage an entire economy.
We can’t even get everyone to agree that cleaning up their own pee is a personal responsibility, but somehow we’re supposed to believe everyone will become hardworking, responsible, and considerate when we’re sharing the fruits of each other’s labor.
Now, compare your average public restroom to a Buc-ee’s bathroom.
Buc-ee’s figured something out. Clean bathrooms attract customers. Customers spend money. So the company has a financial incentive to keep those bathrooms spotless. They hire people to maintain them, hold employees accountable, and compete for your business.
And people will literally plan their road trips around stopping there.
That’s capitalism. Someone recognized a problem, found a way to solve it, and made money because people valued the result.
Of course, not everyone contributes equally to society. Some people work harder, make better decisions, and take more responsibility. Others seem perfectly content making life more difficult for everyone around them.
I believe people should have the freedom to live however they choose. I also believe in helping people who genuinely need it.
But I have a hard time accepting an economic philosophy that expects me to trust everyone to act in the collective interest when some people can’t be bothered to clean up after themselves.
Buc-ee’s figured out how to get people to willingly pay for a better experience.
Socialism wants me to believe the people leaving paper towels on the floor will suddenly become responsible stewards of everyone else’s resources.
I’m going with the beaver.
Lead like an Engineer retweeted
Competition drives cost down.
Free stuff by the government drives up demand without increasing supply. Government then prints money, which drives up costs again through inflation.
Lead like an Engineer retweeted
Being self-employed for 18 years has made me completely unemployable. Not because I can't do the job. Because I can't sit in a room full of adults pretending something stupid makes sense.
Lead like an Engineer retweeted
Gagging the Productivity Commission from examining @AlboMP ’s capital gains tax hike says everything.
They know the world’s highest effective tax on investing will smash productivity, the single biggest driver of living standards, and punish the everyday Australians who put money into businesses, shares and growth.
Suppressing the truth won’t make bad policy better. It just confirms they prefer politics over evidence.
It’s time we must change this tax. We need to to @GetAheadAus
The government gagging PC from looking at its 80% increase in the tax on investing tells you: they know it’s bad policy that destroys productivity; but they prefer playing politics to good policy. Suppress the truth. It won’t work.👇
xitter.cf/DerekFranc90653/status…
Lead like an Engineer retweeted
Shared postI told you 2 weeks into the lockdowns that we were going to ignite the inflation cycle and the war cycle. Obviously that has come to pass.
Liberals are celebrating the mid term results, but I'm going to tell you what the long term consequences are going to be, and like the lock downs they aren't good.
First they are going to create chaos in the government starting next year. This will ultimately crash the economy and the world will roll over into the next recession. The war cycle will intensify and it's very likely the Ukraine war will start to engulf all of Europe as the EU is in the initial stage of financial collapse due to its years of socialist and insane climate focused energy policies.
When governments can't solve the problems (that they created) they blame someone else and start a war. Kind of like the gladiators of Rome to distract people from the decay that is eating away at the society. We are stating to see riots across Europe now as this begins.
This will end up with boots on the ground in Ukraine, starting with Nato but possibly also US troops at some point.
As the recession accelerates Democrats will begin to turn toward socialism. Unfortunately we will not learn the lesson from Europe and will make the same mistake. Socialism only works (temporarily) when a country has a large reserve to draw one. The US is 40 trillion in debt. That means we will have to print trillions and trillions of new dollars to pay for the "free" socialist policies.
As you may know printing a lot of money causes inflation. Again politicians learned nothing from the Inflation reduction act that printed 4 trillion dollars and ignited the inflation cycle. The next time we won't have any choice. If you want to give away free stuff to buy votes someone has to pay. You either crush the entire population with mind numbingly high taxes (you can't get nearly enough from a few rich people, everyone will have to pay)....or, you crank up the printing press and print the dollars out of thin air.
Result? More inflation and higher interest payments on the debt. A vicious circle of printing and higher and higher inflation mixed with periods of stagnation and recession when the inflation triggers cascading recessions.
The problem with socialism is as Margaret Thatcher said: Eventually you run out of other people's money.
I warned in 2020 that the idiotic policies we implemented for COVID would end up killing many times more people than COVID ever would. It has already begun. A million or so have already died in Ukraine and the middle east. Civil unrest is starting to accelerate as hard times come to a fat and complacent world that is in no way prepared to deal years of crisis.
Energy is collected as solar in the (mostly) visible spectrum and heat is ejected (mostly) in the infrared spectrum.
Ejecting heat by heating up passing air molecules doesn't work in space.
Look man, I’m not going to argue with someone who is in the deal/knows these folks personally, but what he describes in paragraph 7: "black body radiation ejects heat into space" - runs head first into Stefan-Boltzmann/thermodynamic challenges that you can't waive away.
The problem is that radiative cooling is 90% to 99% WORSE at dumping heat than convective or liquid cooling. Vacuum isn't cold; it's a giant thermos that refuses to accept heat. You can't just say, "please, heat, go away into the vast emptiness of space." It sticks around... for a very long time! And it leaves slowly!
NOW, I have watched SO MANY videos trying to understand why very smart folks think this isn't a showstopper (for example, this one: youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1…), because when this many people line up behind an idea, I have to assume I'm missing something.
Just from a basic physics perspective, to cool a single modern AI rack, you'd need a tennis court (not an exaggeration) of radiators in orbit, and a full football field of plumbing pumping fluid just to hit 2 megawatts (about two racks). Which can be done! But it seems VERY, VERY hard! And WILDLY inefficient!
PLEASE, I genuinely want to be smarter about this — SOMEONE point me to the math I'm missing!
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Greed loves a recession!
Especially if you can ratchet your income.
In other words, the top 1% figured how to socialize the losses and privatize the profits.
The bottom 50% get cleaned out and the top 1% get cream.
There really needs to be acceptance that recessions are natural parts of the economic cycle and can play an important role in the allocation of capital and labour.
Which actually improves productivity, growth and living standards on a long term time horizon.
But at the same time there also needs to be acknowledgement that we have a monetary policy system built on unemployed people.
And that merely by existing in that role, these people are playing an important part in our society and economy, and they deserve better than what they get.
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Does anyone else feel like we are in the economic calm before a storm?
I'm tempted to place a wager that WW3 starts tomorrow.
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10 years ago I bought a 2nd hand Toyota Hiace for $33k. New was $40k
Today I'm selling it for $35k. New is $80k.
I've lost $30k purchase power but will pay CG tax on the "profit"
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Lead like an Engineer retweeted
This compares cumulative growth in GDP per capita in the first 4 years of federal governments since records began.
The growth path has been deteriorating since Rudd, but Albanese is particularly bad.
We have gone less than nowhere.
Imagine you spent $100 growing 100 watermelons. Now you need to pick and load them to sell wholesale.
Option A: Gov helps you load them for free* but drops & breaks 30%
Option B: Private contractor charges you $20 and breaks none.
Which are you choosing?
The pattern is unmistakable.
Every time the government tries to spend to make something more affordable, it just raises the cost.
Look at this chart every time a socialist promises they will spend their way out of our affordability crisis.
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Lead like an Engineer retweeted
This is @AlboMP in 2020 commenting on then Coalition Minister Bridget McKenzie who admitted to breaching ministerial standards by failing to formally declare her membership at the Wangaratta Trap and Gun Club, which received $36,000 in federal funding through a Sports Funding program. She resigned.
Thanks to @rovingallround for the clip.