Jeff Matthews
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Posts posted by Jeff Matthews
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The creators' intent was to decentralize control over the currency (or rather, provide an alternative centralization) to achieve greater stability than the governments' fiat money. Crypto has proven to be anything other than stable.
Also, what's the deal with FTX? I understand Sam Bankman-Fried speculated with his depositors' coin and that many depositors are holding empty bags, but why does this result in the value of the coin plummeting? If the same thing happened with US currency, a dollar would still be worth a dollar, and people would want it just as much.
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11 hours ago, oldtimer said:
Can Corporate Greed Explain Historic Inflation? Lawmaker Says She Found The Answer (msn.com)
Check it out. While your statement can be true, in the current case, it isn't.
Good article, but giving more money to workers is causing rising prices, especially in this case.
If your article's premise is correct that corporate greed (increased profit margins, rather than merely passing on cost increases) explains inflation, all this tells us is prices are rising and labor can afford them.
If labor cannot afford to pay, prices should begin to fall, and margins should begin to be squeezed.
(I think this is correct logic, but it is complicated.)
I don't think you can fight inflation by feeding the demand side of the equation.
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I like Zelle. No transaction fees.
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49 minutes ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
Those who waged wars of unspeakable gruesome death and destruction of the common man. Those who enslaved, exploited, and reduced the common man to mere " human energy resource." Those who turned the Garden of Eden into the Love Canal for a few more shiny beads. Those who wantonly destroyed much of the Animal Kingdom for amusement, trophies, and an outlet for their cruelty.
Those who cured Polio. Those who ended child labor. Those who developed oversight of the workplace to promote employee safety. Those who ended the Holocaust.
Is the world through your eyes really as dark as you portray?
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14 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
The world had genius long before the Internet. I don't buy the argument that in general people are getting smarter because of the Internet.
They are, whether you buy it or not.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/10/28/4-the-internet-will-continue-to-make-life-better/
In the legal profession, alone, the Internet has enabled far greater efficiency and access to knowledge. Non lawyers can Google legal topics and become educated in legal matters in an instant. Professionals have legal research and practice management tools that allow them to provide value 10 times faster and at 1/10 the cost. This has leveled the playing field between sole practitioners and big law firms. The latter no longer have massive advantages due to combining resources of 10's and 100's of lawyers to achieve economies of scale.
Basically, the Internet has "democratized" the legal profession and has eroded monopolistic access to knowledge and productivity. In many cases, it has altogether obviated the need to hire attorneys in the first place. It's not perfect, but the imperfections result from misuse and other human frailties.
How many of your past customers have benefited by your ability to provide them with cheap and fast technical support over the Internet? Can't you remember the days when people had to hurry through long distance phone calls due to the cost, alone? These inefficiencies were impediments to progress. The Internet prevents the need for them to box up and return products for repair and instead, allows you to quickly educate them and allow them a meaningful opportunity to solve their problems incredibly more easily.
"Multitasking" was hardly a concept in the pre-internet era. I'm not going to bother to argue the benefits of multitasking.
Sure, you can find a million things to complain about. That life. Big deal! To extend the reasoning of your quote, I will reply, "The world had idiots long before the Internet, too. Nowadays, we have a lot more geniuses."
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There's too much worry about what everyone else wants. If they want more cheese on their fries, learn to make peace with that. There's still plenty of safe space left in the world if you just can't handle different wants and opinions. You can even exit the grid and be ignorantly blissful.
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9 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
Then after a little more time I discovered an amazing benefit of having a stranded OS --- they stopped comandeering my machine for those weekly hour long updates just when I needed to get on and print something in a hurry!
If you're waiting that long, your hardware is slow. With a late, high-end laptop, updates are usually less than a few minutes. I don't think they're weekly anymore, either. If they are, it just proves there fast enough to when I don't notice or pay attention.
A really good machine goes for about $1,500. Some people might demand more.
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16 hours ago, Marvel said:
The internet is more like a living/breathing public library (I still like libraries).
Juxtaposed to Mark's criticism, I'd say the Internet is life, itself. Live it. Do good with it.
You are given the power to help millions of people with a fraction of the effort it would have taken 50 years ago.
Of course, there are also the devils out there, using it as a tool to exploit more efficiently than they could before.
Would you rather cede your ability to help people because of the devils? If so, the devils win.
God puts it out there. What you do from there is who you are.
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12 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
The Internet has had about 30 years to "make some big improvement for humanity" and I don't see it
That's a surprising belief.
Hey, Google. Restaurants near me.
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13 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
If I were able to plan my own last words, I'd probably choose something like this: "I wish I had seen the folly of it all when I wass 20 instead of 70."
Wishing for 50 more years of cynicism?
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I don't pretend to know the answer as to why they can't just let the cure for high prices be high prices.
Why do they have to destroy people to save them?
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On 9/24/2022 at 12:35 PM, RealMarkDeneen said:
A far more equitable method of reducing inflation is raising wages, and increasing the share of the economic pie for labor
Giving workers more money increases inflation. Stimulus, anyone?
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On 9/24/2022 at 10:04 AM, RealMarkDeneen said:
The only group that is being harmed with higher FED rates is wage-earners.
That's not correct. Get ready to see how rising interest rates will bankrupt large companies and cause many others to stop paying those dividends you grew to count on.
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11 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:
There is a case to be made that the Internet is ungovernable.
Yes! That brainwashing is A-Ok! Would you like some more sugar with your baseball?
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The Internet has exponentially accelerated the spread of information and knowledge. I couldn't imagine losing all of this.
One person's brainwashing is another's entertainment, knowledge, etc. $1,000's for hi fi, but baseball is stupid?
If we put you in charge of the rules of the Internet, you'd just be the next arbiter in line.
It's ironic that the establishment crowd and the anti-establishment crowd seem to be equally paranoid of misuse and abuse of the Internet. Maybe it's a healthy balance.
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At least proponents agree that it has value because people ascribe value to it. The same argument is s made concerning gold.
So, the real question is which asset is more likely to suffer loss of faith?
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The allure of crypto was that it was not regulated. Now, we are seeing what happens without regulation.
I wonder if Congress will regulate it, thereby validating its investment value, or let it die a natural death.
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On 6/19/2022 at 5:37 AM, SWL said:
I don't crave sweets anymore and I'm surprised how easy it's been. Sugar/carbs are like a drug. The more you consume the more you want/need it. Get off that crap and find out how easy it is STAY off it.
This has been my experience. I gave it up before and stuck to whole foods. It worked. A few years later, I started indulging again, and there's no doubt that for me, refined sugar is great while you gulp it down, but it's so unsatisfying, that I gorge on it.
I'm going back to whole foods. A couple of pieces of fruit beats a bag of chips. Fewer calories and more satisfying.
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Buy?
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Just chilling now... The lyrics in this song are deep.