Hacker News: antwerpz

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:50:29 +0000

I don't think you read the whole of my comment.

Amazon aggressively reinvests its extremely large and stable earnings into the business which Bezos owns a large part of and controls actively. Both he and his ex-wife have realized extremely important liquid wealth by selling a significant part of their stakes. How would you measure his wealth?

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:47:29 +0000

You seem to be making a political point about the Netherlands which is completely separate from the fact which I presented, and which you incorrectly contradicted.

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 11:34:33 +0000

NL has a far, far smaller share of North Sea Oil than Norway (and 3 times the population)

The UK has a similar share (actually slightly smaller) with over 10 times the population.

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 11:33:42 +0000

You're confused about how GDP is calculated.

The GDP difference between the US and Europe is fifty times larger than one rich person's own income? This isn't actually a great argument dismissing the suggestion that US wealth is extremely concentrated.

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 10:43:37 +0000

To be fair, there is not really any other country to compare them to on this. No country which was already rich, stable, democratic and well-educated has ever received such a large resources windfall as Norway did from North Sea Oil.

New comment by antwerpz in "The puzzle of Europe"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 10:41:02 +0000

GDP measures income, not spending. If someone outside the US spends money on Amazon, and a portion of that money becomes part of Bezos' income, that portion is counted in the US GDP, not the foreign country's GDP.

His income last year was around $60 billion, or $200 per person (of any age) in the United States. While last year was exceptional, all of his wealth ($600 per capita) was income in the last 20 or so years, most of it in the last 10. And his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott kept 25% of their combined wealth when they separated.

So it's simply not true that his contribution to GDP looks completely trivial even when compared to total US GDP.

New comment by antwerpz in "UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)"

antwerpz — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 10:27:27 +0000

Losing UC as a subscriber is a huge own goal for Elsevier. Researchers will get used to: 1. always posting preprints, 2. always looking for preprints first, 3. using scihub to get older papers, 4. citing and sharing material using links to preprints or scihub by default.

They will spread these habits to their students and colleagues and as they move between institutions. UC is huge across all the constituent colleges and many parts of it are extremely prestigious, so UC grad students are the sort of people who will often end up as professors in other institutions.

New comment by antwerpz in "“User engagement” is code for “addiction”"

antwerpz — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 11:06:44 +0000

Abstinence-only education fails for sex, because a) sex is a built-in human drive b) sex is beneficial in lots of ways, and c) there are lots of ways to have sex safely.

Abstinence as a strategy is not in and of itself flawed. The way lots of people cope with the dangers of heroin is simply by never trying it their whole life. Lots of addicts adopt a strategy of permanent abstinence, forever.

Some things are very harmful. I don't think we all need to try all to them, just to make sure.