Inflation is either staying elevated or slightly increasing. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/pce-inflation-report-july-20...

The jobs reports are bad, yes, but cutting interest rates is not gonna have any effect there. Companies are actively trimming their workforce or not hiring for macroeconomic/policy reasons like tariffs that have nothing to do with the FED. There simply isn't any meaningful connection between unemployment and rate cuts. No executive is sitting around waiting for a .25 rate cut to hire a bunch of employees when all the other economic data is flashing red. Hell, even the FED themselves say this and point out correctly that lowering interest rates to "help" employment doesn't work especially in an elevated inflation environment.

"When discussing this trade-off, it is important to emphasize that, since the stagflation of 1970s, the consensus position among macroeconomists is that loose monetary policy can easily lead to high inflation without persistent gains in lowering unemployment rates. Therefore, a guiding principle of post-1980s monetary policy has been that it should not be used to try to achieve permanently higher employment." https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_b...

But of course, we have already passed through the authoritarian looking glass and the Trump regime doesn't even bother to lie badly about their justifications at this point. Trump wants lower interest rates therefore they should happen. Anything else is noise.

But now tech is the establishment and has all the power so that story isn't useful anymore. Instead they are justified in their control because they were so successful and are so wealthy. To fight against them is to fight against "progress" and "the market has decided".

Put another way: "The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny"

It's the great irony of our tech elite. They all believe they are independent thinkers who are changing the world but like any clique they follow what the group says and found another Sass App or become another VC investor.

Now, post Covid I see a hard pivot towards Christianity, but importantly, "traditional" forms of it. Protestant sects are being ignored and Catholicism, or if you are really intense, Orthodoxy seems to be in vogue.

This line in particular stuck out to me: "What’s more, in line with Georgist theory, the tax was supposed to credit owners for improvements they made to the land"

I think we're talking about different LVT systems here. The current property tax system takes land improvements into account (and charges you more for them). My understanding is that LVT should be a flat tax on acreage (different tax rates for different areas of course) that doesn't care about what is on it.

This article is attacking a very different LVT than the one I know.

As game developers and publishers have consolidated into mega corps this line just isn't true anymore. You need a billion dollar game to move the corporate needle these days. It's a very similar dynamic to what has happened in Hollywood. All the mid-budget projects are being squeezed out and you either go very low budget/indie or you go huge budget and swing for the fences. There is no career reward in the current corporate marketplace for modest wins.

I went to an unremarkable state school where I had classes with a hundred other students. Even my senior level courses were about a dozen to one teacher ratio. I still remember my professors and specific moments during their lectures when I was able to ask a follow up question which triggered that Eureka moment we're all looking for.

I wish I was able to just sit down with a textbook and learn a meaty subject but that doesn't work for me. I, and many others, need (or at least it helps a lot) the academic structure to learn effectively. The academic calendar, lectures, textbooks, homework, and other students you can study with all work in concert. The way you're dismissing all of that strikes me as really myopic.

There are many examination authorities but employers basically ignore all of them and have gone all in on college degrees as the signal for employment. In that way colleges are gatekeepers to higher level jobs, but they're hardly the only actor here.

I really wish there was a magic bullet to the obesity epidemic. An ingredient we can just stop using, or a diet that will fix all our problems - but that's just not realistic. The evidence points to this being a messy multivariate problem that extends beyond just diet to things like lifestyle, poverty, and cultural norms.

It's so much easier to believe that "with this one trick" we can fix everything but when has that ever worked? Thanks to the author for writing this up.

In isolation each rule is defensible (to varying degrees), but when we step back and look at the whole, we've created a regulatory environment that is hostile to development at every step. It's death by a thousand cuts. Big government through a massive collection of tiny rules.

Therein lies the real problem and why this keeps getting worse. There's no political will (probably because there's no political reward) in doing that sort of systemic analysis of the rules. What is actually essential? What is nice to have? What would be great but increases costs so much that it's not worth it?

Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.

It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.

"this is an excellent deep analysis that I credit the show for."

Wow, thanks John, I'm glad I have the show to credit for doing some basic analysis.

Just this morning I woke up to it feeling chilly. The thermostat said it was 65 and the programmed temp was 68 but it wasn't running. When the furnace runs it works great but something is off with the controller system. I need to call the heating people....

It's pretty clear to me that any online forum needs good moderation to be healthy long term. HN has been good about this with a strong community providing upvotes/downvotes and a moderation team that seems pretty light handed but not afraid to say no when necessary. Please keep doing what you're doing.

My experience is the same as yours OP. Hiring just isn't treated with any respect and your career will probably suffer if you take it on.

Now that i've finished complaining... I think there's a good reason for this behavior. In the US, where most of our posters are from, you can fire people for any or no reason. It's true that you can put in more effort at the beginning of the hiring process to find better candidates but you won't really know if they are a good fit until they work there for a while. You can have great candidates on paper who don't work out in person, and terrible candidates on paper who are great on the job. This randomness to the hiring process means that people don't treat it as a real discipline. And if you do hire a dud, you just fire them. Is it really any wonder that most recruiting processes are so callous?