Great (and impressive) video by NYT on liberal hypocrisy and how it is contributing to worsening inequality (and other social problems) in blue states.
I mostly agree with it, although I think the way tax rates are presented is misleading/false. I would also argue it's not so much a case of liberals not "living their values" as it is not living their *declared* values. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.
Humans are all fundamentally selfish with respect to themselves and their kin and there is no getting around that. Red states have less of these issues as conservatives are more realistic/honest about human nature & gear their policies accordingly.
I.e. to accommodate the fundamentally self-interested nature of humans (i.e. focusing on incentives rather than bold ideals). It makes conservative policies easy to bash by sloganeering politicians, but economic history shows they result in better outcomes (and less hypocrisy).
I've said in the past the left is fundamentally a story of good intentions and bad outcomes. However it's actually a bit worse than that, as the intentions are actually not so wholesome - particularly from leftie politicians. And fundamental dishonesty manifests in hypocrisy.
I have a strict line on hypocrisy - I do not believe there to be *any* excuse for hypocrisy, *ever*, and believe it to be the ugliest of ugly human behaviour. I had a debate with a liberal once who argued everyone is hypocritical. I was stunned. Perhaps in his political circle...
I was genuinely appalled by his matter-of-fact belief that it's natural/normal, and indeed *ok*, to say one thing but act differently with respect to one's own interests. This deep-rooted comfort with fundamental dishonesty is one reason why social problems continue to grow.
Good policy that legitimately solves problems (instead of just wins votes) requires a fundamental recognition of human behaviour, and the tailoring of incentives to drive desired outcomes. Everything else is just politicians pursuing selfish interests at everyone else's expense.
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This whistleblower report on serious inadequacies in the Pfizer vaccine trials is big news. The allegations are credible. The British Medical Journal has published the paper & given the huge implications, would not have done so w/out serious consideration
The whistleblower has a long and respected career in trial quality control, and the article noted they have provided the BMJ with "dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails". The amount of such evidence for BMJ to publish must be very substantial.
Pfizer outsourced the trial to contract research organization Ventavia, who are alleged to have engaged in questionable conduct. The typical commercial conflicts apply here (Ventavia has repeat business with Pfizer) - i.e. wanting to give the client the trial outcome they wanted.
We would like to acknowledge a long list of conquering tribes that forcibly dispossessed this land's from its prior inhabitants. Except the original peoples (who dispossessed wildlife) as their descendants are all dead now so who cares.
This is possibly the most cringe thing I have ever seen in corporate America. It's like (nay is) a cult - it's creepy.
No one doubts past injustices occur. But feeling the necessity to add this preamble to a corporate presentation is just totally messed up.
And clothing - WTF?
Are we going to get to the point that before you can say anything of substance relevant to the issue at hand, you need to give a 10 minute speech on all the social justice ills of the world & disadvantages minority communities merely to avoid the appearance of being racist?
Been an unusual number of such events recently, as well as reports of unusual surges in hospitalizations and children suffering sudden abnormal fatal cardiac events.
It’s not proven, but reasonably probable that undiagnosed vaccine injuries are the underlying cause.
Zero Hedge recently published an article on usual surge in hospitalizations and child cardiac events. Other countries are reporting similar occurrences.
It is unfortunate no research or systematic analysis of vaccine injuries is being done/reported.
Marc Andreessen made an interesting observation in a podcast a while back - covid-induced remote schooling had resulted in parents overhearing what their kids were being taught (ie extremist hard-left CRT ideology), and were shocked. This may be contributing to election outcomes.
CRT is a fundamentally racist doctrine that teaches kids to judge people by their skin colour; feel victimized & resent "oppressor" races. It's exactly the type of thinking/ideology that has lead to recurring & devastating ethnic-based civil wars in Africa over the past century.
It also teaches kids exactly the wrong values they need to succeed in life: to feel powerless/oppressed and a victim; that all their problems in life are other peoples' fault (of a certain skin colour); that personal effort is futile because the system is rigged against them.
Yikes - it takes a fairly extraordinary degree of incompetence & epic failure of the business model for Zillow to expect to lose 5-7% on iBuying houses it bought to flip in a raging property bull market (1/2).
*AI cannot predict markets (& never will).
*iBuyers are competing with amateur property investors/flippers with skin in the game & who input unpriced labour (search, renovation, etc) & hence have lower costs. (2/3)
The iBuying biz model was always virtually guaranteed to blow up at some point due to asymmetry. In strong market you sell at small capped gain. In a down market, market goes no bid & you're stuck w inventory you can't sell. But they even managed to blow up in a bull market!
Rivian is set to IPO at a market capitalization roughly on par with BMW. Rivian has produced a total of *56* RT1 vehicles (not a typo; no missing k), and delivered only 42 (mostly to company employees).
BMW group produces about 2.5m vehicles a year. It also has a large captive financing company and is sitting on >10bn euro of excess net cash. It has cumulatively invested tens of billions of euro in EV tech & will have a fully electrified fleet in coming years.
Every major auto company is investing billions in EVs and will have highly competitive EV line ups with scaled manufacturing in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, billions of dollars are being raised for dozens of of EV startups, from the US to China.