Individuals, corporations, states... emergency funds saved at any level get blown through in months. Stock buybacks are a red herring. Distasteful self-dealing perhaps by some views but if that hadn’t been the norm the outcome would have been no different.
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Savings in financial form essentially embodying expectations information just are not a good savings instrument for wealth capable of hedging against uncertainty. Uncertainty destroys models. The only place to store wealth surpluses is in capability surpluses.
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What was bad about stock buybacks was they overvalued production flows in current reality rather than capability stocks in adjacent realities. That’s the pernicious part about them. What if that value had been stored in empty, underutilized hospitals or warehouses ventilators?
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You know the only area where we understand this? Military capability. If you want peace prepare for war, if you want war prepare for peace. We don’t see piles of barely-used tanks and missiles as unproductive capital. We see it as adjacent possible potentiality.
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Ultimately this insanity is due to optimizer mentality. Fat in the system, underutilized resources for alt adjacent realities. That’s mediocritizaton thinking.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/04/15/mediocratopia-4/ …
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Insurance is NOT the right way to think about the adjacent possible. Insurance can at best pick out a countably infinite set of scenarios to hedge against. The adjacent possible is a continuum of normal accidents waiting to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents …
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I’m getting seriously mad at optimizer theology. That’s what got us into this mess. Specific ideas like lean/fat don’t kill. Mathematical techniques like optimization don’t kill. What kills is idiots fetishizing what they know over what they don’t. Optimizers incapable of doubt.
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Doubt is not uncertainty or risk Doubt is not a probability estimate < 1 Doubt is not ambiguity Doubt is the capacity for living with a consciousness of true ignorance without anxiously covering it up Optimizer theology as opposed to the math of it is about removing doubt
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As a friend said earlier today, grrr go brrr
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted |pneumatik|
Yep https://twitter.com/pneumatik/status/1243034626748080130?s=21 …https://twitter.com/pneumatik/status/1243034626748080130 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
|pneumatik| @pneumatikReplying to @pneumatik @vgrIt really summarizes the difference between business and government. Businesses won’t build up stock unless it’s part of some plan to make $$. Government has to do it if it needs to be done. It’s why running government at a high level like a business produces failed government.2 replies 1 retweet 8 likesShow this thread
Venkatesh Rao Retweeted |pneumatik|
I missed this. This is the sort of flaming idiocy that makes the very sight of trump grate for me. I can tolerate quite a lot of evil if it is smart and quite a lot of stupid if it is kind. It is evil stupid that pisses me off. https://twitter.com/pneumatik/status/1243033644819550209?s=21 …https://twitter.com/pneumatik/status/1243033644819550209 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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The flip side is that we don’t allow for serendipity (surprising luck) in the adjacent possible any more than we allow for zemblanity (unsurprising bad luck). Insufficient capacity for doubt cuts both ways. Optimizers don’t invent crazy futures. Only fine tune the present.
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