I found out about my Tinnitus the most embarrassing way - my wife and we were admiring the relative quietness of the place we were living in, until I freaking
blurted out - "but for vibrations of the universe"......
Ever since, it becomes worse, when I read a posting on HN about the subject and it slowly fades away into the background of tolerability. I now view the vibrations as Universe's gift to me :)
Readit Newsthrowaway161718 commented on Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus? · Posted by u/actinium226
throwaway161718 commented on Stolen van Gogh painting returned in an IKEA bag smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
I was hoping to see the IKEA bag as well when I clicked on the link. Slightly disappointed :(
The problem started long time ago when the central government took most of the tax revenue from the local provincial and city governments leaving them without funding to operate. As a compensation, they were granted the authority to sell the land use right of their lands. Land is never privately owned in China. What is sold is the right to use the land for a period of time.
Since the state owned all the lands and the local governments as the sole supplier of lands, they became a monopoly in land sale. As with any monopoly especially a unchecked one they pushed to raise prices all the times to gain maximum profit. The regulation and policies of the governments aimed to build more and to keep raising the property price years after years because that's what brought in the money.
It has become unsustainable as people couldn't afford the high price. There're a glut of houses and sales have been slow yet the governments have prohibited the lowering of the price as lower housing price means lower tax revenue. There're some cases when developers lowered the price and got hit with huge fine and jailed.
High price and slow sales mean the developers like Evergrande cannot get rid of the inventory to get the capital back to fund further development. They have already sold the not-yet-built houses for the next phase but have run out of money. Couple years back the central government had forced the banks to put in severe limits on loans to the developers. They turned to shadow banks like investment fund trusts to raise money but those are blowing up just now, defaulting on bond payments. They have no money to finish the projects. They owe huge amount of debts, owe huge amount of unpaid taxes, and owe the unbuilt houses to customers. They should have been bankrupted a long time ago but the governments won't let them.
This is a huge problem for China. Housing development comprises about 25%~30% of GDP; its blowup would cripple the economy. Most ordinary people's wealth are largely tied to the value of their homes; a large drop of the house value hits most people hard, forcing them to cut back on spending, further putting down the economy. The financial institutes like banks, shadow banks, investment funds, etc have lost huge amount of money as developers unable to pay back their loans and people defaulting on their mortgages. The lowering of the property value would force more loans gone underwater. There'll be a string of bankruptcy. The local governments have large revenue shortfall and yet saddled with huge debts, because guess what, they were in the game to invest to build housing. The shortfall forces them to lay off workers, cut back on salaries, cut pensions, and cut back on services. Even the central government has no money. Last year they openly said that beyond some emergency fund there's no money left.
Any option for solutions is a bitter pill and no one has the political will to do it. It's just a downward spiral.
"The financial institutes like banks, shadow banks, investment funds, etc have lost huge amount of money"
My understanding of the core problem is - Money has to come from somewhere. It is the result of China becoming world's workshop. Chinese have 45%+ saving rate and those powered up the FIs' balance sheets. This money funded all the buying of land rights, development of housing etc. How Chinese govt. deals with these toxic balance sheets before Chinese people decide to make a run for the banks, that will determine how this crisis unfolds. Ultimately there never is free lunch, unless you are the US which can print it's way out of any problem it creates for itself - what times!
(be aware - the comment is by some anonymous guy on the Internets. Its most value maybe as a 'mildly entertaining conjecture'.
Very brave to selectively quote Ambedkar, especially on Buddhism and Hinduism. Let me enlighten you with his own quotes:
"History of India before the Muslim invasions is the history of a mortal conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism"
"No wonder if Pushyamitra who as a Samvedi Brahmin was the first to conceive the passion to end the degradation of the Brahmin by destroying the Buddhist state..."
"By this proclamation Pushyamitra set a price of 100 gold pieces on the head of every Buddhist monk"
Kindness. You carry hurt in you. Try not to carry that burden.
throwaway161718 commented on How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/Kg terraformindustries.wordp... · Posted by u/bilsbie
The main "breakthrough" the article seems to be pivoted on is: sacrificing efficiency of electrolyzer brings the capex down by and order of magnitude, thus making $1/Kg hydrogen possible. The whole downstream (to H2) value chain is a different economic argument, relevant to how they want the future to be.
throwaway161718 commented on Are super-rich people just better at making money? pudding.cool/2022/12/yard... · Posted by u/dncosta
Start with Delaware.
don't forget South Dakota - it will be put most tax havens to shame.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer...
throwaway161718 commented on When McKinsey comes to town lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n... · Posted by u/mitchbob
I worked at McKinsey for three years. Here are a few thoughts. Sorry it's so long, didn't have time to make it more concise.
- I'd guess >95% of people never run into anything morally questionable while there. My teams always tried to do their best and I never felt like we were helping achieve any sort of nefarious goal. Most of the time I think we were worth the money for our clients.
- I do think the culture makes it more likely for individuals to take risks that may end up getting them in trouble. There's a lot of pressure to succeed, and a lot of money (and prestige) at stake. It's easy to imagine individuals cracking under that pressure and making bad choices, and that the rest of the team might fall in line so that they can also succeed. I'd put most of the blame here on McKinsey and some on the individuals involved - maybe 70/30.
- I'd guess most other consultancies have bodies hidden somewhere that are similar to McKinsey's (questionable contracts, outright fraud, botched projects, moral failures, etc).
- The closest I got to something morally questionable was a project where we had a huge contract to help the client cut costs, including firing people. You'd think our budget would have been on the chopping block too, but I guess not. Obviously this left a bad taste in most of our mouths. I feel we tried to do our best, but I doubt we were worth our fees in that instance. The company eventually merged with another, so even more people were fired in the end.
- The 'internal firewalls' are real - if you've been on a project for one big company in an industry, they won't let you work for a project with another one. There were internal experts we couldn't talk to because of concerns in this area. I'm sure this hasn't been 100% true 100% of the time, but generally I think this is a real concern for McK (if they couldn't guarantee this they'd lose client trust) so they make a real effort to prevent it.
- While I was there, projects with the tobacco companies were famous for having better work/life balance than almost any other project. They were hard to staff because so many junior consultants refused on ethical grounds, so I guess this was a carrot?
- I can mostly only speak to the US. I heard some jawdropping stories about how reliant the Saudi government is on McKinsey and other consultants to get almost any work done, even the most basic things. But that's all secondhand gossip. In general, the sense I get is that the standard in the US offices doesn't carry over to every global location, but I don't have the personal experience to say that for sure.
I guess you won't really come across all the cynical stuff till you become an engagement manager.
(there are 300+ comments and I have only skimmed)
Q: Is there not a single (former) bully who is reading it who can share why they did what they did?
Being a short guy and a motormouth, I got bullied aplenty (perhaps beaten up is the correct word), but I want to believe that it didn't leave any long-term effects. But then I do have a short fuse and I procrastinate like there's always a tomorrow. So maybe, my self-analysis is all wrong.
I'm all for police not to be armed in countries where owning guns is not allowed. In the US that proposition sounds crazy though.
But we got to find a way to break this escalatory cycle?