The Liz Truss mini budget panic was said to be caused by pension fund managers calling the BoE asking for intervention as they faced bankruptcy.
This causality is debated, however it’s interesting to unravel the nature of the pension predicament.
It wasn’t all pension funds as modern schemes should be fully funded (aside rehypothecation practices). The problem is the existing stock of Defined Benefit schemes which pay a fixed amount per year like an annuity. They invest their money in long term government bonds under a practice called Liability Driven Investment (LDI). DB funds don’t know how much they are on the hook to pay, as that depends on how long members live for, so they run statistical models, and invest ‘optimally’ to have enough value at any point in the future to pay obligations. When BoE started selling back its stock of bonds acquired via ‘Quantitative Easing’ in a process dubbed ‘Quantitative Tightening’ they devalued the market for the bonds the pension funds hold dangerously threatening their solvency.
As DBs have ended the stock of them falls every day as, sadly, members of course eventually die.
DB was unsustainable but there isn’t much stock of it left so actually as time goes by the pension industry is less precarious.
Oscar this is NOTHING to with Bitcoin!
True, but saving in a capped supply asset will give you a wicked pension. X
Oh, good point! I had configured an LNaddress ages ago in Damus but can’t see that now. Maybe they changed the model and that is only visible in other clients now?
BIG DAY FOR ME.
I received my first ever zap ⚡️ which is ♾️% more than I earned on Twitter.
I booted up my first bitaxe. These are the first time current(ish) generation chips have been available in small form factor for years.
Shall I run it solo in lottery mode or contributing work to a pool?
Fiat is designed to gradually debase to stimulate work.
Bitcoin is designed to gradually re-base to stimulate leisure.
{No, debasement doesn't mean filing in your basement with gravel, and rebasement doesn't mean digging it out again - that's not leisure time}
Fiat is designed to gradually debase to stimulate work.
Bitcoin is designed to gradually re-base to stimulate leisure.
{No, debasement doesn't mean filing in your basement with gravel, and debasement doesn't mean digging it out again - that's not leisure time}
Careers fair:
I want to make a lot of money
Get into banking
I want to store my new money somewhere
Put it in a bank
How much will that cost me?
Nothing
What?
Yes, banks dont charge to safeguard your money
So how did I make all that money in banking?
You printed it
NEXT!
Is the solution to send him to prison, or to accept this is a popular product and legalise it?
Imagine how much death would be caused if sugar was prohibited.
Imagine how much economic development there has been by sugar.
Stop voting for bad policy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wkd187505o
😂
Right? The commercial opportunity and tax from these goods is enormous. Not to mention the chnace for people to use less alcohol as their only mood medicine.
Is anyone aware of any implementations of the FIDO Passkey scheme which have multikey/multisig auth?
e.g register three pubkeys with the service, submit sigs from any two keys to login
e.g register just one pub key with the service, create sig using local threshold scheme
Atomic minds, would you kindly fact check this info?
A popular LLM informs me that most SMR designs are fail safe (ie HTGR, MSR). Also that if an aeroplane crash split a reactor open, no clean up occurred and you stood next to it for a month then you would receive 10 mSv which is a radiation dose roughly equivalent to:
- A full body medical CT scan
- 10x long haul flights
And resulting in an elevated risk of cancer in later life of 0.05%. If that is true, am I missing any other worse scenarios? Can a villain use cheap methods to cause hell?
Should a government want to tax illicit economic activity more than the legitimate equivalent (because taxes are dis/incentive tools) or zero (because they do not wish to benefit from illicit activity or even have the conflict of interest it represents)?
N.B. In the UK proceeds of crime are taxable under the same rules as legal income.
TicketMaster’s monopoly is quite an interesting case. Most examinations don’t show a regulatory moat, they just acquired/merged their way to dominance with main tool being protectionist contracts (we cease services if you ever use a competitor). However, dig more and there are multiple regulations they exploited to retain dominance:
- Claiming copyright over etickets to prohibit 3rd party secondary markets and private resale.
- BOTS act 2016 both inhibits touts (secondary market makers) and is costly to implement for firms.
- price floor laws (in some locales) prevent others from undercutting
- GDPR (and equivalent) has been costly to implement for these consumer data intensive services.
There are always laws, often ‘consumer protection’ oriented like the above, which get exploited by the large to crush the small and become the giant.
I don’t have enough info yet to claim it was these laws which enabled TM/LN’s malignant monopoly, but they obviously helped and my suspicion is always that regulatory moats are essential.
Does any one have more insights in the case? nostr:note10kmtsgenv2fquhh3txknm6vdv99agm7jaepqc2p2k6n5dhwuht4sqy949j
I haven’t read about the TicketMaster (Oasis) saga yet. I’m aware they are monopolistic already, and now it’s obvious from the outrage that there is dissatisfaction in the market with their practices. Am I going to find a regulatory/legal moat they exploited?
If the UK removed all taxes and replaced them with a VAT (consumption tax), they would maintain annual tax revenues by setting that VAT rate to about 37%.
Imagine how much simpler life and politics would be.
Taxes aren't just funding, they are also behavioural nudges so this would increase work, and decrease consumption (assuming taxes do indeed have such effects). Most people would say that's a desirable outcome.
Critics argue that this scheme costs poor people more as more of their wealth is used on spending. They are wrong, because everyone employs all available capital. The VAT rate would apply to ALL transactions not just those VATable currently, so, add in real estate, securities & commodities transactions, charitable donations, etc and now it's not regressive.
The really big surprise is that when you broaden the scope of VAT in that way, the universal rate falls from around 37% to under 10%.
Reduce HMRC to a few interns (VAT collection is easy). Reduce all politicking down to 'how to spend' from 'how to levy and spend'.
What's the caveat? We would disrupt our competitiveness on the internal market for better and worse depending on sector. The UK financial sector is smaller than it was but still dominant domestically and a 9% transaction tax might wipe out that sector.
Why don't governments do this (not just uk)?
I think it's because they want the complexity. They want levers to pull, and dominions to manage. They aren't there to run infrastructure - they are there to run the country as a business and compete with other Nation PLCs - we, the people, are staff.
Through the annual self assessment routine. They will estimate that you will earn the same amount next year, then demand half the tax for it half way through the year ‘on account’ whether it’s been earned or not. They at least will reimburse any excess but you have to wait for the end of the year - meanwhile they hold your cash.
“Tech neutral” sounds like a sensible position for business leaders and regulators too. It’s an often repeated phrase - and not a helpful one. Two different techs can rarely substitute one another to fulfil some purpose without quite distinct utility and externality profiles.
UK public debt calcs:
GDP: £2.3t
Debt: £2.5t
D/GDP ratio: 109%
Tax rev: £0.9t
Spending: £1t
Deficit: £0.1t
Pay back period = ∞
If we balance budget, cut spend to £0.9t:
Pay back period = ∞
For a 50y back back, cut spend by 13.5% from £1t to £0.865t = -£135bn/yr
∴ inflation
@calle 👁️⚡👁️ looks like you’ve come up with a nice answer to this question with NWS:
nostr:nevent1qqswt09r5mq59nsqv4wj5z0uz756v6mftzph6ycu863qkreyp8wzcdqpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgqgcwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8xmn0wf6zuum0vd5kzmqpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcuvt7an nostr:note1z5yyec8l9thl8v64rqvafn8suqlvxm84ch7vz8865pst5cf8hg3qz76pxc
Please recommend Nostr clients built for chat rooms with equivalent functions to Matrix/Elements, Discord or Slack.
Ideally an application not a website.
Server 1 has an encrypted boot drive
Server 2 has the decryption key
Server 1 boot loader can authenticate to the remote server 2 and retrieve the key.
Q) What is the best thing server 2 can be?
An HSM probably but with a sensible budget?
A password manager server?
Some sort of enclave?
Something better?
Great idea. If I could be there I’d use the time to work on…
- long range mesh networking (LTE direct)
- Highly available redundant LN node infra (working on this anyway)
- Re-decentralising email and e2e encrypted by default (NIP-mail?)
- fiat/btc dex (helping @jayberg)
- ASIC boilers using high temp chips
- Slick PoS NFC UX tooling for btc
Not sure what I’d do in the second month yet :)
Yes, the aim of the mesh is decentralisation of the physical layer. Phones, home routers, etc would form dynamic multilateral connections to one another.
Good point about bitcoin and broadcast not needing routing. Indeed routing is probably the major challenge.
I fear with Starlink we are moving in the opposite direction… one ISP for everyone.
Oddbean new post about login | logout
Notes by oscpacey | export
Fiat is designed to gradually debase to stimulate work. Bitcoin is designed to gradually re-base to stimulate leisure. {No, debasement doesn't mean filing in your basement with gravel, and rebasement doesn't mean digging it out again - that's not leisure time}Fiat is designed to gradually debase to stimulate work. Bitcoin is designed to gradually re-base to stimulate leisure. {No, debasement doesn't mean filing in your basement with gravel, and debasement doesn't mean digging it out again - that's not leisure time}