Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

If you want to get all technical about it...

Doesn't work. Takes too long. Birth rate <> population. Ultimately it's not about population control. It's eliminating a parasitic element, to very cruelly put it: people who are no longer productive to the point where they are burden to the tribe. Senicide to optimize productivity.

It would not be short order. It would be at least two generations after - minimum. That's 50-60 years. If procreation is massive, there's no skew toward too many older people.

There's also actually a better chance at equilibrium or the same problem: insufficient birth rate, not enough young people, when things are good and many causes of suffering are removed.

Easy to unleash again, because this is just COVID-19. There are many others already in the works if not completed.

I don't think long term depression in China is the CCP's / Xi Jinping's goal. It's hegemony over Asia. An army of people over 60 may not do so well taking over Taiwan.

 

It's like this for any economy.

GDP is the wrong measure. It kinda works for comparative purposes for modern industrialized countries, but in reality it's like SINAD, marked as a measure for success where higher is always better. In reality, GDP is useless for determining qualitative value, whether an economy is healthy, sustainable, equitable, etc. When I was introduced to GDP in high school economics, I questioned it. No one gave me a satisfactory answer.

Think about this: does China want their GDP to be dominated by health care costs, pensions, entitlements, grandpa buying new slippers; -or- the production of ships, chips, and bricks to assimilate the Pacific Rim?

Or what happens when there are more people who consume more than they produce (past age 60) -vs- people who produce more than they they consume (ages 20-60).

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The reason the USA doesn't need to worry about this: We are in fairly good shape. Although the birth rate is below replacement level, replacement comes from immigration, fairly young people with higher birth rates. Note small bumps for boomers and their spawn. There is some consensus that we can sustain a slightly higher population but should be thinking about stabilizing it.

The reason we can't get immigration reform isn't that 'publicans are anti-immigration. 'publicans are actually pro-immigration, they just don't want immigrants voting for the other party!

USA population pyramid 2020


Here's China's


Japan's already been in a world of hurt. This is the reason their growth rate is like 0 and their debt is 300% of GDP. This is what China wants to avoid. China could end up losing Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang to insurrections one day.

 

LOL, this is Xi Jinping and Chinese communism we are talking about:

• State > Individual
• "Harmony" > Freedom

Xi Jinping is like a way more competent Palpatine. XI's disadvantage is that he has had to deal with centuries of misrule in China. Now, I didn't say that the virus was released intentionally. I simply proposed that such a virus was a consideration on the part of the CCP; but that it unintentionally left the Wuhan lab. I don't think China would have let it leave the lab intentionally without first having an antidote. Oops. Shit happens. (China remains "locked down
and closed today).

I am pretty sure there's a word in both Japanese and the Chinese for self-senicide.

Didn't the Comanche old people who were too weak (useless) intentionally leave themselves in the middle of nowhere when the tribe decided to move on? It's totally harsh, but stuff like this is why the Comanches kicked ass. I didn't know about the Comanche because US history doesn't teach us about them, but the Comanches were brutal and a major pain the ass to US expansion, blocking the USA in the southwest for generations. Huge swathes of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma were Comanche territory that no white man dared enter. Watch the John Wayne movie The Searchers (loosely based on real events) to get an idea. Those dudes were brutal, dumping coals into captives' eviscerated stomachs, tying up captives between wagon wheels to slowly torture them to death. It took until a good decade after the Civil War to get them to surrender. The Comanches make Klingons look like pussies. Only other tribes of suitable bravery and honor, such as the Kiowas, were allowed to ally with them. They enslaved all the other tribes. (The US Army employed scouts from a tribe that the Comanches fucked over, funny how things work).

The Washington Redskins should have been named the Comanches, because they were the fiercest and the tribe that held off the USA for the longest. Redskins are a politically incorrect caricature. Comanches will kill you and did so historically.

 

Nope. It's a desperation move. Zuckerberg is out of ideas. He was out of ideas at the start when Facebook was a f**k-or-not college project. Facebook hasn't done jack shit since then. All they've done is buy out competitors like Instagram, but the problem is that you can't buy them all out. Facebook still has that shit interface. Nextdoor is much better vehicle to find out how shitty your neighbors are. Tiktok is way better at gathering behavioral data for the CCP while putting smiles on kids faces.

VR could be great. I'm in meetings all day and find that human connection lacking. Actually I find the spontaneity of human communication lacking. There are ways that can this be accomplished without the need for VR. I found ways to make communication super fun and effective: a virtual whiteboard using MS paint with my mad MS paint skills.

I will start with completely blank canvas on MS paint, and start to draw parts, encouraging people to interrupt and ask questions. I find folks (including senior people) bemused at first, but then they suddenly get it. The old approach with pre-made fancy Powerpoints and fancy Visios, for some reason, that stuff just makes people's' eyes gloss over. After several meetings, difficult to communicate concepts still don't take with these traditional presentation methods.

I know I've done a good job with my MS Paint Picassos when people nod their heads, tell me they are satisfied, won't need any more meetings, and get this: ask me for a copy of my super janky MS paint drawings.

Here is an example (sensitive stuff redacted)


Can I get a copy of that?
Are you sure, it kinda looks like crap?
Oh no, that's super useful to me.

Yes, VR could make online virtual meetings even more excellent, bring back more of that human touch. The problem is that no one wants to wear a Kylo Renn helmet and gloves and no one wants to pay for them either. A Wacom tablet (on order) would already up my game.

 

I totally start from scratch without any notes. Oftentimes the people involved already have some idea, so I invite audience participation when I have a brain fart (I always do). The important thing is that we get some laughs and bond over the absurdity of the situation.

A recent meeting I got to draw a lizard brain and a human brain, to explain why certain kinds of phishing attacks work so well, e.g. "from: CEO subject line: corporate layoffs".

I want my quarantined email restored!
#denied. It's a phish
Oh no you don't! it's from the President of the company and it's about layoffs! I demand that you restore it.​

Push the right buttons to set off fight&flight response, and human rationality gets overridden.

 

The problem is that FB / Meta / whatever now has a serious branding issues and headwinds for further growth, not to mention antitrust concerns. For a "high-growth" tech stock to have a PE ratio of 16 as of 2/3/2022 (steadily decreasing since 2013 when it as 1000) is bad news. That kind of PE ratio is for electrical utilities! This means it's no longer a growth stock. Considering that dividends are zero, it's not particularly attractive. All good things come to an end. It was a good ride. This happened to IBM (perma) and it happened to Microsoft (which was able to pivot to Cloud).

I'd put my money on Microsoft doing the "Meta" thing first*, considering their recent acquisition of Activision and how far and quickly they've come with Teams, which has steadily replaced the a combination of Slack, Zoom, WebEx, etc. FB doesn't have the creative team to do Meta. Those creative teams lie in interactive (gaming) and M&E (movies and TV). I don't see FB chasing after the talent or making acquisitions or investments in either of these two industries. This tells me they are slow or don't know WTF they need to do in order to truly to Meta.

There's also a good chance that Netflix and maybe Apple join in. Less so Apple because Apple has become completely uncreative since Jobs died and is now lead by a master Jedi beancounter. At least Apple provides a small dividend. Amazon will try too, but their attempts will be half-hearted and has-been.

There's also the possibility that a relative unknown ends up winning. I've alpha-tested some corporate "Meta" meeting shit already - it's kind of gimmicky TBH.

*Actually, M$ will probably be second or third, but they will do it well and eventually crush everyone.