• 126 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 10th, 2022

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  • It raises some good points. It’s also said that there is ‘nothing people can do’ about surveillance. For those interested, there is a good documentary what happens if and when someone tries to do somethong about it:

    Total Trust

    Total Trust is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing story of surveillance technology, abuse of power and (self-)censorship that confronts us with what can happen when our privacy is ignored. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film tells of the dangers of technology in the hands of unbridled power. Taking China as a mirror, Total Trust sounds an alarm about the increasing use of surveillance tools around the world – even by democratic governments like those in Europe.

    If this is the present, what is our future?






  • I suppose that’s the mechanism they’re using to centrally manage the economy, by controlling fund transfers to lower levels of government.

    I would agree with this view. The local governments are responsible for the majority of spendings (including pensions, health care), but they can barely raise funds themselves.

    The central government has already said that the new debt will be forwarded to the local government, and that it will be ‘off-budget’, meaning the money goes to LGFVs. The future will tell us how this ends up, but the risks are high imo given the country’s debt burden is so much higher than in most other countries as you suggested.


  • The real change in retail pricing might be discrimination pricing (or ‘surveillance pricing’ as it is now called sometimes). Simply speaking, it uses personal data to personalize prices not just for each customer, but also for each customer depending on actual circumstances such as day time, weather, an individual’s pay day, and other data, collected through apps, loyalty cards, …

    As one article says, there is One Person One Price:

    "If I literally tell you, the price of a six-pack is $1.99, and then I tell someone else the price of a six-pack for them is $3.99, this would be deemed very unfair if there was too much transparency on it,” [University of Chicago economists Jean-Pierre] Dubé said. “But if instead I say, the price of a six-pack is $3.99 for everyone, and that’s fair. But then I give you a coupon for $2 off [through your app] but I don’t give the coupon to the other person, somehow that’s not as unfair as if I just targeted a different price.”

    The linked article is a very long read but worth everyone’s time. Very insightful.










  • … it’s actually about confidence in asking for more upfront

    I think this is a good point. I’m wondering whether one reason why men still earn more than women could be that men negotiate more assertively for themselves than.women do because of gender roles that are deeply ingrained in our society.

    It could be that girls are still expected (and brought up) to be accommodating, concerned with the well-being of others, while boys are taught how to.compete and being profit-oriented. Are girls and women still considered to be relationship-oriented from an early age, while boys and men are expected to be assertive?

    If so, women may feel more uncomfortable negotiating their salaries forcefully over fears of some sort of ‘social backlash’ in the labour market and in the workplace.

    I say ‘could’ and ‘may’ and conclude that I don’t know whether that’s reasonable. I don’t know of any research in this field but I am not an expert on gender studies.

    (But, yes, I would also assume that pay gaps exist within male and female groups for similar reasons. Not all women and men are alike.)

    Addition: To whom it may concern: Just stumbled upon the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in the U.S., they seem to have a lot of research.






  • “we have these “assets” but we aren’t going to tell you what they are because we don’t have to”

    Yes, this is exactly what off-balance sheet, OBS for short, means.

    Suppose a company has a line of credit at the bank of, say, 1,000,000 dollars, but the credit line comes with a financial covenant stating that the debt-equity-ratio must not exceed 0.5, meaning that the company’s total debt must not exceed half the company’s equity at any point of time.

    Suppose now the company wants to buy a new machine on credit, but the costs for this new asset would violate the covenant rule. So the company founds a subsidiary. The subsidiary would then buy the machine to immediately lease it back to the parent company. As the parent company doesn’t legally own the machine, it is not on its balance sheet, meaning the debt-to-equity ratio is fine, but it can control and use the asset (the machine) as it is the company’s subsidiary’s asset.

    The company now pays leasing fees (instead of interest rates, had it bought the machine directly on credit), which, of course, stresses its liquidity (very much as it would be in case of a direct credit).

    So OBS assets can technically improve ratios, but they are hard to analyze and assess (but they can deceive shareholders and other stakeholders, including authorities, by conveying a higher solvency and liquidity than they actually have).

    Large companies and banks have many opportunities to create such OBS. They often create so-called Special-Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) following a similar approach as in our small example. Banks can also move assets through securitization, leaseback agreements, accounts receivables, derivatives.

    Don’t get me wrong, there are good reasons to use this tool, but if and when you overdo it, you may not know yourself what risks your entire business actually bears. It becomes incalculable.

    And if then, say, you can’t pay back a small loan because investment A went wrong, then investment B that has initially nothing to do with A may also suffer, which then effects C …

    [Edit typo.]