Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "PolyMatter" channel.

  1. Right, the trades may prevent you from being financially broke, but there’s such a high risk of becoming medically broke. And it’s much easier to earn more money later on than it is to completely heal from a chronic service-connected condition.
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  2. tldr It’s the Jeonse 전세 system, where tenants lend the landlord much of the value of an outright purchase, in exchange for a multi-year lease at reduced or even no rent in lieu of interest. Sounds like a pretty good deal on paper, but there have been cases of landlords deducting for “damages” and other “fees” when they’re supposed to give back every Won to that former tenant.
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  3. It also depends what your selling. For mundane transactions it's not a big deal, but when splurging on something special AMEX is famous for having the best value to the buyer (both in purchase protections and ancillary benefits). AMEX doesn't also offer business grades of its premium cards because it's truly adversarial to business owners.
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  4. Unfortunately the "benign" part tends to be very rare.
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  5. The problem is consumerism empowers customers… who are also citizens. Allowing citizens to control supply of goods and services ultimately allows the same citizens to steer the underlying policies and the politicians who make them, and there’s a lot of common animosities against the Party that can quickly get explosive once the Chinese people aren’t siloed and gaslit into thinking it’s all just personal problems they carry.
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  6. Kinda wondering how much the concentration of dealership ownership contributed to the surge of prices on cars 🏷️🤔
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  7. Singapore is what Mainland China thinks it is, if it conveniently ignores how S'pore 1) celebrates multiculturalism; 2) admittedly relies on foreign immigrants; 3) maintains armed forces that don't project its presence against their neighbors; 4) doesn't tolerate even rumors of corruption by officials at any level; and 5) allows open challenges to the ruling party, even in the face of declining popularity 🇸🇬
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  8. Right, it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a Chinese SIM, a Chinese bank account, and a WeChat account, or a friend/agent who does everything on your behalf. It's by far the least tourist friendly country that isn't under international sanctions.
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  9. Tomorrow's headline: "CuriousityStream taken offline by massive cyberattack" 🇨🇳👨‍💻👨‍💻👩‍💻
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  10. Ironically those “job ready” STEM degrees prepare you least in communication and vital soft skills. If you remain a lonely awkward human, you won’t get in, and if you’re in you won’t rise far. Dismiss those “unrelated” mandatory humanities studies at your peril.
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  11.  @ArawnOfAnnwn  China and other authoritarians deliberately hide and downplay their issues, which is why you won't hear of similar slowdowns affecting say Huawei and DJI. America routinely dramatizes its issues as part of regular political and business maneuverings, and in confronting these problems inevitably ends up at least partially fixing them.
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  12. That socializing can mean the difference to getting offered a job and being retained down the line. Networking and soft skills are probably more important things to develop, which ironically “job ready” STEM classes are notoriously unable to provide on their own.
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  13. It was also the safe Western portal into the likewise autocratic Qing Empire and pre-Taiwan ROC. HK prospered exactly because it was not under the control of the more inept and ideological Mainland Chinese.
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  14. That's primarily with just the US. China is currently trending to start one against Europe and all the Global South countries where they've been getting offshored to.
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  15. Sadly the American "conservative" means societal traditionalist, not ecological conservationist.
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  16. Every vehicle crash I came across while in China involved at least one car, and was pretty much never the fault of the cyclist or e-biker when a two-wheeler was involved.
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  17. There's a reason post-Cold War Western aid packages demand things like improvements to education and transparency: to reduce the ultimately nation-dragging corruption that Chinese-style governance proliferates.
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  18. That's assuming China survives intact once the Taiwanese insurrection gets quelled, which could take years if not generations. The Mainland depends on imports for food and fuel, and sanctions or not civilian ships will be scared off and China's global customers are going to more aggressively seek permanent alternatives. More likely unrest at home over food prices and quality (think Shanghai except everywhere and more defiant) will flare up and only grow as rations get taken from periphery security forces to keep more core functions fed -- the PLA is not nearly big enough to do battle with the rest of China.
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  19. Student debt is at all-time highs but recruitment rates are crashing. If anything it's because too few Americans are exposed to actual family and friends who served, so the uniform is a distant thought as a career option.
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  20. Infrastructure pays itself off from the total economic activity it supports, which is especially salient when it comes to moving cargo. America's freeways and existing rail network are great for making internal shipping cheap and easy. Airlines and China's HSR suffer from not being able to move high-margin shipments -- passengers and consumer mail don't pay nearly as well as bulk goods and HAZMAT -- and both airlines and China's HSR overbuild have very high capital and operating costs compared to their slow heavyweight alternatives.
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  21. Those hobbies, friends, and exercise is in even more demand nowadays because it's how not to get left behind in this increasingly outsourced and automated economy. Kids introduce path dependence, leaving you permanently stuck at wherever you are because you're no longer able to spend time with self-improvement.
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  22. ...until your debit account gets cleaned out and your bank isn't so motivated to get it back, compared to when it's their money gone missing on a credit card.
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  23.  @spartanparty3894  Although it'd be interesting to see how Chinese builds hold up after a century of use like America's miraculously has so far on marginal maintenance. There's already news of brand new BRI builds collapsing within months of opening, and sold-out new apartments getting condemned if not collapsing in China isn't unheard of either.
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  24. Considering the quality of their builds (especially the newer ones), those bills are going to come as a shock on their dwindling budgets.
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  25. Which will put rising pressure against the patriarchy trap, and hopefully by the time those household incomes rise, there will be more acceptable and pay for women to stay employed.
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  26.  @Alex-fm5ke  Right, economic estimates indicate China could be approaching its peak, which could be followed by stagnation and decadence similar to that of Japan. So it's just as likely that China has become overcapacity and overleveraged as aging, pollution, and the end of easy profits takes its toll upon the PRC.
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  27. ⁠If you were perhaps put in a marketable service support role like logistics or communications. If you’re a door-kicking grunt though, it’s just a waste of time.
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  28. The whole intro is a good description of “path dependence”, where previous decisions and events forever lock you into an ever narrowing path of potential and opportunity.
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  29. Dependents (including children and elderly) are financial drains, and a drag on personal advancement in an environment of unfettered libertarian capitalism. Not to say there's a problem with children and retirees, but with the "strongest-takes-all" selfish libertarianism that provides most of our paychecks.
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  30. The smartest people I ever met were native African. There's a lot of education and creativity there, it just needs a better governance environment to take advantage of those skills before those folks develop the opportunity and commitment to emigrate.
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  31. This is why immigration is increasingly important for sustaining a country. It allows the host to pick out those motivated enough to adapt, with those who don't make the cut either getting ejected or departing on their own (a labor flexibility not so easy to perform with citizens). Likely we'll see Old World ethnostates like NE Asia failing to find a second wind, and more openly adoptive competitors eventually passing them in the longer marathon of generations.
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  32. There's a reason STEM people tend to fail in politics and even regular management: they're too tunnel-visioned to listen or care about what actually motivates people.
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  33. South Korea, China, and much of Europe were quite big recipients of foreign aid until recently. What seems to be more important is having a local government that tries to benefit beyond the ruler's tribe to develop the nation.
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  34. It helps that the USSR was openly goading to fight with military force, whereas China is still deciding if being kinetically threatening is the best way to defend its interests with the least amount of return damage.
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  35. Africa and the Middle East are slowly shrinking in family size too. Not as fast as would be actually beneficial, but you can't expect economic rationality from religious cultures.
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  36. It doesn't mean it'll collapse tomorrow, but the way things are trending it won't be looking so imposing like the CPC dreams to be when the PRC turns 100.
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  37. For gifts it's the thought that counts, in this case suggesting a place they already enjoy shopping at. What makes gift cards valuable is the limitations on where to spend the money, as opposed to straight cash that can cause mental paralysis by having too many choices. If that sounds economically irrational, that's because humans are themselves irrational.
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  38.  @jingchengyang8957  Organized doesn't mean they make all the right decisions, and in fact could blind them from mitigating underlying trends which could be fatal going forward. For Japan their discipline leaves them with schizophrenic technology systems and an aging population. For the Eastern Bloc it was cultural suffocation that kept Western liberalism quietly favorable until an opportunity to break out arose. For China it could be their cavalier corruption and patronizing attitudes which may see support for the Party collapse dramatically when they eventually fail to shut up critics with promises of indefinite economic improvement. The strength of a democracy and open protests is that it provides a visible image of a nation that ultimately holds together despite the internal differences and tensions.
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  39. Next would be pedestrian avenues and mass transit to get these kids moving about the neighborhood on their own again. I don't know about you, but I'd trust a third grader to tap onto a tram over trying to drive a car.
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  40. It's free for corporate and church interests. Everyone else has to follow the laws they impose.
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  41. TSMC isn't as concerned with big countries like China and the US, as their people and facilities will inevitably be more spread out for an industry that demands quick (24 hours or less) in-person access to its entire human capital to take care of production issues among its thousands of simultaneous fabrication lines. It's most potent competition would instead come from similarly sized South Korea.
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  42. ​ @firdauslathiff5570  That security is only granted Singapore has open access to trade. A blockade from M'sia and Indo would see that food supply drop quickly, as there's very little arable land left on the islands to farm from. It might survive with airlifts and occasional blockade runners similar to the Berlin Airlift, but S'pore has twice as many mouths to feed, distances to Thailand and Australia are way farther, air forces don't have nearly as many surplus paradrop-capable planes on hand, and that's before considering the active targeting of communications and vehicles that West Berliners didn't have to deal with.
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  43. The problem with China's HSR network is that most lines are physically too weak to handle freight trains. Passengers and mail only pay so much, hauling cargo is far more profitable (it's the same case with airlines). What makes the US Interstates so valuable is that it handles both trucks and commuters (it was originally designed for massive military convoys). China may have seen a similar benefit if they instead installed beefy quad tracks where freight trains regularly flowed in both directions while G trains blow past.
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  44. Although the idea was imported from the Price Club, which did start in Southern California and later merged with
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  45. Main problem is the Jones Act effectively discourages the options of ships Americans would crew because of the limited size of the oceangoing US-flagged fleet. The lack of shipbuilder competition already shut down American shipyards through consolidation, making the nation weaker that it would've been had we allowed that overseas competiton.
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  46. Which is basically to make sure the CPC does not forcibly seize Taiwan, which if we don't fight directly at least means bringing supplies and information to the Taiwanese resistance, and make the Party lose face among the Chinese people by denying the quick and easy victory they keep promising.
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  47. It's probably called that because they're basically edible weeds to them. Lobsters in America were also "prison food" back in the days when they naturally washed up on New England beaches.
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  48. EVs provide at least twice the range per ton of carbon emitted when charged on 100% coal, and only improves with greener energy sources. Plus it's far easier to monitor and control pollution from fixed centralized power plants.
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  49. If you understand Mandarin and watch their news over the past two decades, you'd think we're already in one. The Party needs a powerful foreign enemy to justify its continued domestic rule.
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  50.  @studyonline4763 Westerners are more productive because they’re actually working those hours, slogging through a backlog or hustling for new ones. A lot of Korean and Japanese hours are spent quietly shopping/gaming/chatting on Kakao or LINE while waiting for their boss (and their boss and their boss) to clock out. The job culture reflects the cultural one of absolute servitude to one’s superiors.
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