The game was always going to be systemically rigged, because the "riggedness" is borne from the very nature of how reality itself works. But it seems to me economics doesn't want to actually contend with nature or reality, just ideas which sound more or less true, even if they actually fall flat upon deeper analysis. It's essentially an ideology at this point... if it ever wasn't in the first place.
"Austerity" is a red herring. I mean let's be serious, every option is austerity for someone...
Cutting spending, means those who would have received that debt spending take a loss (perhaps their job). Raising taxes means taxpayers pay. Raising productivity or inflating the debt means the young and laborers shoulder most of the burden. Financial repression means capital owners pay. Defaulting means bond holders pay.
This is what people who argue the debt doesn't matter don't understand. Sure it doesn't matter in the sense that we could always just roll the debt forward, and continue to make future generations pay. Just as it's possible to choose over and over again to wine and dine at someone else's expense, against their will.
No the debt always matters, because, it's a matter over who gets to benefit and who has to pay.
They did control for obvious appearance differences (e.g. color & type of clothing, hair length) and morphology (e.g. height/body size), even people's approach. But not more subtle traits such as gait, waist-hip ratio, odor...
One hypothesis suggested that in early history, women may have more commonly caught smaller prey (birds) than men did, and this fear could be evolutionarily ingrained.
To be fair, I don't think most birds have a good sense of smell (as dogs, cats, deer etc have) so that would discount odour. I suspect if there is a factor here it may be something that is obvious to the birds.
Odor was an example given by the researchers. And I too doubt it's due to odor, but we can't dismiss odor outright just because it seems reasonable. I mean humans for example are known to have an overall worse sense of smell than dogs, but can actually detect certain specific odors/chemicals at much lower thresholds than dogs (such as amyl acetate). Which is to say, birds may possess an acute sense of smell to certain things that we may not know of yet, even if they're bad in general when it comes to smells.
Another hypothesis given is sunscreen. If women wear sunscreen more often (such as on their face) and sunscreen reflects UV (and birds can see in the UV spectrum), then that could also explain it.
Yes about commodities, but what you said about surplus is actually wrong. Consumer surplus is at a maximum when there is no differentiation. That is because when producers struggle to differentiate amongst competition, they must compete fiercely on price, so customers often pay far less than their maximum willingness to pay.
And arguably your own statement here doesn't help the view that the industry is not a bubble, as one could argue most LLM models are not substantially different from each other, and most products integrating them are offering similar features. The industry may need to do better at differentiating if it wants to avoid being commodified.
You're also ignoring the fact that these companies have been shifting things around to make their books look better than they actually are. Here's a good example explaining how META has been keeping debt and lease obligations off its books to fuel growth (and who's at risk if META doesn't pay up):
Many tech companies operate at a loss initially, that is the point of venture markets in firms that invest heavily in R&D, the initial investment will pay off once the technology matures.
As for Meta’s shady accounting, I also inside most tech companies leverage whatever they can to remain competitive in a high growth market. They certainly have the money to get away with it though for now.
People skills are primarily learned through observation, interaction, and modeling the behavior of others who have already have cultivated social skills. You know, from being around and interacting with people. It's not like studying a certain discipline, such a mathematics, forbids you from ever cultivating these abilities.
Mech E. on the other hand, is perhaps the broadest engineering discipline in terms of foundational principles, application variety, and transferable skills. So shouldn't be all that surprising when it comes to hardware engineering.
Does it really say something? If so what? I think the assumption that suppliers are always just catering to whatever the market demands is dubious at best. In uncompetitive markets with strong moats and price inelasticity, there's no need to cater the demands of market, the market must cater to the supplier's demands. And since markets tend to collapse into a few main stakeholders, markets eventually end up this way, rather than the assumed way.
Honestly though, they're not all that prophetic. I mean, you can find widespread instances of each means used throughout human history. Although I would happen to agree that the methods that feed complacency and ignorance are the most effective.
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