I wanted it to be a bit more similar to IRC where you can just enter channel name and create it just like that. In the beggining the project was very focused on media but then I saw it needs to be a bit more traditional because text is still very very important. Project implemented with meteor.js. Let me know what you think here or on heahy :)
>We need better alternatives to Reddit
I am working on one - heahy.com, it's still very small and unfortunately mostly used for memes and porn :) I will try to do something about having more high quality discussions but probably some changes to design are necessary before doing any marketing.
This is completely wrong, it disproportionally affects the poor and middle class the most because all they have is their wages and a little bit of cash. Wages are not that elastic and will certainly lag behind.
Rich are heavy on assets and it doesn't affect them at all unless they are stupid enough to convert those assets to cash during high inflation period (it of course doesn't happen).
I agree. I'm not ashamed to admit though, I'm still a little baffled by Buffet's backing off into "cash" - or out of the market - I guess cash means different things to different people...
Are you saying rich and powerful have grandpa checking bank accounts and just refuse to spend it? They are owning real estate, land, companies, resources - that's where their wealth it. In high inflation scenario current wealth gap will look like good old times...
Slight inflation is good, but high inflation will be troubling to a lot of regular people.
>Also, what weak economy? Economic growth is up, wages are up, unemployment is down, personal debt is down.
That usually happens in the beginning stages of high inflation scenario.
Also government debt is not the same as household debt, however it still matters especially at these high levels. There is a breaking point just no one knows where it is. 300% gdp? 500%? 700%. At some point it will break down.
What would break mean? The US debt, like all debt, is somebody else's asset. This “somebody” has zero interest in collapsing the system.
The only two things that can actually make the system collapse in the next 30 years are:
- a communist revolution in the US (this is not happening anytime soon, do not worry).
- zealots with a debt fixation, who would rather collapse the entire economy because they think debt is immoral. This one is a little bit more likely, but given the strong ties between the financial sector and the political parties in the US, I really doubt these people would ever be in charge. Republican, when they don't control the White house, are prone to rant about how debt is unsustainable and should be reduced at all cost, but whenever there is a Republican president, the debt keeps rising.
What I mean by "break" is runaway inflation or hyperinflation. That doesn't mean the whole system collapses. The rising debt or money supply is not a problem - the problem is its second derivative - how fast rising increases and how connected it is with underlying economy. And this points to a kinda dire future at the moment.
Hyperinflation (or even “a little bit to high” inflation) would literally destroy billions of financial assets (public and private debt), given the enormous political power of the finance industry, it's not going to happen.
Also, there is exactly zero historical instance of hyperinflation caused by public debt labelled in a country's own currency. Zero.
There's little rational reasons to believe public debt will cause hyperinflation, and as I mentioned above there are in fact powerful effect acting in the opposite direction.
The only reason people make the link between those two is that hyperinflation is the canonical example of an economic catastrophe and because people believe debt to be immoral, it must lead to a catastrophe in the end. This is a religious/moral discourse, which has no link with the actual world.
And to conclude, keep in mind that high level of public debt is a political decision (borrow from the wealthy instead of taxing them) it would be quite straightforward to fix (with the 60s income tax level) but it's in the interest of no-one with a bit of political power.
All of the instances of inflation is linked to government debt, what are you talking about? Even kings were cutting weight of silver coins in middle ages.
TIL there were hyperinflation episodes in Europe during the middle age (not). You have never read a book of economic history (or even just history) right?
For the record: most of inflation comes from rising costs in the supply chain (from supply issues, resources scarcity and/or wage raises). This is where we are now.
There exists instances of hyperinflation related to debt (Weimar republic's for instance) but this was due to debt labelled in a foreign currency (basically gold in this case).
Of course they would try to do it - first of all raising interest rates. However they are basically trapped now and it's questionable if they can still control situation. With current debt levels it might be extremely hard to raise rates or sell instruments they hold that were bought with printed money (to take off liquidity of the market). On top of that I would say all the rich and influential are well positioned for high inflation so it's speculation but I wouldn't bet that Fed will choose hard recession scenario...
I've already shared early version that wasn't launched yet. Now I fixed some things and it's ready to be used.
I have recreated a few posts from HN just to show how it would look like.
In short it is:
Web chat
Anonymous, no registration
Channels and threads, each thread is a real time web chat
Enter name and if channel is not taken it's yours
Easy upload (mp4 only and 8mb limit for now)
Old content periodically deleted, but since few users for now it's on hold
If you find a post that starts interesting conversation you can select it as root (or simply double click) and you will get that conversation - all replies and their children, grandchildren etc. So I don't think there is a real need to have tree style comments as the approach to this is different.
Reply system with ability to select conversations is one of the main differentiators from other similar sites. I know people might find it uncomfortable in the beginning simply because it's unusual but I think it's superior system to upvotes/tree style.
Hi, thanks for the question. This is of course a headache for me, when I started I just worked on the concept that I thought would be fun to have for online entertainment. Obviously as a single person I can't moderate everything so even if I would like to do strong centralized moderation it's not really possible. Also I believe in free speech and that's by definition means allowing people to express their opinion even if you don't like it.
Moderation will be achieved by the owners and moderators of each channel. You can also hide posts or all posts by a particular user yourself. I also do have some tools to ban IP and users from the whole site or delete all of their posts in case of spam or posting illegal content. I hope that will be enough. Right now it's not really a worry because there are no users so I will focus on that :)
Regarding moderation - this is of course the most difficult question. I have a primitive tool to delete user and all its posts with a single click. I also don't allow TOR traffic. Possibly in the future no proxies too. Each channel owner can moderate and ban whoever they need to, either just the user or its IP address if he/she comes back (right now it's very easy to create a new user, just clear the cookie and you have it).
Of course website must be somewhat popular to attract that crowd. I hope that in the beginning these tools will be enough. On the other hand dirty content won't necessarily be moderated if it's in a dirty channel and it's not illegal.
