I originally implemented Signalling and Quiet NaNs in the compiler. It was an abject failure. With all the transformations a compiler does, where the signalling turns into a quiet is lost. So just quiet NaNs are used.
NaNs are a very underappreciated feature of IEEE-754 floating point. In the D programming language, floats get default initialized to NaN, not to 0.0.
double y = 0.0; // initialized to 0.0
double x; // initialized to NaN
The discussion routinely comes up as "why not default initialize to 0.0?" The reason is a routine mistake in programming is forgetting to initialize a variable. With a floating point 0.0, one may never realize that the floating point calculation results are wrong. But with NaN, the result of a floating point computation will be NaN, which is unlikely to go unnoticed.
I don't know of any other programming language with this safety feature.
Also, the D `char` type is initialized to 0xFF, not 0, because Unicode says that 0xFF is an invalid character.
Just requiring explicit assignment before first use feels like the superior approach to automatic initialization, regardless of whether the automatic initialization is with 0 or with NaN.
The trouble with it is a bug I've seen often. People will get an error message about an "uninitialized variable". Then they go into "just get the compiler to shut up" mode, amd pick "0" as the initializer. Then, the program compiles and runs, and silently produces the wrong answer. Code reviews will simply pass over the "0" initializer, as it looks right.
With default NaN initialization, the programmer is more likely to stop and think about it, not just insert 0.
With the default initialization to nan, do you ever run into situations where people are searching for common sources for nan (nan literals, div by zero) and they can't find it? Or cases where only some branches but not others initialize the float?
To leave a variable uninitialized, use the construction:
int x = void;
Note that nobody is going to write this by accident. And it's easy to grep for.
To find the source of a NaN, it helps to know that every operation that has a NaN as an operand produces a NaN as a result. So if you see a NaN in the output, you can work backwards to where it originated.
What do you think of kotlins approach where it has a 'todo' function that can always coerce to a type, but instead of populating the variable with a default value that's valid, it just throws
> every operation that has a NaN as an operand produces a NaN as a result.
That's not true. The minimum/maximum functions (fmin and fminimum_num variants, but not the fminimum one) treat NaN inputs as not-present, so return the non-NaN value if there is one. Similarly, hypot also treats NaN inputs as not-present. pow and compoundn will ignore NaN exponents if the base is 1.
How long did you think about this before making this declaration? How long did Walter Bright think about this before making his decision when designing his language? Not saying you're wrong, just something to think about perhaps.
C# requires explicit assignment. If an appeal to authority sways you (it shouldn't), you can substitute Anders Hejlsberg instead of this random OP. How long do you suppose Anders Hejlsberg thought about this?
But I contend it's more useful (and interesting) to think about the idea with your own mind instead of tallying up the perceived authority of its supporters and relying on trust. It was also somewhat rude to suggest that the OP had not given their idea much thought. This is a forum for discussion, isn't it?
Sure, but that only matters if default-initialising to NaN significantly reduces them compared to the alternatives. IME it takes a very finely calibrated level of thoughtfulness for your argument in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928539 to work, to have a programmer who is simultaneously thoughtless enough to initialise to 0 without thinking if the compiler requires initialisation, but thoughtful enough to stop and think about it when the compiler initialises to NaN.
Another crucial use of NaNs is if you have a sensor. If the sensor has failed, the sensed value should be transmitted as NaN, not 0, so the receiver knows the data is bad.
My experience is that if you write an interface that (rarely) returns NaNs, someone will use it assuming it's never NaN no matter how good the docs are. Then their code does bad things and you have to patiently explain why they're wrong and yes, they are holding isnan() wrong (in C/C++).
When such users are expected, there exists only one solution.
Do not mask the invalid operation exception, which was actually the original recommendation of the IEEE standard, which was that the default behavior should be to mask all exceptions, except the invalid operation exception.
When the invalid operation exception is not masked, NaNs are never generated and any NaN present in the input data will generate an exception, which will abort the program, unless the exception is handled.
This behavior avoids the bugs caused by careless programmers. Unfortunately, the original suggestion was not adopted by most programming language implementers, so nowadays the typical default setting is to have all exceptions masked. When the programmers also omit to handle the special values, bugs may remain unnoticed.
Special values need not be handled everywhere, because infinities and NaNs will propagate through many operations, so they will remain in the final results. But wherever a value is not persistent, but it is used in some decision and it is discarded after that, special values like NaNs must be handled correctly.
DEL is unicode codepoint U+007F, which is the byte 0x7F in UTF-8, not 0xFF.
Perhaps you were thinking of ÿ which is codepoint U+00FF, which encodes to the bytes 0xC3 0xBF in UTF-8.
When selling a product through a reseller, the markup is around 80-100%. I was horrified by this in the 80s, but soon learned that the resellers would be out of business otherwise.
The reason resellers exist is they do the marketing, warehousing, shipping, customer service, etc.
No, the process has impeded even higher standard of living, because it misallocates resources from value generation to value appropriation.
It's the extreme short term profit maximization that makes the economy a zero sum game. Otherwise it is not.
I don’t know who his wealth was transferred from, exactly. But I do know what he’s using it for now: as a gravitational force to unilaterally screw with public institutions and systems the rest of us depend on.
Even if you agree with some of DOGE projects’s goals, the way it operated was wildly thoughtless about consequences beyond Musk’s personal wishes, and almost completely unaccountable.
I’m honestly sick that my personal Model Y purchase helped add to that power.
And I say that as someone who was a huge Musk fan for years, despite the warning signs — the Thai “pedo” comments, and his very public turn during COVID.
He ended up with all of the profits, but he didn't put in all of the work. A lot of people worked very hard for that wealth, either for salary or a minuscule fraction of the profits.
He gets to keep the lion's share of the profits because he was the one who took the risk with his capital. And bully for him; well done that man. But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true. It's a myth that the wealth owners tell us.
All of these products would exist with the CEOs who get the credit. If it weren't them it would have been someone else. Their expertise as CEOs is not to get the product done, but to get it done a week earlier than the other guy. And even that much is more luck than skill.
There's no way to say "Musk took this money from someone else". But that's different from "He has a million times as much wealth because he is a million times more valuable."
Obviously not. The investors got their share, and employees got their stock options.
> But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true.
What were the names of the crew of Captain Cook's ship? Who was under the command of General Sherman? Who won the battle of Yorktown? Who created Standard Oil? We give credit to the head of something, not to the people under his command.
> If it weren't them it would have been someone else.
Nobody knows that.
> And even that much is more luck than skill.
If I hit a home run once, I would attribute it to luck. If I hit a home run 3 times, then I have skillz.
Gates maneuvered 3 dramatic changes in Microsoft, where other companies failed at the transition. Jobs made 3 fortunes. Musk has made several diverse fortunes.
At some point, you're going to have to give these people credit.
Musk has created a million times more wealth than others. If his life story was a novel, I would have put it down as absurd.
When you accept a salaried position, you sign a contract. The contract lays out your compensation, stock options, etc. In return you turn over the intellectual property you produce to the company.
This is an entirely mutually voluntary arrangement.
If the company does not deliver on its contractual obligations to you, you can take them to court, and you'll win.
If you don't get more than you accepted in the contract, you have no cause to claim being "screwed over".
If you don't read the contract before you sign it, that's on you.
P.S. I've added adendums to employment contracts listing the separate intellectual property that was mine and would remain mine. I never got any pushback on that. Also, I've started side projects while employed, and before working on them, I'd get a signoff from an executive that it was not covered by my employment contract. And I never got "screwed over".
You can always trick investors. For example all the overpromising Musk has done over the years. Also when you are that famous you can sell lower quality goods for a higher price that people will buy because they are associated to you.
All true. That's why there are laws against fraud.
What do you think of the tricks that California pulled to have billions vanish with not a mile of track laid? Or all those hospices with no beds? Or this fun one:
Unfortunately, as a taxpayer, I am on the hook for those tricks. With a business, I can do some due diligence and then decide if I want to get in or not.
I suspect you and I are being fleeced far more by government waste and fraud than by businesses.
In the article I linked to, $8 million disappeared without a trace. I doubt anyone will be prosecuted over that. I'm not sure why. How about Caltrain producing 0 miles of track? Nobody is being prosecuted over that, either. Or the $100 million raised by Fire Aid (to aid the victims of the Palisades fire), and nobody knows what happened to the money.
Do you believe that means there's no hanky panky going on?
> I suspect you and I are being fleeced far more by government waste and fraud than by businesses.
lovely how US politicians have been able to successful lie their way into making gullible people like you believe this - quite remarkable… I am always in awe what they can accomplish
Tesla was quickly going bankrupt when Musk decided to buy into it. It was not an "established business". It had no plan, no car, no design, no sales. When you sell a controlling share to another person, the other person then controls the business.
The “created vs transferred” thing is more nuanced than that.
At some point, accumulated wealth becomes power, and that power can be used to pull energy, attention, labor, and public resources out of the system for one person’s agenda.
And in Tesla’s case, the stock value creation story is insanely unorthodox, to be charitable. A lot of that valuation was supercharged by years of market-moving hype done personally by Elon: 10+ years of FSD timelines that never happened, the more recent “buy a Tesla, it’s an appreciating asset!” super-lie, the mission gradually being abandoned, GOP craps on EVs and it’s crickets from Elon, etc.
Now we have the ultimate example of wealth gravity distortion: Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional. But Elon is not just benefiting from Trump’s transactional nature. He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.
So with all that, the kind of shady behavior Elon pulled that might normally trigger government scrutiny or enforcement is now being smothered by political influence.
Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype, and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.
And to be clear, I’m not trying to pretend nothing real was built. SpaceX is impressive. Tesla really did help kickstart the EV market. But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.
So yes, maybe the wealth was “created” in an accounting sense. But the concern is what happens when that created value becomes an unaccountable force acting on everything else.
If TSLA is in a bubble, at some point it will implode. And then the wealth that was created is destroyed - it won't be transferred out of the company, either.
> Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional.
Both parties accept help from wealthy people, and yes, they do expect something in return. I don't see that Musk got anything out of it, though. Musk received 0 benefit from DOGE.
> But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.
What power do you think Musk is exercising now?
> He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.
I gave you examples of no accountability in government things. I don't see any decrease in accountability.
> Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype,
Sure. And I bought TSLA years ago. I didn't believe his FSD hype. But he delivered on it anyway. If TSLA stock implodes, it's only going to hurt the shareholders, not you.
> and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.
USAID was not involved with regulating Musk's companies.
Let's say Musk has all that private data. What did he do with it? Is he extorting anyone? How does it help his rocket business? Is he draining anyone's bank accounts?
Wealth is not created, it's stripped from the natural commons and it is, despite being massive, obviously finite. What you're referring to is "value creation"--the transformation of this natural wealth into a form that some other humans find valuable at a point in time. This value creation is rewarded via capitalism by the accumulation of monetary instruments which very much represent an appropriation of this wealth. If this system wasn't zero sum then we wouldn't have inflation?
The vast majority of it was stored underground as petrochemicals. A fact made immediately apparent by looking at like any chart. Is this a serious conversation?
In the vast majority of cases that energy could have come from other sources, though the cost would have been somewhat higher. In the hypothetical case of solar would you still describe it as being finite or stripped from the natural commons? I suppose raw land area or 1 AU solar sphere surface area could be viewed that way but it seems reductionist to me.
What if I use what would otherwise be a waste product to create something people are willing to pay for? For example sawdust. Is that not value creation?
How much does your bread cost and how much did it cost in the 90s? Where do you think all that value gone? Has bread some what become much better quality or something? Are they lacing it with gold?
They are stealing from your pocket, in many ways than one.
Another point to consider is that musk wealth is on paper only, real value if he wanted to cash out would turn much smaller, it's all hypothetical.
American bread was worse in previous decades. Now I have many more options, and I buy organic bread.
> They are stealing from your pocket, in many ways than one.
You need a more compelling argument than that. Agriculture is not a particularly lucrative industry.
> Another point to consider is that musk wealth is on paper only, real value if he wanted to cash out would turn much smaller, it's all hypothetical.
Back to "what is value?" There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Value is what people are willing to pay for something. That's it. If people are willing to pay more, then the value is higher. If the are only willing to pay less, then the value is lower. And certainly the value of x is different for different people, and varies moment by moment.
The value of a TSLA share of stock is no different from the value of that piece of paper you have that says "One Dollar" on it.
What is the point on Musk you are making? The monetary success does not neccesserily correlate to the common good they have created. In case of Musk there is a lot of governement subsidies, lots of market manipulation and false claim s. So not all activieties that bring profit to the richest are good to the rest. And stats on inequality just highlights that trend
On the short term every economy is effectively zero sum. Even if you invented something magical that is worth trillions, the economy can't pull trillions of dollars out of nowhere in any short period of time without devaluing everything else.
Sigh. A brief explanation of how money is created. If I create something of value, you can go to a bank and borrow money based on that value. Where did that borrowed money come from? The bank created it out of thin air! Yes, that's right. Created value can be transformed into money. The books balance. And this is unlimited.
What happens when you pay back the money? Yes, it is symmetric, the money is destroyed! (wild, isn't it!)
So why does the bank do this? They make money on the interest from the loan.
This is how "free banking" works, and it applies to your scenario. Creating value does not devalue the rest of the economy. The supply of money is not fixed, it rises and falls relative to the value in the economy.
I know this is a difficult thing to describe briefly, there are college degrees on this topic.
When it comes to what actually matters, people's standards of living, what matters most is percentages, which are zero sum. In a simplified economy where 10 people have $100 each, everyone is worth 10% of the economy, have about equal buying power, equal standards of living, equal political power, and so on.
If one of those people suddenly "creates wealth" and now has $100,000, then the average value of the dollar goes down and the cost of everything goes up. Person X can trivially afford the increase, but the other nine now have lower buying power, lower standards of living, and the $100,000 now can exert coercive control over those with less.
We are all slightly worse off every time there is a new billionaire.
> We are all slightly worse off every time there is a new billionaire.
I responded to the zero sum theory in another reply.
I'll just say that every country that decided to get rid of its wealthy people wound up poorer, a lot poorer.
For a specific example, Massachusetts has a luxury yacht industry. The government decided that they wanted to tax the wealthy, and slapped a hefty tax on yachts. The billionaires simply took their yacht buying elsewhere, and the yacht industry collapsed, costing thousands of highly paid jobs. The government rescinded the tax.
While their activities certainly fall in the realm of capitalism, and are just blips at longer time scales, it certainly feels like capitalism has been a bit under the weather for the past couple decades.
Regarding the money invested in AI, it all gives me "irrational exuberance" vibes.
> Musk got a huge leg up through the government, whether it be tax credits, incentives, side-stepping regulations, etc.
Nope. (Any government incentives were available to all the other car companies.)
> Bezos ran at a loss for so long it drove out actual and potential competitors.
Where do you think he got the money to sustain those losses? Investors! Including me. That is not a "transfer" of wealth, as in exchange the investors received an ownership share of the company.
> Regarding the money invested in AI, it all gives me "irrational exuberance" vibes.
I was not making an argument that the economy is zero-sum, or that Musk or Bezos did not build wealth. I merely pointed out methods they used to build their empires. For example, Musk did take advantage of government incentives, sidestepped regulations, etc.
Again, I never claimed there was any sort of zero-sum transfer of wealth. I'm simply pointing out there are varied ways to build up wealth; people have various opinions about those ways. It's right to call out misconceptions or outright falsehoods, but it's also good to understand what leads people to form or accept those misconceptions in the first place.
I would argue that profit maximization has had very many effects.
On the one side, it has succeeded at reducing costs, which has indeed given rich societies unprecedented access to consumer goods.
On the other, it has outsourced from us both jobs and knowledge, which has resulted in higher unemployment and dissatisfaction, with as consequences the political dominoes we see falling internationally. That and the shoddy US health system (which the rest of the world seems to have decided to follow, for some reason).
And there is the small fact that we're in the process of optimizing the planet to death, and that not-so-rich countries (as well as formerly-rich ones) have starved to death for this high standard of living.
So, let's appreciate our standard of living, but not assume that it's necessarily a good thing in the grand scheme of things.
Outsourcing happens when it is cheaper to build something somewhere else. Tariffs can compensate for that.
Where are the starving people in capitalist countries?
The US health care system is pretty much run by the government. It is not a result of free markets.
A large part of profit maximization (i.e. optimizing) usually means reducing the amount of material needed. Isn't that a good thing?
The people who "rough it" in the wilderness still seem to be backpacking in hi tech equipment. I read about the kit that Lewis & Clark carried. No thanks. (Even on that "Alone" show, they bring hi tech equipment.)
> Outsourcing happens when it is cheaper to build something somewhere else. Tariffs can compensate for that.
Is that free market?
> Where are the starving people in capitalist countries?
The first example from the top of my head is Argentina.
> A large part of profit maximization (i.e. optimizing) usually means reducing the amount of material needed. Isn't that a good thing?
This very much depends on the industry. In software, for instance, it's exactly the opposite.
> The people who "rough it" in the wilderness still seem to be backpacking in hi tech equipment. I read about the kit that Lewis & Clark carried. No thanks. (Even on that "Alone" show, they bring hi tech equipment.)
> > In software, for instance, it's exactly the opposite.
>
> ??
During the last 30+ years, the trend has always been to increase hardware use to save on development/thinking time. AI is the latest and most extreme version of it.
"Profit maximization" on its own would have left most people working 12+ hours a day 6 days a week, like it was very common in the 19th century. Luckily, it's never been the only force shaping our societies.
Sure, productivity increase is hugely important, but if you only pursue profit maximization, then all the productivity increase goes into profits, which means that the general population doesn't increase their well being much if at all.
The 40hr work week didn't come by as a consequence of the profit maximization mentality, but as a consequence of hard fought battles by the workers/employees against that mentality. And when I say "hard fought" I mean in the literal sense, with at least 1,000 workers killed just in the US in those days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
The Law of Supply and Demand is in play, and it means a company cannot dictate prices, wages, or working conditions in a free market economy. Rising productivity would have reduced the average work week regardless.
If you still aren't convinced, consider that the benefits package routinely offered to employees is worth around 40% of their pay.
Human societies aren't governed by simple, divine Laws. "Free market economy", based on rational actors, is an abstraction, an idealized model which is useful to understand some mechanisms, but it's far - VERY far - from being a complete model of any real society. At some point, trying to explain everything with the simple rules of that abstraction becomes an ideology just like Communism, which tries to do the same with different abstractions/simplifications.
Why does it require it? To what aim does this serve the market?
A check against fraud and protection of property rights can be achieved through force and violence and the threat of violence, so that answer seems inadequate.
Likewise, supply and demand is definitely affected by government policies. The supply of labor, for example, by allowing or disallowing near shore or off-shore work with steep penalties. Or allowing/disallowing gambling.
So that also flies in the face of evidence.
It’s a self-serving, faith-based belief that that desires to put “market forces” beyond the reach of voters. It’s also a colossal delusion.
It’s a strange blindspot you have where you understand there is clearly some government role to have a free market, yet can’t see that this also means the government can influence—not eliminate, you’re the one making this claim not me—supply and demand.
The government clearly has levers to influence supply, but I’m failing to make it clear it seems.
As for making transactions beneficial between two parties: Which two parties?
Why does this belief not extend to workers and businesses?
Why doesn’t the lobbying by firms to support H1Bs and off-shore prove that government policies clearly impacts labor supply?
> Rising productivity would have reduced the average work week regardless.
Do you have evidence of this?
> consider that the benefits package routinely offered to employees is worth around 40% of their pay
Please define "routinely" and "employees". Part-time employees do not get benefits packages, much less benefits packages worth 40% of their pay. PTO, Sick time, family leave, and other "benefits" are actually legally mandated and I do not see any evidence that companies would offer this if they were not mandated to do so.
Google sez: "Total compensation generally exceeds base salary by 30% to 50% for many roles, meaning salary often represents only 60% to 70% of an employee's total worth to the company."
Google sez total compensation includes bonuses, commission, stock options, employer-paid insurance (health, life, disability), retirement contributions, paid time off, tuition reimbursement, student loan assistance, gym memberships, employee discounts, Childcare assistance, commuter benefits, and relocation expenses.
Most people do a lot of work themselves that the Richie Rich would pay somebody else to do, like cooking, cleaning, childcare, gardening, etc. If it counts as work when you hire somebody to do it, it should equally count as work if you do it yourself.
People still did cooking, cleaning, childcare, and gardening in those times of 12 hour work days.
BTW, cooking in those days was an all day affair. The wood stove required continuous feeding and watching. Today one can just put the food in a microwave.
I cook a steak now and then, it's the only cooking I do. It takes about 10 minutes. The dishwasher does the cleaning.
Rich people hire others to do the cooking because the rich peoples' jobs pay off far more per hour of work. For example, if my profession pays me $100/hr, it makes perfect sense to pay someone $30/hr to do the cooking for me, as I am still $70/hr ahead.
Working long hours was not necessary in those days, it was forced upon people by declining wages as profit was transferred from individuals, families, and small businesses towards the capital class. The entire movement to introduce the 40 hour work week was based on people wanting to reduce their hours towards what their grandparents worked and survived on. The entire luddite movement was based on declining wages and worsening work conditions compared to the generations before them.
I don't know where you're getting that information from, but analysis of the bones of American colonists shows they worked themselves to an early death.
Life expectancy and average height improved throughout the 19th century.
I think it's more accurate to say it is a process that has resulted in our high standard of living faster than other processes... so far.
There is no guarantee it will keep working for the majority of us going forward; as is becoming very clear all around the world, it also has downsides especially without checks and balances (which was predicted and observed in the past, which is why other processes were conceptualized in the first place!)
As a trivial example, profit maximization is directly responsible for the enshittification we're seeing everywhere, which definitely is negatively impacting our standard of living.
> Nobody has found a better process. Not even close.
Maybe, but as they say, "Past Performance Is Not Indicative of Future Results." The point was, this process may work up to a point, then it may work more against the interests of the population.
I mean, history is already littered with examples of the downsides of this process, like all the rampant anti-worker things profit maximizers tried to get away with that had to be fought literally with blood. Without that bloodshed it is highly likely the average standards of living of the general population would be much, much lower.
You don't even have to look at history, the process is literally playing out right now in various countries.
> It's not an example, it's a generalization. If you have a specific example, let's have a look at it!
I thought enshittification was a pretty specific example? You can find the many articles written about the various ways things are degrading on the Internet with a Google search (the experience of which is probably an even more specific example in itself ;-))
I chose that example because I think it's a microcosm of this process: in the beginning, the profit motive creates great innovation and products. But at some point, like when the market is saturated or monopolized, the profit incentive creates anti-consumer dynamics because companies turn to extractive methods rather than innovative ones.
I don't recall ever seeing USSR products in stores, while plenty of manufactured goods from other countries were. (By products I meant manufactured products, not extracted resources like oil.)
I got some Soviet Union produced wrenches and drill from my great grandfather and East Germany made drill bits from an auction despite nobody in my family living outside the US in 120 years. No it isn't common, but I wouldn't expect the Soviet Union's biggest rival to be importing many of their products to start with, so the fact I possess them at all is decent evidence of their significant production volume.
But no cars, washing machines, microwaves, electronics, furniture, apparel, and on and on. Kinda sad for the size of the country.
I bought some Soviet stuff after the fall of the USSR, because it was unique and interesting. One item was a telescope, one was a brand new rotary dial telephone manufactured in the 1950s, and one was a mechanical clock reputed to be from a submarine.
I'm only sad that I abandoned my phone line (as I only received spam calls on it) and so my Commie Phone is a nice, but useless, desk ornament.
I remember books (there was a famous soviet science publisher, which I believe we learned later had gulag deportees working on their printing presses) and I seem to recall toys and some foods.
My memory from the period is far from perfect, though, as I was a kid when the USSR collapsed.
I think that may have been a result of the political divide of that era. The USSR did export some machinery and arms, but those were traded largely within other Communist countries and "third world" countries.
Your line of reasoning misses the clear example that China pulled 1.4 billion people out of poverty creating mass-literacy before embracing capitalism.
They certainly turned away from socialism and towards capitalism though, I think as part of embracing capitalism. What parts of the economy are not capitalist? State owned companies? In Canada and the US there are many protected or subsidized companies as well. Genuinely curious on the differences on owning a company in China vs canada
Are stock market profit expectations mostly long term? Stock markets have been wrong before.
Besides that, the U.S. stock market went up over several decades while manufacturing capabilities were transferred overseas. That has had, and will continue to have, domestic ramifications that might not be captured by investor profits.
What exactly is the difference? Someone tweets that next week bitcoin will be worth $x more, or elon tweets that tesla will be worth $x more next week?
On the other hand, we have government operations that spend staggering amounts of money, and accomplish nothing at all. This one even has lost $8 million and nobody knows what happened to the money:
There's that show "The 1% Club" that is reasoning-based, but trivia is a lot faster to come up with, lends itself to showing lots of pretty pictures and can make for good, but subtle product placement opportunities. Additionally, everyone knows at least a little trivia and can play along whereas some people will get stumped on the easiest of reasoning puzzles.
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