Top all-time · #1353
Charles Hugh Smith
Personal blog · oftwominds.comeconomicspolitics
Charles Hugh Smith's personal blog at oftwominds.com covers economics and politics. Since 2007, 52 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “Suburbs: The Dispersal Defense Against Nuclear Attack (2010)”. The last post was in 2008, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (27) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Charles Hugh Smith's Of Two Minds for critiques of the US economy, debt and bubbles, housing, bureaucracy and Cold War suburban planning, often backed by charts. Praise and criticism both focus on how well the analysis is supported.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Analysis and conclusions one commenter finds hard to argue with; "a good overview"; "read the whole thing"; a Japan land-price graph.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 27 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Suburbs: The Dispersal Defense Against Nuclear Attack (2010)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-03-08
- /blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnerability.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-10
- /blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12-10.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-13
What Hacker News says?
This crapification of tech is just a microcosm of where America is headed as a whole. I found a blog recently that talks about it in depth, and I find it hard to argue with any of the analysis or conclusions [1]. Hard to ignore the signs that the US is an empire in decline, heading towards collapse. 1. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun24/negativity6-24.html
Comment linking /blogjun24/negativity6-24.html
on “It's time to make computing personal again”Submitted Why Japan Is Doomed as a story · 111 points
HN discussionI agree, and I suspect most people are just engaging with the title more than its actual contents. To me this reads as a bit perma-bear/conspiracy theory inspired. The article is lacking in pretty much any evidence to support its claims besides the FRED graph of disability claims. Also I'm pretty sure that graph is showing almost the opposite of what they're saying it shows. The number of non-participants (of workin…
Comment linking /photos2024/disability8-23a.png
on “The Tsunami of Burnout Few See”- pg · 2010-02-05
Submitted The median US house is now 4.9x median income, vs 3.5x in 1975 as a story · 35 points
HN discussion The NOAA currently hosts over over 37 petabytes of 'comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data' and was established in October 1970. It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. I'm not one to use emotional quasi religious terms like 'denier' but that does give pause for thought. The NOAA started out Surveying the US coastline in 1807 as the 'U.S. Coast and Geodetic…
Comment linking /blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12-10.html
on “It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record”Submitted It's Your Choice, Europe: Rebel Against the Banks or Accept Debt-Serfdom as a story · 29 points
HN discussionMoney quote from this piece feels relevant: "Once you enable students to borrow $36,000 a year, then magically the costs of a year in college (or for-profit school offering worthless "skills" that do no more for the hapless student than a high school diploma) rise to $36,000" http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/consumer-devolution-tw...
Comment linking /blogapril11/consumer-devolution-two4-11.html
on “Peter Thiel: We’re in a Higher Education Bubble”Submitted Push Them Hard Enough and the Productive Class Will Opt Out of Servitude as a story · 25 points
HN discussion> Broadly speaking the US economy is quite healthy In reality, it's the exact opposite of "quite healthy". Here's a good overview of what's up: http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug15/bear8-15.html
Comment linking /blogaug15/bear8-15.html
on “Stocks Off Sharply as Market Upheaval Grows”Submitted Why Has the U.S.-Owned Auto Industry Failed in North America? as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSorry, I am multi-tasking, and that poorly. I will look up some of the references, the names that seem to be coming to mind (looking over my RSS feeds) are Kuppy from Adventures in Capitalism, Chris Martensen from Peak Prosperity, Simon Black of Sovereign Man, Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds, I think less-doom-prone authors on fee.org and mises.org. It is highly likely a biased list, I seem to have been gravitati…
Comment linking /blogmar19/empires-collapse3-19.html
on “A Black Hole Engulfing the World's Bond Markets”Submitted Why are you so negative? (2024) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThat's interesting. I hadn't heard of this before. The evidence is pretty well set out in Kathleen Tobin's "The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence." https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnera... The vast majority of proposals are from before 1956 -- i.e. before the Soviets demonstrated their own high-yield thermonuclear weapons. The degree o…
Comment linking /blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnerability.pdf
on “To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars”Submitted Patents, Complexity, Marginal Returns: Hello, Devolution as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThere is an about page: https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Comment linking /blog.html
on “How We Institutionalized Incompetence”Submitted The New Tyranny Few Even Recognize as a story · 12 points
HN discussionAmericans are desperate. May not be felt among the HN crowd, but standards of living in the US have been declining consistently for a long time [1]. Remember that Trump was not re-elected to a second term initially specifically because he failed to deliver on his promise of "MAGA". He instead did a Jeb Bush presidency, complete with Wall Street (Mnuchin) and the CIA (Pompeo) running the country exactly as would have…
Comment linking /blogjun24/negativity6-24.html
on “Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed "”Submitted China: Ascendant Superpower Or Just Another Nation with Structural Problems? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI think this graphic might point towards some of the reason that college is so pricy: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png Although it is somewhat cynical...
Comment linking /photos10/lifecycle-bureaucracy.png
on “It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays”Submitted The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSome of the logic behind the incentivization of all this was to make the US less vulnerable to nuclear attack during the Cold War. Basically it would be harder to kill all of us if we were more spread out. http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnerab...
Comment linking /blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnerability.pdf
on “Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?”Submitted Is Anyone Else's Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital Shadow Work as Mine Is? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIncome for bottom 90% has declined http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2015/income-growth4-15.png
Comment linking /photos2015/income-growth4-15.png
on “Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?”Submitted When Belief in the System Fades (California Tax Rebellion) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThese two charts tell the story: http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2014/total-credit6-14.png http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2014/usfed-balance-sheet6-14... Read the whole thing: http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune14/central-planning6-14.ht... We are in a debt bubble propped up by massive central bank intervention all over the world. The intervention will fail at some point and well get a bout of deflation just like in…
Comment linking /blogjune14/central-planning6-14.html
on “Valuations”Submitted Low Interest Rates Ruined the Economy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLooks like they've been doing a bad job. They've created a pretty massive destabilization bust of the dollar, with a massive unrecovered crash since the inception of the fed [0]. Not long after the fed's inception, there was massive GDP destabilization[1], and then further boom-and-bust cycles. Unemployment cycles circa before/after fed don't look terribly different either, especially if you exclude war time. In fac…
Comment linking /photos2012/Dollar-value1776-2008a.gif
on “US economy added just 22,000 jobs in August, unemployment highest in 4 yrs”Submitted Seven Things That Will Eventually Matter A Lot as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe suburbanization (or decentralization) was promoted by the Federal Government as a deterrent against nuclear strikes https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly10/suburbs-defense-07-10....
Comment linking /blogjuly10/suburbs-defense-07-10.html
on “Why Invest in Cities? There's Always Another Boise”Submitted Suburbs: The Dispersal Defense Against Nuclear Attack (2010) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
