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Idiosyncratic Whisk
Personal blog · idiosyncraticwhisk.comeconomicspolitics
Idiosyncratic Whisk is a personal blog at idiosyncraticwhisk.com about economics and politics. Since 2018, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on housing economics, such as the housing shortage after the 2008 bust and why rent rather than sale price better reflects cost of living. Comments cite it as a source.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Pulling yolks from the scramble.
What Hacker News says?
Evidently, there are enough advantages for people to voluntarily take on those jobs. And 'normal employment' means 'unemployment' for a lot of people in France these years. France should encourage more companies to enter and contest the market that Uber is in. See https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in... for how when Uber and eg Lyft are both operating in the same market, the result is almost…
Comment linking /2019/05/uber-and-wages-in-free-economy.html
on “Highest French court reclassifies Uber drivers as employees”I agree with your sentiment. But it's not house prices that are important. It's housing affordability, which is better measured by monthly mortgage payments (and rents). However, that was not what happened in and after 2008. Availability of credit collapsed. So owning housing got cheaper for people who could still get credit, but renting did not become cheaper. Have a look at the backlog of https://www.idiosyncratic…
Comment linking /
on “Why in the world would you own bonds?”Actually, the general public kept demanding a housing price collapse around 2008. It's rather tragic. See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43062766-shut-out for more detail than you ever wanted to know, or check out the author's blog at https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/
Comment linking /
on “Why in the world would you own bonds?”Investors are squeezed all the time. Just look at how much stock prices drop whenever there's some bad news. What do you mean by top-of-band comp? In a competitive industry workers are paid according to their marginal productivity. https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/10/california-wants-... has some background to what I was talking about. Do keep in mind that industries can be (un-) competitive in different ways…
Comment linking /2019/10/california-wants-more-monopsony-in.html
on “The Death of Corporate Research Labs”https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2016/10/housing-part-183-... Kevin Erdmann agrees with you. Here is his blog post about the housing shortage associated with the 2008 bust
Comment linking /2016/10/housing-part-183-measure-of-shortage.html
on “Berlin approves 5-year rent freeze”You joke, but do have a look at https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/10/california-wants-... and https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in... Summary: Uber couldn't pay more, even if they wanted to.
Comment linking /2019/05/uber-and-wages-in-free-economy.html
on “Teaching Rats to Drive Tiny Cars”> The other ridiculous conditions are solved by making them threat their employees as employees and pay them a minimum wage for time spent including spent idling + millage. Compare https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/10/california-wants-... and https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in... Basically, there's not much binding riders to a specific delivery app. Many cities have multiple competing…
Comment linking /2019/05/uber-and-wages-in-free-economy.html
on “Revolt of the Delivery Workers”> It'll be interesting to see what this does to the credit quality of future borrowers, which is the only leverage the bank has. Secured loans on appreciating assets mean that at some point, the bank has an incentive to write loans that they know are not going to be repaid, because they buy only part of the asset, receive a stream of cash payments for it, and then get the full asset anyway when the borrower defaults…
Comment linking /p/a-slide-deck-on-bubble-and-crisis.html
on “Used car market gets even more bizarre”> It's fundamentally _odd_ to me that people are looking at rental costs. I think it was good that he focused on rent instead of for-sale price. The sale price includes other factors (property taxes, interest rates, expectation of rent increases) that do not affect the cost of living, and many authors get confused when they complain about rising prices while ignoring rents; see https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/201…
Comment linking /2017/10/housing-part-264-rent-is-how-we-consume.html
on “Why you're having trouble hiring”