Item — HN Reader

A few people say or do something completely nutty and the 'country is suffering this lunacy'. At what golden period in history were there no nutcases pitching some irrational extremes into the public sphere?

On the other hand maybe I'm quite wrong about all this. Someone has estimated (an open calculation) the payback time for the US debt burden at 90,000 years if it was paid back at the rate of $1,000,000 per day. Some might argue there's lunacy at work over many decades to achieve this result.

(from a comment on this blog) - -https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/10/08/the-smartest-pe...

2 comments

1. It's different because the internet feeds us every bit of lunacy that happens anywhere in the country, so it looks like everyone has gone insane. (Especially in politics, where the Ds will tell you about every single stupid thing an R says anywhere in the country, and the Rs will tell you about every single stupid thing a D says.)

2. The national debt is probably a result of long-term lack of wisdom, yes. But with an economy the size of the US, there is absolutely no reason to pay it back at only $1,000,000/day. A serious attempt would be more like $1,000,000,000/day.

$1m per day divided by ~400m population is essentially zero. Why even mention this? It's just using numbers with a lot of zeros to sound scary, but means nothing.