Off topic: what is the cultural or psychological meaning of these one-off usernames on Hacker News? Last week I referred to Lisp in the past tense and someone created a username "presenttense" to correct me. Is it suppose to be a clever way of saying something, to create a one-time username? Or is that some people really need that much anonymousness? Should I assume that some of these one-offs are people who work for Ycombinator, who perhaps do not want to attach their normal usernames to something that some might interpret as snarky?
(edit: why downvote this? It is a serious question. I am curious why people create one-off usernames. And I am curious what the Hacker News community thinks of this practice. Another thread today was about how to improve voting on Hacker News. Do one-off accounts throw off the way karma should work, in an ideal system? That's a valid question, when we consider how to make the community better.)
I've often thought that some of these one-offs are owned by long-time HN'ers who want to post content or comments across topics they find interesting, but don't fit well into the perceived "right content" moderation buckets. Much like your off-topic (but valid to HN) comment above... I could be wrong, but I've assumed it was a means to provide fringe topics/discussion without "damaging" their more popular personas.
The article is very interesting, much more so than the meta discussion here. Mark's thesis is that the middle class have no place to put their money except in real estate which is creating an unsustainable bubble which will lead shortly to a crash and a possibly violent upheaval. The Chinese have many unfulfilled needs, such as health care, which could be funded by their foreign earnings, but this would drive the dollar down and the yuan up, killing the boom.
He states that the consensus driven leadership is hiding from the problems of the bubble economy. Interesting times.
I did find it interesting that in 183 comments that were left on this article (not now, as this is a repost, but in the earlier discussion that was linked), there was scant mention of the property bubble, excepting one person who simply said "definitely"; I found the progression fascinating, and am going to now go back through and re-read some of the previous articles I had seen on Chinese property valuations again to learn more.
(edit: why downvote this? It is a serious question. I am curious why people create one-off usernames. And I am curious what the Hacker News community thinks of this practice. Another thread today was about how to improve voting on Hacker News. Do one-off accounts throw off the way karma should work, in an ideal system? That's a valid question, when we consider how to make the community better.)