Frondo

51 ms·

571.
by Frondo 7y ago
The first sentence is the "how do we want society to work" and it is the right one. Businesses are a thing we've invented to shuffle resources around; there's currently enough resources for everyone in the world to be fa
572.
by Frondo 7y ago
What I'd like to see is what the numbers look like if you: 1) Pegged the CEO <-> lowest-paid worker ( or contracted worker , so you can't just contract out the janitors) to no greater than 10 to 1. 2) Balance out the next fe
573.
by Frondo 7y ago
One clarification here that fills me with a mixture of disgust and heartbreak: "in rural areas, land is being used" -- it's more that, in rural areas, land is being owned . Not necessarily used. I lived in an extremely rural
574.
by Frondo 7y ago
No, let's be real, the cops show up in cities pretty reliably. The drawback is that sometimes they do good for the situation, while a third of the time they end up shooting someone. Interesting you mention medivac insurance -- I spent
575.
by Frondo 7y ago
With 1 in 8 Americans living underneath the federal poverty line, and 10% of employed American adults facing food insecurity (i.e. hunger), it's arguably not the case that the economy is booming. As for what you can credit the tax cuts
576.
by Frondo 7y ago
Of course not. What I object to is how American life is structured to require one. I went to Taiwan a few years back and didn't rent a car for the two weeks I was there. I was able to explore the city of Taipei thoroughly on their in
577.
by Frondo 7y ago
The worst consequence of a car-heavy culture, to me, isn't the pollution (or any other externalities we don't normally account for because cars!). It's that a car-heavy culture takes the choice away for everybody for any oth
578.
by Frondo 7y ago
And what if we'd have let them cut down every patch of old growth forest? How many more years of logging jobs would those communities have gotten, before the jobs would dry up because the trees are all gone? 10? 20? And then who wou
579.
by Frondo 7y ago
Yes, I am willing to consider trade-offs and account for externalities. "Anything other than spiteful" isn't dehumanizing. Humans can be spiteful, and can operate in a way that seems entirely driven by spite and still be peo
580.
by Frondo 7y ago
I'm going to present an alternate take on "how to live" from you and several other people who replied, not to say your way is wrong, but to say that others live other ways. I like hearing about cool stuff, I like sharing it w
581.
Professionalization of tech by corporations to prevent a tech labor movement(twitter.com)
3 points by Frondo 7y ago|1 comments
582.
by Frondo 7y ago
I prefer what the EFF is doing -- trying to shift the legal landscape, so that we don't need to take elaborate steps. Us individual techies always look for ways we can, as people, dodge these intrusions of the system into our lives. Un
583.
by Frondo 7y ago
You are all absolutely correct, that it comes down to effort and practice, for the typical adult. If you treat language learning like a serious hobby, and practice it several hours a week, consistently, of course you can learn to speak a l
584.
by Frondo 8y ago
So, someone is tasked with building and maintaining a small part of what Slack provides as a service?
585.
by Frondo 8y ago
Much of the eye candy is functional, not frivolous anyway. This is the false dichotomy. Being able to apply slight styling to text is better than wrapping words in asterisks or underlines. Adding reactions and emojis is better than usi
586.
by Frondo 8y ago
Why even call it "part"? The word everyone's familiar with is "leave". "part" is already an irc jargon.
587.
by Frondo 8y ago
IRC is rarely used compared to Slack, with its 10 million users. I used it daily for decades, but let's not forget netsplits, nick collisions, zero log history (without a bouncer, and then you need a place to run a bouncer!), no file
588.
by Frondo 8y ago
When did a bank run on "all the banks" happen? Referring to what you said here: > But what if it happened to ALL the banks?
589.
by Frondo 8y ago
But what set of circumstances would lead to this specific sequence of events? "Every bank customer wants to withdraw all of their money into cash on the same day." ??? I don't mean this as snark but that's a hypothetica
590.
by Frondo 8y ago
1) Federal government, yes, state governments, most of 'em, local governments, mostly not. City and county-level governments are hugely varied in size, but it doesn't take much for a private company to be larger than vast swaths
591.
by Frondo 8y ago
I used to work for a business that sold a software platform to both government buyers and large private companies, and we saw absolutely no difference in inefficiency, waste, and fiefdom-building. Those things are all absolutely a matter of
592.
by Frondo 8y ago
Counterpoint to the ACA specifically: before it, I was unable to buy health insurance at any price, because a surgery I'd had in 2004 disqualified me as a "pre-existing condition". I'm sorry your premiums went up, but t
593.
by Frondo 8y ago
This is really getting into the weeds here, but my partner and I (hetero couple in our 30s) do laundry maybe once a week, but it is a pretty time-intensive process because half of all of our clothes are cold-wash, half of those are line-dry
594.
by Frondo 8y ago
I can't rebut the comment that replied to me here, because it's dead. But it raised a few points I do want to address. Yes, people were oppressed under the Soviet system. American capitalism is oppressive to many, too. Ask a pri
595.
by Frondo 8y ago
Has your life brought you in contact with any significant number of people who grew up in the Soviet system? Or are you insinuating something only by what you've read in books? Strangest distinct memory I have of hanging with people i
596.
by Frondo 8y ago
This is already a theoretical risk with vote-by-mail systems, and in practice it is Not a Problem. Oregon has had vote-by-mail for more than two decades; there are present-day voters who were born after Oregon dropped polling places entirel
597.
by Frondo 8y ago
This is a thing I've seen said a lot, but I'm curious if it's been studied. And I don't mean this as snark, but has anyone looked at what kind of "good works" churches do for their local communities? I'm
598.
by Frondo 8y ago
I don't think that's fair; it's certainly not specific, but it is a way to structure society. It's just a vague way to do it. It establishes a base minimum for what to expect from people, and what to give to people.
599.
by Frondo 8y ago
I've always heard that that's predominantly religious giving, but never actually looked to see whether that's true til now. It turns out, it is: > Historically, Religious groups have received the largest share of charitabl
600.
by Frondo 8y ago
In addition to downvoting, I would really appreciate hearing from folks about what's a better way to structure society than "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"; and specifically, why wou

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