bokonist

94 ms·

781.
by bokonist 18y ago
It wasn't just the American west that attracted the ambitious. Sample from a time and place with healthy entrepreneurial capitalism and I think you'll find that ambitious people had a much greater inclination towards starting a business th
782.
by bokonist 18y ago
I find your essay a bit confusing because you never define what "success" or "better" means. There are many different ways of measuring organizational success. When you say that traditionally, bigger organizations were better, do you mean
783.
by bokonist 18y ago
Here is one: Large organizations will start to do worse now, though, because for the first time in history they're no longer getting the best people. I believe this statement to be false. Sampling from my college class and my smart homet
784.
by bokonist 18y ago
As a recent ivy grad, I've noticed the exact same thing.
785.
by bokonist 18y ago
Behind the success of most corporate giants is usually the not-so-invisble-hand of government connections. The 1960's organization man economy was a result of the tremendous growth of government during the New Deal and the World War. IBM
786.
by bokonist 18y ago
larger commercial operations tended to be more successful than small ones. It's just that the big ones weren't very big by modern standards. In your essay you predict that "large organizations will probably never again play the leading ro
787.
by bokonist 18y ago
also the development of New York at that time may be comparable as the development of Cameroon now days. No way. I would much, much prefer to live in New York city circa 1900 than Cameroon today. Read the section of "The Land of the dol
788.
by bokonist 18y ago
The crux of the problem was the rating agencies. By law, regulated funds (insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds) can only invest in bonds that are rated "investment grade" by official rating agencies ( such as Moody's). The rat
789.
by bokonist 18y ago
Yes, but taxes are not unique to African countries, which is what the article is trying to explain. All developed countries have taxes too.
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by bokonist 18y ago
I don't buy the corruption thesis for explaining lack of development. New York in the late 1900's was unbelievably corrupt, yet it had one of the fastest growing economies in the history of the world. Read this book if you want to read ho
791.
by bokonist 18y ago
The homicide rate of modern Washington D.C. is 40X that of London during the great depression. Let me repeat, that's a 4,000% difference . Do you think modern Washington D.C. is 40 times poorer than depression-era London? Source: http
792.
by bokonist 18y ago
A "net neutrality" bill would've forced the CRTC to rule in favor of the small ISPs Can you name a regulation that in practice has benefited small companies at the expense of larger companies? Most regulations get enacted in two steps 1)
793.
by bokonist 18y ago
The graph Krugman shows is monetary base - ie actual green Federal Reserve notes. Unforunately, most of the U.S. money supply is not in the form of federal reserve notes, but in the form of credit ( savings accounts, money market funds,
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by bokonist 18y ago
You'd think that by 2008 we wouldn't still be banning usury, but I guess not.
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by bokonist 18y ago
Are the test scores you refer to based on learned skills, or on intelligence? If the former, you could try giving the students a test like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices It
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by bokonist 18y ago
Without some kind of wage growth above inflation The key is keeping inflation down. Run a sound monetary policy and keep a constant stream of productivity improvements in all sectors, so that the purchasing power of a dollar continually
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by bokonist 18y ago
Most non-fiction books and essays are collections of anecdotes plus a guiding interpretation. Data (as in statistics) is hard to come by and rarely reliable. And without the interpretation, you simply have a bunch of mindless facts. The
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by bokonist 18y ago
I'm curious if anyone has any refutations. I shared this because I found it unexpectedly compelling. But I don't want to be the victim of believing the last thing I have read.
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The Case for Global Warming Skepticism (commentlog.org)
1 points by bokonist 18y ago|2 comments
800.
by bokonist 18y ago
Right, fixed now.
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Feynman, Rothbard, and the Science of Economics(commentlog.org)
4 points by bokonist 18y ago|0 comments
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by bokonist 18y ago
In a SaaS company the cost of sales is recognized immediately, but revenue is only recognized one month at a time. The company might spend $3K on marketing and sales to make $15K over the life time of the customer. The cost of sales up fr
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by bokonist 18y ago
So if you could do it again, what degree/career path would you have chosen?
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by bokonist 18y ago
You make a pretty broad generalization that programming sucks as a career. I think you need to compare the best engineering jobs to the best MBA jobs, and the average engineering job to the average MBA job. So compare working at justin.tv
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by bokonist 18y ago
A 50% dropout rate may be a sign of health - it means the courses haven't been watered down. I'd be far more worried about a 95% graduation rate. States universities are less selective with general admission, so the engineering department
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by bokonist 18y ago
That's a lot of upvotes for a rant. Is this your experience personally? Do you not like working for justin.tv?
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by bokonist 18y ago
Many of these lunatic dictators were elected ( Mussolini, Hitler) and the others came to power from revolutions that promised a "people's democracy" ( the Bolsheviks, Mao, Pol Pot). My take on the origins of World War I is quite different t
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by bokonist 18y ago
Off the top of my head: Sulla, Cromwell, Robespierre, Napolean, Hitler, Mugabe. There are many more, but I'd have to verify.
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by bokonist 18y ago
I would welcome a government that did absolutely nothing except stop bad guys from getting into power. Unfortunately, Congress thinks its job is to pass "legislation" and it does so in vast quantities. This has piled up over the decades c
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by bokonist 18y ago
One option: Abolish Congress and the presidency. I mean, what have they done for you lately? Can you name a single good deed they've done in the past 30 years? Use some sort of board of trustees to select the Supreme Court justices and

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