dbingham

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331.
by dbingham 5y ago
They're still considered to own their home, even when they have a mortgage on it. Though, I'm not sure how many people do own their home at all - so I probably should have said "For the vast majority of people who own any pr
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by dbingham 5y ago
> Do we force people to sell pieces of their property to pay the taxes on that property? You answered your own question, but to add more context the answer isn't "For many types of property" but for most people the answer
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by dbingham 5y ago
> Even the worst models of climate change do not predict the catastrophic ends you are attempting to paint. You're just distracting from the issue at this point. In general, I find doomsday predictions unvaluable. Nevertheless, i&#x
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by dbingham 5y ago
> Owner and employee are different risk profiles, it's neither useful nor beneficial to impose by law that nobody can be an employee any longer, especially for those who can't afford the risk. The owner doesn't carry the r
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by dbingham 5y ago
Yikes. You... uh... must have a social circle that looks very different from mine. I know any number of people who would eagerly start a high risk innovation play as a worker cooperative, because the money reward isn't what they care
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by dbingham 5y ago
> The free market and worker cooperatives are completely compatible. I agree. But there is something that needs to change in order for worker cooperatives become the dominant business form. So long as capital can demand ownership, worker
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by dbingham 5y ago
Yes, worker cooperatives have formed and functioned in the existing economy. Which is part of how we know using them as the foundation of our economy, rather than a niche aspect of it, could work. > But lenders won't lend without a
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by dbingham 5y ago
No the co-ops I'm talking about are businesses democratically run by their workers and they exist in the current economy with out coersion. Ever heard of Mondragon? 80,000 worker owner cooperative operating out of Spain for decades.
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by dbingham 5y ago
It would have to be linked to a requirement that all businesses be formed as worker cooperatives, democratically run by their workers. That's what would give labor the power. The usery laws are just about preventing banks from exercis
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by dbingham 5y ago
How would the proposal I outlined for a free market made up of worker cooperatives limit overall wealth in our society?
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by dbingham 5y ago
> This already exists, they are called cooperatives, many of them actually work pretty great. Try to guess what happens when they grow and they need to hire employees... They continue to operate. Mondragon has 80,000 worker owners. And
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by dbingham 5y ago
There are many more options than feudalism, fascism, or communism. And my point is that the lack of awareness of them is part of the problem. For example, there's the form of Democratic Socialism I propose above: where we replace the
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by dbingham 5y ago
> My meaning was very plain. Your meaning was not plain, you wrote a few very broad sentences and in your clarifications it seems you were talking about a single problem - equality. The original post was outlining many problems, inequal
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by dbingham 5y ago
That didn't seem like the point you were making, what you seemed to imply is that some form of the current system has existed forever. But lets work with your new point. Saying "all the economic systems we've tried produced
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by dbingham 5y ago
No, that was centralized state socialism - it was authoritarian and centralized. What I'm proposing is more akin to distributed democratic socialism. Our government is still democratically run. You still have independent banks (forme
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by dbingham 5y ago
They don't have thousands of years of evidence. The modern economic system has only existed about 200 years. It's precursor was around a couple hundred years before that. Prior to that, the economic system looked very different
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by dbingham 5y ago
There are quite a number of solutions on offer - they just have a difficult time gaining traction in our media (and therefor in the public debate). Part of that has to do with the fact that a majority of those with economic and political p
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by dbingham 5y ago
I see, you lead HN and HN is an independent piece of YC. You're not involved in the incubator side of YC? Makes sense. Thanks for explaining, and thanks for working so hard to shepherd HN :)
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by dbingham 5y ago
Just out of curiosity, what's your relationship to YC? I (and I'm guessing others here) only know you as HN's moderator.
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by dbingham 5y ago
Is there any evidence that the "startups" that we should be frustrated are getting funded are the ones started by people from diverse backgrounds? Chris Evans, the founder of the startup in the OP, doesn't sound like someone
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by dbingham 5y ago
Most localities in the US are dominated by one of the major parties to the point where the primary becomes the election. That doesn't leave any room for a third party to break in either. Too many people never learn about local candid
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by dbingham 5y ago
There is no room for a third party to start gaining ground in the US. We already have a third and fourth party - the Libertarian and Green parties - that have been trying to gain traction for years. Neither has been able to. The Greens c
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by dbingham 5y ago
If companies were structured as employee owned worker cooperatives, then that sacrifice would be meaningfully rewarded. As it is now, a lot of people sacrifice so a handful can walk away with the rewards created by everyone else's sac
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by dbingham 5y ago
Yeah, adding my voice. Rescue time (and apps like it) are far too invasive (by necessity) for me to be comfortable with that data being sent remotely. It amounts to the single most invasive spy tool you could possibly install, since it&#x
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by dbingham 5y ago
You're going to need a citation for the statement that organic farming releases more greenhouse gasses. That would be a deeply un-intuitive finding, and even with that citation I would want to scrutinize it carefully. Organic farming
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by dbingham 5y ago
But that's the point. There are always going to be distortions. And only some of those distortions come from the government. Perfect markets don't exist and can't exist . They don't line up incentives as advertised
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by dbingham 5y ago
> What makes dollars unique is that if you inject more dollars into the free market for a good, then ceteris paribus, you will cause more of that good to be produced. Markets don't actually work this way in practice. That's th
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by dbingham 5y ago
Except, if you'd ever paid any attention to housing markets in any major city they don't work this way. There are too many other factors and incentives at play. Not least of which is that the profit motive drives developers and
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by dbingham 5y ago
Those things happen in markets with price signals too. Rationing and persistent shortage are happening in housing markets around the world broadly. It's kind of a given that any social housing like this is going to have a limited numb
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by dbingham 5y ago
The issue is not his nudity so much as the commercial use of his image.

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