john_b

15 ms·

61.
by john_b 12y ago
If you want to argue general economic principles, then do so [1]. Just don't cherry pick examples to prop up your perspective. I don't think anyone, even Reagan or Thatcher, would have stood behind the assertion that a luxury phon
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by john_b 12y ago
> "Unlike real serfs Uber drivers can set themselves free at anytime (i.e. quit)." I'm certainly not on the Uber-hating bandwagon that's been doing laps around HN lately, but this isn't always true. Some people
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by john_b 12y ago
You've just treated the entire world economy as if every individual is fungible, all tasks are identical, and transaction costs are completely negligible. The only thing that's failed here is your perspective. The world is a very
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by john_b 12y ago
> "I don't know what it is, but US companies seem to have a real issue with taking a "European" approach to this work-life balance matter." Much of it is because US companies pay a higher proportion of the cost
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by john_b 12y ago
> "The economic argument would be that some of the benefits of creating new people are captured by the rest of society, not just the parents, and so to maximize efficiency, some of the costs should also be borne by society."
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by john_b 12y ago
> "if you forced companies to pay through their leave, that gives them an incentive to hire people who they don't believe are likely to have children soon" This is already done, though it is never admitted for obvious re
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by john_b 12y ago
You can use averages in your area as a baseline, weighing more heavily towards any startups of a similar nature. You can also do a sensitivity analysis and determine what the room for error is in those quantities. Startups are a form of spe
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by john_b 12y ago
> "Spying on European officials is a problem with oversight, not with capabilities." Snowden has showed this to be absolutely false. "Oversight" has been the nominal preventative for spying on our allies for decades
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by john_b 12y ago
You may be technically and structurally correct, but I think most people care far more about how effective democratic checks and balances are being applied to the NSA (hint: not much) rather than classifying it as part of one type of system
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by john_b 12y ago
> "At GE, we have stayed competitive for more than 130 years because of our relentless quest for progress on all fronts, including culture." Does it count as a submarine [1] if it is obvious? [1] http://www.paulgra
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by john_b 12y ago
The fundamental reason is that most people see the state as a protective entity. People don't give their information to someone they don't trust (at least not for free). But they fundamentally trust the government as a whole, even
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by john_b 12y ago
I was about to post the same thing. The research methodology is very careless here. It reminds me of how so much psychological research has been reexamined after psychologists stopped using college students as their exclusive sample group.
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by john_b 12y ago
I've found that objections to space exploration share a fundamental axiom with the more general objections to federal funding of scientific activities of any type. Namely, that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is an inherently
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by john_b 12y ago
Capitalism as a system has many impersonal qualities, but capitalism per se does not value anything. It just provides mechanism (market prices, investment dollars, and so on) by which the value that people attribute to things can be known.
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by john_b 12y ago
I can understand how Europeans are justifiably upset when Americans talk about reforming the American surveillance apparatus in terms of protecting the rights of Americans, but please understand that this does NOT imply an indifference to
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by john_b 12y ago
To quote Michael Jordan: "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in
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by john_b 12y ago
Recursion and unbounded loops are far too risky on their own, even ignoring the problems they cause for static analysis. The code that goes on NASA spacecraft is bombarded by cosmic rays on a daily basis, something a server sitting in a bui
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by john_b 12y ago
From the OP: > "We want to be sure we’re not discriminating against founders in our funding decisions at YC" This is not an affirmative action program. YC is an accelerator, not a charity. It primarily seeks long term positiv
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by john_b 12y ago
The traditional approach in sensor fusion is to use high accuracy, high drift sensors like the phone's accelerometer to provide accurate short term data and then correct for the drift using less accurate but low drift sensors like GPS.
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by john_b 12y ago
Austrian economists like to point out that human wants and needs are effectively infinite (mostly due to the "wants" part), so there is fundamentally no reason that our economy should cease functioning just because the "needs
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by john_b 12y ago
> "Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population" I'm not sure what you mean. These are apples and oranges you are comparing here.
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by john_b 12y ago
I think you need to check your dictionary for a proper definition of "administrative". Nobody has been bemoaning the exponential expansion of janitors and cafeteria ladies on university campuses.
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by john_b 12y ago
> "Look at the nearby discussion: Instead of asking why Carmen Ortiz, who's been in her current job for nearly six years, is still there, we're debating the terms of use of the petition site. Instead of wondering why a la
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by john_b 12y ago
...and incur great expense in constructing infrastructure [1] to replace the roads and parking areas which previously occupied those city centers. [1] Buses, trains & tracks, bike rentals & bike paths, etc. Choose as you may, it sti
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by john_b 12y ago
In economic theory this is fine, but much of economic theory is like string theory: consistent and rational, but utterly unmeasurable--and thus useless for anything outside of philosophy. Your definition of "productive" requires s
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by john_b 12y ago
There is something better and it's called the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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by john_b 12y ago
This is all fine and I don't disagree with you, but how do you propose we fix the real problem (federal control over far too much) without first removing the endemic corruption favoring entrenched interests that our current campaign fi
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by john_b 12y ago
This is a predictable response to the nature of the product (education), the nature of the market (mostly clueless teenagers), and the uncertainty within that market of the eventual value of the product (chances of getting a job, how much i
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by john_b 12y ago
If your company is having that discussion in the context of full time employment, the indirect costs (i.e. non-salary things like health insurance, 401(k) matching, etc) are a significant factor in the equation. As salary drops, these (rela
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by john_b 12y ago
Outrage requires awareness as a first step. Our mainstream sources of journalism are often too preoccupied with party talking points when covering welfare programs to get to the real issues of corruption, fraud, and systemic brokenness unde

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